Fulfill creative potentials

Full of ideas about how to be more creative in life and in business, four tips are suggested here:

1) Make art
2) Unlock your creativity
3) Turn STEM into STEAM
4) Put the “seemingly absurd” into action

Unlearn 5 Good Habits

Stop Thinking So Positively

When we visualize our goals as already achieved, it can subconsciously lull our minds into complacency. Goals are important, but make sure you are mindful of the difficulties that you will face along the way.

Stop Trying to Fill Every Hour of Your Day

Ever wonder why you get most of your ideas in the shower? It's because the shower is among the last sacred spaces where we aren't distracted by colleagues or technology. Our ideas need time to ferment and connect with other ideas, and being bored allows our minds to accomplish this naturally.

Stop Caring What the Internet Thinks About You

It feels good to check our blog's traffic, Google our names, or compare our Twitter follower counts, but this kind of "insecurity" work rarely helps us advance our creative pursuits. Tasks like these are intellectual empty calories, giving us the appearance of doing work. If you truly want these measurements to rise, focus on getting things done while compartmentalizing these activities to specifics times during your week.

Stop Equating Rejection with Failure

Getting rejected, while painful, isn't what can hold us back— it's how we react to such setbacks that often determines our success. Research shows that handling rejection with an "I'll show them" mentality can actually boost performance over those who have the easier route of acceptance.

Stop Spending More Time on Your Work

When we feel we need to get more stuff done, many of us invest more of our time and work weekends or evenings. The funny thing is, our time is finite and by overworking ourselves we can cause collateral damage to our creativity. Instead of spending more time on our work we should spend less. By embracing our bodies' natural rhythm of "pulsing and pausing" we can sustain our energy levels.

5 Steps to Live the Life as U desire

By following them, one can take control of his/ her life and get empowered to live the life as truly desire :

1. "Someday is Today." Stop procrastinating and creating excuses for why one can't have what he wants. Take control. Announce to yourself "someday is today" every day, to seize the day and eradicate an excuse mentality.

2."Have More Fear of Regret Than Failure." Remind yourself that the feeling of regret is so much worse than trying something (even if it doesn't work out) and living with no regrets. Realize fear is an illusion that holds you back. By doing so, you will set yourself free to live to your fullest potential.

3. "I Only Have Good Days." Remember, the only thing in the world we have control over is our perspective. You can choose to adopt a consistently positive perspective and find the good in everything. Or you can be negative, and attract more negative things into your life. The mantra "I only have good days" reminds you to see the positive for a better outcome.

4. "Opportunities Lie Within Every Obstacle." It can be tough to dig deep and find the positive, especially when confronted by challenges. But if you choose the positive, you will find the opportunity and nuggets of wisdom in every obstacle that presents itself in your life.

5. "Live With Passion and Purpose." Stop asking "what should I be doing" and start understanding "who you want to be." What do you want your legacy to be? As you reflect, you will begin to understand your purpose. That will make it easier to live with more passion and stay further away from needless and draining distractions or drama. Identifying your purpose and living with passion is the most authentic way to be empowered all day, every day.

Seed Capital raising

Worried about the Series A crunch? Choose not to participate in it and go raise a bigger seed round. Startups are often too worried about dilution, instead of whether they are capitalized enough to dominate their space. Here are  eight key advises to close our seed+ round successfully :

1. It's very hard to raise funds on the side, so staff appropriately : It takes a lot of time and effort to raise venture funding quickly--so staff for it. One has to be very diligent in reaching out, following up, setting up meetings, pitching, requesting intros and answering questions, which simply can't be done well on a part-time basis. 

2. It's a numbers game. Go get meetings, and get lots of them : It is very difficult to know what the right fit will be with early-stage investors and angels, so schedule lots of meetings. Send cold emails to known active investors, leveraged LinkedIn and requested intros from fellow fundraising startups. Investors are too busy (or attention deficit) to cull through massive amounts of detail or rely on vague emails with little teasers.

3. Force an answer from all investors : Many investors avoid saying yes or no. They linger without committing, always saying they will stay in touch. If this didn't move them to an answer, consider 'no'.

4. Leverage momentum to overcome investor hesitation : Many investors prefer to wait a while and monitor progress before writing a check. Leverage each of investors to follow up with our active pipeline. Again, having our tech team focused solely on improving the product was crucial to building the momentum.

5. Focus your message and have a clear plan : Everyone wants to change the world instantly and be the best in all adjacent markets, but believe that one can only do one thing very well at a time. Many investors well respond well to your strategy and appreciate focus.

6. Use convertible Venture Debts : Convertible Venture Debts are much faster, cheaper, and easier to execute than equity rounds since you do not have to worry about negotiating every detail of a term sheet and creating a valuation for something nearly impossible to value. Plus, it keeps your cap table simple. smallB branch of Dena Bank is playing leading role for Innovation and Start-up Finance.

7. Time is money (literally, in this case)--so be responsive, but efficient : Plan would be obsolete by the time the ink dry and it wouldn’t help them understand your business any more than your presentation already did. Created an FAQ document for the common questions so you may quickly paste canned, yet thoughtful, responses into emails. 

8. It's a seed round, not Series A : You don't need all the answers, but you better know what the questions will be. Made sure to have good thoughts on each subject and explained assumptions in addition to your methodology. 

Bottom line, if Series A funding is going to be more difficult to obtain, make sure that you raise enough money now with a seed+ round to give you sufficient time to hit those Series A milestones. While there may be more competition for capital in the future, investors will always write checks for a good business idea that solves a real problem. Get the money in the bank and get back to growing your business--just make sure you don't run out of cash before you have the chance to succeed.

Who will be successful?

Look at yourself and the people around you. Who among you will be the most successful? Don’t shrug and say it’s impossible to know. Success has markers. Spot them and you can determine who will be successful. The successful businessperson has three key traits: Drive, ability and knowledge.

1. Drive is really a state of mind. It is the internal source of motivation. People who are ambitious and have a desire – whether it is to become rich or to delight customers or some other goal – are on a path to success.
2. Ability is a combination of in-born traits and acquired skills. An example would be communications skills – some are born with this and some must work at it. Other abilities may be administrative or quantitative.
3. Knowledge is the final ingredient. Drive and ability will not help you succeed if you do not possess knowledge – of the world, of the workplace, of technology. Willingness to learn and keep learning is critical.

Big deals on 15.01.13

1. Grey Orange Robotics (GOR), which develops warehouse automation systems, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from a consortium of investors led by Blume Ventures and BITS Spark Angels, and other angels including the Hatch Group, Rajesh Sawhney, and Samir Sood.

2. On a day of festivities the India deal scene was abuss with as many as 6 deals. Ranging from intention to raise funds, to fund raising itself to even IPO, the deal space was abuzz with activity on Monday. Here’s the Deal Digest for 14/01/2013 -

• MyTopTeacher looks to raise funding 
• India’s first Technology Business Incubator (TBI), exclusively for non-residents Indians to be set up in Kerala
• Adult lifestyle products site ThatsPersonal.com raises angel investment
• OOH technology platform BookAdSpace raises angel funding from ad-tech executives
• Online doctor appointments firm HelpingDoc.com looking to raise VC
• Surat based Kavita Fabrics files for IPO at BSE SME

Tips for Charismatic Leadership

1. Be prepared

2. Shed the stoicism

3. Embody enthusiasm

4. Be authentic

5. Practice

Surprising signs of Entrepreneurs

1. Hate the Status Quo 

2. Easily Bored 

3. Fired from Jobs

4. Labeled a Rebel

5. Resist Authority 

6. Ready to Improve Everything 

7. Bad at Making Small Talk 

8. Bullied in Your Youth 

9. Obsessive 

10. Scared to Go Solo 

11. Unable to Unwind 

12. Don't Fit the Norm 

5 Tips for Quick Big Decisions

There are five things that help one to evaluate the scenario and make a decision effectively:

1) Get to the heart of the matter: The first step for any major decision is based on critically and objectively dissecting its different elements to get to the bottom of the issue. A technique, called precision questioning (PQ), is a structured method to quickly get to the underlying assumptions, sources of data, measures and cause-effect relationships to separate out causation variables from associations. 

2) Encourage dissenting points of view: Everybody has a set of experiences that inform their decision making. It’s the muscle memory they rely on when confronted with a big choice. This method is dangerous because it supports predisposed points of view whereas one need diverse perspectives to make the best decision. Hence one need to listen seriously to the counter points of view and ensure every voice is heard. 

3) Foster boldness : A key element of good decision making is timeliness. A deep and accurate understanding of all aspects of an issue is important, but seeking perfection is not practical. 

4) Ensure the discussion is not personal : Getting to the heart of an issue in a rapid manner especially with techniques like PQ can be quite intense. Make this a natural part of organization. Ensure a respect and civility in all discussions. 

5) Provide clarity in the decision : Often times a decision is made but not well communicated and therefore not well understood. Once a decision is made, it is important for everyone involved to understand the “what” and “why” of the decision. Transparency builds the foundation for support.