Weekly Roundup: Career Restart, Productizing Pain, & Professional Transitions
What we learned together on Network Capital this week
This is Network Capital’s newsletter that helps 100,000+ millennials and GenZs build their category of one. To receive this newsletter in your inbox regularly, subscribe here.
Dear community members,
Given below is a quick overview of the week gone by on Network Capital. You can get access to all our offerings once you subscribe.
🚀 Registrations open for the Career Restart Program
📅 Upcoming Masterclasses: Career Principles with Co-Founder of Taali (YC W19) Aarti Kochhar Kaji, Book Discussion: What the heck do I do with my life? with Ravi Venkatesan, Personal Growth Strategies with HBS Alum Ravi Kyasaram, Career Principles with HR Head of Big Basket, TN Hari, and Career Principles with Co-Founder and CEO at Clear (YC S21) Ahana Banerjee
💌 Newsletters: Danger vs Risk in Careers: BCG to Beer, The "Gravity" Problem in Careers, and Productizing pain, packaging suffering, peddling "inspiration". Have we really entered that era?
📚 Masters of Scale: The Best Decisions are Fast Decisions, with Eric Schmidt
Network Capital Career Restart Program
The Network Capital Career Restart Program is designed for professionals who took a break from work and are struggling to find meaningful career opportunities. In this live cohort based course, you will get the skills, networks and 1:1 mentoring support to bounce back into the workforce. Our focus won’t just be enabling you to get a job. We will work relentlessly to build your category of one.
If you want to quick peak into the kind of faculty we plan on bringing for the career restart program, check out sessions this week with -
Career Principles with Co-Founder of Taali (YC W19) Aarti Kochhar Kaji
Aarti and Aditya fell in love with water lily pops all the way back in school. This love for the snack followed them into college. The husband-and-wife team shared their ‘pop’ romance with their friends, classmates, and professors too. They’d pop ‘em at home and share the little goodies on campus. This was the start of it all.
Book Discussion: What the heck do I do with my life? with Ravi Venkatesan
Ravi is also the founder of the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) , a coalition which aims to create 10m local entrepreneurs in India and Africa by 2030.
Personal Growth Strategies with HBS Alum Ravi Kyasaram
Ravi Kyasaram has deep expertise in formulating and executing Growth Strategies. He is Director of Growth and Technology at Edward Jones in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA. Previously, Ravi worked with Emerson where he was responsible for Growth Strategy for various parts of the organization. Prior to Emerson and his MBA, Ravi was a part of India’s biggest conglomerate, the Tata Group
Career Principles with HR Head of Big Basket, TN Hari
TN Hari is an advisor and sounding board to numerous young entrepreneurs and startups. He is also a Strategic Advisor at ‘Fundamentum’, which is a homegrown growth phase VC fund set up by Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal. Hari also heads HR at BigBasket.
Career Principles with Co-Founder and CEO at Clear (YC S21) Ahana Banerjee
Ahana is a highly motivated 2021 Physics grad from Imperial College London, and has been building Clear full-time since January 2021. Clear is the first integrated social commerce app for skincare (YC S21)
Newsletters
Danger vs Risk in Careers: BCG to Beer
The important lesson from Jim’s life is to NOT mimic other people’s dreams. Following your curiosity and quenching your thirst is the way forward to make sense of the confusing world we live in.
The "Gravity" Problem in Careers
When it comes to our work life, “gravity problems” are facts we can’t change. They can’t be wished away. They will persist and we will have to learn to accept them.
Productizing pain, packaging suffering, peddling "inspiration". Have we really entered that era?
Pain + Reflection = Progress, says hedge fund investor Ray Dalio, but what if the pain is manufactured or exaggerated for effect. Perhaps to prove a point or tell a convenient story?
Masters of Scale
The Best Decisions are Fast Decisions, with Eric Schmidt
Key Takeaways:
Don’t spend too much time oscillating on a decision – it will stall your team and diminish your focus. Keep moving forward even when you might not have all the answers, and be willing to take accountability for the outcome.
The need for speed: The way you make decisions is a hidden factor that can drive your business to scale – or alternatively drive it into the ground. Fast decisions mean a fast path to scale.
Think like a pilot: Piloting a small plane taught Eric Schmidt the value of making quick decisions. You make the best decision you can, with the information you have available.
Quick decisions keep your team moving: Making clear, quick decisions with speed and regularity allows your team to regroup, refocus, and move forward.
Always be ready to pounce: When everyone can make clear decisions on what’s working, and what isn't, your team has the opportunity to learn together – with little time wasted.
The Masters of Scale Courses app is a powerful tool that cultivates a winning mindset in growth-focused leaders at any level. Each course is divided into short-form audio bites called ‘Daily Practices,’ lead by Reid Hoffman and some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. Each Daily Practice unlocks surprising truths about scaling a business (the stuff we don’t learn in school), with actions to put into practice right away. In the app, you’ll earn a beautifully designed certificate upon completion of each course.
If you’d like to hear more from Masters of Scale Courses, we’re pleased to be able to offer an exclusive 50% discount on annual membership to the app. Redeem promo code NETWORKCAPITAL at join.mastersofscale.com/networkcaptial.
An Invitation to Network Capital
Not a subscriber? Intrigued by Network Capital? Now would be a good time to subscribe.
💝 If you want to learn how to navigate the Network Capital ecosystem, please read this article.
✍🏼 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s Harvard Business Review articles here Building Your Category of One, Should You Choose Passion Over Paycheck, How to Make Envy Work for You?, and The Right Way to Make a Big Career Transition
💞 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s book Seductive Illusion of Hard Work. The foreword written by Klaus Schwab, the founder of World Economic Forum.