Andrew Mason was fired as the CEO of Groupon last week and he wrote an amazing letter. Building a company takes everything you’ve got, and sometimes more. After putting in everything for years, to admit you were either wrong or incapable of delivering is one of the hardest things to do. I’ve quit being the CEO of a company before, and wrote a rallying mail to my then co-workers to support the new CEO. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, and it was also one of my best pieces of writing.

You can’t ask for much more from a leader than to admit that he was wrong and admit it with humility. Even though my company Haggle has an approach to commerce that will disrupt the daily deals space, I think Andrew deserves great credit for building a multi billion dollar company, and entirely new business space in such a short span. He has one upped his achievements as an entrepreneur by publicly taking responsibility for Groupon’s decline. 

I’ve always considered Alan Greenspan’s admission that he was wrong about regulation as one of the finest examples of human character. For a man of his stature and accomplishment to admit that his whole life’s work and belief was wrong at the age of 82 is nothing if not magnanimous. You just can not ask for better human behaviour in society. 

Entrepreneurs will always face failure. It is the very nature of the beast. To admit one is wrong in the public eye is what sets the successful ones apart from the failed ones. 

I wish Andrew luck in his next venture.

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too hard to break. I’ve heard Warren Buffett say this before, probably in a different context. But the recent tragedy in Newtown, and the lack of immediate action, following it by President Obama is a clear sign the chains of habit are too hard to break. 

• The stats

I did some checking on the numbers related to gun rights in the country and I found three stats shocking. 

1. There are 88.5 firearms for every 100 people in the country. This is 70% more than the country with the next highest rate. (source: Fareed Zakaria article on Time)
2. There are over 300 Million firearms in circulation today. We probably don’t have 300 Million smart phones in circulation in the country. 
3. In the decade since 2000, violent crime rates, aggravated assault rates and non gun related homicides have all dropped by over 20%, while gun related homicide rates have stayed about the same, and serious but non fatal gun injuries caused during assault have increased by over 20%. (source: Fareed Zakaria article on CNN)

How does anyone look at those numbers and not make the conclusion that we have too many guns in America, and that as gun control has become looser, we have had more deaths?

• Look at other countries

The shootings in Aurora and Newtown both tell us we need better access to mental health services for those that need it. But this is not a problem only of access to phychological resources. There are mentally ill people in Asia, Europe and Australia as well. There is depression, loneliness and dark psychological shades among some of the people there as well. But they don’t have anywhere near as many mass shootings as we do in America. In Australia, after a mass shooting in 96, they immediately enacted strict gun control and they haven’t had any mass shooting since then. 

We have to learn from other countries and stop being stubborn. 

• Just ban them all

We should ban civilians from having guns. Assault weapons, hand guns, hunting rifles - all of them. Those who have a tradition of hunting in their family, or enjoy going to a shooting range, should be able to rent them on those premises and not be able to take those guns back home. There should be strict background check before they get a permit for renting on these premises and the background check data should all be synced up to a national database, to avoid people getting around the system. 

At the very least civilians should not have access to assault weapons. They were not designed for hunting or recreation. They were designed for killing - killing in mass. 

• Leadership

President Obama’s address following the Newtown shooting was touching, but his promise of action needs to be real. Now is the time for him to take some bold steps, like the ones Mike Bloomberg’s pushing for. 

The chain of habit we are finding too hard to break is being stuck in a quagmire of political discussion. We need bold, disruptive action. Surely, whoever framed the Second Amendment, didn’t have in mind a situation where twenty young kids would be shot. 

I hope we step up as a society, with bold leadership, and implement tough gun control and implement it now. I like America because of its ability to make big adjustments with changing times, and now is the time for another big one.

We need a new town, America. One without guns.

My awesome co-workers and I have been working hard to create Asterisk and we launched a Beta today. We wanted to disrupt the Search Market with three principles - 

1. YOUR Time - We wanted to make it easier for you to get content right on any web page you are on without having to waste time going to reading apps, landing pages, search engines and such.
2. YOUR opinion - We strongly believe that editorial and quality opinions matter more today than ever before. We want to make it easy for you to see what sites/writers/blogs are shaping your opinion.
3. YOUR data - We are sick of all the targeting done by advertising companies. We want to let you take charge of your online data and see how you influence others with it.

Using Asterisk is simple. Once you add it to your browser, just highlight any word that you want to get more content on, and click on the little Asterisk icon that comes up. You’ll get personalized content in a beautiful sidebar that slides in from the left of your screen.

The product is by no means fully finished and we have a LOT of work to do in the coming months. But it has been a lot of fun burning the midnight oil to launch Asterisk Beta. I love the user experience of the product.

I’d love it if you gave the product a whirl and give me some feedback. This is built to make your life easier, and in the spirit of “succeed fast, fail faster”, I’d love to hear if this is helpful to you or not.

You can add Asterisk to your browser from our website - www.goasterisk.com

It is currently only available on Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers on Desktops. 

(Source: goasterisk.com)

I just supported Geode by ICache on Kickstarter. It’s a digital wallet that is not only cool looking, but also revolutionary. 

But something else struck me - the way they’re raising money on kickstarter. As of this date, they’ve raised $242,643 from 1205 backers. If you back the project with $159 or more, you get a Geode from them and if you back the project with $7500 or more, you become a reseller and get 50 Geodes. Most of the money they’ve raised so far has come from these groups. So essentially, they’re building the product with the potential customers paying for some part of the development even before they buy the product. 

This is amazing. I’ve been a CEO of a hardware company in the past and I know how hard it is to get a contract or a reseller and take that contract and get a credit line against it to buy parts etc. Kickstarter has connected a hardware business directly with the users, so they can raise money from the early adopters/buyers of the product and essentially the users are pre-paying for the product. I think this can revolutionize the hardware industry. 

The guys at kickstarter have done something really innovative here.

I’m overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection for Steve Jobs. He is, like for many, a hero for me. In his blog post, Richard Branson wrote about how Steve was a hero for many - adoptees, people fighting cancer, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who come back to turn a company around, artists, engineers, marketing experts……his impact on all of us is beyond the ipods and the macs. 

Ben Graham, apparently decided as a young man, that he could become great by looking at the people he admired and imbibing the habits that made them great.

Image Source: gigapple.files.wordpress.com

Of all the habits that one can take from Steve, one really stands out in my eyes. In a conversation with Andy Hertzfield on the proliferation of start-ups, with so many young entrepreneurs focused on an “exit strategy,” selling their companies for a quick and hefty profit, Steve apparently commented - “It’s such a small ambition and sad really, they should want to build something, something that lasts.” It is this habit of Steve to not get distracted by the short term profit or the criticism, but to keep focused on building something great and long lasting that I take most to.

I wish more entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that I work with think this way.

Image Source: t0.gstatic.com

If there is ever a person who can call a spade a spade it’s Charlie.

Text

• A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business 
  USC Business School, 1994 
• Basically, It’s Over 
  A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin 
  Feb 2010

Video

• The 2008 Lee A. DuBridge distinguished visitor Lecture
  Caltech, 2008
• A conversation with Charlie Munger
  University of Michigan Ross School of Business, 2010
• Charlie discusses the economic crisis with Professor Joseph A. Grundfest ‘78
  Stanford Law School, 2010
• Charlie’s speech at USC Law commencement
  USC Law School, 2007

My name Rajiv was somewhat inspired by India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Growing up in India, politics meant the Indian National Congress Party and whatever other party that would put up some fight and come up with a new name with Janata as one of the words in the name (Janata Party, Janata Dal, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Janata Party…..and many more…). But as elections over the years threw up more and more split results, coalition governments became all the rage. The Brits, in their delectably subtle yet sarcastic humor, named the coalition governments as Hung Parliaments. I always thought that a coalition government, with all the political horse trading essentially renders the parliament hung. Surely no meaningful progress can be made when parties with contrasting points of view take control of the House together, just to be in power! Yet, oddly it all seemed to work in India. I guess much like everything in India, things can only work when there’s some chaos thrown into the mix. 

After I moved to the U.S, I was surprised to see that the seemingly smooth and efficient two party system is as inefficient as the multi-party system. My friends know what a big fan I am of Aaron Sorkin’s writing in The West Wing. Its interesting to me that years later, living in Washington D.C, watching a great President in action seems uncannily similar to President Bartlett in The West Wing. A Budget related shutdown of the government, Israel-Palestine talks, struggles with making a big change to the Education system - all significant challenges which can not (in my opinion) be overcome when there is such a big divide in the ideologies of the two parties. This is an age where we need disruptive changes to our economic, education and health systems. I think we can only make incremental changes with the Republicans and Democrats having such different points of view and not make a real disruptive one.

So I often wonder, if the multi-party system doesn’t really work in India, the two party system doesn’t really work in the U.S, and really the demographics and economics are driving India and the social freedom and innovation is driving the U.S, then is politics even a really relevant framework for our society in the decades to come? I think it certainly won’t be the only important framework of governance. Surely social networks, innovation, flow of capital and micro-cultures should be as important, if not more, as politics. Need I mention the Arab Spring…although I hope the summer keeps up the momenturm…

George Soros’s work on Open Societies is fantastic. I think some of those principles with the real time, innovation driven, social network influenced elements in our lives should drive the frameworks for the future. Over the next months I want to do more research on this, discuss this more with my friends and write more on this.