Reflecting on Reading, Writing and Adventures in 2024
As I sit and reflect on 2024, it distinctly stands out as the year marks 20 years since my B-school with the intervening years full of wins & losses, scars & successes, resulting in countless memorable moments both personally and professionally. I have been fortunate to travel, partake in adventures and see the world at close quarters, all the time learning about ‘unity in diversity’, picking up skills and meeting cross-section of people across cultures which have been deeply enriching.
Looking back, I got day 1 offer at highly sought after Asian Paints in sales & marketing, which through its comprehensive leadership training program set a high bar, instilling Values of pursuit of excellence, acting with integrity and motivating talent in myriad ways. I still carry those learning with me to these days and those values have informed my path as I have built a career in Tech. sales and business development in Silicon Valley over the last 17+ years. The dynamic and innovative ecosystem of SV has inspired me over the years to do more, climb higher and go further in order to increase one’s professional impact and I found myself volunteering as sales coach at Alchemist Accelerator, serving as growth advisor to select startups, investing in a few, and all the while feeling deeply energized from varied interactions with bright, talented people.
Coming back to the topic of Reading, writing and adventure sports, those keep me centered and provide further impetus to my professional life. Reflecting upon this year, I mostly read around the themes of Sales & business, literature, travel & adventure -
Dealstorming by Tim Sanders — A fluid read in the art of cracking difficult client accounts by blending deal-making and brainstorming, leveraging your team’s combined ability. Especially liked his bringing to life the characters involved in the sales cycle from the Hacker, the Chef to the Artist — each playing an important role through prospecting to leading the deal to its closure.
Move by Sangram Vajre and Bryan Brown — the authors outline a four pronged approach to navigate the Go-To-Market (GTM) maturity curve depending on the stages of an organization. The ideas are equally applicable to fast moving Tech Startups looking to scale and large Enterprises driving for growth.
Ecosystem-Led Growth by Bob Moore — Moore is founder of Crossbeam, he expounds the philosophy of strategic partnerships to drive business growth and improving GTM motions for client acquisition or account expansion by leveraging partners and related data. Coming from Tech sales background where bringing right solution to the client orchestrating partners is the key to success, I couldn’t agree more to his philosophy.
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman — the formed DeepMind founder who studied philosophy in college surveys the current AI evolution and its repercussions to business and society at large. Interesting read overall.
Venture Mindset by Ilya Strebulaev — Stanford GSB Prof dwells on mindset that makes a VC and approach to risk based decision making with lot of uncertainties. The lessons are equally applicable to large Enterprises in the current Tech-driven Innovation economy. Very insightful read and as an aside, Prof. believes that emerging fund managers have higher chance of generating larger returns and be more successful than their established counterparts. And his general advice — ‘Become a failure machine !’
Pattern Breakers , Why some Startups Change the future? By Mike Maples, Jr — The book is a fascinating read with a premise that we, as humans are hard-wired to ‘pattern match’ whereas breakthrough startups break the pattern riding certain ‘inflections’ (change in technology, policy, etc) and create a different future. Think Airbnb, Uber …
The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey — An easy read that delves into the mental side of achieving Peak Performance. Though the book draws its analogy from Tennis, the parallel easily extends to other sports, besides Enterprises and board rooms. I hear book is highly recommended by both athletic coaches and business coaches alike.
To Show and To Tell by Phillip Lopate — A highly recommended book on writing, esp. for the craft of literary non-fiction.
The Creative Act : A Way of Being by Rick Rubin — It dwells in to the theme of Creativity and what it takes to be an artist who create/ bring something novel in this world, be it a story, a book, music or work of art. What’s the wellspring that feeds the imagination of a creator, Rick might have an answer.
The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker — Found it to be a very fascinating book as it delves into the seven basic plots that pretty much make up every fiction novels or movies or storytelling, as per the highly accomplished journalist-author. Yes, the pretty renowned ‘Hero’s journey’ is one of the seven plots.
Another Sort of Freedom by Gurcharan Das — I had read his earlier work ‘India Unbound’ and came across his memoir at Delhi airport. An entertaining read that inter-twines his journey scaling professional summit as C level with his journey as a writer-author-speaker. His concept of ‘making a life vs. making a living’ would resonate with most of us.
How to Think like a Philosopher? By Peter Cave — A fascinating read on development of philosophical thoughts from ancient to modern times with remarkable insights from stalwarts like Socrates, Aurelius, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre and others.
Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo — on public speaking blending one’s passion with storytelling to entertain, stimulate or inspire the audience.
Burning the Days: Recollection by James Salter — Called a writer’s writer, Salter’s memoir sparkles with his travel and adventures, his early days as fighter pilot and his later life pursuing literary ambitions as novelist and scriptwriter. His short, pithy writing style is reminiscent of Hemingway.
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown — an epic story about an underdog rowing team with its main hero who comes from a highly disadvantaged background and their unstoppable quest for Olympic gold. It’s an inspiring, entertaining and scintillating storytelling from the world of sports.
On the topic of adventures, I keep getting my daily dose (as far as possible) of either swimming or cycling/running. Instead of participating in events, I mostly focused on picking up new skills like sailing and rowing during the summer weekends this year and got my Sailing ‘first mate’ certification. I did return to the annual ‘Distinguished Gentleman’s ride’ event though, revving up the motorcycle alongside hundreds of fellow-riders for quite a memorable day. Taking an early morning, hot-balloon ride to watch the golden glow of sunrise spread across the horizon and across the Sandia Mountain in Albuquerque was also a highlight. One of the fascinating travels has been to discovering parts of France and Spain, hiking in the Montserrat Mountain outside Barcelona and watching sunset from the bohemian hill of Montmartre in Paris.
The beginning of the year saw the publication of my book ‘Yosemite of my Heart — Poems of Adventure in California’ at San Francisco Writers Conference and it was wonderful getting invited to speak at literary events like South Asian Literature and Arts Festival (SALA) at Stanford, Litquake event in San Francisco, Yosemite Climbing Association, few local libraries. The India Currents magazine carried a review and got invited to a weekly radio talk show called ‘Making a Difference’ on Bolly 92.3 FM. Book publishing is indeed an exhilarating journey !
One of the important learning this year has been reframing my definition of success to include ability to make an impact. A meaningful life or career doesn’t come from what we collect, but it comes from what we become in the process — meaning comes from experiences (personal or professional) that transform our thinking and increase our potential. And as you can gauge from above, that I firmly believe Nature and Outdoors adventure can be a great vehicle for self-transformation.
As we enter into 2025, I am looking forward to new adventures and being in the Valley, super excited about the potential of Agentic AI that can transform businesses and our society at large. That said, I believe as the software product becomes easier, cheaper and faster to build, the key to business value will be the strength of sales & distribution. Exciting times ahead in Tech industry!
Going forward, I plan to write at least one post monthly on ‘All Things Sales and Growth’.
