Blog – Page 12 – Karthik Shashidhar

food, fundaes, general, studs and fighters, work BASE, blog, blogging, blogs, carnatic, chefs, classical cuisine, confidence, consulting, cooking, copyrights, delhi, dosa, eating, evenings, Exception, eyes, fighters, flavour, food, funda, fundaes, google, gurgaon, handful, hypothesis, implementation, improvisations, job, jobs, market, maybes, mohit, music, parents, possibilities, process, productivity, profession, professions, publishers, pulao, recruitments, strategy lucknow, stud, studs, taj, theory, trades, work

Fighterization of food

April 9, 2009

One of the topics that I’d introduced on my blog not so long ago was “fighterization“. The funda was basically about how professions that are inherently stud are “fighterzied” so that a larger number of people can participate in it, and a larger number of people can be served. In the original post, I had…

arbit, fundaes, work baada, hyperspace, information asymmetry, job requirement, jobs, match, medium term, option value, productivity, skill sets, universe, vector

It’s about getting the Cos Theta right

April 8, 2009

Earlier today I was talking to Baada and to Aadisht (independently) about jobs, and fit, and utilization of various skills and option value of skills not utilized etc. So it is like this – you possess a variety of skills, and the job that you are going to do will not involve a large number…

arbit, economics, finance, fundaes, work analogy, blog, blogging, blogs, clue, correlation, debates, denial, diversification, drift, evenings, financial instruments, fraud, friedrich hayek, friends, handful, intellectual, investment philosophy, investments, mistake, money, mr brown, observation, offerings, portfolios, possibilities, private property, proportion, severity, signature, two instruments, weightage, work, writing

Intellectual Property

March 25, 2009

A blog post earlier this month on Econlog finished off with a very strong quote by Friedrich Hayek: One of the forms of private property that people cherish most is their ideas. If you convince them that their ideas are wrong, you have caused them to suffer a capital loss. I ended up liking it…

business, finance, fundaes, IIM, personal, relationships acquaintance, acquaintances, advertisement, advertiser, advertisers, assets, axes, BASE, bumps, bust, cesares, commodities, counterparties, counterparty, crib, disaster, dowry, evenings, formals, funda, fundaes, fundamental concepts, government, group project, hypercubes, iimb, improvements, liquidity, louvvu, market, marketing management, marketing product, marriage, mental issue, money, otc over the counter, parents, placements, process, profession, professions, related concepts, relationship, relationships, scissors, segmentation targeting and positioning, stp, target segment, trades, work

Arranged Scissors 5 – Finding the Right Exchange

March 22, 2009

If you look at my IIMB grade card, one subject stands out. It is one of the two Cs that I have on the card, and the other was in a “dead rubber” (5th/6th term where grades didn’t matter for placements). This C was in introductory marketing management. Where the major compoenent was a group…

fundaes, studs and fighters, work amp, apologies, apprentice, blog, blogging, blogs, book talks, books, clue, contracts, delusion, discretion, fighters, funda, fundaes, god, good carpenter, hammer, handful, high, implementation, innovation, job, latter kind, left hand, maybes, mistake, misunderstanding, non-scalable, possibilities, process, producers, recipient, richard dawkins, smaller steps, stud, studs, theory, two different ways, work, writing

Stud and Fighter Instructions

March 20, 2009

My apologies for the third S&F post in four days. However, this blog represents an impression of the flow of thought through my head, and if I try to time my thoughts to suit readers’ interests and variety, I’m afraid I may not be doing a very good job. I came across this funda in…

arbit, personal, work BASE, bombay, cesares, clue, constraints, countries, drunkard, engineering, english, evenings, fighters, finance, fundaes, gurgaon, iimb, implementation, job, kannada, lala, market, marriage, money, office, phrase, profession, professions, quants, recession, sensex, story, stud, studs, trades, uncle, work, writing

How do i describe my job?

March 19, 2009

One of the “problems” with my job, if I can describe this as one, is that it’s tough to explain my job to a layman. There are multiple levels of disconnects here, and multiple “pitfalls”, if I can call them that. So when someone asks me about my work, it gets tough indeed to describe…

business, economics, entertainment, finance, fundaes, media, sport accountant, accounting, achievement, advani, advertisement, advertiser, advertisers, btw, contracts, entertainment, evenings, fidel edwards, football, guardian, handful, india, juve, liverpool, losers, many different things, many things, market, match, money, net games, neting, offerings, possibilities, puzzles, scorecard, second time, sky, sport, taj, tata, tea time, test real madrid, work

Why is Ten Sports sitting on so many rights?

March 11, 2009

I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to stay up and watch the WI-Eng match till the very end. Waking up this morning and checking the scorecard, it seems like it was a really good match. And Fidel Edwards seems to have become a last-day-shutdown specialist. This is the second time this series…

arbit, economics, fundaes, general 2000s, accidents, bangalore, bike, bust, car, compromise, delhi, economic meltdown, friends, handful, high, home loans, home ownership, implementation, implication, improvements, incentives, jai, job, neighbourhood, ninja, ownership, personal safety, perversedriven vehicles, proportion, road safety, severity, subprime, taxis, theory, vehicle safety

Car Ownership

March 6, 2009

People, especially in the US, make a big deal about home ownership. In fact a large part of the current economic meltdown has its roots in the American craze for home ownership. Fannie and Freddie were created to help home loans become cheaper, then there was the CDO wave. Then came subprime. NINJA (no income…

business, economics, finance, investment banking arbitrage, downturn, europe, fallout, friends, global economic crisis, gtalk, incentives, india, inefficiencies, interesting stuff, investment bankers, market, plants, productivecity of london, recession, stationery manufacturer, work

Recession notes

March 2, 2009

Over the weekend I spoke to a few friends, over phone and GTalk. And enquired about their business. Some interesting insights: On Saturday, I spoke to this guy who is a banker in the City of London. He says that one major fallout of the global economic crisis is that the financial markets have become…

bangalore, economics, food, general, relationships 1980s, affiliation, attendance, bangalore, BASE, benefit, course weddings, cousins, dessert, excuse, favour, finite probability, food, friends, gurgaon, house, iimb, indian wedding, money, mysore, NED, networking, occurrences, offerings, photographer, proceedings, process, receptions, restaurants, sweets, time travel, train, work

Weddings

February 28, 2009

I’m trying to understand the significance of attending another person’s wedding. It is very unlikely that you are going to add any significant value to the process, since the person who invited you is likely to be extremely busy with the process. Unless you know one of the main people involved in the wedding really…

arbit, fundaes, personal, studs and fighters, work achievement, books, bugs, cash management, chootiya, clue, discretion, evenings, fighters, hypothesis, immortal words, implementation, improvements, insight, insights, instinct, inventor, job, jp morgan, kaam, logs, maybes, offerings, patterns, process, strategy sheet, theory, trades, train, work

Process

February 26, 2009

A couple of days back, I was debugging some code. And yes, for those of you who didn’t know, coding is a part of my job. I used to have this theory that whatever job you take, there is some part of it that is going to be boring. Or to put it in the…

business, randomness, work

Work

February 17, 2009

Work is not just something you do for money. Yes, what you do working from seven (in the morning) to eleven in the night counts as work. But that is not the only thing that counts as work. Broadly defined, work is anything that you need to do at a particular given time. It doesn’t…

cricket, fundaes, sport, studs and fighters, tennis, work arjuna ranatunga, australian open, cricket world cup, energy management, good time, grass court, length of time, match, precious energy, principle states, scoring system, sri lanka, stamina, tennis, theory session, third man, victory

Rafa and the Ranatunga Principle

February 1, 2009

Today seems to be a massive theory session. In the morning, I introduced you to the Mata Amrita Index. Now, as I write this watching the third set of (ok it’s the third set now – when I’m starting to write. for all you know, by the time I finish this, the match might be…

books, business, fundaes assets, benefit, binge, books authors, bookstore, first thought, instinct, landmark, publishers, reading a book, rupee, second thoughts, viewpoint

On Large and Small Books

January 31, 2009

During my last binge at Landmark, I saw a book which I thought I’d like. It was priced at some six hundred rupees – a full fifty percent premium over what I’m usually willing to pay for a book – and was quite thick. My first thought was “ok on a pages-per-rupee basis, this seems…

cricket, economics, finance, football, fundaes, investment banking, ipl, personal, sport coase theorem, excel sheet, franchise owner, franchises, game theory, half a mind, kings xi punjab, mata amrita, mumbai indians, player auctions, preity zinta, ranji, robin uthappa, royal challengers, structuring, team formation, zaheer khan

IPL Structuring

January 29, 2009

I remember that this time, last year, I was eagerly looking forward to the IPL auctions. It also happened to be a time when I was actively looking out for a new job (i wasn’t going to find one till about six months later). And I was secretly hoping that one of the IPL franchises…

business, economics, general bank ceo, feng shui, interior design, investment bank, john thain, million dollars, ml, numerology, painting, profession

Interior Design

January 25, 2009

Recently it has been reported that former ML MD John Thain spent some 1.2 million dollars in decorating his office. And people say that this is very conservative by normal CEO standards. Normal people (like me) might wonder why one needs to spend so much on one’s office. Even if you were to list out…

arbit, business, fundaes, media advertisement, advertiser, advertisers, copyrights, eyeball, hue and cry, latter model, new paradigm, thirty seconds, tv channels, two kinds, virtual money, watching tv

A new paradigm for selling advertising slots

January 14, 2009

There are fundamentally two kinds of videos – videos for which willing to pay to see, and videos which you are paid to see. It is intuitive that advertisements fall in the latter model – for watching an advertisement, you are being “paid” a certain sum of virtual money which gets encashed when you watch…

business, fundaes, IIM, studs and fighters choices, common sense, first class, guest faculty, initial stage, innovation, insight, jargon, job, pioneer, ritesh, stud

Fighterization

January 13, 2009

The story begins with this slightly old blog-post written by Ritesh Banglani, a guest faculty at IIMB. Banglani writes: In the first class of my course at IIM, I asked students a simple question: What is strategy?. The most interesting response came from a rather cynical student: “Start with common sense, then add some jargon.…

business, cricket, economics, finance, fundaes, investment banking, sport domestic cricket, financial crisis, investment bankers, laziness, pitches, quants, statisticians, television revenues, test cricket, tv rights, viewership

The Aftermath

January 8, 2009

Baada collaborated on the research leading up to his post. I hereby acknowledge his contribution and condemn his laziness for not blogging it himself. One of the major problems of the financial crisis that has been happening for about two years now is that investment bankers, as a profession, stand discredited. Before this, they used…

arbit, economics, politics baada, china, chinese threat, counterbalance, currencies, current account deficit, downturn, economic crisis, external debt, foreign exchange reserves, fsm, god, hindustan times, india, pakistan, rmb, suicide bomb, terrorism

Thank God for the economic crisis

December 11, 2008

This post is based on my discussion with Baada yesterday. I hereby acknowledge his contribution to this post. One of the hundred thousand random headlines that The HIndustan Times put on their front page during the last couple of weeks was a statement that China won’t hesitate to help out Pakistan in case India were…

fundaes, work consulting, downtime, empirical, failure, fighters, meetings, sickness, studs, willpower, work

Meeting Sickness

December 4, 2008

Ok here is another reason I can think of as to why I didn’t do well in my consulting career. This is based on something I’ve been observing at office over the last week or two. I suffer from what I call as “meeting sickness”. The inability to work immediately after a meeting. Rough empirical…