Competition - Natural versus prepared!!!

Competition - Natural versus prepared!!!
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Well this is just one thought that I got while I was walking back from the cafeteria after my lunch. Some of my friends were talking about writing exams like GRE, CAT, GMAT ans things like it. Even I had given CAT and got GDPI calls for 3 of them. But this thought which I got - naturalness versus competitive preparedness, is not one that i am used to.

This is a competitive world no doubt about that, we see competition right from school days till we find job, and even after that. We see children in pre-university colleges, going to tutions after theirs long hours of class through out the day. Especially when the students are in 12^th I see that they don't have a break, the preparation starts some 2 months before the actual college classes begins, the students are made to go through a rigorous schedule and don't find time for anything else. Then there are the competitive exams which these students write. They are get to compete on much larger scale and those who will make it though these exams gets a graduation course of his/her choice.

In all this process of preparation for the exams, we are continuously strained by the time bound process. We have to say, wake up at 5:30am, then slog the whole day and then get back to bed at 12 mid night. We do this for one year and then we get into a graduation course that would later on guarantee us a job, and a profession. But in all this we find that we just prepare our-self for the competitive exam, and just get trained for the particular purpose. We don't follow this system further until we have another competition else where.

Well when I say "natural" in the above sentences, I only mean not being explicitly prepared for this purpose, but this naturalness might be a result of long term effort. What this means is, you work continuously, not concerned about the course of events/competition etc., you work to increase your skill set and there by just make it natural - liking what you do.

Here are a few things that curtails me and get me thinking as to why its better to make the thing natural than just be prepared for it is the effect this preparedness gets in. Assume you enter into a prestigious institute like IIT with a solid preparation that was overlooked & guided by a coaching class. When you enter into such an institute and find all the people coming in there with just some prepared course material and not naturally good in the subject (he has not understood the subject on his own and just come in with some knowledge about how to solve what is given), we cant find a lot people getting into to understand the subject of the course and the basis for innovation - science, takes a hard hit. We find today a lot of people who could not make it into the engineering colleges for their graduation go and join the pure science stream. The result being that we have very few innovations in the pure science related field of late. We have to emphasise on naturalness and ensure that this be the path that people follow, so as to benefit the long run objectives of improvement rather than immediate gains.

After all these though, i am slowly getting into being more bent towards the natural process. I don't want to be spontaneous for success alone, I feel like relishing what I do. I want to make my gamut of capabilities large enough to encompass the challenge of competition more easily. I believe in sharpening the axe even when I don't have to cut wood. Working toward making life and the challengers that I face be just a process of evaluation for the much larger concept of making things natural.

If I have to explain what I mean to say in the above paragraph, I would get it clear like this. I am generally work with words, solve crossword puzzles, and try all the games related to vocabulary, just because I like the language and want to know more about it. I work on this continuously. If some day choose to write GRE, the preparation for the vocabulary section of the exam would not need any extra effort. Its just natural for me to answer this. I would be in a much better mental state to answer the questions, than if I had prepared specifically for this purpose - in which case, the pressure of the exam can get me to mark a wrong answer even if I know the correct one. If you read regularly to improve you G.K and not for any competitive interview, you are definitely more better off.

Though the natural process of preparation, which takes time and effort, and doesn't seem to give immediate results, except that you do it for your own satisfaction. In the long run, this naturalness give lot more preparedness to face situations, a better understanding of the subject, making it more rewarding.

Well I don't mean to rule out that small term preparation is bad, or not useful at all. All I want to tell up is that, this short term is a good short cut to success but it will not carry a long way until we convert this short-term preparation to be more expanding and encompassing. We don't get to like all that we do, true, but we have to prepare our-self for the situation... in such cases we have to take to the short term preparation. But we can keep doing this short preparation but have to make it natural if the same situation recurs. The basic point is we have to strike the right balance between the two.

The most important way of converting this short term preparations into naturalness is by converting them into hobbies, this is the easiest of ways. Other than that we can start off continuing with the same routine that we would have developed in the days of intense preparation, and then blossom with the same routine to experiment and know the beauty of the each of the subjects that may be involved. These are the smoothest way to transform from the short term preparation to long term natural preparedness...

Well I see that for quick gains and results in the fast paced world of today, there is little that we can do to prevent short term preparedness towards competition. We are happy being able to perform on the particular day and not care about how well we understand and perform. But the only point that is repeatedly coming to my mind is, how long can you survive on something that is manipulated and not completely integrated and made your own feature? I don't disagree that there are people who follow the short-term progress but understand the subject as well but those are very rare cases.

Personally I still advocate being on a "natural" course rather than the gimmicks of a short term preparation... I have decided that I will adopt this system from now on.... may be the turning point of my life... cant say.... I still see sense in this method... What do you think?

Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia

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I am sure - if you have been listening to the news with apt attention during the late 1997 or early 1998, you would not have missed the news of Microsoft taking over HoTMaiL. In this article I give a brief introduction of the co-founder of the HoTMaiL. The co-founder of the now famous HoTMaiL is none other than our very own Bangalore lad - Sabeer Bhatia.

Sabeer was born in 1969 at Chandigarh to Balev Bhatia & Daman Bhatia. Balev Bhatia served the Indian Ministry of Defence while his mother Daman Bhatia worked as a senior official at a State Bank.

Schooling:

His parents placed great value on education. Sabeer grew up in Bangalore and had his early education at Bishops Cotton's School in Pune, and then at St. Joseph's Boy's High School in Bangalore. He did his Pre-University in St. Joseph's College Bangalore.

Some of the memorable incidents during his school life are here - "On parent-teacher days they would just say 'Sir, why did you come? You don't have to come! We tell Sabeer to solve the questions on the blackboard for us,'" says Bhatia senior. Once, Sabeer came home crying after an exam. He had not done badly; he just hadn't had time to write down everything he knew.

He started his undergraduate education at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani. In 1988 Sabeer won a full scholarship to the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), in Pasadena. After graduating from Caltech, Sabeer went to Stanford to pursue his MS in Electrical Engineering. At Stanford, he worked on Ultra Low Power VLSI Design.

Career:

At Stanford, he was inspired by entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy eventually deciding to become one himself. Instead pursuing a PhD after his Masters, he decided to join Apple computers.

Sabeer briefly worked for Apple Computers as a hardware engineer -he lasted nine months there, after that he joined a start up company called Firepower Systems Inc, where he spent two years.

The new dawn:

In his cubicle, he read about young men starting up for peanuts and selling out for millions. Sabeer pondered what the Net could do for him, and what he could do for the Net. Then he had an idea.

It was called Javasoft - a way of using the Web to create a personal database where surfers could keep schedules, to-do lists, family photos and so on. Bhatia showed the plan to Jack Smith, an Apple colleague and they got started. One evening Smith called Bhatia with an intriguing notion. Why not add e-mail to Javasoft? It was a small leap with revolutionary consequences: access to e-mail from any computer, anywhere on the planet. This was that rare thing, an idea so simple, so obvious; it was hard to believe no one had thought of it before. Bhatia saw the potential and panicked that someone would steal the idea. He sat up all night writing the business plan. "Then we wrote down all variations of mail - Speedmail, Hypermail, Supermail." HoTMaiL made perfect sense: it included the letters "HTML" - the programming language used to write Web pages. A brand name was born.

In order to attract attention, the e-mail service was provided for free and revenue was obtained through the advertising on the website. Bhatia had $6,000 to his name. It was time to find investors. By the time he reached the offices of venture capitalists Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 19 doors had slammed behind him. Steve Jurvetson and his colleagues quickly saw the potential and put up $300,000. Bhatia and Smith stretched the money all the way to launch day, July 4, 1996. By year-end they were greeting their millionth customer. When Microsoft came knocking, 12 months later, they'd signed up nearly 10 million users.

Selling HoTMaiL to MS (Microsoft):

But what were 10 million subscribers worth? Was it $160 million as Microsoft said? More? Less? Sabeer polled his investors. Doug Carlisle, whose firm Menlo Ventures had pumped $1 million into Hotmail, guessed $200 million. Sabeer chided him for giving the lowest estimate and joked that he might hold out for a billion. Carlisle promised that if Sabeer made $200 million he would erect a life-size, bronze statue of him in Menlo Ventures' foyer.

Sabeer didn't know how to sell a company. But he did know how to buy onions. "In India you've got to negotiate for everything," he says. "Even buying vegetables, you've got to negotiate." When the bargaining started, Sabeer felt right at home. "They came in low with $160 million, so I came in at $700 million! And when they said: 'That's ridiculous! Are you out of your mind,' I knew it was just a ploy."

Sabeer wouldn't budge, and Microsoft's representatives kept walking out, or rather storming. And shouting and swearing and hurling insults. But the Hotmail team had been warned of Microsoft's tactics. "It was like a record being played," says Jurvetson, "which we thought was pretty funny. It gave us a real sense of strength." During the negotiations, he had bumped into a British backpacker in Prague. Sabeer asked him how he kept in touch with family and friends - Hotmail, of course. Sabeer went back and told Microsoft: "If that is the brand we have built in one and a half years, imagine what it will be in 20 years. Hotmail will easily be bigger than McDonald's."

At $200 million, Doug Carlisle started looking for a sculptor. At $350 million, Hotmail's investors agreed: Sell. Sabeer returned to the table, alone, and once more said: "No." The contract was inked on Dec. 30, 1997, Sabeer’s 29th birthday. The price: some three million Microsoft shares - worth $400 million at the time and twice that now. Today Hotmail users are signing up at the rate of 250,000 a day, and the firm is valued at some $6 billion. "I'm pretty sure Sabeer and Jack regret selling," says Jurvetson. "Who knows what might have been?" Sabeer shrugs: "When we sold, it was considered an outrageous amount. In hindsight, yes, we sold too low. But I don't regret it because at that time it was considered a great deal."

After the Sale (New day!!!):

After selling Hotmail, Sabeer worked at Microsoft for about a year and in April 1999, he left the company to start another website, Arzoo Inc, which was shut down when the dot-com bubble burst. In 2006, he re-launched Arzoo as a travel portal.

He started a new website trying to capitalise on the emerging blogosphere - BlogEverywhere with co-founders Shiraz Kanga and Viraf Zack.

He also pushed for a project enabling access to the internet through cable television in Indian homes. However, due to bureaucratic problems it is very unlikely that this will reach completion.

Further future plans of his include the development of a new city in India by the name of Nano city. The aim of Nanocity is to replicate the vibrance and eco-system of innovation found in the Silicon Valley.

Recognition:

Sabeer’s success has earned him widespread acclaim;

1. The venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson named him 'Entrepreneur of the Year 1997',

2. MIT chose him as one of 100 young innovators who are expected to have the greatest impact on technology and awarded 'TR100',

3. San Jose Mercury News and POV magazine selected him as one of the ten most successful entrepreneurs of 1998 and

4. Upside magazine's list of top trendsetters in the New Economy named him 'Elite 100'.

5. Named by TIME as one of the "People to Watch" in International Business (2002)

Src:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabeer_Bhatia

http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/technology/990625/bhatia.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1402270.stm

http://www.webindia123.com/personal/abroad/sabeer.htm

http://www.indobase.com/indians-abroad/sabeer-bhatia.html

http://www.engology.com/eng5bhatia.htm