Nishant Verma

  The truth is when you are an entrepreneur there is no weekend and it’s not by any compulsion but because of the passion, you have for your startup. The majority of the entrepreneurs would echo this line of thought. If you are an entrepreneur and taking the weekend off then maybe you are just in a glorified job with no boss to report to. All days are the same! For entrepreneurs, work is their passion, their life, their baby. It’s for a reason you have left a few things behind to venture and create it. In fact, work is not really a work per se, it’s their passion. When you initially started, all days are the same, there is no Sunday or a Monday, all are just the same. You put in innumerable hours to read, to enhance, think, and discuss the plan, and execute. So practically there is no work-life balance for entrepreneurs. It’s just about the idea and execution. Entrepreneurs have a vision in front of them and you chase it with all your passion and ene...

Disclaimer : Not a post to promote my Org. Read it if you want to understand what we do at  TestVagrant  and what you can expect from your career as a QA here. Almost 4 years back we created the company called  TestVagrant  and the prime intention was to make testing very intelligent and innovative. We want to make testing lean, more efficient, foster intelligence in solution which we owned and built. We wanted to challenge the assumptions of the testing and create something which is more intuitive and value addition to the software development process. And this happens when you own the design when you can influence it and change it based on the knowledge and skill you have acquired over a period of time. End of the day we wanted everyone to believe in the work they are doing, enjoy the work, experiment with what they are learning and have the courage to question the status quo and above all feel free to implement their ideas. We code to test and make testing fast...

Every one who is in a competitive world wants to stand out and gets identified as a valuable person to the team, to the organization and to the external world, unless he/she thinks they are obliging the company by their presence (Pun intended).                                                   Courtesy: Google Image search  Then why in a team of 3 or more generally only one gets identified as a most valuable contributor or maybe just 2. This is not a “how to post” for beating the competition, neither it will help you be more productive. It will do nothing of that sort, just to set the expectations right. Ever wondered why most of us put in the same amount of effort but the only handful of people gets noticed. One of the key characteristics which a person need on a day to day life to stand out is “ diligence ”. While running the company for 4 yea...

In a hectic and a joyful life of running a company, being full time on a project and then being a father is just a little too much.  Writing took a back seat because of all this.  So I thought to cut down my sleeping time to get back to writing blogs, it's liberating I feel. Here I have basically tried to discuss what we generally look in for when we are hiring especially for a position in start up point. Excerpt here:  We are 14 right now and we are still looking for more. We have filtered around more than 400 resumes, close to 150 face to face interviews and then we selected bunch of folks who are working with us. I have been doing interviews since 2007, so when I reflect at the hiring process, I feel there is not much change with respect to how you give interview. Largely the process of giving interview remained the same. To a certain extent the reason could be that what we ask in interview hasn’t changed. Full blog here:   lnkd.in/fnT...

TestVagrant  is perhaps the first services company to bring in an idea of free POC. We learnt that services for startups need to be different from services for enterprise.  VagrantLab  is our attempt to address the need. At  VagrantLab  , we have created a very  succinct  and pertinent solution offering for startups: Easy to get started (via a free POC) Easy to continue (bare minimum retainer model) and Easy to handover (you own what we code)

There is a sudden surge of startups and most of these startups are in B2C space with a product either on web or mobile or both. Also, most of these startups offer a very little differentiation so there is not much induced stickiness in app and hence consumers have choice to drop one and pick another based on their likeness or product feedback. For example, we have BigBasket, Grofers and PepperTap in grocery space, Fasoos, freshmenu, and spoonjoy in food space and likewise. This post is about why startups need to focus on quality, what are the current challenges and what we think we can help with. Read my complete  blog here  https://goo.gl/URQXlh

It’s been a little more than 9 months on this entrepreneurship journey and I thought of sharing the two most important learning of this journey. 9 months back when we started this venture, we looked into the happy side of it and was excited with the answers of these questions - what we could do, what impact we will be able to make, what kind of satisfaction it will give us, how empowered we will feel when we have a group of like minded people working towards one goal and blah blah. Probably if you ever thought of being an entrepreneur you might have got these questions in mind and once you get an answer to these questions you will feel the kick within to go out and try. Read complete blog here ...  https://goo.gl/65NPkR

Friends read my new post on "I am lucky to have found Co-founders". Link here Excerpt from the post below:  Most of us who think of starting their own company are generally very confident. Confident of taking the plunge, confident of the idea we have, confident of how the execution should be, confident about what to do when things might not work out. When I thought about why I co-founded a company ( TestVagrant Technologies ) with two other folks, it was an interesting thought process which revealed quite a lot about my thought process. So when I actually look back, this whole idea was there from quite a long time (almost 3 years). All three of us used to work together in the same company so we had that advantage of knowing each and experiencing what it feels like working with them. Also there were instances where their approach and problem solving skills highly impressed me.

Today I was having a discussion with one of my long time friend who is in a senior role in an IT industry. We touched upon a lot of topic but one thing which makes me write this blog is Culture, Quality (by quality I mean the quality of people) and Growth.  For once it does look like 3 different topics but it's actually interrelated and bringing up one invokes other. So you can't have discussion on Culture in silo or for that matter either Quality or Growth. Relating from my experience of hiring in one of the companies I worked with, had three rounds of interview with two people evaluating the person in each round. So if a candidate has gone through all rounds there would be six different opinions and a higher chance that people might have mixed opinions. The only situations where all six of them would have readily agreed was when the candidate is really poor in knowledge (mostly they wouldn't reach next round ) or really outstanding where in people reach consen...

Exactly that's how my life has been from past 2 months since I left my full time job ! It's more peaceful and lot more focussed on what I want to do for myself and definitely the big picture for which I envisioned and left my job. Working full time in an IT company is a bit competitive in terms of work pressure, the desire to perform better, the desire to stand by the faith of people who trusted you with the opportunity. Believe me working in IT for 8 years did leave some traces of competitiveness in me as in I miss competing with a bunch of intelligent people and try everything to stand out as in a healthy competition. Aaah I miss that really! And I see there is nothing wrong with that, that's how our pay system or appraisal system is designed as well. Less of caffeine trust me is a big favour you are doing for yourself. You don't need that much of caffeine. There was a time when I was having close to around 15 cups of coffee in a day in one of my  previous organ...

Lesson 1: No matter what you do, few things will go at it's own pace ! When you can't influence them, bear them and be happy ! When I planned with other two friends of mine to leave ThoughtWorks and set up a company of our own, we had no much of idea of outside world. We were starting on getting the company name finalised, registering the company. Reading mostly on web we found out that it would take around 4 weeks to register a company. We thought we have around 4 weeks of notice period and started the procedure. Believe me if it's a government work you are bound to repeat the task at least once. It took us 8 weeks to register the company and get all the documentation done and a ton of patience, there are still couple of filing under progress which are more like nice to have. Plus the whole government functionary is black box. So in case you are registering for a new company you would need to submit four names as a potential choice for company name. Ahhh yes 4 na...

This is the first time when from coming monday I will have no office to go to. I will not drive through the busy inner ring road of Domlur (Bangalore) to reach office in Koramangla, I will be at home for few days! There is a certain amount of fear when you leave something so set for unknown. Unknown where you  for sure don't know what would be coming to you next. The moment one face something unknown, fear starts coming in, fear that it will disrupt your life, fear that it might derail all the plans you have. But this fear is more of a guiding nature and satisfying because everyday it will give you a chance to face it.  It will be worth reflecting when was the last time you faced such a fear ! Really this is what I am feeling after leaving my full time job at ThoughtWorks.  I know we can debate on the purpose of life and how you take life as ! But somewhere I feel the very purpose of life is to explore things around you, uncover new ways, uncover new paths without ...