About 11 years ago, I cold-emailed Om for his guidance. I was an absolute nobody, living thousands of miles away. Not only did Om patiently explain how I should think about my career, he kept in touch over the past decade checking in on how I was doing. I left journalism last year to do something else -- coincidentally, again, following Om's footsteps -- and had been meaning to write a long email, sharing so much. I deeply regret missing the chance to have another conversation with him.
Om has been deeply impactful to my journalism career and beyond. He was way too kind and leaves a big vacuum.
For example, India based companies have had the ability to create and market enterprise class software for decades … at scale. And there is certainly enough talent that has been exposed to business logic and domain expertise while working at India-based subdivisions of the biggest legacy players. Yet over the decades, even with this insight and a massive low-cost skilled workforce, no regional vendors have successfully emerged to challenge the legacy US vendors, in our view. Factors such as having enterprise class sales teams, technology cross-licensing agreements, proprietary and patented IP, industry specific domain expertise, aligned workflows with industry practice, being first-to- market, having brand awareness, scale, or effective go-to-market strategies are just the tip of the iceberg when looking into the key attributes needed to compete effectively in the software sector and … just making code is not enough.
(The note isn't in public domain, hence sharing here the text and screenshot.)
The paper interestingly finds that fertility rates have fallen to historically low levels in virtually all high-income countries due to a fundamental reordering of adult priorities rather than economic factors.
Om has been deeply impactful to my journalism career and beyond. He was way too kind and leaves a big vacuum.