Hemant Mohapatra @MohapatraHemant Twitter profile

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Hemant Mohapatra

6 years

So @lyft is paying $8m/mo to @AWS -- almost $100m/yr! Each ride costs $.14 in AWS rent. I keep hearing they could build their own DC & save. My early days at @Google cloud, heard the same from customers: "at scale, owning is cheaper". It wasn't - they all came around. Here's why:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Long ago I asked a Sr leader @ Google why Larry picked Sundar as CEO. Apparently it wasn't coz Sundar was smartest, most visionary etc. At one pt other leaders just couldn't agree w/ each other unless he was there to mediate. Low ego, high EQ is an under-rated leadership quality.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

In 2 pages @JeffBezos teaches you more about high standards than you'll learn from reading 2 books. The art of summarising that which resists summary is critical to achieving greatness. The world will forget you, except what you've written down, then what you've written down well

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

So now that Nvidia has far outstripped the market cap of AMD and Intel, I thought this would be a fun story to tell. I spent 6+yrs @ AMD engg in mid to late 2000s helping design the CPU/APU/GPUs that we see today. Back then it was unimaginable for AMD to beat Intel in market-cap

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

7 years

Good advice if you're visiting the @usa .

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Jeff Bezos teaches you more about high standards in two pages than you'll learn from reading two books. The art of summarising things that resist summary is critical to achieve greatness in almost any field.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

~8yrs ago (Dec’12) I got a job @Google . Those were still early days of cloud. I joined GCP @<150M ARR & left @~4B (excld GSuite). Learned from some of the smartest ppl in tech. But we also got a LOT wrong that took yrs to fix. Much of it now public, but here’s my ring-side view👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 months

Long ago I asked a Sr leader @ Google why Larry picked Sundar as CEO. Apparently it wasn't coz he was smartest, most visionary etc. At one pt other leaders just couldn't agree w/ each other unless Sundar was there to mediate. Low ego, high EQ is an under-rated leadership quality.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

India has so far donated 66M covid vaccines to over 95 countries. What the US chooses to do in holding back vaccines that, from what I hear, are over-stocked by 30-40M, will be a defining moment for Biden's legacy. The East remembers.

Vaccine Supply

www.mea.gov.in

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

Speed of execution is the moat inside which live all other moats. Speed is your best strategy. Speed is your strongest weapon. Speed has THE highest correlation to mammoth outcomes. Those who conflate speed w/ 'thoughtlessness' haven't seen world class execution @ speed. E.g.:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

8 months

SoftBank sold its entire 4.9% stake in Nvidia for $3.3B in January 2019. At current prices that stake is worth over $90B! In just 4 yrs, a company could hit a second wind and go exponential. Power law is incredibly hard to predict & incredibly powerful when you get it right. 📈

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

My fav Mumbai memory. Right after college I bought mom a saree with first salary. Walked into a crowded train but couldn't get my arm in through the mass of people at the entrance. Train started to move so dropped the bag at the station floor. A man picked it up, ran next to the

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

6 years

On the way to airport few days back, my cab driver tells me "everyone has a story inside them", so I ask him "what's your story?" He says, "Sometimes when it's raining or too cold, I pick up homeless people in my cab and just let them sit in there all night..." ❤️

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

When distribution is proprietary, distribution wins (Comcast vs Netflix), when distribution is commoditized, best product wins (chrome vs IE), when product is commoditized, best service wins (Amazon vs others), when service is commoditized, best network wins.

Nameet.eth | Muzify.com

@Nameet

4 years

Never underestimate the power of distribution!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

Every time I fly to Delhi I think of this airport cab driver who once told me "everyone has a story inside them". I asked him "what's your story?" He said, "Sometimes when it's raining or too cold, I pick up homeless people in my car & just let them sit in there all night..." ❤️

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

The future of AI is now being controlled by two CEOs who grew up in middle class India and worked their way up from there. Let that sink in.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

You can often trace back a co's massive competitive advantage to a key decision in its history. For amazon, it was this 2002 memo. The API economy was still 10yrs out, so this took real courage. The only joke here was the last line. Bezos didn't really care if you had a nice day.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

A few yrs ago on the way to the Delhi airport, my cab driver tells me "everyone has a story inside them", so I ask him "what's your story?" He says, "Sometimes when it's raining or too cold, I pick up homeless people in my car and just let them sit in there all night..." ❤️

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

5 years

I spent the last 15yrs in US in enterprise engg/product/venture @AMD , @Google & @a16z before returning to India. I'm often asked how India compares to SV hot-bed of enterprise innovation. Besides US, I feel world-class enterprise startups will come from India & here's why 👇:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

5 months

Now that Google is finally starting to impress on their product, their distribution advantage will kick in shortly. A good reminder: when distribution is proprietary, distribution wins (Comcast vs Netflix), when distribution is commoditized, best product wins (chrome vs IE), when

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

If you're trying to change status quo, remember: you're alone & your sense of purpose is your power. The world may adore you today but don't be fooled. To them, you're a tightrope walker in a circus: they'll cheer & clap, but most of them bought the ticket just to see you fall.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

It's been almost ~5yrs since I returned to India after 15yrs in the US. I've written about it before but here is my story 5yrs later. It's been a ride & frankly one of my life's best decisions! If you are considering a move back to India, hope this helps:

Return to India: My journey ~5 years later

I returned to India mid 2018. I wrote about it here for the first time — and here again — as a way to retrospect on how I arrived at my…

medium.com

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

6 years

@kassy Our four generations all the way from India ;)

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

I feel stressed everyday when it's 7pm and no one new has invested in JIO.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Since last night recvd 2 emails frm friends @ cos like Google abt returning to India. This feels different. Ppl are sick of the uncertainty; ban was a personal betrayal. Indian startups pay well (some roles are at bay area salaries) and do VERY exciting work. COME HOME AND BUILD!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

India's entire startup ecosystem employs ~550K people (including part time). IBM alone employs ~120K people in India. Infosys has 250K+. In the US, just the venture-backed startups (maybe ~10% of total or less?) employ ~2.5M people. We are still in the very, very early innings.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

In '02, my US scholarships got cancelled due to 9/11. I was graduating w/o a job (didn't apply). Prof G Siva of CS dept @iitbombay paid me 80$/mo out of pocket & hired me as TA. 20yrs later I feel I'm still trying to pay him back. Still trying to "earn" it. Small gestures matter.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

6 years

If you think your employees are going to be productive waking up at 6am to then spend 1-2hrs driving to work, giving their 100% at office, then driving another 1-2hrs back to then take care of their personal health and families day after day, you are smoking crack.

AriannaSimpson.eth

@AriannaSimpson

6 years

Unpopular opinion: remote work is mostly bullshit. Way more gets done when you’re all in the same office.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

Visiting US past few weeks made me realise how superior India's product chops are. Swiggy is 10x Uber eats/Ddash. Stuff like pharmeasy, dunzo doesn't exist here. Don't even get me started on using cards to make payments 🤮 Uber rides here are better tho (but so expensive!) :)

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

1 year

The combination of high IQ and low ego is a really powerful one in business. Especially as you'll get into leadership role, IQ alone will deliver diminishing results. A famous fact about Sundar Pichai is that he was promoted into the CEO role not because he was the smartest

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

~12yrs ago, I got a job @Google . Those were still early days of cloud. I joined GCP @<150M ARR & left @~4B (excld GSuite). Learned from some of the smartest ppl in tech. But we also got a LOT wrong that took yrs to fix. Much of it now public, but here’s my ring-side view👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 months

You can often trace back a co's massive competitive advantage to a key decision in its history. For amazon, it was this 2002 memo. The API economy was still 10yrs out, so this took real courage. The only joke here was the last line. Bezos didn't really care if you had a nice day.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

10 months

Before EOD today: Sam returns triumphant Satya joins openai board Both watch world cup together India wins WC2023

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Happy 75th b'day independent India! I could tell you facts. I could say India attracted more venture capital than China this yr. Or that we've minted a new unicorn a week since the start of 2021. But the real story of hope & ambition is below. The roaring 20s are here. src: TWTR.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Spent 15yrs in the US before I returned to India in 2018. Even in my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined how much entrepreneurial energy will get unlocked in just 3 years. 2020s is India's decade.

The Information

@theinformation

3 years

“Imagine having two master’s in the USA, living for 14 years, paying taxes and owning an apartment—but having zero flexibility in choosing careers.” After years of living the American Dream, many U.S.-educated Indian entrepreneurs are returning home.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

When distribution is proprietary, distribution wins (Comcast vs Netflix), when distribution is commoditized, best product wins (chrome vs IE), when product is commoditized, best service wins (Amazon vs others), when service is commoditized, best network wins.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

7 months

Ambani bringing down pretty much a large chunk (by following or market cap) of the global culture and business leaders to a tiny town in India is a power move unlike any. This was Davos but with singing and dancing.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

My google exp reinforced a few learnings for me: (1) consumers buy products; enterprises buy platforms. (2) distribution advantages overtake product / tech advantages and (3) companies that reach PMF & then under-invest in S&M risk staying niche players or worse: get taken down.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

Frankly the only one coming out of the Twitter debacle looking good is Parag. Massive turnaround and shareholder value creation, dignified leadership against 24x7 chaos, made Elon bend to follow through, shipped code. His real career is just starting...

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

#lifegoals . Grandpa is 94, granny is 83.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

8 months

Man buys books worth 3.3L from a book fair. The hero we all need.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

After my MS, I had an offer from Intel & AMD. I chose AMD at 20% lower pay. Growing up in India, AMD was always the hacker’s choice - they allowed overclocking, were cheaper, noisier, grungier and somehow just felt like the underdog david to back against the Intel goliath!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

5 months

The best career advise I ever got in my 20s: "build a thick skin". Without that, a lot of your intrinsics (hard work, ambition, intelligence) will come to naught in the long run.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Speed of execution is the moat inside which live all other moats. Speed is your best strategy. Speed is your strongest weapon. Speed has THE highest correlation to mammoth outcomes. Those who conflate speed w/ 'thoughtlessness' haven't seen world class execution @ speed. E.g.:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

5 years

The hustle of Indian SaaS founders is unlike anything/anywhere I've seen. Daytime: running their startups. Nighttime: US customer calls. Weekends: hackathons/meetups for keeping up on latest tech and events/coffee-chats for hiring. Very inspiring.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Happy 73rd India! Around for 1000s of yrs, but in charge of our destiny as a modern nation only since ‘47. In last 20 yrs, we’ve 6x-ed our GDP, touched the moon, left for mars, gone nuclear, digital & truly entrepreneurial. Major challenges yet to fix, but much to celebrate too👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

AMD was a “TRIBE”. For so many it was their 1st job out of college in the late 80s 90s and 2000s & they are still there after 30-40yrs! My first manager @ AMD retired from there after 30+ yrs. My second manager is still there. My super-manager has spent 40yrs there by now. I

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

This was hard to read. From a highly qualified college friend who's returning to India. Posting with his permission so those who claim the recent #H1Bvisas ruling 'is just a temporary suspension' or 'it has exceptions' know that this is already impacting lives. Read 👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

6 months

Really low flying plane circling Bangalore near Koramangala / Indiranagar area. This is the 6th circle. Comes really close to ground then takes off again without touching. Military exercise?

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

So @nvidia briefly overtook @intel market-cap last week - GPUs FTW! I spent 6yrs @AMD engineering & it was unfathomable to beat Intel back then. Here’s the inside story of how & why AMD saw the GPU oppty, lost it, & then won it back & lessons I still carry from those heady days👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

...2008 crisis happened & we were totally caught with our pants down. After that, AMD basically lost the market to pretty much everyone: Intel, ARM, Nvidia. I learned it the hard way how SUPERIOR PRODUCTS LOSE TO SUPERIOR DISTRIBUTION LOCK-INS & GTM.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

For the first 15 years, join jobs that make you feel unqualified. For the next 15 years, hire people that make you feel unqualified. If you do this, you can happily retire at 50 :-)

Kunal Shah

@kunalb11

3 years

If an engineer from India with 7 years experience has an offer from google/amazon in India versus a series B/C startup, where should she join and what’s a good decision framework? Serious responses only pls.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

5 years

Recently met ~80 people in SF / Bay Area who were interested in moving back to India. Lots of interesting Qs; many misconceptions cleared, many known truths reinforced -- both good & bad. Here’s a sample of the top Qs & As 👇& reasons to move back:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Dreams are not zero sum: the American dream continues for millions of Americans & immigrants. It's just that now US isn't the only place hungry, ambitious builders can go to take binary risks with high upside! India is one the the most attractive entrepreneurial markets globally.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Over half dozen VC backed Indian cos will IPO in the next 12mos. Each of them were written off by media "pundits" as unsustainable / wasteful a 100 times. Builders build. You're in the pit carving the stone. Let the critics sell tickets however they like. This is still your show!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Indian govn's "1cr zoom replacement challenge" is just so 🤦🏻‍♂️. In 1cr ($130k) they want full encryption, HD quality, concurrent sessions, file sharing, low b/w AND low-end CPU support?! Zoom likely spent 50M+ just in caching servers, local POPs, dark fiber, & datacenter capacity.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

6 years

E.g. if you are +30% of the internet traffic (nflx) it doesn't make sense to pay rent to telcos any more and feed their margins. You have the volume and stable demand to justify ownership. For the rest, cloud is where they'll live and die.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Startups are war. Make no mistake. Win or lose, you'll never return home the same. Pick your ground carefully. 300 can defeat an army in a narrow corridor. "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" -- Sun Tzu 🎯

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

@Noahpinion Success attracts hate. Indians need to just get used to it, laugh it off and get back to work.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Past 6mos: the fastest growing SaaS co we've ever seen came from Ahmedabad. The hottest OSS co globally right now is in Jaipur & another contender in Kochi. No "IIT" types & many dropouts. In Crypto, this phenomenon is 10x. India is undergoing a foundational broadening of access.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

AMD always launched w/ better CPUs but always late to market. Customers didn’t grok what is fake vs real dual/quad core. If you do `cat /proc/cpu` and see cpu{0-3} you were happy. I was a proud engineer till then but then saw the value of launching 1st & fast. MARKET PERCEPTION

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Damn. Are you even building a SaaS company if you don't have an Indian CxO? At the Goldman Sachs tech conference: Nextdoor, Workday, MongoDB, Alphabet, Twitter, Vimeo, Zscaler, DocuSign, and so many more have desi CxOs! 🤯

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

2020 is the year the emperors at the Harvards, Yales, IIT/IIMs of the world are going to get caught with no clothes. Shifting education to online but keeping the # of admits the same while charging the same fee/admit is proof of their deBeers supply/demand of privilege strategy.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Imagine if FB had bought snapchat, Twitter and Netflix as well?

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

@kunalb11 Doing exactly what is told every single time. No surprises. No failures. No risks. No co-creation. No glory.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

You know venture capital has gone mainstream in India when it features as a question in @SrBachchan 's Kaun Banega Crorepati! I do think there's a whitespace in 'genie investor' though. 🧞‍♀️🧞

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

Through the 90s, AMD was nipping @ Intel’s heels but ~2003 we were 1st to mkt w/ a 64-bit chip &, for the FIRST time, had a far superior core architecture. Oh boy, those were exciting times! Outside of SV, I haven’t seen a place where hardcore engg was so revered. Maybe NASA.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

When I was younger I used to filter people based on talent, but with age I've started filtering for character. Most talent can be built over time (especially if alone) but character needs a crowd and is a muscle that gets rarely exercised, making it that much harder to build.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

I went to IITB but my claim to fame is that my alma mater has three of the same letters as BITS.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Crisis divides the world into two groups of people. One, those that say things that are exactly correct and completely useless. Two, those that jump in and start figuring out a solution. Be the latter as often and for as long as you are able.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

We did launch a “true” dual core, but nobody cared. By then Intel’s “fake” dual core already had AR/PR love. We then started working on a “true” quad core, but AGAIN, Intel just slapped 2 dual cores together & called it a quad-core. How did we miss that playbook?!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Common thread: engineering hubris. We had the best tech, but had poor documentation + no "solutions” mindset. A CxO at a large telco once told me “you folks just throw code over the fence”. Cloud was seen as the commercial arm of the most powerful team @ Google: TI (tech infra).

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Yes, twitterverse, yes. Indian Matchmaking is exactly how all of us desis get married. With parents pre-buying jewelry & clothing for a certain neck, hand & body size & then deploying professionals who roam the world to fill that boy or girl shaped hole.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

As remote hiring becomes the norm, founders in western mkts need to stop thinking of india/SEA as "low cost talent". BLR start-ups are 5yrs ahead of Denver/Austin & 5yrs behind SF on salary ranges. India's talent-to-price ratio is probably highest globally, but unf it won't last.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

Prepping for the IITs, I had a v. weird schedule. I'd sleep @ 9pm, get up @ 2AM & study before the chaos of school, homework, evening tuitions. My Mom would wake up before me, make a *mug* of tea, wake me & then sleep till breakfast prep. That's how I got in ❤️. #HappyMothersDay

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

1 year

A better representation of India's geopolitical lean in one video than what Ian bremmer has done in his entire career. Whoever made this was a genius...

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

10 months

Satya has once again proven beyond any doubt that being charming and articulate is a super power beyond all super powers. All other secondary superpowers -- smart, strategic, etc, are only amplified and made 100x more effective if you are charming + articulate.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

#India #edtech How it started: How it’s going:

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

#BLR Thinking of doing monthly cubbon park founder walks + breakfasts on Saturdays @ 7:30AM. No agenda & def no 'pitching'. Just problem solving on whatever you are stuck on e.g. scaling, hiring, culture. Will keep cohorts to <10ppl; DM me w/ what ONE problem you need help with!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

While we kept plodding on the “pure dual-core”, Intel, still smarting from the x64 defeat just slapped two 1x cores together, did some smart interconnects, & marketed it as “dual core”. Joke at AMD was that Intel’s marketing budget was > our R&D (true fact). Customers ate it up.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

But clearly, someone at AMD saw the future. We just saw it partially. We should have acquired Nvidia - and we tried. Nvidia – for those who remember – was mostly a “niche” CPU for hardcore gamers and they went hard on CUDA and AMD was a big believer in OpenGL. Developers

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

TI “built” stuff == good; Cloud “sold” stuff == bad. This unspoken hierarchy led to GTM decisions that cemented our #3 position in a market where we had far superior tech. Another reminder that BETTER TECH RARELY WINS AGAINST BETTER GTM:

Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

When distribution is proprietary, distribution wins (Comcast vs Netflix), when distribution is commoditized, best product wins (chrome vs IE), when product is commoditized, best service wins (Amazon vs others), when service is commoditized, best network wins.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

Had an @urbancompany_UC massage today & the guy talked about adani/hindunberg market movements, what is happening with mamaearth, latest shark tank gossip, and more. No kidding! Name's Gauranga if you want to book him; excellent massage too! True 'barbershop gossip' experience 🤯

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

Huge respect for Nvidia though. They were just one of the little boys back then - we lost some GPU sales to them but never thought of them in the same league as ARM/Intel. They stuck to their guns, and the market came to them eventually when AI took off. BELIEF IN YOUR VISION and

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

Rajanikanth went to a @Starbucks and couldn't find South Indian filter coffee. Complaint got escalated and Starbucks now has a South Indian CEO to fix this grave issue! Thx thalaiva! 🙏😂

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

7 days

Our politicians need to focus less on politicking and more on administrating. Instead of legislating a 8hr work day, solve the 3-4hr daily commute time for people through better infra. Solve the toxic work culture issue through stricter governance. But no, those options require

Shashi Tharoor

@ShashiTharoor

8 days

Had a deeply emotional and heartrending conversation with Shri Sibi Joseph, the father of young Anna Sebastian, who passed away after a cardiac arrest, following four months of deeply stressful seven-day weeks of 14 hours a day at Ernst&Young. He suggested, and I agreed, that I

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

It was great to talk to my friend @balajis a few weeks ago. He is a quintessential futurist, living maybe 10-20 yrs in the future & has been right about so many things that sounded ridiculous back in the day. Genomics, Crypto, DeFi, Covid. Highlights in thread. #EE21 (1/11)

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

So exactly 3yrs ago I packed up my bags worth 15yrs of life spent across Austin, SF, & London & landed home in India for good! Been an incredible ride since. Staying close to my family ❤️ and friends and building an investment practice with my @LightspeedIndia family. #longindia

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

ATI was a tough nut - we didn’t really “get” them; they saw the world very differently. We wanted to merge GPU+CPU into an APU but it took years of trust & and process-building to get them to collaborate. Maybe if we had Slack, but we only had MSFT Sharepoint 😅

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

gm! We are pumped to release v1.0 of Lightspeed's India & SEA Crypto market map spanning L1 & L2s, devtools, CeFi & DeFi, NFT & P2E gaming, DAOs, analytics & more across India+SEA. See for the full blog & what we are looking to invest actively behind: 🧵

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

just used Bing for the first time in a decade and will likely not go back for another.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 months

India is not a country of 1.4b potential sports stars. The intersection of (1) ample time to play sports (2) overall nutrition, family support for intense training & other intrinsic advantages & (3) facilities to play in, is likely a nation of 2-5M tops?

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼

@Noahpinion

2 months

What's the best explainer on why India doesn't win many Olympic medals?

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

10 months

Really regretting the day 150 million years ago when Australia split off from pangea as an independent continent.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

1 year

Tim Cook has met more people and traveled to more places in India by now than I have in my ~5yrs here. The guy can be found in kitchens, boardrooms, showrooms, malls, hospitals, IPL, janpath, bollywood, hotel sightings, dunno where else.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

I joined AMD right when their stock price was ~$40, and worked on the 1st dual-core architecture (single die, two cores) AMD-X2. Our first mistake -- and AMD insiders won’t like me saying this -- was made here.

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

In these difficult times, I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot who, at 92, must have seen almost all human misery that there is, and who, without a doubt, is the “most interesting man” I know. His life is just absolutely fascinating 👇

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

4 years

A great thing about the whatsapp to signal migration is the chance to quietly drop off from all the whatsapp groups you were too polite to exit from earlier!

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 months

Also mad props to Lisa Su who now leads AMD. Lot of my engineer friends are still there building world best tech and I can’t imagine what they must have had to go through all through the 2010s: multiple heavy layoffs, salary cuts, leadership changes (2 CEO changes b/w 08-11

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

3 years

Google domains is out of beta. I was part of the team that led the BD for it in 2015 (maybe 14?). Fact that it took them 9 years to get out of beta on a product that really isn't rocket science is why I laugh when someone says "but Google will do it first".

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Hemant Mohapatra

@MohapatraHemant

2 years

This is for SaaS & esp India-SaaS but applies more broadly as well. I’ve been investing in India-SaaS since '18 & harping abt this endlessly to anyone who’d listen. I’ll say it again: the age of “business model innovation” in SaaS is over. It’s done. What does this mean? 🧵1/20

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