Lets start with what wikipedia has to say:

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which is a French word meaning “one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods”.

Surprisingly enough, that is exactly what I believe an entrepreneur  to be. First and foremost, an entrepreneur is an innovator. Without innovation, the world becomes stagnant. An entrepreneur must also apply business acumen (an innovator without business acumen is just an inventor or a researcher). The world runs on money. Everyone wants some. Startups want to make money. Investors want to make money. Non-profits want to make money (to help others). Fortune 500 companies want to make money. But all of these companied share one thing in common.

They all have room for entrepreneurs – people who innovate and change things. They break the rules. People who understand that a good thing is only a good thing when it can be turned into a viable business. These people are dedicated to what they do. They love what they are doing. They will stay up all night working on their projects not because of deadlines but because they enjoy what they do.

So, what is an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is an innovator with business acumen who is dedicated and loves what they are doing and hopes to be economically successful!

This comes to a maximum of 13 classes to go (my lucky number by the way). I am planning to take 4 in the Fall, 5 in the Spring and 4 more the following Fall. This led me to do some interesting “What-If” planning. The main question was, what if I get a full time job offer? Wouldn’t I want to get out [a term often used by Tech students instead of the word graduate] of Tech sooner. At the same time, what if I land an amazing internship for the Summer of 2011 (like the one I landed this summer )?

So, the idea I came up with was that I need to take a light load my last semester here (12-13 credits) and make sure that the classes will be offered in both the Summer and Fall of 2011. This means that I will not need to decide on my date of graduation till Early May of 2011 by which time, I need to decide whether I will be taking class over the summer or working. The solution was actually pretty simple. I actually found 6 classes (Probability and Statistics, Algorithms, Digital Design Lab, Social Psychology, Senior Design and my remaining Lab Science) that are being offered in both the Summer and the Fall. Of these, due to Pre-requisite/load balancing reasons, I will definitely be taking Prob/Stat, Algorithms and the Lab Science during my graduating term. Which leaves me with 3 classes [Senior Design, Digital Design Lab and Social Psychology] of which I will need to pick 2 for the Spring 0f 2011 and 1 for that last semester, which is great cause anyone who know about registering for classes at Tech will know plans rarely go according to plan due to time conflicts. The ability to pick and choose from those 3 will give me that flexibility.

Our Assistant Dean, Tom Pilsch always tells us that we students need to have a plan towards graduation. Well, I can say I’ve one upped that and have 2 plans for graduation .

What can throw a spanner in this wonderful plan? 2 things! Firstly, OSCAR scheduling. Even with all the flex room I’ve put into this plan, the odds are that there will be some weird time conflict. I am not too concerned about this as usually it is possible to work with the administration on this specially at the time of graduation. The second spanner thrower is me flunking out of one of these classes. It has been known to happen before… Multiple Times… [Calculus 3, I'm looking at you just so you know] and my luck, I still have to take Calc 3. GRR. O well, the pressure should motivate me to pass THAT class this time around.

Funny things that are going to happen? 2 things once again! Firstly, OSCAR might get confused in the Spring when I start registering for the exact same classes for both the Summer and Fall [do keep in mind that I will be dropping all those classes for one of those semesters before the term starts]. That will just be amusing. Secondly, career fairs in the fall will be interesting cause I will be carrying with be 3 different resumes; 1 for Summer internship, 1 for Summer graduation/Full time and 1 for Fall graduation/Full time + I have been planning on taking copies of the updated [soon to be] Visual Resume.

Should be an interesting year or two ahead of me. But for now, I have only one focus ladies and gentlemen: Being the uber awesome summer intern at Turner. One thing at a time people

The reason for this is simple. My name is not who I am! When asked who I am, I can not answer that question in 2 syllables. My being is much more complex in nature and the best way to answer the question, “Who are you?” is to get to know me. Shakespeare got the point pretty well a couple hundred years back.

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

- Juliet from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Now, to answer the question of how to pronounce my name, there is NO RIGHT WAY! There is not right way because I say there is no right way. I use a lot of different pronunciations of my name cause I am a very different person and am comfortable with having people call me different things. Most of my friends call me AJ (as in the letters A and J). I have gone by Ahai (the spanish pronunciation of the j) for a couple days too. Honestly, I don’t care. I’m ok with being called “Oii there” if you have a proper Aussie accent and can do a goo job with the Oii. Go ahead and call me Invictus (the name of this blog) for all I care, it actually means the same thing as Ajai though in a different ancient language (Latin and Sanskrit respectively).

But for those of you who still want to know what the right way to say my name is, I have a consolation prize: The original way to say my name. I was named by my parents who speak Tamil and my name is a Tamil name. I have spent the last couple hours figuring out how to write my name in Tamil and then transliterating that to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). In Tamil, my name is written as,

That when translated to the IPA comes to be [ʌd͡ʒaɪ], which consists of 3 distinct parts:

• ʌ – The starting sound which is the sound made by the ‘u’ in the word plus.
• d͡ʒ – The sound for the j in my name which is the sound made by the ‘j’ in the word jump.
• aɪ – The ending of my name which is the sound made by ‘gh’ in the word high.

There you go. I’ve thoroughly analyzed it and have laid it bare for all of you to see (well, more like say ). If you still are not sure how to say the name, start with the uhhh sound you make when you uhmmm in the middle of a conversation and end with the jai from the song jai ho from Slumdog Millionaire.

To start of, the first thing thats wrong should probably be the fact that the Web Browser is not a game. I’m not going to get into how they found Mature/Suggestive Themes on the internet (god knows there are a lot of those) but shouldn’t Safari have these same warnings?

Update: This is just an observation I made. I am not going anti-apple here and am not an Apple Critic. This post was supposed to fall under the humorous mixup category.

And another video by the same people who made the last one

AT&T offers 3 messaging plans. A 200 messages plan for $5, a 1500 messages plan for $15 and Unlimited for $20. There is a lot of room between 200 to 1500! I personally text about 300-400 times a month but have to pay the $15 for 1500 messages.

Come on AT&T! Get something right for once and make a $10 messaging plan for 600 messages a month or something!

Sounds like a deal doesn’t it. Wavee advertises between 70-99% discounts on the final bid price (vs. the retail cost of the item). How does Wavee make money? Well, my rather inquisitive nature led me to figure out the math behind Wavee.

My goal is to figure out the relationship between the Value of an item and the final selling bid at the break even point.

The total revenue (which at break even point will be equal to the retail price of the item) from the sale of a product is the revenue from bids ($0.75 * number of bids) and final selling bid ($.01 * number of bids). The gets the total revenue from a sale to be $0.76 * number of bids.

Since the final selling bid is $0.01 * number of bids (hence, number of bids = 100 * final selling bid), the total revenue can be written as 76 * final selling bid. So, we come to the conclusion that Wavee breaks even when the final selling bid is 1/76th the value of the item. This equates to final selling bid having a 98.68% discount on the value of the item.

So, you can see that Wavee makes a profit whenever they sell a product at a 98.68% discount or less. Sounds like a deal for both the startup and the buyer. Check them out and have some fun.

Note: This analysis is done with only the sale of the item in perspective. You got to keep in mind that there are other expenses for the company such as development costs and employee salaries. Wavee also provides 5 free credits to each new account and also gives reward credits which are not accounted for. But the basic idea remains the same. If the winner of the auction is not a total idiot, he is definitely going to make a saving on his purchase; and as long as Wavee has enough users bidding, they will make a profit too.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Whats more to say? Say’s it all doesn’t it!

The basic idea is that you should play your part in making the world a better place. Some people are great developers. So, great idea people. And some really good at getting things done. But what do you do when you are not one of these people? Well, you help them. The age old saying comes to mind; “Those who can’t do, teach”.

I like to use a different word instead of the more common tool. I like to think of myself as an enabler. I feel that by helping other reach greatness, I have done my little bit to change the world.

Now why am I talking about this topic in particular? Well, I have rebooted the Young Entrepreneurs Society once again. Though I hope to work on my side projects which will probably include a startup and develop myself professionally, YES is going to be my #1 priority for the coming academic year.

The success of this organization will mean a lot more than you would expect. This groups goal is to change the very culture at Georgia Tech and get more startups to come out of this wonderful institute. I am going to embark on the quest to make YES awesome once again and this time, I am joined by 2 other people who are crazy enough to thing this will work too; Welcome aboard Michelle Bjornas and Mike Skalnik.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So, this is what I say. If you have the opportunity to enable someone to be greater than they are now, take it. It is probably one of the best thing you could do.

PS: Quoting the Apple Think Different ad has inspired me to write another post today. Way too much coffee I tell you

In my search, I stumbled into far more than one job posting that had a GPA cutoff, (usually 3.0) which meant that I had no hope of getting the job even before I applied. This led me to think more about the whole GPA situation and how much it actually spoke about my abilities.

Firstly, I must say that having a fixed GPA cutoff is inherently biased against most Georgia Tech students. Due to the academic rigor, the average GPA at Tech is lower than that of most other universities. For instance, the GPA requirement to graduate cum laude from Georgia Tech is a 3.15 while at most universities it is closer to 3.5. This does not create a standardized GPA scale between different colleges and I am happy to say that many of the Atlanta based companies and most of the companies that come to career fairs at Tech are aware of this. But even still, GPA cut-offs seemed to be disqualifying a lot of eligible candidates.

Secondly, the GPA seems to fail at measuring your academic success and is more of a measure of your academic failure. Why do I say this? Well, the GPA seems to be based on not what you have learned at the time of graduation but more on what you didn’t know at another point in time. The easiest way to explain this is with an example: I have personally registered for Calculus III for CS Majors 4 times during my time at Tech. I dropped it twice and have failed it once and  by the look of things, will be failing it once again this semester. My GPA has been drastically affected by both of these ‘F’s but when I do graduate, I will have the calculus knowledge imparted by these classes as I won’t be able to graduate without passing this class.

Lastly, GPA doesn’t account for the difficulty of different classes nor does it account for learning styles of different people. For instance, I have many junior level and senior level classes during my Freshman year and have been taking graduate level classes throughout my time at Tech. Being the youngest person in these classes should definitely mean that I am ahead of the curve, but were I to make a B in one of these classes, my GPA is lower than my friend who is taking the same class 3 years after I am. Does a freshman taking a senior level class and getting a B show more ability or does a senior getting an A in the same class. Exactly my point!

As for learning styles, I earlier wrote about my bad luck with calculus. My personal learning style is oriented towards learning by applying what I learn in my day to day life. I am a very hands on person and love to get my hands dirty while I try to figure something new. This is quite difficult to do with a subject such as calculus. It is kind of funny how my being bad at calculus does not even demonstrate my ability with Math. I got an easy A in both Combinatorics and Constructing Proofs, two of the more difficult mathematically oriented classes at Tech and I plan to have a similar experience with Probability and Statistics.

There we go. My rant about GPA. I’m not even going to talk about how the GPA doesn’t say anything about extra-curriculars and work experience since I hope that goes with out saying. Please feel free to continue this discussion.

Six ways to make people like you

Win people to your way of thinking

Be a Leader

Note: I took this from www.westegg.com – I believe that my readers would find this very interesting and useful

My pet projects are usually something I have started myself or have led a major change in and am a key player. I am a leader by nature and am usually found closer to the top of the pecking order of most organizations I am affiliated with. What can I say, I like being at the top.

Going for the punch line, I consider myself successful with my pet projects when I get them to a point where they do not require me anymore. Despite the simplicity of that statement, it is unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) not as simple. It involves me building the organization to a somewhat stable point, getting other people to work with me and getting these people to the point where these “other” people have as much passion as me (if not more) for the project. As many startup people can probably vouch, not many people are as excited about your product as you are.

Despite these I have had a couple successes under my umbrella, the most notable of which would be the Firewall. Though the firewall was not initially my idea, what it evolved to before we launched was more of my brain child. I took one the role heading the organizational aspect of it and now the organization is thriving with both founder completely unaffiliated with the paper. Their last issue was much better than any issue that I put forth, and I proud of that fact.

I am writing this post tonight cause, I believe that I have reached this level of success with another organization. The Undergraduate Council was resurrected by me over the last year and is now a very strong group comprised of some of the best people I have had the chance to work with. Today, I announced the elections for 2 weeks from now and have spent the last couple hours thinking whether I want to run or not for my position again. No decision in sight for the near future. I’ll let you guys know how it goes in 2 weeks time.

I have 3 possible options, and  none of them seem to be right. Should I put in India, the country I am a citizen off? Or should it be the United Arab Emirates, where I lived most of my life? Or is the United States the right one? All and none at the same time. Hence my crisis.

A little background about myself. Born in India to Indian parents, I lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirate pretty much all my cognitive life. For the last three years, I have been doing my undergrad in Atlanta.

Can it be the United Arab Emirate?

Unfortunately no! Despite my having lived there all my life and considering it my home, I am no longer a legal permanent resident, if ever I was one. I was a dependent of my parents on their work visas till I was 18 and can’t enter the country without a visit visa.

Can it be India?

It is the country of my citizenship. Why not? Well, JFK once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In my eyes, India and me have not done anything for each other. I have not lived there. I feel like an outsider every time I go there. And finally, I do not thing I have the right to claim being even Indian due to the fact that I have done nothing for my so called country. And shall I say, neither has it done anything for me. On the contrary, it has disadvantaged me cause the first impression people get of me when they see me is Indian and not for who I am. I consider myself a Third Culture Kid, but that is something for a different post. This is no offense to Indians, its just annoying being classified in a category that is 1 in every 6 person belongs to when I do not belong in said category. Keep in mind that I really do enjoy considering myself unique.

Finally, the United States?

So, many would say that I do not have a claim to the United States. But it keeps popping into my head every time I see one of these forms. It arises from the fact that for the past 3 years, I have spent 49 out of 52 weeks in this country. I was only on a student visa but in practice, my permanent residence is in this country. That is the address on my business card, my bank account, my resume… you get the jist. But no. Can’t do that! I’m only a permanent resident if I have a green card. Unfortunately, I haven’t got one of those.

So, 3 down and none to go! You see the dilemma I’m under.

Fact 2: I am crazy enough to follow through with a bunch of them. Proof!

Fact 3: I do not have the time for more (seriously, my new years resolution is to not do anything new till May)

Hence, my decision to open source my next idea to my readers. If you think you can make it, go ahead an do so. Let me know cause I will probably end up using it. Keep in mind that this is a non-profit idea.

I volunteer at the atlanta humane society. I love doing what I do, ie. playing with the cats/getting them adopted. Being in this environment, I soon realized that very often, non-profits have needs that require skilled labor which many of their volunteers are able to fill but are not being advertised about.

So here is the idea. A website that lets non-profits post certain volunteering needs they have that require skill (building shelves to coding a database for the animals). It would also let people search for projects based on the skills they possess. And TaDA! We have a match.

Funny how I just explained the entire idea with 2 lines. Well, some of the best ideas in the world are very simple in nature, aren’t they?

Let me say first that I love what I am doing. I have gained a lot from the college of computing and feel like this one of the best ways I can give back to the college and also make an impact on the experiences of future students within the college.

Earlier today we had a debate over whether or not the UC members should put their personal reputations on the line with regards to one of our projects. Over the course of the discussion, I had a moment of clairvoyance, in which I realized the following:

• The members of the UC exist in order to serve the student body of the college
• The officers of the UC exist to serve the members

It is our responsibility to serve the people we need to and while representing them, our personal opinions do not matter at all. If we are not willing to do what the people who we represent want us to do, then why are we in the positions we are? Unlike what many would think that the officers have additional power over the members, I have often emphasized that the title only add responsibility and not power.

1. It looks gorgeous. The Unibody is amazing. I love it on my macbook. I’m going to love it on the iPad (I seriously did prefer iSlate personally.)
2. People are going to buy it. Apple is going to sell the iPad because it is cheap! And because they have and awesome PR department. Its functionality might not be that great (for those who wanted a Mac OS on it) but it does what it needs to do.
3. I saw Steve type on it with 2 hands. Not something I have seen before and not something I will believe until I check it out for myself.
4. The apps on the iPad are great. I look down at my dock right now and see the apps I use the most often. MailPlane for email (I can haz an app for that pretty please). The rest is the iWork suite, Pandora, Meebo running on Fluid and my alarm clock. All of which can easily be ported onto the iPad or have already been in certain cases.
5. Did you see iWork on the iPad? It looks gorgeous. I almost cried in joy when I saw iCal.
6. Will the iPad kill the Kindle? Hell No. The iPad and the Kindle are not the same. I own a kindle and I like it cause I can read on it for about a week between recharges. It also is less of a strain on the eyes too. The iPad is not the Kindle!
7. 10 hour battery life. Great Job apple. Anyone who knows me well will know that my biggest frustration is more battery like on all products. When I read the TechCrunch prank article which said ARC Reactor (design: Tony Stark) I was salivating though I knew it was not going to be true. Next one, I was 24 hours
8. I am not happy by the fact that there are ZERO USB ports on this device. If for nothing else but to plug in a flash drive to copy files quickly.
9. I find the lack of flash support to be disgraceful.

So, there is my report on the iPad. Am I a Fan Boy? No! Do I want an iPad? Yes! Will I get an iPad? No! Why? I can’t afford one right now and I would rather wait for the iPad Version 2 which has improved on this wonderful product (and hopefully I have on interned for a couple months and made some money by then to buy myself an early birthday gift.)

The concept behind Coders Anonymous is to learn programming languages somewhat individually but in a group setting. The way I currently plan to implement this at Georgia Tech is a weekly two hour meeting where we get all interested students into a room (a big one based on current feedback). We decide on a language or two to focus on (I see rails, php and django being the hot topics initially) and start going through some online tutorials. When one person gets stuck, there is probably someone else in the room who understands the concept and is able to clear the doubt. We also hope to have a couple people in the room who are proficient with the language to help out.

The advantages:

• It becomes a group activity.
• You have someone to push you when you start slacking. Kind of the same as getting a workout buddy.
• When you get stuck, there is someone who can help you out.
• With a large enough group and a couple months, you will be able to pick up not 1 or 2 but quite a few languages.

On top of the basic concept, I also see some potential for other tertiary activities such as instructed classes by members of the community (for instance someone from the Atlanta Ruby Users Group doing a seminar on Rails) and hackathons. Another problem this will fix for those of the entrepreneurial mindset will be a larger pool of good developers looking for a job/project to work on.

This is just my initial concept but I do plan to launch this by the end of this month, so any feedback or suggestions are welcome.

Update

The ACM is planning on launching a program of options classes this Spring. In order to not confuse students, I’m putting this project on hold for the near future.

While, Sanjay Parekh replied “Everything“, Merrick Furst countered with “Nothing“.

The explanation is simple. The CEO is responsible for doing everything and must be willing to do it all (this includes taking out the trash). In reality, a CEO does not have the time to do anything at all. A CEO’s job is to hire people to do different tasks, tell them what to do and make sure they get it done. Once that is done, the CEO has run out of hours in the day.

This is not only true with startups but also with organizations and pretty much any leadership structure.

What keeps the CEO from going crazy and doing everything themselves? One word: Trust! A CEO must be able to trust their subordinates to get their part done. The moment an employee loses the trust of his superior, it’s going to be hard for everyone. The CEO has to micromanage the person (which he doesn’t have the time for) and the person gets annoyed by having someone micromanage them.

Rules of thumb:

• If you say you are going to do something, do it!
• If you need help, ask as far in advance as possible!
• Make sure not to lose someones trust, it isn’t easy to get back!

Those are my rules, what are yours?

Well, there you have it. My very first post. Posted before the site is even complete so that I can check out how it looks. Stay tuned for more interesting posts in the near future.