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Stanford to Cornell to Bangalore

December 5th, 2006

I arrived in the US as a graduate student in the Computer Science department at Stanford in 1993. And as part of being a PhD student, had to do my share of being a teaching assistant. Everyone at Stanford at that time was talking about companies … I would rarely find people talking about their grades. Actually I just assumed that this was normal in the US.

The contrast became very dramatic when a few years later I ended up in Cornell and there was no talk about companies … but everyone talked about grades. Actually most of the undergrad population had friends who were in MIT and their constant effort was to show that they are better than their MIT friends ….

Since then several years have passed by and I had a similar experience in Bangalore. I was sitting in Bangalore club with some of my mentor-partner friends and listens to enterprenuers pitching their ideas. And the contrast was striking … in the valley most peoples ideas start with the PC, Storage…, now the web … in Bangalore most ideas start with phone, phone and phone. When people want to do a company, they think phone. The eco-system is “early-adopter” mentality, Bharti, Reliance and others are open to launching 3rd party applications on a revenue sharing basis.

Again the contrast was sharp and stark.

Entry Filed under: India