Ramen Profitable

As a budding and a small-time Angel Investor I often get to hear passionate founders of start-ups. Their energy, conviction and optimism rubs on anyone around and I'm no exception. 

This week I saw a tweet from Paul Graham of Y-Combinator, in which he had shared an old mail from the founders of AirBnB, when they became Ramen Profitable. Ramen Profitable means the start-up is making just enough money to pay founder's living expenses as Paul describes in his essay.

A flurry of thought entered my mind as I read the tweet, the original essay, and things I had read about AirBnB in the book Upstarts. It just means laser focus, continuous tinkering till you get it right, not getting distracted and keeping it lean and mean. For investors, it cannot get any better and what a joy to work with such founders and both help and learn from them.

It also brought back memories of my failed investments. As an Angel one should expect and be ready to lose entire investment. But then there are a few founders who fought and fought to keep it afloat and some wound-up without any fight after squandering investor's money. The first will have no trouble raising monies again when they move on as their integrity remained intact and their demonstrated grit made them even more valuable in the eyes of investors. The latter might have burnt all the goodwill and likely to struggle raise monies again - they are well advised to internalise being Ramen Profitable. 

What RamP's Reading: Sep'20

Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

When Derek Sivers started CD Baby, he wasn’t planning on building a major business. He was a successful independent musician who just wanted to sell his CDs online. When no one would help him do it, he set out on his own and built an online store from scratch. Sivers didn’t need a business plan, and neither do you. You don’t need to think big; in fact, it’s better if you don’t. Start with what you have, care about your customers more than yourself, and run your business like you don’t need the money.

How to change your mind - Michael Pollan (reco'd by Naval)
A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Stumbling on happiness
In this fascinating and often hilarious work – winner of the Royal Society of Science Prize 2007 – pre-eminent psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows how – and why – the majority of us have no idea how to make ourselves happy.
We all want to be happy, but do we know how? When it comes to improving tomorrow at the expense of today, we're terrible at predicting how to please our future selves.

The War of Art: Winning the Creative Battle
Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success. The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognize and overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectively shows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline. Think of it as tough love . . . for yourself.