The Daily Dick No.1

Today I introduce a new feature, The Daily Dick. An ongoing (but daily?) conversation between Dick, myself and the blog, a chance to chronicle the trouble, travels and travails (and triumphs, right Dick?) Dick lives through. Interesting times (meant not as a curse) too, weaving multiple time zones and multiple cultures into a profitable gig.

You will like Dick. I do. But then I have a thing for smart, intellectually curious, best-idea-wins, results-count-but-people-matter-too people. Don't meet enough of them.

Dick 1 finds Dick in well-known-city, India, hiring new and getting to know (month) old staff, both as individuals and examples of Indian culture. He's been away from home close to two weeks and he's tired. But still observant:

Daily Dick No.1
It can be very stressful running a start-up, and there are times when I wonder what I got myself into setting up this company. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often, but when it does all I have to do is look outside

and watch the workers who have been demolishing the building next door to our office to get a proper sense of perspective.

These guys are doing grueling and dangerous physical labor for less than US$2 per day without any real job security or safety net in the form of insurance. Most of them are working hundreds of miles from home, and rarely to get to see the families that they are working so hard to support.

Worse still, they don’t have any choice but to sell their physical labor because they lack the necessary education and skills for finding other work, and most of them will spend their lives grafting away on building sites.

Unlike these laborers, I was lucky enough to have the choice to create this company, and now I have made this choice I have the responsibility not only to make it successful but also to provide an environment in which the people who have chosen to join me can grow and develop themselves and their careers.

This is a huge responsibility, and it is one that I need to remain constantly aware of. Having chosen to go along this path and persuaded others to follow me on it, there’s no turning back.

Dick describes the always grueling and often gruesome reality of developing India and China, waves of menials selling physical and emotional hardship in a desire for a better life for their family. Selling it to the physical and emotional desires of the new middle class for a better life for themselves. What Dick is watching is the death of one way of life and the birth of another, the changing of a culture.

Birth can be pretty but is always messy, and death can be noble but is always disturbing.

And starting a company can be exhilarating but is always tiring. Good on'ya Dick. Welcome to the blog.