I like Zest. Sure, not all content it throws my way is a masterpiece, but every once in a while I come across something that makes me stop and think for a bit.

I like Zest primarily because to some extent, it spices up the otherwise bland new tab on Chrome, and till the time I find another extension that can add value to that real estate, Zest is here to stay on my computer.

Anyway, I digress. Today, this is what the first item on my new tab was:

You walk in to your office, what is the first thing you do?

I work with entrepreneurs every single day, and for a lot of them, the morning routine looks exactly the same — they enter their offices with their phones glued to their ears.

It is eery how the “walking into office” behavior is the same for so many different entrepreneurs I know. Irrespective of the business they are in, or the stage their businesses are at, they all walk into their offices the exact same way. Putting out a fire. Either it is an unhappy customer or it…

We are struggling with our social presence.

We have a large social following, but we don’t see much returns from our social media presence.

We don’t know how to efficiently track the RoI of our social media marketing efforts.

These are just some of the remarks I get to hear from businesses every day. A lot of times, the problems are fundamental in nature — things that have got more to do with what the business decided to do, and less with how they did it.

Let us quickly get the most obvious thing out of the way. Yes, social…

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. In my experience, life is what happens when you least expect it. That is what happened to me recently. Things were going alright, and bam! Just like that, I was bedridden. Two weeks of sudden illness, when you feel completely shitty, unable to do the most basic of things. Thankfully, the worst is probably behind us, and although it would take me another couple of weeks to recover from the weakness I am experiencing at the moment, getting back to work should help with the overall…

And opinions are pretty much useless. Everyone is entitled to have one, doesn’t make it groundbreaking.

Also. No. When I say data, I am not asking you to fill up two slides with Google search on the size of the market you are planning to enter into. Always assume that any investor understands the market is huge and offers immense potential for any business that is able to tap into it. When I say data, I am talking about the only data that truly matters. Traction!

The most common theme I get answer requests for, on my Quora profile, revolves…

An ex-boss of mine and I were catching up a couple of weeks ago. We were meeting after years, and in the years that have passed us by, he had a mega-exit in his last startup, and after a brief gap he took to figure out what’s next, he is back in the driver’s seat. The startup is already making some waves and coupled with his previous success and trust investors have in him, they have raised decent capital in no time. As a result, hiring the right talent is not an issue. …

Quite a few of my Medium stories come up because of questions I am asked on Quora, or questions that I see popping up in my feed. This is one such story.

Earlier this week, I was asked this question:

Wall Street is where private businesses face the ultimate litmus test. It is where all the lofty valuations go out the window, and analysts and investors alike go through the business inner details with a fine-toothed comb. It was revealed to a great deal when much-awaited IPOs of Uber and Lyft more or less fell flat on their faces, and the vigor of it was underscored with quite prominence with the whole ongoing WeWork debacle. …