I’ve learned countless invaluable lessons in my journey from a Ph.D. student to a tech startup CEO that has raised ~$7M of venture funding and built multiple products. I love to share my knowledge with anyone who cares to listen. So scroll down below to read about my learnings on life, startups, entrepreneurship, engineering, and more!
- First Round of Funding: When Should a Founder Go Raise
I. Introduction The Critical Decision Point for Raising the First Round of Funding In the crazy journey of entrepreneurship, one decision often stands out as pivotal – when to raise … - Startup Fundraising: 3 Core Principles
~40% of startup founders I’ve spoken to in the last 6 months needed help to raise funding. I get it, startup fundraising is hard. But I’ve raised ~$7M personally from … - Cap Table Management for Dummies
A startup cap table, or capitalization table, is a document that tracks the ownership of a company’s equity. Most first-time founders and non-investor-backed founders are clueless about it. So, today, … - Co-Founder Conflict: Why Does It Happen & How to Solve It
What do you do if you have a problematic co-founder who’s also the CEO and he/she isn’t running the company the way it should be run? Nah… Let’s dig into … - 2x Your LinkedIn Lead Generation
3 Powerful Secrets of LinkedIn Sales 3 powerful LinkedIn lead generation secrets that successful B2B founders have taught me over the years. Linked Lead Gen Secret #1: Use the LinkedIn … - Revenue Growth Challenges: How to Find and Eliminate Them
Introduction Revenue growth challenges are messy and stressful. Here’s what failing to hit revenue growth targets looks like: If this happens frequently or for too long…stressful months turn into painful … - How to Differentiate Your AI Startup From the Competition
100s of new AI startups are being launched every week But most of them are *Me Too* ideas doing the exact same thing… Here’s a list of the top AI … - 5 Strategies for Managing Your Startup Finances: CEO Advice
Managing startup finances can be a complex task, especially in today’s ever-changing business landscape. In this blog post, we’ll provide you with 5 strategies to help you manage your startup … - Raising Venture Capital? Here are 3 Absolute Must Dos
Only 0.7% of startup businesses are able to raise venture capital. But… A lot of times, founders that do raise venture capital end up making these 3 common mistakes: 1/ … - Pilot Phase: Top 3 Reasons Pilot Projects Fail
The pilot phase is the most critical phase of your b2b sales journey. So let’s talk about a topic that’s near and dear to every entrepreneur’s heart: pilot phase failures. … - How to Get Your First Customers
If you’re launching a new startup or small business, one of the biggest challenges is getting your first few customers. You might have a great product or service, but if … - 5 Things Early Stage Founders Must Know About B2B Sales & Marketing
Early Stage Founders, raising awareness, and attracting customers are key components of any successful business, but especially for early-stage B2B startups. In order to grow and scale your business, you … - Early Stage Venture Capital: 5 Key Factors Founders Should Consider Before Raising Funding
Raising early-stage venture capital can be a crucial step in the growth and success of a startup, but it’s also a big decision that requires careful consideration. Early-stage founders, in … - How to Build a Robotics Startup: A Step-by-Step Guide
Building a Robotics startup is definitely harder than building a software startup. However, robotics is a rapidly growing industry with a wide range of applications in various fields (e.g., drones, … - VC Fundraising for a Deep Tech Robotics Startup Outside Silicon Valley
It’s tough, yes it almost feels like it’s impossible but if you’re in the process of raising, don’t give up. In this post, I share my experiences raising capital for … - When to raise funds for your business?
When to raise funds for your business? Should you even raise capital? When I talk to first-time founders, somehow they always want to talk about fundraising more than they want … - How to build a startup?
To build a startup is hard, but some things are not as hard as you might think. What I’ve learned in my 5 years of building a B2B VC-backed hardware+software … - If you’re a technical founder…learn to talk like an MBA
Even though VCs are looking for technical founders, most VCs are MBAs with financial backgrounds. In my experience Angels have a bias towards founders with a sales/marketing background. So learn … - How to Hire for a Startup
Here’s a guide on how to hire for a startup from a founder who learned it the hard way (and continues to learn). I’ve made countless mistakes running my startup, … - Series A Funding Strategy GuideA proven strategy guide on how to raise Series A funding for your startup. Are you a CEO / Founder looking Series A Funding? Or for that matter any kind …
- Startup Fundraising in Texas
Startup fundraising in Texas is hard. Definitely harder than raising in New York or Silicon Valley. BUT, I do expect it to get a whole lot easier and exciting really … - How to be a better communicator and just get the damn message across!
How to be a better communicator To learn how to be a better communicator, start by imagining a water slide at the amusement park. To enjoy the waterslide, you must … - Why I work on Forklift SafetyForklift Safety Was Not My Dream Job If you asked me 5 years back what I wanted to work on, I can tell you that forklift safety was not on …
- Startups: A great early-stage startup CEO needs to be a killer COO
“No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server … - Immigrant Entrepreneurs: How to build a startup as International Students on F-1 Visa
Immigrant entrepreneurs in the US have gone on to build some of the biggest multi-billion dollar businesses (e.g., Elon Musk). The good news is that there is a path for … - How To: Figure out how to get started with robotics researchNote: This is an email query I received from an undergraduate student who wanted to ask me about how to get into robotics research (SLAM and path planning). I am …
- How To: Using SuiteSparse for solving Ax = b or Generalized Least SquaresSuiteSparse by Tim Davis is a high quality sparse linear algebra library written in C that provides CHOLMOD which allows you to solve Ax=b ( in MATLAB CHOLMOD is used for …
- A practical introduction to pose-graph SLAM with ROSNote: This is a live article and as I get time I will update it… In this post, we are going to understand the pose-graph SLAM approach with ROS where …
- How To: Building financial stability and grow your moneyDisclaimer: I’m not a certified financial adviser and by no means should this article be construed as financial advice and should not be relied upon in making or refraining from making, …
- How To: Get ground truth pose data in ROS GazeboSometimes you might need to get the robot’s actual position to compare your state estimation code. Copy paste the contents of this file (plugin_code) into your urdf description file. It …
- Can a robot drive 100s of Kilometers with < 1 m Error without GPS?A considerably difficult aspect of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is the problem of uncertainty constrained long term point-to-point navigation where global loop closures to eliminate estimation biases may not …
- How To: Running Ubuntu and ROS in a Virtual Machine on macOS / OS X with 3D Acceleration (Gazebo)I primarily use a Mac for my work, but since a I do a lot of robotics I have to switch over to Ubuntu to use ROS. Having a linux …
- The Best Way to Convert Latex Math Equations into Word EquationsSometimes you just have to face the absolute horror of having to convert your beautiful latex documents into word. As an engineer your biggest worry is, oh crap, will my …
- How To: Get depth (X,Y,Z) of a 2D pixel from PointCloud2 or Kinect DataSurprisingly there is no clear cut instruction anywhere. My questions was, if I tracked an image feature from the Kinect, how would I know its 3D position? I wanted to …
- How To: Setup Turtlebot Simulator in ROS with GazeboImportant note: Do not buy parts or equipment from Dabit Industries, they are extremely incompetent and will take ages to ship parts that will be incomplete and you’ll be left …
- How To Setup Kinect with ROS and RGBD SLAMI recently setup a Kinect with ROS for SLAM but the instructions are all spread out. So, in this tutorial we go through the steps required to setup a Microsoft …
- Fix CodeBlocks Freezing In UbuntuCode::Blocks is a great light IDE for C++ but somehow has a tendency to crap out and hang after every minor operation in Ubuntu 14.04 (at least this is where …
- Munkres Topology SolutionsSolutions to Munkres (2000) Topology, Second Edition. textbook can be found at http://dbfin.com/topology/munkres/ Useful for engineers since topology can be pretty heavy for engineers!
- Autonomous Flight for Parrot AR DroneSomebody recently watched this video of my previous research and asked me: “I saw a YouTube video of a project you did, and I’m fascinated with making a drone autonomous. I …
- Qualcomm CES 2016 Future of Autonomous DronesQualcomm recently published a video of the project that I worked on during my internship at Qualcomm Research. This video shows the capabilities that we integrated into a small drone …
- Fix vim keyboard problems in Mac OSXGetting vim to work correctly on Mac can be pretty useful. touch ~/.vimrc Then open vim and do :set backspace=indent,eol,start
- How To: Setup Ubuntu on MacBook Pro 2015Update: In this post I talk about how to setup an Ubuntu virtual machine on a mac. I recently setup up ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a new 2015 MacBook Pro …
- FAQ: Belief Space Planning With OMPLThis page contains answers to some common questions about the belief space planning library based on OMPL that I have developed in my research group based on my own work …
- How To: Tips and Tricks in LatexThis page is a collection of tricks I use to get my latex publishing going. How to Shrink Your Paper / Thesis: When you’re submitting papers to conferences or journals, …
- Reasons Why You Should Be Thinking of a Career in RoboticsAre you an engineer at that messy point in your life when you’re thinking about the universe and your career. Maybe, you are in high school and thinking of a …
- Qualcomm R&D Interview Questions & ExperienceI interviewed for a Fall Co-op position at Qualcomm R&D San Diego with a Principal Engineer in their Deep Learning team. The interviewer was obviously a very smart and knowledgeable …
- How To: Simulate Laser Scanner (Lidar) on IRobot Create/Roomba in ROS GazeboFollowing up from my previous post, I wanted to simulate an IRobot Create with a hokuyo laser mounted on it. I needed this to get my motion planning simulation up …
- How To: Tracking ArUco markers using a USB Webcam and ROSFor my research I needed to setup ROS to use ArUco so that I could track these ArUco markers placed randomly in the environment and localize my robot. Assuming that …
- How To: USB Web Cam with ROS IndigoThere’s no clear instructions for how to actually get your usb webcam image in ROS. Steps: 1. Install usb_cam ros package ($sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-usb-cam) 2. Create a launch file. …
- How setup the Flip32 Flight Controller on a Mac/OSXAfter spending an entire weekend I finally got my Flip32 (from readytoflyquads.com) working on my mac (Macbook Pro Retina 2014) running OS X 10.10.2. -> The issue with the drivers …
- Low Latency Video Streaming from Raspberry Pi and Camera ModuleSo I’ve been trying to get my raspberry pi to stream video to my laptop with as low latency as possible because I intend to use it as an FPV …
- How to use iRobot Create with ROS Indigo and GazeboThis is an update to my previous post on setting up an iRobot Create/Roomba in Gazebo/ROS for the new ROS distro Indigo. Steps : 1. Follow the ROS instruction guidelines …
- Shortest path on a grid – Dijkstra/Dynamic Programming in C++I was asked by an interviewer from Microsoft (internship interview) to write code to determine the minimum steps/shortest path on a grid from some start to some goal, since this …
- Quick Paneer Tikka RecipeIngredients: 1. Paneer: 250 gm 2. Chicken Tikka Masala 3. Salt 4. Pepper 5. 2 cloves of garlic 6. Shredded Ginger (one thumb) 7. Yoghurt: Half Cup 8. 1 Lime …
- How to use irobot create in gazebo with ROS hydro?I’ve not been able to find any clear examples on how to achieve a simple simulation which involves moving a virtual model of an iRobot Create/Roomba in Gazebo using ROS …
- Grad School Application Guide for Engineering Students (suited mainly for Indians)This was written by me and a few friends just after graduating in 2010. It was written with IITians as the target audience but it more less applies to any …
- Roboticists need to learn to sell (rather all engineers do!)After attending my first international conference on robotics (ICRA 2014), my first take away is that so many of the talks were insanely boring! It’s not that the work was …
- International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2014 Hong KongJust got back from the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Hong Kong. I presented our group’s work on the application of FIRM to physical mobile robots (ICRA-2014-pdf). FIRM …