We live in exciting times. Thanks to the internet, starting up, launching a new idea, gathering an early audience, and validating your idea are all possible without spending much time and money. However, the same is not true if you are building a hardware company. Building hardware is still quite expensive; it always has been. But one company that has done a phenomenal job decade over decades has been Intel. Sadly, the last few years have been quite rocky for the once fabled company. In this edition of ROTW, let’s explore what’s happening with the world’s most successful chip designer and manufacturer.

Last week, Intel announced to replace its current CEO Bob Swan; VMWare chief Pat Gelsinger would succeed him. Intel’s problems have been compounding over the last few years, and this is the 3rd CEO change in the last two years.

Intel’s failure over the last decade has been following the very same strategy that has been the reason for Apple’s success during the same time; that is - Integration.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in - Issac Asimov

Someone I respect immensely once told me that it takes five years for a company’s culture to solidify. They said that a company could change their ways of working, their frameworks of thinking, the rules of their business, what they value, etc., in the first five years. But after being around for five years, a company gets set in its ways of working. Bringing around significant cultural changes is quite difficult after that. We (Treebo) were three years old at that time. I breathed a sigh of relief, telling myself that we still have two more years to go, and then forgot about it.

Sometime back, I came across this story.

There once was a great saint who would lead his followers in meditation. Just as the followers were dropping into their zen moment, they would be disrupted by a cat that would walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone. The saint came up with a simple solution: He began to tie the cat to a pole during meditation sessions.

This solution quickly developed into a ritual: Tie the cat to the pole first, meditate second.

Years later, when the cat eventually died (of natural causes), a religious crisis ensued. What were the followers supposed to do? How could they possibly meditate without tying the cat to the pole?

From Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search For Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert

It’s the beginning of the new year. It’s that time of the year when you see many people trying to predict what will happen this year. When is COVID going to end? When are things going back to the way they were etc. etc. Some people have even taken a shot at predicting what will happen in the next ten years.

Over the year, I have become a little skeptical of these predictions, no matter how credible the source. The more I have read them, the more I have grown weary of - one, people’s ability to make any accurate predictions and two, the predictions themselves. Even as late as the end of 2019, no one predicted that the entire world would come to a screeching halt due to the pandemic. I know no one can foretell such a thing, but that’s precisely my point. It’s impossible to see it coming.

The problem with predicting the future is this. When asked to imagine the future, we tend to take the present as a baseline, then extrapolate using some projection model (linear, exponential, or otherwise) that makes sense to us, primarily driven by our wish or desire more than anything else. Most of such projections produce iterative changes. 

I don’t think the future works that way. Future is always a mix of few iterative changes and a few radical changes born out of a unique combination of factors that are impossible to predict in advance.

If you genuinely care about the goal, you’ll focus on the system - James Clear

I started committing to new year resolutions only a few years back. A friend sat me down and convinced me that taking a few hours out towards the end of the year to think about what do you want to focus on in the coming year is a worthwhile endeavor (God bless him for that). 

But for a long time, I used to simply write down my new year resolutions, which would inevitably be some combination of these 3-4 things: Get fitter, Read more and travel more. I would give up on the fitness goal in the first couple of months, mostly do okay on the reading goal, and just be spontaneous about travel plans in general (what’s the point of travel planning anyway?)

My thoughts on the new year resolutions, however, have changed over the years. I feel a year is too long a time to commit and assess anything. Two things usually happen: Either you develop a habit and are on the course to complete the goal, or you give up mid-way. And within the first three months, it’s usually clear which way you are headed.

I have to admit, this year has been the strangest one of our lifetime, by a considerable margin. Even if you compare it with all the other black swan events we have seen in our lifetime. Like the year 2000, when not only the dot com bubble burst but people were worried that all computers in the world would stop working due to Y2K. Or the burst of the housing bubble in the US and the ensuing financial crisis in 2008.

Unlike them, the sheer pace with which the events unfolded - it took less than three months for the whole world to shut down - and the magnitude of the impact it had on everyone was simply mind-blowing.

Like everyone else, I had goals and plans for this year. Amongst other things, I had plans to travel and see the world and meet new people. But COVID-19 looked at us, laughed, and said - Nope! Not happening this year.

There is no doubt that 2020 had been a tumultuous and challenging year. We have just spent the whole year reacting to (adjusting to) the ramifications of the pandemic. It’s hard to feel anything but disappointed.

But I came across this story recently, and it changed my perspective.