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Ventures

A business has the following setup

Inputs/Capital -> Process -> Outputs/Profit-Loss

Optimizing this equation is the goal of any company. Let us break this down:

  • Inputs. Can be people, technology, relationships, etc. Anything that is unique that we can reuse.
  • Capital. Every input also takes in capital costs. This includes costs for that people, technology, etc.
  • The process includes marketing, sales, value creation, and value delivery. This is function of a company.
  • The output of this process from a business standpoint is profit or loss. If a business spends more on its inputs than it gets in outputs it is not a good business.

However, this flywheel concept has different ways of being understood a low margin business or a high margin business have different optimizations. Say you spend 99 on the input and make 100 dollar on the output. You only make 1 dollar. This may seem like a poor return on investment but the time scales also matter. If you spend 99 dollars and make 100 dollars over a one year time frame the 1% return is terrible. If on the other hand you spend 99 and make 100 in a week that is a high return on investment.

The primary focus of the Ventures is a focus on Sanatana Dharma. Every project I have is based on the propagation of Dharmic thought.

  • opsZero. Building India as a technical and AI powerhouse. Train technical capabilities in India.
  • SattvaSurya. Building India as a trader for the world. Trade India native goods to the rest of the world.
  • Samraja. Building Hindutva as a political power.
  • Parabrahman. Imagining a Dharmic Philosophy for the West.

Each of these ventures exist to expand and grow Sanatana Dharma.

Format​

  • Finance
    • Accounts Payable
    • Accounts Receivable
    • Legal
    • Deming
  • Growth
    • Product
    • Marketing
    • Sales
  • Operations
    • Support
    • Documentation
    • Team

Stack​

  • Legal.
    • Legal Entity
    • Bank Account
    • Stripe
  • WhatsApp Group. We have a single group for all communication. This can be within a community.
    • WhatsApp Community. Shared WhatsApp Community with a group for the Sangh.
  • Cloudflare. We use Cloudflare for all DNS and CDN.
  • Apollo.io. CRM for sangh and sakhas.
  • AWS. We use AWS for all cloud infrastructure.
  • Google Workspace. We use Google Drive for all documents and spreadsheets.
    • Shared Drive
      • Legal.
      • Competitors
      • One Pager
      • Contracts
    • Calendar. Shared Calendar for the sangh.
      • Meetings. Shared Weekly Meeting Calendar.
        • Weekly Competitor Review
  • Github. We use Github for all code, documentation and issues.
    • Github Orgainization
      • main repository. Look at the sakha structure for rest of the structure.
        • ledger. hledger powererd accounting system.
    • Github Project. There should be a sangh level project that tracks all sangh and sakha tasks.
    • Github Issues. All tasks are tracked in Github issues.
      • feature
      • bug
      • waste
      • support
      • pull-request
    • Github Actions. All automation is run through Github actions.
    • Repo. All code is stored in Github.
      • .github/workflows. All the Github actions workflows.
        • pr-*.yml. Pull request validations including tests, linting.
      • README.md. Overview of the sangh or sakha.
      • tasks.py. Task runner using pyinvoke.
      • app. The backend code written in Django and Python.
      • www. The frontend code powered by Docusaurus.
        • /one-pager. A one pager that explains the business unit and made public.
        • /presentations. All sales presentations.
        • sop. Standard Operating Procedures
          • prfaq. PRFAQ for the business unit.
          • routine. Checklists for various processes.
          • ledger. Tracking the metrics for sakha.
      • infra. Infra terraform code.
        • aws. AWS terraform code.
        • cloudflare. Cloudflare terraform code.
        • github. Github terraform code.

Our individual business units are built using a decentralized team with a standardized technology stack and process. Each sakha is run by a small team of three sevakas.

The sakhas has a few core characteristics that are common:

  1. Do one thing well. A sakha can be explained with a single sentence.
  2. Small team. Each sakha is run by a small team of three sevakas. a. Business Lead. The business lead is responsible for the overall success of the sakha. They are responsible for sales, marketing, and business development. b. Technical Lead. The technical lead is responsible for the technical implementation of the sakha. They are responsible for the code, infra, issue management, and deployment. c. Support Lead. The support lead is responsible for customer support and operations.
  3. Independent. Each sakha is independent and can be run without any external dependencies including the Sangh.

Limited Scope​

I do not intend to cross pollinate too much between the different business units (sakhas) so all decisions for the most part will be made at the sakha level. The sevakas will work as a small team within the sakha and will be responsible for the day to day operations. Each sakha will operate independently.

So what does this mean for the Sangh level operations? The sang will largely be focused on finance, legal, and infrastucture. Everything else will be pushed down to the sakha level.

What consistitutes finance, legal, and infrastructure?

  • finance
    • bookkeeping
    • tax filings
    • financial statements
  • legal
    • contracts
    • incorporation
    • IP protection
  • infrastructure
    • cloud infrastructure
    • DNS and CDN
    • email and communication systems
    • lead scrapers
    • social media automation
    • common git templates and actions

Nearly everything else will be pushed down to the sakha level.

Boring Businesses​

The problem being in proximity to San Francisco is that newness is always the rage, entrepreneurs chasing the newest gold rush. Makes sense since San Francisco started with the actual gold rush! But if we look at the companies remaining in San Fransico from the actual gold rush of 1849 the two prominent remaining companies are are Wells Fargo and Levi Strauss.

Bank and pants are boring businesses. These businesses are not going to be changing rapidly but will remain the same for a long time. sakhas should not to chase to build innovation led products with high capital costs. We build things that people need delivered at a lower cost than our competitor with exceedingly simple business models.

Boring businesses have some advantages that we can provide them:

  1. Entrepreneurs don’t find them sexy so don't work on them.
  2. The legacy players are not nimble enough.
  3. They tend to be process heavy.
  4. Costs can be driven down with standardization.

All of these are advantages that we have as a small, process oriented organization.

Definition of Done​

There is tendency in software towards enshitification. To avoid this, all sakhas will reach a point where they will be considered done. The way to determine this is if it meets the objective that it started out with. This means that a sakha has a specific goal in mind and once that goal is achieved, the sakha is considered done.

Once it is done, the sakha will continue to exist but will not add new features or functionality. It will be maintained and supported but will not be actively developed. There will be security updates and updates to any upstream API changes.

The goal is to avoid feature creep and to keep the sakha focused on its original purpose. If there is a new opportunity or idea, a new sakha will be created to address that. If this results in multiple sakhas that are similar, they can be later merged or one can be deprecated or both can continue to exist if there is a market for both.

Issues​

Tasks​

Our continuous improvement has four distinct entities:

  • feature. A feature is an improvement to a single Sakha or Sangh. It is isolated and be developed quickly and launched. Further features tend to be a large part of projects.
  • bug. A bug is something that is no behaving correctly or is creating incorrect results. Bugs are a stop everything and fix situation. We do not tolerate bugs and these are the first things we need to address above everything else.
  • waste. Waste are bugs with a lower priority and focused on process. Anything that is slowing process leads to waste.

Every feature we build is aimed at Continuous Improvement of our sangh, sakhas and sevakas. Features follow a framework called DMAIC that comes from Six Sigma.

  • Define. Define the problem, solution and goal. This should be written as a blog post if it is a significant feature or a couple of sentences if it is a small feature.
  • Measure. What is the current baseline. What are the current metrics of the system that is being improved. Do we have any metrics?
  • Analyze. Use the 5 Whys to analyze the root cause of the problem and ensure that the solution addresses the root cause.
  • Improve. Confirm that the improvement is leading to the desired Measurable Outputs.
  • Control. Track the performance over time using Control Charts to ensure that the process is stable and the improvements are sustained. Update the SOP including the Process Map, Routine, and Checklists.

SOP​

Sakhas are built using Standard Operating Procedures that are repeated daily. Each day we try to find an improvement of 1% of how to do the tasks so that we can slowly overtime improve each of the businesses

SOPs have a few things that are common:

  • /sop/. Process Maps
  • /sop/prfaq. PRFAQ
  • /sop/routine. Routine Definitions
    • daily.md. Daily Tasks
    • monthly.md. Monthly Tasks
  • /sop/deming. Deming Charts
terraform {
  required_providers {
    cloudflare = {
      source  = "cloudflare/cloudflare"
      version = "~> 5"
    }
  }
}

provider "cloudflare" {
}

locals {
  domain  = "discountcloud.io"
  zone_id = ""
}

resource "cloudflare_zero_trust_access_application" "sop" {
  domain           = "${local.domain}/sop"
  type             = "self_hosted"
  zone_id          = local.zone_id
  session_duration = "720h"
  policies = [{
    id         = "5e3c1eb1-cef9-4de1-93a3-01ff389a443a"
    precedence = 1
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}
    [
      '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs',
      {
        id: 'sop',
        path: 'sop',
        routeBasePath: 'sop',
        sidebarPath: './sidebars.ts',
      },
    ],

Study​

The primary book I use for running my business. As part of it also incoporating Toyota Way as the operating manual.

  • Toyota Way