GMAT is a popular exam that most MBA
aspirants appear for. And the sample tests available online throw up a very
interesting food for thought. If one is just hovering around being an average
or just
This i figured out when i was
preparing for my GMAT in 2007. The trick is to achieve 99 percentile.
The business
world
MBA to me is seemingly the most
irrelevant education one can ever acquire because it makes you aware of your surroundings
a bit more than everyone else. The case studies based on thousands of successes
and failures over the last 100 years makes you terribly aware of too many
things and you lose your chance to take that risk. Because we fail to forget that
its an efficient marketplace.
The more i deal with educated and
allegedly experienced professionals the more sceptical i get. Analysis analysis
and more analysis. The sum total of all monetary risk is as follows. Every fund
every source of money could be parked in AAA rated securities (absolute
safety), and as businessmen start taking risks and start leveraging the base
equity, the returns start rising. (Risk reward ratio – directly proportional)
In India you can easily park money at
11-12% in almost AAA rated securities or bonds and Warren Buffet’s life performance
is about 21% CAGR (and i consider him the epitome of financial performance), so
put it simply - the entire economic activity on this planet, the entire
analysis, the entire risk reward, the entire funding of start-ups, etc etc is
to inch from 12 % CAGR to 21% CAGR.
And yet
Statistically only 8-10% companies
have survived beyond 33 years of existence
Only 8-10% of start-ups ever make any
money
Only 8-10% of return is guaranteed over
a long period of time
And in a casino if one analyses the
top 4 games that are played 95% of the time, you have a fairly good 8% chance of winning.
If Ambani (india’s leading
businessman) had analysed his pro and cons even an iota more, his children
would still be filling fuel in the petrol bunks of Yemen. Thank Goodness he
didn’t know what IRR was.
If Bill Gates or Jobs had calculated
their IRR on their investment what would they be doing today is anyone’s guess.
Life is about the leap of faith and
an uncanny and a very scarce ability to go with ones gut to invest/start/embark
on the journies of life. After all you only have an 8 % chance over short to
medium term and we are all dead in the long term.
The business of
life
Life sucks – I know a dear friend who
courted for 9 yrs before getting married and the marriage lasted just a little
over nine months. And there are people who didn’t see their potential spouses,
went thru an arranged married ( 2/3rd s of the world doesn’t even
know what an arranged marriage is) and they have been married for ages some for
decades and many I know for over half a century.
Carrying your heart on your sleeve is
the best virtue a human being can have. You win some. You lose some. Whether
its life, love, casino or business.
Go by your gut and pursue your
dreams. If you win you become rich, if you lose you become wiser.
There is no failure in life – only
feedback
And life is just one big casino.