AI
The use cases of AI just keeps growing. It started with AI will be efficient and effective in managing repetitive or routine tasks, and now it comes a full circle to ensure that we humans can stick to a routine, in other words helping us being productive.
Struggling to Stick to a Routine? Here’s How AI Can Help
AI an Equaliser
Worried about AI taking away your job, well it may take away many more jobs than just yours, but that must have been the worrying thought every time civilisations advanced from one phase to the next, like agriculture to manufacturing to technology and so on. May be back when computers were entering the world, people may have had the same fears, only that they didn’t have these communication tools that made the spread of the fear so fast, which we have now to share valuable information or fear. The choice is ours, the choice is yours. Just like the way computers assists one in his or her work, AI is the same. No point fearing it. Use it to be empowered.
100% of Everyone’s Job Will Be Changed Due To AI – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Future of Jobs and Businesses
India is set to overtake the US in terms of number of programmers, and at a time when AI is bound to replace most entry level jobs. As per a report from the World Economic Forum, whilst approximately 90 millions jobs will vanish due to AI, a fresh 175 million jobs will be introduced through AI. Clearly AI will be giving more than taking out. Approximately 90% of the businesses are also going to depend on AI in some way by 20230. In conclusion, to be relevant one has to ensure that he or she has the right entry level AI skill sets be it a job or business.
Recode the Coder in the Age of AI
And That Future of Programming Jobs Is Already here
Yes, while various studies are throwing out trends and numbers around how AI is going to shift things in the job market and in businesses in the future. It’s already validating with the way programming has changed already, using AI, cutting short development times from days to hours.
Perplexity CEO: AI Coding Tools Transformed the Way We Work
AI – Replacing the Founder or being the Cofounder
And again yes, while AI can be used to make most processes and roles auto, efficient and effective. It certainly can be built to be the founder to launch ideas into sustainable and successful businesses in a shorter timeframe than the traditional model and methodologies that have been around for ages.
“Investment Case: Foundups — The Post-Startup IDE Paradigm”
AI Your Financial Advisor
Current AI models assist in researching a script and recommend actions. Going further experts believe AI models will become more adaptive to their human clients and assist in overall financial advisory.
‘AI Will be Ready to Manage Your Money in 5 Years’
AI for Managing Fast Fashion and Reduce Carbon Footprints
AI startup’s GreenStitch and Stylumia helping brands and manufacturers track carbon emissions, make sustainable operational decisions and automate climate compliance.
SaaS Startups Tailor New Green Solutions for Fashion Industry
Comfort and Discomfort
An entrepreneurs journey is never comfortable to begin with. Over and above that he/she faces a number of situations that may be or may not be related to the business directly, and make him/her feel uncomfortable. Such times they may have to learn to say no, learn to not oblige to such uncomfortable requests. Then there will be times when uncomfortable situations but important to the business, will pop up, and the entrepreneur must learn to deal with these discomforts. Only then they will overcome the discomfort and move on.
Consciousness in Entrepreneurship
An interesting theory presented by Deepak Chopra on physics and meta-physics, consciousness and the human mind that shapes what is reality and what is not. Similarly in entrepreneurship it’s the conscious human mind that ideates in the first place, and then the action planning to make it a reality.
How Convenient Fiction Won Out Over Reality
Choices
Customer validation has to be the first choice always for any entrepreneur. All other choices must be thought after only later.
Crowd funding
Anker Innovations launched kickstarter campaign and raised a record breaking US$46 million, for it’s UV printer EufyMake that allows customers or businesses to personalise there merchandise of mugs, banners, tote bags etc….
3D Printer Breaks Kickstarter Record, Raises Over $46M
Creativity
Creativity comes from paying attention and not from getting attention. And paying attention in the right place is important to be creative. You cannot be creative by paying attention to posting on social media, because that is about getting attention. In entrepreneurship, if you have to solve a problem, if you have to get a creative solution, then you have to pay attention.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: How craving attention makes you less creative – TED Talks
Customer Service
Customer service is as important as any other business function. And it has to mean the same thing at all levels of a company. Any variance between the executive, managerial and the frontline staff in terms of customer service, directly affects the business. Customers appreciate stability and continuance of good customer service with loyalty.
Daily Discomfort
We are living in a time where in technology has made most things easy, comfortable and convenient for us and it continues to get better. However, Growth does not happen from comfort, practicing discomfort is becoming a daily ritual to push ourselves for growth.
3-2-1: On daily discomfort, the power of acting early, and life’s greatest pleasure – James Clear
Data Diligence
Entrepreneurs must be prepared to handle investor audits, as investors don’t just invest looking solely at the projections presented by the entrepreneur. As the deal progresses, investors can conduct an audit of the data room, to look for accuracy and alignment of data between pitch deck and actual records, and discipline by the entrepreneurs in maintaining an up to date data room.
This Mistake Can Tank a Deal, Even If Your Business Is Solid
Dopamine Mastery
Dopamine often referred to as a motivation molecule, is a hormone released to drive one to take action over something in anticipation of a reward or a goal accomplishment. That’s the bright side of dopamine. And then there is a dark side as well which daily high jacks ones motivation to take meaningful actions, by offering easy rewards or short term comfort or pleasure through distractions in the form of modern day technologies and platforms meant for the same. As entrepreneurs one needs to guard their motivation molecule heavily to ensure meaningful action for desired rewards.
Mastering the Dopamine Game: Turn Your Brain’s Chemistry into a Winning Strategy
Dubai – Hotspot for Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship has been a buzzword globally for over couple of decades now. Major metros have built Eco systems that are fostering entrepreneurship and startup’s. While most of these zones have had an early start, they may have not had a perfect start. That’s the advantage that Dubai has, to take those learning’s and provide an infrastructure both physical and regulatory that is not stuck in red tape, is decisive and moving fast with access to world class talent and connectivity.
This City Is the Best Place to Be an Entrepreneur Right Now
Entrepreneurs or Entrepreneurship in the New Age
The new school book on entrepreneurship is the exact opposite of the old school book. Everything that came first to starting up, back in the days, now comes last and at times never comes altogether, and vice versa. And the new playbook seems to make sense, as it values the most basic and fundamental things first.
How the Next Gen of Entrepreneurs is Outpacing Us
Entrepreneurship after Retirement
Entrepreneurship has no age barriers. Many famous brands and businesses where launched in retirement or at a very late stage in one’s life, take KFC as an example. Also being entrepreneurial is more easy now than say 40 years ago. All you need is a laptop and a good internet connection. Retirement can just be the right time to start something new, backed with lifelong connections, experiences and learnings.
Why Retirees Have a Hidden Edge as Entrepreneurs
Epictetus – The Acquired One
Resilience is an important quality for entrepreneurs to cultivate in the journey of entrepreneurship. Not all days are the same, not all plans turn out the way we intend, we can only control how we respond to what is happening in the outside world around us. We cannot control the outside world, but we can control our inner world, and the way we respond to the outer world.
Stoicism and the Art of Resilience
Energy Production Sustainable Alternatives
Think of electricity production and supply and the picture that comes to mind is big and complicated. Think again, advancement in technology has helped in creating solutions that fit in compact systems at home or office and able to benefit users in more than one way. Capturing human kinetic energy through energy harvesting materials embedded in a tread mill or underneath a floor tile, whilst using a tread mill or just casually walking around,
At this Brown University, students keep the lights on by running on the treadmill
Feedback
At any stage, in any area or function of a business, feedback is important for improvising. It’s also as important to validate the feedback sources, so as to only take into account that feedback which adds value to the business going ahead.
The order and the medium of feedback
Franchising
Franchising is the solution to owning a business whilst having a day job.
How I Built a Multi-Franchise Operation without Leaving Mu Day Jon
Funding
Startup funding in the first half of 2025 has picked up compared to the corresponding period in the previous year, however the euphoria of blindly investing for scale is gone. Most deals have taken place in growth stage startup’s that have sound fundamentals, positive unit economics and hence profitability.
Venture capital Funding Inched up in H1 to $4.9 billion via 410 Startup Deals
Four Day Work Week
This must be the default option for most companies and businesses. If one is required to complete the tasks for the week in four days instead of five, it basically results in better efficiency, a happier mindset in the company, and an opportunity for exploring ideas in one’s own time.
Flexible Financing
Idle capital in a business is not a smart finance strategy. It can be argued that access to the capital will be easy with liquid cash in hand, when an opportunity needs to be seized. But for a business to be growing does not mean to be ready when an opportunity arises, businesses need to be growing everyday as part of the daily operations. Which means that idle capital in that case is not the best utilisation of capital in the business. A better design must be created so that the capital is employed effectively and is also available when required for meeting and seizing new growth opportunities. Hence it’s not about having liquid cash but more about managing liquidity or in other words the Cash Conversion Cycle.
Financial Flexibility For Seizing Opportunities
Growth Mindset
Entrepreneurs do not come from a fixed mindset, if they did, they would not be launching startups and succeeding at it. The maintain a growth mindset, through which they challenge the status quo, ask better questions, adapt, learn and transform setbacks into success.
The One Trait That Separates Great Leaders From Everyone Else
Pain Paradox
In entrepreneurship failure is painful, but training the mind to handle that failure with curiosity unlocks learnings and a way to move forward. Not doing so, and pondering over the failure in your mind can make it worse than it actually is.
The Pain Paradox: How Fear of Pain Creates More Pain
Plastic Waste to Paracetamol
Engineering biologists at the University of Edinburgh have developed a way to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, the process involves a reaction between genetically modified E.Coli and chemically treated pet bottles. This innovative experiment when scaled for commercial will help in reducing plastic waste in land fills and carbon emissions in production of paracetamol.
Reprogrammed E. coli turns plastic waste into paracetamol
Productivity
Knowing your sleep chronotype helps in being aware and maintaining your sleep pattern and also being productive by scheduling your most important tasks for the time your are most active and energised.
What are sleep chronotypes & which one are you?
Publicity or Public Relations
When the media talks about it’s publicity. What you create working with internal and external stakeholders in your business is public relations. Publicity is visible and will only run for the short term, but public relations stays for the long term.
Publicity or public relations?
Robotics
Investments in robotics have been increasing steadily over the last three years, globally. Rise in automation within enterprises and lower costs and lesser time in manufacturing robotics, has fuelled the interest in the robotics sector.
Investors Powering on Robotics Startups
Startup Exits
While 2024 Sona number of Indian startup’s take the IPO route with big valuations and handsome returns to the Angel and VC investors, the 2025 story so far is reversed. A volatile stock market has driven the valuations of startup’s to comparative levels in Private equity, Mergers and Acquisitions and hence the PE and M&A options have been a preferred route for investors to exit the startup’s.
IPOs Lead India’s 2024 Startup Exit Wave, But M&As Likely to Catch up
Side Hustle Success Stories
Havenly
Sisters Lee Mayor and Emily Motayed started and online interior design service, Havenly. With successful client servicing they also acquired a handful of home furnishing companies. Insightful lessons from their success –
- Doing what you know may be easy but not the most important thing to do in that moment
- Do the difficult stuff first, to make everything else relevant.
- Don’t take rejection personally, learn and move on.
- Take advice, but filter it through your lens.
Sisters’ Side Hustle Leads to Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
The global economic scenario has lead people to have a job and a side hustle running on the sides to maintain security to their lifestyles. To successfully manage a side hustle that not only thrives but also survives without you, requires careful planing, playing on strengths and solving real world problems.
How to Build a Side Hustle That Stands on Its Own — Without Burning Out
Actual Veggies
Jason Rosenbaum and Hailey Swartz founded an all veggie Burger brand Actual Veggies as a side hustle in 2020 to becoming a national business brand with approximately $20 Million revenue expected in 2025. Advices founders to track their time from idea to launch to be within 8 to 14 months as an ideal time, anything faster or slower requires one to reassess and proceed.
Obvious’ Side Hustle: From $300k Monthly to $20M+ in 2025
Strategy
Agile
Technology has always been fast paced, and now with AI it gets faster. To stay relevant as a business, companies will need to adapt to the changing technologies and corresponding markets with agility.
Agility – The Only Strategy to Outpace Disruption
Empathy yes, but Honesty first
Knowing when to empathise with a customer and when to be honest in communicating your thoughts to the customers is crucial to the business. Customers do expect the niceties to begin with, but then the expect you to come down with serious business, provide honest feedback, that can help them adapt accordingly and grow.
Being Nice Can Cost You Your Business
Storytelling
The only thing that stands out in the markets flooded with competing products and services is your story. Everything else can be copied or matched by competitors, but they can’t replicate your story. Using stories to connect with prospects makes it personal, builds emotional resonance, as people don’t follow or remember brands, but they will always connect with and remember a story. Additionally one must create a story bank for different themes, as one story will not be relevant across themes.
Why Storytelling (Not Selling) Is Your Most Powerful Branding Tool
Sunk Costs
Sunk cost is the past, done and dusted, no need to sink with it anymore, just get moving on.
Sunk costs and the framework for forward motion
Selling A Business
A business must be dealt with like a business, it helps in making the decision to exit it at the right time, easy. Treating it as your baby when building it is fine, but one must know when to treat it like a business, so as to exit it at the right time at a good valuation.
The Pitfalls of Being Too Attached to Your Business
Something from Nothing
Wise words of advice for anyone starting up with nothing, no resources, no experience, totally building from scratch.
9 Principles That Carried Me From the Sidelines to the Suite
Startup Spotlight
Azmarq is an omnichannel communications service provider that does not spam for business’s. Launched in 2014 and bootstrapped it’s way to approximately 400 customers and Rs. 20 crore in revenue.
Azmarq helps businesses with omnichannel communication services that don’t spam
Bookshop.org
Amazon’s launch in 1995 as an online book seller, which is now 10% of it profits approximately $30 billion. Around the same period more than 50% of brick and mortar bookstores in the US closed shop. Andy being a book lover and working in publishing noticed this trend, and decided to support independent bookstores by launching bookshop.org which has approximately 2200 independent bookstores registered with it, giving away 100% of the profit to the bookstore that a shopper specifically supports, and 33% of profits in general to all of the bookstores on the platform. Andy refrains from holding on to lot of the profits, as that would be against his philosophy to support independent bookstores. His idea of winning is to have 5% of Amazon customers to return to independent bookstores.
Leatherology
Siblings Rae and David Liu launched Leatherology a luxury leather accessories brand in 2008 using their own funds and complimenting skills, turning into a eight figure business. Their story highlights the advantage of freedom to make decisions and run the business as per their plans as a result of self funding, not compromising on quality and leveraging on various marketing channels.
Self Funded to Eight Figure business every year in Luxury Accessories
Neuralink
Brain implants that solve a health condition may be more validating, than an implant that connects once thoughts to a machine. The cost and affordability of the application is going to be a huge factor driving adoption of this technology by the masses.
Poppins
Lucie Basch a French entrepreneur founded Poppins to enable borrowing and renting of household items that are not used everyday, are required once in a while. The app will help develop circular habits, make people more social, reduce the green house emissions by cutting unwanted over production and over consumption of household items.
‘Own less, have more’: French app rents out underused household items
Pawspace
Pet care industry in India is valued at approximately $462 million as of 2024, and is expected to be around $2.5 billion by 2031. Pawspace launched in 2021 has served 35k customers with a 27% repeat bookings, offering boarding and grooming services, and to introduce accessories, toys and treats in the near future.
How PawSpace is bringing structure to India’s fragmented pet care industry
Throne SPORT COFFEE
There is a growing awareness amongst consumers around the ingredients in what they consume. Most top selling Ready to Drink coffee has approximately 300 calories and 50 grams of sugar. Michael Fedele launched Throne SPORT COFFEE using natural caffeine, flavours and sweeteners as its ingredients, a healthier option for on the move coffee addicts.
Throne SPORT COFFEE disrupting the $5 Billion Ready to Drink Coffee market
Summer Davos 2025
A clear message that comes out of the Summer Davos 2025 in China, is that AI is no more just an assist for handling repetitive or mundane tasks, but is more like a co-creator that entrepreneurs can use build billion dollar companies individually. Entrepreneurs can not only treat AI as co-creators but are also developing AI beyond just LLM to handle more sensory and physical tasks, such as sensing the workflow in a factory and prompting any irregularities.
Reflections at Summer Davos 2025: A New Era for Entrepreneurs / Entrepreneurship
TED Talks
Smart and Contradicting Strategies to Succeed in Your Endeavours
At times doing or being the unexpected gets people to do what you actually want from them.
Barry Sonnenfeld: How to get people to do what you want
Embrace Transparency
Things can be difficult and dangerous at times, embracing them with grit and transparency helps one overcome the challenges.
Morgan Spurlock: The greatest TED Talk ever sold
Micro Finance Success Story
M-Pesa a mobile phone based money transfer, payment and micro finance service launched in 2007 in Kenya, accounting for approximately 60% of Kenya’s GDP transacting through it.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Jacqueline Novogratz: A story of moral imagination and bold entrepreneurship
Travel & Tourism
The travel and tourism sector has the scope to be a $16 Trillion industry by 2034, provided the growth is planned a sustainability focus, managing tourist numbers in popular destinations to ensure pleasant experiences for the tourists as well as the locals, promoting the not so hyped destinations, providing opportunities for locals to benefit economically by providing products or services to tourists that add a local experience,
Warren Buffet Lessons
Trusting your inner scorecard was an advice give to Warren Buffet by his father. Knowing why you do what you do, and doing it without worrying about what others think, believing in yourself and putting in the work, operating with integrity and honesty, always pays off down the road.
The Secret Sauce of Warren Buffet: Ingredient #1 Trusting you Inner Scorecard
Sources
Bloomberg
Common Spirit blog
Daily Stoic
Entrepreneur
Economic Times
Newatlas.com
Nir and Far (Nir Eyal)
Procrastination.com
Reinventing Life (Deepak Chopra)
Secret Sauce Podcast
Seth Godin Blog
Ted Talks
World Economic Forum
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