Serial entrepreneur and The Final Pitch creator and host John Aguilar shares valuable lessons, tips and techniques he picked up from years of producing and hosting the reality pitching show.
In this book, he straddles the East and the West to interview world-renowned investors, venture capitalists, conglomerates, startups, creatives, and legal and financial experts to identify the components of a pitch that makes an impact-whoever you are, wherever you are, and at whatever stage of your idea, start-up, or scale-up. He dives deep into the minds and methods of founders who pitched their way to million-dollar valuations, and tackles lessons that can be learned from those who failed.
Through this book you will be able to:
– Discover your ‘Why’ and find your ‘Who’
– Learn how to read and prepare for your audience
– Distill the essential elements of the pitch and craft your pitch deck
– Hone your pitching style and storytelling technique
– Know how to pitch to anyone, anywhere, virtually or in-person
– Learn the art and science of valuation and prepare for due diligence
– Gain insights on how to pitch on a reality TV show
This is the titular playbook that explores each component of the pitch so that you can understand the art and science behind it as you gear yours for success.
In 1956, the Senguptas travel from Calcutta to rural Malaya to start afresh. In their new hamlet of anonymity – a small settlement on the edge of a British rubber plantation – the couple gradually forget their troubled pasts and form new ties. But this second home is not entirely free and gentle. A complex, racially charged society, it is on the brink of independence even as communist insurgents hover on the periphery. How much can a newcomer meddle before it starts to destroy him?
Shuttling in time and temper between the politics of a small Malayan town and the anguished years of pre-Partition Bengal, between the Malayan Emergency and Direct Action Day, between indifference and lust, A Flutter in the Colony is a tender, resonant chronicle of a family struggling to remain together in the twilight of Empire in Asia.
Anna, the pampered daughter of a maverick Englishman and his local Muslim wife, has been promised the unprecedented freedom to marry for love. Her young life, like the island she inhabits, is perched at the crossroads of eastern and western cultures in the waning days of the British Empire in Asia. The first man she falls for, the son of a prominent Chinese family in Penang, breaks her heart when he submits to an arranged marriage with a ‘backward’ but ambitious mainland Chinese bride. Anna’s next choice seems to be more suitable, a second-cousin on her mother’s side, an earnest self-made man whom her family adores. The newlyweds struggle to reconcile their individual aspirations with the expectations of their sprawling, extended families. The rumblings of the Second World War and the brutal Japanese Occupation transform their individual plights into a matter of life and death when they are thrust together in a desperate struggle to survive. This epic story of love and loss is illuminated by the richly painted backdrop of a multicultural society in flux on a vibrant island that is both breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly suffocating.
After civilization as we know it ends in a nuclear war, triggered by pursuit of black gold, mankind is given a fresh start. The thrones of power are void and unclaimed. Survivors crawl out from the darkness where they hid to wait out the aftermath of the disaster, grasping at all the hopes and opportunities above the ruins of the corrupted world. A second chance for humanity to prove itself.
From semi-primitive settlements to architectural marvels, the homo-civilis sure is a master at survival. But as they breathe their new lives, greed pulses in their heartbeats. Their inner demons never cease to feed on power and riches, and this was the same curse that befell their ancestors.
After Time witnesses the dawn of this new stronghold of humanity in fragments of tales, like a folklore. An ambitious commoner and a greedy royalty. A blind seer and a prodigal young genius. A murderous advisor, cunning princes, and kings who fall for their own machinations. A warrior blinded by love, and warlord who wields greed as his sword. Rulers so fearful of knowledge, they doom their people to illiteracy.
Trails of blood, lust and intrigue trickle through each chapter, building up to a massive tidal wave that will eventually drag the empire to its knees, paving the way for a better generation to carry the torch of human civilization.
Born and Bred in Myanmar is about the life and struggles of rural dwelling youths in Myanmar who, at an early age, have to work to supplement the household income or work alongside their parents to support the family.
They often find it difficult to even complete their basic formal education and thus find it hard to break the poverty cycle that their parents have been trapped in. The book portrays the lack of a support system from the government or even support from the family for young people who dream of pursuing a good education in life.
Some of the youths whose stories are told in this collection are: Khin Soe from Mon State, who drops out of primary school due to his father’s deteriorating health and has to work as a carrier transporting the cargo of pilgrims making the trip to the top of the mountain to visit the famous holy pagoda; Moe Kyaw from Kyaukpadaung town, who volunteers to help his father who became ill working as a long distance bus driver, yet is never recognized for his help which is instead dismissed as a mere excuse for not wanting to go to school; Ma Nyo Pyar from Baw Lel village, who quits her studies to help her struggling mother in the paddy fields as well as look after her newborn sister, after turning down an offer from her mother’s friend to put her through school.
Although these are stories of youths who lived in Myanmar in the 1980s, these stories still reflect the lives of youths in rural Myanmar today.
Winter Blue is a fourteen-year-old fairy-child who leads parallel lives in two worlds-the world of humans, and another, secret, wondrous world-Magic-Land. In Magic-Land she meets magical and interesting creatures like Sherbet, a creature who tastes as sweet as honey; Snow-Nos, white creatures that turn into a real nuisance every time it starts to snow; errant Mud-Mushrooms that are relocating to a new apartment before spring; and, of course, fairies, house-fairies, dwarflings and more.
Along with her fairy-child friend Timothy, Winter embarks on a new adventure. She discovers a secret opening leading to a hidden, subterranean world situated right under the human world. It is the home of ancient creatures called the ‘Stone-Giants’. Winter and her friends befriend the stone-giants and help them in their war against a secret cult that threatens to ruin them. They sail down rivers of boiling lava, cross the Waterfall of Fools, battle with blazing lava stalactites, and use the magic dust that had been given to them the last summer.
This is the third book in the beloved Winter Blue, Fairy-Child series.
This is Book 3 of the thrilling LAST KID RUNNING gamebook series for 10 to 12 year olds. YOU decide how the story unfolds.
You are Runner X, one of six contestants in the final round of Last Kid Running, the craziest game show streaming on the mobile web.
You’ve been waiting eagerly for this. But the pandemic strikes, and the ingenious Dr Yamato creates a home-based VR version of this event instead, to keep the fans entertained.
It turns out to be a wild and futuristic adventure, with five levels full of twists, thrills and tricky challenges. Plus, you’ll need to solve the Riddlemaster’s Remarkable Riddle, which is the most baffling brain-teaser you’ve ever encountered.
Do you have what it takes to be the LAST KID RUNNING?
Read and find out!
Everyone gets stuck in habitual patterns, including emotional, behavioral, and relational habits. We have the same arguments repeatedly with our parents, partners, and children despite wanting to stop. Often by the time we realize we’re stuck, we no longer know how to get unstuck. The secret to finding freedom is to understand karma and free will.
Why is it useful to understand karma and free will correctly? If you misunderstand karma, you’re more likely to get stuck. And if you misunderstand free will, you’re more likely to stay stuck.
Joining Western psychological science and traditional Buddhism, experimental psychologist and Zen monk Ven. Dr. Douglas Cheolsoeng Gentile describes how our minds can be simultaneously our greatest weakness and greatest asset. We are controlled by both external forces and internal habits of mind, while simultaneously believing ourselves to be ‘free’. This conundrum can be solved by seeing where our biases begin, how our natural ability to learn traps us, and how we unintentionally undermine the progress we intend to make. This book can help you find freedom from negative habits, relationship patterns, and feelings.
You don’t need to be Buddhist to be able to use these ideas to be happier, just as you don’t need to be a mathematician to be able to add. You just need to have an accurate understanding of the processes to make them work for you.
Rejection: A Sumatran Odyssey is an epic family drama by Ashadi Siregar set against the turbulent years following Indonesia’s independence.
The story follows Tondi who as a young man joins the separatist rebellion of the late 1950s and early 1960s in North Sumatra. Later he moves to Java and finds his way in the murky Jakarta underworld. Tondi’s story is interwoven with the magical world of his paternal grandfather, a shaman traditional priest living in the old pre-Islam, pre-Christian world of Batak belief. Tondi’s father deserts the family when Tondi is a child, moves to Jakarta, and joins the Indonesian national army. Tondi’s mother stays in Sumatra and forges a life of her own, for a while working at a hospital with Dutch personnel who return to the former Dutch colony after Indonesian independence.
A central section of the novel describes Tondi’s journey alone through the primeval jungle of North Sumatra, on a mission for the rebel army. His grandfather has given him directions to pass through this rarely-traversed realm where his ancestors used to roam.
In rich and poetic storytelling, Ashadi Siregar portrays the Batak culture of North Sumatra: its language, beliefs, ceremonies, and intricate kinship system. He also vividly depicts a critical period in history when Indonesia was struggling to find its place internationally against the backdrop of the Cold War, while fighting internally to keep the new nation together.
The main characters all have choices to make in this time of love and war and conflicts between the old ways and the new. All reject something, just as the time itself is one of rejection; rejection of past ways; rejection of nationalist ideals; and the Sumatran rebels’ rejection of the centralist Indonesian government.
This English translation of Ashadi Siregar’s ground-breaking historical novel brings a non-Indonesian readership into a fascinating, vast and little known part of Indonesia’s history.
Ariston Letrero is a renaissance man: audio producer, insurance salesman, musician, composer, part-time fast food mascot, and a philanderer who quickly and quietly abandons his wife and son, Lucas, at the peak of his mottled career, for a new life in America with his lover Odette.
Years and years later, he sends an email to his son, Lucas Letrero, an advertising man who has been brought up on super robot cartoons, Catholic school truisms, and a diet of fast food and loneliness, and who has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart Dedes, who has made a post-annulment life for herself in America.
In the 30-odd years in between is a story that sings songs and anthems of identity, relations, loneliness, and loss, and how they figure in the lives of contemporary Filipinos who are not scattered across space and time, but who are also connected and separated at the same time.
Joy is a story of joy-lived forward, backward, sideways, and upside down, in lives and loves that are fragmented, separated, gathered, made virtual, and made real.
