So this is the kind of post which comes after half an hour of trying to figure out what your WordPress password was. And this one apparently falls in the anniversary week of my last blog post! Terribly bad! At least not how i wanted it to be like when i booked this domain. But I would blame laziness, twitter & confidentiality, in that order, for not having written posts on subjects which interested me in the course of last one year. I like writing though, in fact writing a book has long been on the bucket list alongside a lot of other weird things like directing a movie, both of which i guess are pretty far away.
In the last one year, a lot of things around me changed, most of them for good. “The small little world around me” has become slightly bigger & is hopefully growing faster than inflation. A lot of reflections & realizations, a bunch of interesting conversations, a ton of ideas, a huge amount of travel, fair bit of execution, a lot of internet data consumption & most importantly a handful of new friends & connections. I gauge change by the actual change of 2 things. Change in mindset & change in routine. The latter has changed completely. The former has been through a lot of revisions over regular intervals of time mostly in tune with the lunar cycle!
I generally hate being on flights, being disconnected from the rest of the world, having to sit still all the time & I can’t sleep for short bits. Power naps are a distant dream for me & the cause of jealousy when i see people around me fall asleep just like that! No, let’s not go there… So the flight durations are mostly dedicated towards a bit of reading & thinking or more appropriately called dreaming. Richard Branson, through his books of course, was my co-traveller, in a lot of those otherwise boring flights. (btw, there should be blind dating services on flights, idea courtesy Sherin & Anoop) A lot of things that dude did was exciting & fun and his views on business or rather businesses were obviously inspiring.
The first of the many realizations of the last entire non-blogging year (ya, Q2 to Q2!) just on one of those flights. See.. There are fundamentally 2 types of people. BTW, I’m talking about people who do big stuff or at least want to. Ha.. So 2 types. The first kind can do one thing so well that the sheer passion & effort will put others to shame. They wouldn’t mind doing that for their life time. They improve & innovate & even reinvent. And the second kind, who likes doing multiple stuff and likes being challenged from multiple directions. It’s just what makes you happy at the end of the day. The fact that we were never a single product company & that we always reinvented ourselves across multiple verticals, made me ascertain the fact that Richard Branson & Yours Truly, had similarities in the way of thinking! If anyways you are always multitasking then why not multitask multidimensionally? A breath of fresh air in the flight & the restless wait for the thing to bloody land, safely of course!
Fast forward a year & now there are a few more small entities that we are associated with in one way or the other, either subsidiaries or joint ventures or startups or small investments. Most of them small but beautiful & having a primary entrepreneur running the show on a day to day basis. And the excitement & adrenaline rush is back to how it was during college days while bootstrapping. What goes around, does come back around i guess. It’s been tough but refreshing. (more on each of the start-ups later) The biggest strength, has of course been the team around. More so because they are all fundamentally entrepreneurs themselves. Every single person in the team, in their own small & big ways, help us chase more dreams together. And like in a lot of other parallels, the fun is always more in the chase!
Now the bigger dream is to create an eco-system. One that empowers more minds & spawn dreams in them. An eco-system of do-ers & go-getters. And an economic slow-down, like the one that’s most likely to happen now, is always the most fertile ground for a start-up.
The challenge is the focus & the resources. Both are always limited. Time, the most important of resources, is the biggest luxury for a man. It’s easy to say Dream BIG, it’s more important to strike the right balance so that execution doesn’t suffer. Growing in spurts is good. Helps you set goals you can see & aim at. Just don’t get stuck to them for too long. Always revise & reinvent. Nothing survives without that. We, as a country, have always been referring to the reforms of 1991, as the reason for the India growth story. True. Totally. But only till this far. To grow further, you need a totally different set of reforms. A 2 trillion economy (by March 2012) can’t run with the policies which were created to help the country reach the then target of 1 Trillion. Applies to everything!
Basically, identify yourself. What sort of a person are you? What makes you happy?
Dream BIG, but then chop them into cute smaller ones and put them in a sequence.
Be quick to get them done one at a time, Time waits for none.
Reinvent & Adapt. Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep discovering.
Being at the right place at the right time! A statement used so often that it has almost lost all it’s charm! And still when you give it a thought, it’s so very critical in each of our lives. It’s a simplified version of saying you got a good opportunity on which you could act on. In every phase of life, a few critical such scenarios decide where you are, what you do, who you meet, your lifestyle, your friends’ circle, dreams, ambitions, aspirations… It basically defines or rather redefines who you are.
Generally “being at the right place at the right time” is referred to in the context of being fortunate. Many humble individuals would say they owe it to someone else, usual beneficiaries being god, parents, guru/mentor/boss, friend(s) etc usually in that order. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with it, it’s never completely your capability or lack of it, that you are where you are right now.
The explanation that usually goes behind all of it is the very intriguing concept of “destiny”. For a set of unexplainable & uncontrollable things, it’s a good way to save a lot of profound thinking time! What I am more interested is the set of things that is totally under your control & can actually make a difference. No matter who all you owe the opportunity to or whatever part of the result is due to pure luck, there is this obvious set of things which you have knowingly or unknowingly done or maybe still doing.
Which means that if you bring more right things under the category of ‘things you knowingly do’, you might really stand a chance to make a difference I suppose. From an entrepreneurial perspective, let me list down the most important items, many of which I’m sure will be applicable to other things in life as well.
a) Contacts
One of the most important factors, if not the most. Just reflect on your life & you realize that every major breakthrough moment you had in your life, you can trace back to certain key individuals who was instrumental in some way or the other. As an entrepreneur you need to build contacts like crazy. It’s not easy maintaining them but obviously it’s worth the effort provided you are building the right ones. And it’s not just random acquaintances, I’m talking about people who would call you first when they come across a specific set of opportunities or information, people who like you & wish good for you.
b) Information
Finally what makes one person or entity different from the other is the amount of useful information at their disposal which they could use for their own advantage or for others. You need to have your trustworthy sources of course.
c) Knowledge
With contacts & information at your side, you need enough knowledge about the sector to think through & decide how exactly you can benefit from the scenario. This is unfortunately something you can’t help but rely on someone else, maybe via books, internet, continuously interacting with key stake holders in the space & keeping yourself updated on what’s happening in the ecosystem.
d) Implementation
Putting ideas into action, the point where you put all the above mentioned items in the right proportion & make things happen in the real world!
e) Choice
In a big maze every left & right you take could have a lot of good or bad implications in the future, maybe near term but more importantly the medium & long term ones. You can retrace steps easily if you hit the dead end really early, it gets a lot tougher when you have taken too many wrong turns. For entrepreneurs ‘gut feel’ works the best, I have no clue about the logic behind that but probably because you feel you are the only person responsible for the decision & hence would stand by it no matter what.
f) Risk Appetite
The adrenaline rush is the fun part and stress, restlessness & sleeplessness probably the bad part. But to achieve big things in life you will definitely need to lose a lot of sleep I suppose. But it’s up to you to decide what’s your priority, you should probably not have been an entrepreneur if you thought there were other ways! The art is in managing the risk to whatever extend possible. The function which relates risk & reward is still probably a mystery but it’s obviously got some connection & in the same direction.
Mix all of the above with a lot of positive attitude & you have got a fantastic formula to be at the right place at the right time. You do make your own destiny to a certain extend. Probably the reason why successful people tend to succeed again & again or certain individuals seem to be extremely lucky!
A startup becoming a success story is not all that common. Probably every 99 out of 100 attempts fail but still that 1 triumph inspires another 100 teams to startup! What goes into that one startup that makes it a success? Why is it that the 99 others are not able to create the same magic? Is there a set of rules that ensure success of a start-up?
Though there are so many small & big things that help a startup get closer to tasting success or at least ensure that they stay on the right path, there is nothing much that can ensure a sure shot success. But if there are things that can increase your chances, there is no reason why you shouldn’t follow them.
Startups across the world face almost the same set of challenges but being in India & not having experience running a startup anywhere else, i think my limited knowledge only allows me to comment about the scene here. But call it my ignorance or give credit to the bigger number of odds against you out here, if you have what it takes to make it a success in India, probably you can do better in almost any other part of the world! Having said that, the things I list below are completely my personal opinions & don’t blame me if you follow all this & still screw up!
I’ve read a zillion articles that guarantees a better success rate for a startup & have agreed (to a lot) or disagreed (to an equal number) to the various points in them. I’m sure you have read even more number of articles & might feel my GYAN session to be extremely boring, but just in case a few of you think there has been some small little thing that you could take away from this page, I’m more than happy. I look forward to adding more items to this space or edit the existing ones, as & when i get the revelation! So here we go >>
Team
The most important ingredient for a good startup is undoubtedly the right team. Ideas can change, business models can evolve, everything you do can alter directions but if you don’t have a good team with you, your chances of making it big are close to zero. And by ‘good’ team, I mean a balanced team with the right skill sets. You need a core team that is collectively good at ideation, execution, marketing, sales, finance & the ability to think ahead of time.
I strongly recommend a team size of atleast 2 and is not pro a one-man-show system, because of reasons more than one.
a) A single person won’t have all the skills essential to lead/run a startup.
b) It’s really good to think in more than one perspective on everything.
c) You need someone with you who will stand by you when you screw up stuff.
d) The joy is more when you have people around you to share success.
Everyone thinks different. You need someone to think about the cons when you are so much into the pros. I really admire those iron-men who have built empires from scratch all alone, but who knows, maybe they would have made even bigger a business or have saved a lot of time, if they had the right partner.
Business Model
There are so many things that you can do to attract publicity & make people say good things about you. I’m not saying don’t do all that, in fact its really good to do all that. But, at the end of the day, you are running a business to make money & everything else are just by-products. A simple thing that many people fail to understand is that profit = income - expense, which essentially means that to increase your profit there are only 2 things you can do. One is to increase income & two is to make sure you are spending the least possible. And to have income in the first place, you need a good revenue model. A startup’s success is not when it makes a multi million dollar exit (though that is a good thing to happen) but when it makes sustainable & growing profits. If your intention is to make a company that fits the “hot, loss making, free service with mega valuations” tag, you are in the wrong game. It does happen once in a million companies, but definitely a model you cannot bet on.
Flow of information
You need strong systems & processes in place to ensure good flow of information within the organization. Everything from tracking expenses to daily revenues to business development initiatives to what your clients think about your product/service, progress towards the next milestone, these are all pieces of information that you would want to make available to the core team on a near real time basis. The more the delay in flow of info, the more likely that things go out of hand. The core team has to be constantly updated among each other on all the stuff happening within the company & the rest of the team should be trained to continuously communicate the info upwards in comprehensive packages. The results of good flow of information is good turn-around times, happy clients, better margins, more business and above all, the ability to take informed decisions at the right time.
Incentives
Everyone needs some kind of motivation to put in their maximum. It need not always be monetary in nature but there definitely has to be incentives for achievement. It makes a person put in that extra bit that could make all the difference. It gives everyone the scope to grow at a pace they are eligible to, instead of being capped by other external factors. So put systems in place to reward every achievement. You might not be able to give incentives to every single person in the organization from day one, but make sure you make an effort to moving towards such a situation.
To-Do lists, Reporting & Reviews
Each person in the team has to be accountable for the work entrusted. There has to be a daily track of who does what. EOD’s (short for End-Of-Day reports) are something one can’t afford to miss no matter how big or small a part that particular person plays in the organization. EOD’s make you more accountable, it helps you track progress, lets you plan ahead better, makes you prepare to-do lists that makes you better organized. Irrespective of the team member being on tech side or marketing, there has to be a strong reporting system. Even in case you don’t understand the benefits initially, don’t be lazy, stick to this & you will soon realize the importance of the same. Trust me, the entire productivity of the team goes up considerably higher if everyone writes EOD’s & maintain daily to-do lists.
Over and above this, you need to have EOW’s that track progress of a business unit over a week & then EOM’s that tracks the same over a month. It’s not incremental work creating all these reports, EOD’s help you make EOW’s & EOW’s compile into EOM’s etc. The core team should also make sure the progress is reviewed periodically.
Patience
I like this statement Infosys founder Narayanamurthy made >> “It took me 25 years to become an over-night wonder”. You can’t expect to become a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs in a couple of years. Be realistic. Be patient. Just ensure that you are on the right path and everything else will follow. There are things which you can’t speed up beyond a certain point. Don’t overdo things. Keep your cool. Don’t be frustrated. At the same time patience doesn’t mean that you sit locked in a room waiting for someone to come & deliver stuff to you.
Media
It’s good to be written about. It’s good to showcase your product in public. It’s good to have a fan following. Every start-up should learn the trick of getting free publicity. Apart from the print & visual media, nowadays the social media is also becoming of increased importance. Leverage all that you can. Find out your USP’s. Get them across to public through whatever means. But be careful too. a) Any publicity is not good publicity. Things can put you in a bad light too. b) Don’t get too proud reading what is written about you. Only you know the real picture & if you start believing that all those media attention is gonna get you somewhere, you are really wrong.
Positive thinking
You will need a lot of this to tide through the tough times. An entrepreneur has to be extremely optimistic about things. Positve thinking gives you positive energy that empowers you to do seemingly impossible stuff. Everyone around you may try to pull you down or atleast try to make you believe that you have set out to achieve something impossible, but that’s the whole point. You are out there to do stuff that normally people can’t & that’s why you are an entrepreneur and others are not! You are not the giving-up-types, no matter what. And go ahead and believe that you are a bit lucky too!
Delegate
It’s an art. Unless & until you learn this, you will keep doing the same stuff everyday & you are most likely to waste all your time which could otherwise have been used for new/better things. Human beings are prone to getting bored if they repeatedly do the same thing for more than a particular period of time, regardless of how good the thing is. In the case of an entrepreneur, the period of time we are talking about is considerably lower. Delegating work is not a bad thing to do. Every kind of work has to percolate down the team so that you get more bandwidth to think & do new things. This is essentially how you need to grow your team. Always have it in mind that you are capable of doing bigger, better things every day & your primary job is to show your team how best to do something, put systems & processes in place and then move on. It also ensures continuity of work & makes things less person dependant.
Mentors
Always good to have a right set of mentors. People whom you can trust totally. “Been there, done that” kind of people who can give you real good insights & help you find the way when you hit roadblocks. Be cautious, there are so many people out there who just do the talking and is not worth a penny. If the mentor is not passionate about the team & the work you do, there is no point wasting time. And if the reason why a mentor is associating with you is money/equity more than enything else, you are probably better off without this guy! The right mentor will be able to connect with your thought processes, he can relate to you & your situations & can share with you lessons he learnt in his journey. Do not give out any equity/money for mentorship based on future deliverables & verbal guarantees. If they are expecting something, they need to deliver first & you need to get convinced only seeing results. Finally, no matter what mentors tell you, the decision to be made is yours.
Prioritize
There are only a certain number of things which your brain can process at a time. There are only 24 hours in any given day. Any startup guy is likely to run out of bandwidth in his struggle to do so many things in the minimum possible time. While there is no problem in that part, what needs to be done is to prioritize things & the delegation part which has already been discussed. When you step a bit sideways and think, you will realize that a lot of things you do can be deferred as it is not of immediate importance, another set of things aren’t worth the pain in the long term and probably a third set of things which you just realized that it might do more harm than good. By prioritize, i mean figure out what has to be done on urgent basis, what is to deferred & what is to be skipped & this exercise can make sure you never run out of bandwidth for long stretches.
Save Money, Spend Less!
Don’t be ashamed. Spend as less as possible. People who tease you for being a miser won’t give you money to run your company. Save money wherever & whenever you can. Travel cheap, stay at friend’s places when on business trips, buy stuff on EMI, bargain & do whatever you can to save money. But at the same time, don’t refrain from the optimum spending on business development. Don’t refrain from spending if the time you spend bargaining is not worth it. So it’s basically a trade off between time & money which you have to master. And you also need to understand that without investing, there is no likely gain. Manage your CAPEX & OPEX well and keep track of them separately. Every company needs money, albeit in different proportions, for scaling up at various stages of the journey. If you wait for profits to be generated and then to re-invest, you will probably lose the opportunity in today’s cut throat competition. Identify funds, be it seed, angel, VC or PE, so that you can cash in when you are convinced about the opportunity.
Entertain Ideas, be open to Change!
Be open to ideas especially from within the team. If you try to resist change, you will be outdated in no time. Like they say, the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. So learn to adapt to the changes around you. The biggest advatages of a startup needs to be leveraged to the maximum, like minimum turn-around times, quick decision making, out-of-the-box thinking & zero aversion to innovate. Always encourage everyone to come up with ideas, cos that retains the spirit, and then debate over it actively before taking a final call.
Work hard, party harder!
There is no replacement to hardwork. You literally work your ass out 24×7 to get things rolling. Sleepless nights & no-time-to-eat-food days are so common in every startup. Having no short-cut, just make sure that you don’t burn-out too much. Take a break once in a while, cos mind & body needs rest and rejuvenation.
Dream BIG
Like APJ Abdul Kalam rightly says, “Dream, dream, dream! Dreams transform into thoughts, thoughts lead to action”. There is no harm in dreaming big. Infact, it gives you vision.
What do you want out of life? Money? Stardom? Fame? Love? Power? Fun? Success? Most probably a combination of some of these would be what you want out of life. If you want all the above, don’t read further, you are already too lost! Just kidding… I’m not here to preach anything, just jotting down stuff which have come to my mind in different circumstances of my journey.
I believe it’s all about being happy. It’s just that different people have different reasons & things that give them happiness. But if it’s such a common knowledge, why is it that very few people around you actually seem truly happy? I agree that everyone can’t be happy all the time, but if you admit the fact that the ultimate aim of your life is to be happy, then you should also understand that happiness is not something that suddenly comes to you 5 minutes before you die, it’s some state of mind you have to be in for the maximum amount of time as you live your life out. Looking back in life at any point, if you don’t consider yourself lucky & happy, then don’t blame it on anyone else, it’s solely your fault.
Now, what everyone believes in common is that these are things out of your control. Some say it’s god, some others just call it destiny, fate, bad luck etc. But I think it’s a lot dependent on the numerous small & big choices you make in life. For a human being living in this era, his/her life is constituted by work, family, friends & love. And each of this give enough reasons to be not happy. But what if you train your mind continuously to move on a bit faster to the next thing whenever you are hurt than the amount of time you took the last time around? And what does it take to do that? Just a lot of positive energy!
Happiness is contagious. Your happiness spreads to a close circle of people around you & vice-versa. Sadness is equally contagious, but it’s your choice whether you want to spread it or not. Choose not to unless when absolutely necessary & even if you do, don’t prolong this phase! Take life as it comes, live life to the fullest are all things you have heard a million times from so many sources, just try implementing them. Find out what gives you happiness, set your priorities straight and work towards it. Think positive & that gives you more energy than all the RedBull/Horsepower cans you can ever have. Happiness gives you a high which no other intoxicants can ever induce. It’s not fake, it’s incremental, it pushes you to achieve bigger things in life.
I strongly feel that every single thing that happens in my life is for some good or the other. It’s just that in the case of certain things, you understand immediately that it’s good for you & in certain other twists of life, you can figure that out only some time later. Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech has been pretty much inspirational for me, ‘you cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards’. The trust you have in this statement is the only reason you would have to follow your heart. And according to me, ‘following you heart’ is the most important thing in life. Because once you start following your heart, you will learn not to blame others for whatever has happened in your life. And also, it’s only the heart that can lead you to the right thing that can give you happiness.
You should definitely watch this video if you haven’t already >>
