Stop Chewing Silicon Valley Garbage
I've had the privilege of speaking with the younger diaspora a lot over the last one decade. One thing that seems to be be common is the fascination people have with America. The reason could be attributed to the powerful mass media machinery America had. It helped America to a great extent in becoming a super power. If one reads Edward Bernays's Propoganda , one can understand how effectively mass media helps political parties strengthen their propoganda. Remember this famous scene from the Robert De Niro-Dustin Hoffman master piece 'Wag The Dog'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmM8rE_LdFA
The movie clearly shows how effectively mass media can be used to futher the political aspirations of the second estate. It helps distort reality and creates an illusion. Most commoners can't see past the fog. Their decisions become clouded and it helps the State acquire power over and over again. The fourth estate devoid of a journalistic integrity is a powerful tool that could be misused by anyone with deep pockets for perception management. We all know how Putin has used it to his advantage that show him in a positive light almost always. China has effectively kept a tight leash on their mass media that has helped strengthen their imperial agenda. But the top position undoubtedly goes to America. America as a nation has been an unparalleled leader when it comes to optimal usage of the fourth estate. Feeling puzzled? Take a deep breath and look back.
Do you remember this scene from the blockbuster 'Independence Day'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_QSJyJaeD4
This is the iconic speech that gave Bill Pulliman a career and America an almost unquestionable dominance over the rest of the world. Every movie, news or documentary that was made around the last 50 years showed America to be the only superpower that helped save the world from an existential crisis. I don't deny how America declared itself a superpower, right after Truman ordered his troops to drop the Amtomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki inspite of the Japanese surrender. In some aspects it is an awe inspiring country that has managed to create a somewhat superlative democracy or at least the idea of it. But as it usually happens with overconfident zealots, America too lost its foot in the world post the 2008 recession. The senseless war on Vietnam and their powerful retaliation had shown everyone across the world, America's Achilles heel and with the biggest recession looming in, the world moved away from recognizing Uncle Sam as it's proverbial father anymore. Jeff Daniels nailed it with this monolgue in Newsroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk
But this isn't a political discussion and I aint' Anderson Cooper. The reason I am writing all this, is to show how everything American isn't great. We can't have a generic medicine for every ailment in the world. I mean poor Einstein tried real hard to come up with a theory of everything but he couldn't piece together anything. It might seem like a fabulous idea to stitch everything up and come up with a singular theory, assumption or conclusion but the world is seamlessly chaotic and has infinite amount of entropy to bring things to a turmoil. The reason why we have been able to make this level of progress is because we understood the concept of uncertainty faster than any other species, at least in this material world. But coming back to the discussion, civilizations are seemingly complex microcosms of cultural idiosyncracies. What works out in a specific civilizational culture might not work out in another culture.In fact Peter Drucker figured it out quite early as he famously said
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast"
Isn't that the reason why Google had to move out of China? Isn't that the reason why Fuyao, a Chinese glass maker that set up a factory in Dayton, Ohio with the sole intention of integrating workers from two different cultures , failed massively and shut down the plant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36QeKOJ2Fc&t=32s
Carly Fiorina in her award winning memoir 'Tough Choices', talks about the importance of culture in South East Asian countries and if not taken seriously could result in a deal going South. But coming back to our original topic of discussion, the idea that whatever Silicon Valley comes up with is sacrosanct and has to be abided by is in itself a vaguely bizzarre idea. We as Indians have aped anything that America has come up with in the last 5 decades even if that means the names of our Private Limited entities- so we had a freshdesk for a Zendesk. Guess that did not work out that well for us or more importantly for the Private Equity, Hedge Fund or the VC community.
Today in India inspite of the fact that we have a formidable technology industry dabbling in innovation(though we aren't remotely close to Pasteur's quadrant), we breathe everything American without understanding the rationale behind it. Over the last one decade ever since I returned to India I have been hearing words like dogfooding, agile, pivoting, shipping, hypergrowth, Paul Graham(that's actually a phrase someone used on me when I went to raise money for one of my startups), fail fast, fire fast, lean startup, Unit Economics, scrappy, growth hacking and many other phrases that still drifts through my subconscious somewhere. The point that I am making is that in a bid to emulate from a Western behemoth, we have plastered their shit all over us and now perceive ourselves to be this uber elite till Icarus loses his wings and falls to his death. Today almost every other guy in India, be it in the virtual world or the physical one is enamoured by tales of American entrepreneurs especially the technology ones. There is an intrinsic dream that's floating somewhere down the neocortex that could only be fulfilled by a complete Americanization of a brown man. Don't see any problem with that till a white guy kills a George Floyd and we find ourselves in a criminally divided world filled with prejudice.
Today the Indian diasopra's collective consciousness has been painted in Uncle Sam's colours. We follow everything American. From their politicians to their tech billionaires to their universities to their culture(or more aptly the lack of it). We pick concepts from America and start applying it in our startups. I remember a young startup founder I mentored told me how he was shipping code daily and I asked him why. He thought for a second and said,"Isn't that what every successful tech major has done till date in America?". He isn't wrong there but he doesn't get the big picture. The idea is simple. Pushing code to the production systems and putting a new feature vying for A/B testing is a hit and trial methodology but it doesn't really show you the context of the requirement.It's merely an assumption and lacks any kind of primordial substance.
What's required is not to ship code everyday but to devise ways to understand deeply about the customers or in Seth Godin's speak- the Minimum Viable Crowd(MVC). MVC could be defined as people with a certain worldview who have a critical need that your product or feature could fulfill. Let's not kid ourselves in thinking that customer demands are static and what people needed in 1990 is exactly what people need now. Times change, cultures fluctuate and customer needs change. Not many companies can keep track of it from time to time. Isn't that the sole reason why technology companies like Google, Uber and Facebook are hiring economists, neuroscientists and psychologists in numbers? The idea is to understand more about how consumer behaviour under various constraints. Nir Eyal, who calls himself a Behavioural Designer explains bits and parts of human behaviour in his blogs. He even managed to write a bestseller called 'Hooked' to explain the psychology behind people buying products though its a unidimensional view of human behaviour. The point being- Its not important to ship code everyday ,but its important to understand why you need to ship code and more importantly, who are you shipping it for and do they really need it?. There you go.I said it. The guardians of the galaxy can sure as hell crucify me for having a mouth way too bigger for a vermin my size, perhaps as big as Galileo or Copernicus had.
Well I am gobsmacked to find Indians picking up entire business models from Silicon valley companies without a nickel of thought. Ever since Reid Hoffman made hypergrowth popular by writing a lacklustre book called 'Blitzscaling', every Indian founder took it on face value to grow his startup as fast as possible at the expense of valuable cash. Since we are all well versed with the fact that cash is valuable and cash is finite and one fine day most founders find themselves in a lurch when they realize they are about to go bankrupt in a month or two if they don't end up raising sufficient cash again. That gives rise to an endless chain of funding rounds A,B,C,D,E,F and maybe more till the founders end up losing any amount of control they had in the company. That's actually the beginning of the end. Once you induct an investor in your company, you are technically working for the money man. The money man is clueless about your industry or your focus area and is merely interested in a 5X or a 10X return. Software is a business that takes close to a decade to establish and scale up. Almost any major software behemoth like Apple, Google or Microsoft took sufficient time to become a global giant. But hypergrowth principles dictate otherwise. They want founders to burn as much cash as possible for faster conversion on the pretext of discounting so at any point in time in the future the user base could be large enough to act as a monopoly. Unfortunately that brings about doom for most companies because they deviate from their original vision, there is a lot of jumping back and forth in terms of decision making and ends up creating a perfect market or a red ocean where no one wins. We've seen that with a lot of Indian companies that looked promising and ended up being disasters which were bought by foreign entities ,purely to gain a backdoor entry to Indian market owing to FDI restrictions for foreign entities. One doesn't really need to grow like Natasha Henstridge in Species. We can do a fabulous job with Sustainable growth that doesn't burn insane amount of cash and ensures the WC>= NFO that ensures that profitability is reinvested into the business till the company is profitable enough to go public. That was the sole fundamental on which most big companies like Nike or Semco or IBM became giants that they are. One can't defy gravity in this Newtonian universe and any attempt to do that results in an epic downfall.
In a way we have ingested so much crap from Silicon valley that we have somehow lost out in understanding our own country. Most people who are either part of technology companies or run technology companies in the consumer space , are so disconnected from reality. I remember going and telling the founder of a lending platform about the huge opportunity that awaits them in the rural sector and they should perhaps invest in understanding the cultural datapoints of a rural region so they could launch their services. She wasn't really interested in my discourse and told me about her plans to become a monopoly across eight top cities in India. She wanted to become a market leader in top tier cities in India. Imagine financial services being used by a meagre 23 percent of the country residing in A-class cities and fintech startups competing with each other for a slice of a pie which is limited in nature. How wise is that? Instead of creating a blue ocean of your own, one is willing to become a part of the rat race. Whoever said anything about disruption must be bullshitting. God provide some peace to the late Clayton Christenson's soul. These are all by products of chewing Silicon valley garbage for a very long time. Remember Jack Nicholson's quote from 'The Departed'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3EMDxqz3Wc
Well sorry to say but it doesn't pan out that well in real life unless you are an Italian mafia with roots in Sicily or you are Rocky Balboa. One has to take in decent dosages of realism from time to time to understand how to survive in a volatile environment like business. But more importantly, an entrepreneur or an employee working in the consumer space needs to understand our country deeply. One has to familiarize themselves with the geopolitics of the region. One has to understand the anthropology of India comprising of several odd cultures changing at every 100 KMs stretch of land. When I talk about politics , most people I have interacted with over the last couple of years go absolutely blank. When I talk about the cultural diversity of this country and how consumer demand differs across various regions influenced by emotional data points or cultural factors, many can't fathom the context of the conversation. I have gotten my hands dirty in understanding India by reading,traveling and speaking to people from all across the country as much as I could , that I somewhat understand how India works. The larger question is- how many people have taken an effort to understand the rich cultural history of our country-I bet zilch. Nandan Nilekani in his seminal book 'Imagining India' talks about the cultural diversity of India and how technology can uplift the fate of this nation plagued by policy paralysis evident in multiparty democracies. He coined the term demographic dividend hinting at the unsually large young populace of this country, that can help steer the country forward if they are trained, mentored and guided in the right direction. Although with the current flavour of jingoism , we all know where we are heading so its pointless to talk about that. It's obvious we aren't heading to Valahalla.
What's more preposterous is that inspite of worshipping Uncle Sam as a demigod and munching on everything Silicon Valley throws at us, we haven't really fact checked most of the things that Silicon Valley has thrown over the years. I hear a lot of brouhaha around Innovation. Let me tell you that inspite of the shameless PR that one hears from Silicon valley, it's not actually the cradle of iiovation in the world. The countries that really are doing some really cutting edge work are countries like Israel, Estonia and our nemesis China. China has invested more in artificial intelligence more than any country in the world. John Olivier in last week's late night show on 'facial recognition' spoke about how Chinese have deployed the most superlative facial recognition systems on the planet. Their survaillance systems are A-grade. Check out this video of how a BBC reporter who intentionally went off the radar in Beijing was found in a record 7 minutes by Chinese authorities using their survaillance systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNf4-d6fDoY
That's innovation for you, ladies and gentlemen, in case you're wondering about the semantics. I don't deny the fact that 5 decades back, America was at the fore front of technological superiority. Jon Gertner captured it beautifully in his book ' The Idea Factory' . It was the golden age for America and between 1920 and 1980, America was a force to reckon with. The leadership wanted America to be a nation with their feet dipped in science and technology. But that era is long gone. In the last 2 decades we have seen a lateral shift in this belief system. Now most of what we hear from Silicon valley is empty rhetoric devoid of substance. Most of what I gather from folks in the Bay Area is precisely the same thing coming over and over again in cycles. On the contrary , we've seen a lot of Elizabeth Holmes's type of characters who have made a name for themselves in tabloids. Its unbelievable how a 20 something managed to befool an entire community of folks in the technology industry who gave in to her charisma. She must indeed be the Jordan Belfort of the technology industry. Add Adam Neumann to the list and we got an impressive cast of characters who knew how to play with the system, This ain't close to inspirational. But will our Indian bretheren comprehend my point- I am afraid not till the sixth mass extinction gulps the planet.
I apologise if my criticism of America hurt many a soul and sensibilities but take a second to retrospect and you might actually understand the merit behind my statements. I am not a troll who takes carnal pleasure in denigrating one of the greatest nations on this planet. I have always admired America. I lived there for a long time to develop a sense of appreciation for the American dream , which was about using capitalism to bring about growth. It helped the planet grow and ushered in a new age of prosperity but a lot many years have passed by since that happened. Today calling America the greatest nation on the Earth would be a far cry from reality. It would be smug on anyone's part to sing glories of America in an age where a lot of countries have progressed exponentially and done exceedingly well for themselves and their denizens.It's time Indian folks realise that not everything American is worth a shot without understanding the context and the environment in which it would be deployed.