Fresh Help for Start Ups
By Laura Parkin
Laura is the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). NEN is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Prior to this, she was Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies.
"I won a contest - and the prize was working with Consumer Vision," a software startup, Gaurav Chaturvedi, a student at IIT Bombay, explained enthusiastically. Not cash, not an iPod, but rather a chance to work at a startup: this unusual prize, and the excited response it engendered, point towards a new trend on top campuses across the country - a trend that holds potential benefits and risks for young companies.
Internships or student projects at large organizations have long been a fixture in academia. But as entrepreneurship programs develop on campuses, and the fascination with new ventures grips students, the students are starting to call for evermore real world entrepreneurship experience.
And startups are beginning to take advantage of this new resource pool. As Sivaprasad Cotipalli, founder of Dhanax Information Services explained, "We do work with students a lot. They have more ideas, fresh ideas; they are ready to try out new things. And they are also economical."
Abhay Panjiyar, the entrepreneur behind CEON Solutions, a company that delivers software solutions to schools, discovered similar advantages when bringing students on board, "At IIMA the students had a lot of experience. Working with these students gave me fresh ideas."
Placing students with startups is still a fairly new endeavor. Entrepreneurship itself is new to most campuses, and the students' interest takes time to mature to the extent that they want to spend time working with new ventures.
In addition, matching students with the right type of companies can be difficult: startups do not have the infrastructure devoted to creating opportunities for students, and many institutes simply don't have a network of startups. Therefore, it's not surprising to find that on several of the campuses that have successfully integrated students into new companies, those startups are actually housed within on-campus business incubators.
Prof. Rakesh Basant of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, explained, "Our students work with the incubatees on a regular basis as part of an existing model." IIMA's incubation activities were designed from inception to incorporate student involvement in the startups being incubated. Prof. Basant outlined the reasoning, "Startups tend to give exposure to a large number of activities. You become part of the confusion, in some sense, and in the process you end up learning a lot."
The results of startup internships have included some very practical learning for the students. J Kavitha, Ethiraj College, admitted, "The first thing I learnt was how to behave and talk properly - how to communicate crisply and correctly. I want to start my own event management company. And for this I need to know how to deal with people."
Yet other students live the entrepreneurial experience to an even greater extent. Abhishek Naik, student, BITS, Pilani, was one such student. "I didn't have any salary because they were just beginning the company. But we had enrolled for a few B-plan contests and we won two of them. So we shared the money," he said gamely.
Students feel that their startup experiences differ significantly from projects at larger companies. Aashima Sekri, a graduate of IIMA, shared, "This experience gave us the chance to look at the bigger picture. Would we have learnt this in a non-startup? Well, if the top management had taken us for larger projects then may be. But normally they don't offer that to 24 year old management students!"
The benefits accrued also to the startups. Abhay Panjiyar, the founder of CEON Solutions, described his organization's experience with IIMA students: "They helped with communications, writing, marketing, branding, and also business planning and VC pitches in the later stages. By the end of it we had re-organized our entire approach to the client, and our presentation had improved immensely. Their input on fundamentals and coming up with a USP for the product was especially brilliant."
Sivaprasad Cotipalli of Dhanax Information Services was pleasantly surprised by Abhishek Naik of BITS, Pilani, "Actually I was not expecting so much from him and he actually wrote the whole business plan out for me."
However, for all the positive experiences, working in a startup can throw up additional challenges for the students. Abhishek Naik felt the biggest issue for him was, "when people see you are an 18-year-old, and when you say you want to work, they think it's just a college project. They don't really appreciate the fact that a student can work and give results."
Challenges exist as well, on the other side of the equation. While many startups do benefit, there is a risk. Rohit Nalwade, founder of Consumer Vision Limited, didn't hold back when he explained, "The problem is that of many non-performing students."
And given how vulnerable a startup is towards manpower issues, the cost of non-performance can be enormous. Rohit expressed his frustration with some students who "whiled away their time in the office and then when the deadline was approaching they compiled something that was of no use. The result of this was that the entire product development got delayed by a month."
Prof. Basant felt that part of the problem lies with the fact that, "Startups normally don't have the time to get organized, and in some cases they are not able to get the maximum out of the students." This is one reason that IIMA faculty members work with the startups to define clearly a project for each student, and then monitor the progress.
Startups can also increase the success of their student internships. "We don't usually give the students a deadline and forget about it. We monitor their day-to-day progress all through the deadline period," explained Sivaprasad Cotipalli of Dhanax Information Services.
In the end, Abhay Panjiyar of CEON Solutions had such a positive experience with the students working with him that he wanted to keep the relationships going, "I wanted to offer the job to a few of the students I had worked with but I first wanted to take some time to get to a good level. Now I have started making offers to some of them."
And on the student side, long term effects are also evident. "The experience took the glamour out of working in a start up," concluded Abhishek Naik the BITS student who worked with Dhanax. But with his deeper understanding of the realities, Abhishek averred, "I want to start off on my own in the future. I don't have any specific plans as on today but I want to start my own company."
Aashima Sekri, one of the IIMA students who had worked on CEON has already put her experience to work. "I have my own startup now! It's been 5 months since I started. I knew I wanted to start something on my own," she smiled.
At the bottom of the page after "contribute to building entrepreneurship in this country." put in a headline in BLUE colour
Thursday, January 10, 2008
I Did It My Way
I Did It My Way
By Laura Parkin
Laura is the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). NEN is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Prior to this, she was Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies.
Aiming for entrepreneurial success? You had better be ready to fail. A lot. Success stories abound, and rarely do we hear about the mistakes entrepreneurs have made along the way. But for entrepreneurs, mistakes hold the ingredients for success. In fact, the key to achieving entrepreneurial success seems to lie in the ability to redefine success and failure on the fly, and on one's own terms.
From people in corporate jobs, "I hear all the time: 'If I had the perfect idea, I would quit'. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding the process of entrepreneurship," explains Manish Sabharwal, co-founder and Chairman of TeamLease, India's second largest private employer.
New businesses rarely succeed on their original business plans. "Entrepreneurship at its best is like a laboratory experiment. We arrive at vision of what can be made better and changed, we test it in the marketplace, we measure its progress and we decide how to refine it, accelerate it, end it," says Randy Komisar, mentor to dozens of start ups, and Partner at venture capital firm, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
Therefore failure is inherent to the process. In fact, according to Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford University's Technology Ventures Program, "It's best to fail quickly and learn, rather than keep banging on the wrong nails, or with the wrong hammer. Try something different instead."
When one drops behind the eyes of entrepreneurs, it's clear that they see these failures not as personal blows, but rather as information and experience on which to build.
Mike Lanza, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, who has founded five successful companies, explains, "I don't believe in failure - maybe things don't work out, but life is so fluid, life always throws up something good. For example, one company I started never got off the ground, but it made the next company possible - so I don't consider that a failure."
Manish Sabharwal discusses the journey taken by his first company, which tried several businesses before succeeding as an HR outsourcing company, "Were the life insurance and the pension businesses failures? Probably. But the question is: how do you define failure?"
This evolutionary progress played out in Manish Sabharwal's first company, "We just kept mutating. Entrepreneurship is the art of staying alive long enough to succeed. Of course, you may run out of runway, or investors may pull the plug, but part of the art is managing that."
What if the investors had pulled the plug? "I would have taken the business plan to ING or Sunlife. I would have implemented it somewhere else, financed it differently - it would have been a different kind of project. I wouldn't see it as a failure," concludes Manish.
Sometimes one does have to shut down a company. In that case, "I think you have to redefine success - maybe the company doesn't make it, but you become an expert and build your network in a great market space, and you become a consultant and sell that expertise to others," says Mike Lanza.
This attitude towards failure and the ability to redefine success along the way highlight a skill critical for entrepreneurial success: adaptability.
"Entrepreneurs have to have 'intelligent flexibility'. Of course you have to stick to your guns, but at a certain point, you have to adapt. Maybe you build your product and the market feedback is bad. Or by the time you're ready, there are too many similar companies in the field, and some of them are ahead of you. You have to change what you're doing," explains Mike.
"The hallmark of the successful entrepreneur is the ability to be passionate and driven, and at the same time dispassionate, objective, and honest about whether you're doing the right thing, or need to change what you're doing," explains Kanwaljit Singh, co-founder and Partner at Helion Ventures.
If entrepreneurs don't regard business challenges as failures, does that mean they never fail? No. And their surprisingly consistent definition of failure may reveal the core of the 'entrepreneurial mindset'.
"The only time I've ever been disappointed is when I try to be something I'm not. When I try to conform to someone else's thinking. When I feel I have not been "true to myself"," is how Mike Lanza defines failure. Manish Sabharwal's definition ran parallel, "It's when you 'lose the faith'."
Prakash Mundra, a young entrepreneur just two years into his journey, explains "I would consider failure when one's life is too much controlled by society's pressure and not by one's heart."
What shines through in these comments is a true independence of mind. Entrepreneurs live in a world where they set their own measures for success, and failure. And it's this freedom from the common perspective that may enable entrepreneurs to see opportunities where most others do not; and liberates the entrepreneurial mind to innovate and create. As Heidi Neck, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson, says, "Fear of looking like a fool is the number one barrier to creativity."
Some individuals may be born with an inherently independent nature. Others may achieve the independence, in which case, context matters. In India, achieving this freedom may be more difficult than in some other cultures.
"Particularly in India, in this context, we are born and brought up to be successful in certain visible ways: 'my son earns X million Rupees' or what your title is. These are considered very important manifestations of success," explains Kanwaljit Singh. "I think for society, success is who you are externally - for example, where you were educated, versus what you learned. This results in fear of failure." And this creates barriers, says Kanwaljit, "For corporate executives, concern about being seen as a 'failure' is a huge barrier to getting started."
A supportive culture does help, believes Randy Komisar," Genuine entrepreneurs are natural optimists. But if they don't have a supporting culture, their optimism will take a beating. A place like Silicon Valley is not distinguished by its infrastructure, or capital, or intellectual talent - it is distinguished by its culture of accepting momentary failures as a way of life and encouraging entrepreneurs to keep trying and to reinvent themselves and their ventures with the benefit of experience."
Kanwaljit does see a change starting in India, "In India, a new attitude has just started emerging in the entrepreneurial community. If the entrepreneur has given it an honest shot, and has been willing to take the risk, that is worth something."
The emergence of role models is one element contributing to the more supportive climate. Manish Sabharwal explains, "We don't really have a track record of failure from the past 5 - 15 years. It's too short a time. We're just starting to have role models; it's changing today."
Developments in education are also encouraging young people to think more entrepreneurially, more independently. Many institutes of higher education are starting to incorporate entrepreneurship in their offerings. These programs usually include exercises that require students to solve problems, and provide the opportunity for them to experience "small successes and failures - where there is no given 'right answer' - in a risk free environment," describes Tina Seelig. This marks a clear departure from the lecture-based, standardized-testing system that dominates.
The decrease in societal pressures, encouragement of critical thinking in schools, and the emergence of role models are changing the entrepreneurial landscape in India. Within an increasingly supportive culture, it may be easier for more individuals to develop an entrepreneurial mindset - one characterized by independent judgement and the freedom to define one's own successes and failures. This would be good news.
"Failure, defined as the inability to achieve one's objectives, is a matter of life for entrepreneurs and those that support entrepreneurship. Without the chance to fail, no one has the opportunity to achieve great things," summarizes Randy Komisar.
By Laura Parkin
Laura is the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). NEN is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Prior to this, she was Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies.
Aiming for entrepreneurial success? You had better be ready to fail. A lot. Success stories abound, and rarely do we hear about the mistakes entrepreneurs have made along the way. But for entrepreneurs, mistakes hold the ingredients for success. In fact, the key to achieving entrepreneurial success seems to lie in the ability to redefine success and failure on the fly, and on one's own terms.
From people in corporate jobs, "I hear all the time: 'If I had the perfect idea, I would quit'. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding the process of entrepreneurship," explains Manish Sabharwal, co-founder and Chairman of TeamLease, India's second largest private employer.
New businesses rarely succeed on their original business plans. "Entrepreneurship at its best is like a laboratory experiment. We arrive at vision of what can be made better and changed, we test it in the marketplace, we measure its progress and we decide how to refine it, accelerate it, end it," says Randy Komisar, mentor to dozens of start ups, and Partner at venture capital firm, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
Therefore failure is inherent to the process. In fact, according to Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford University's Technology Ventures Program, "It's best to fail quickly and learn, rather than keep banging on the wrong nails, or with the wrong hammer. Try something different instead."
When one drops behind the eyes of entrepreneurs, it's clear that they see these failures not as personal blows, but rather as information and experience on which to build.
Mike Lanza, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, who has founded five successful companies, explains, "I don't believe in failure - maybe things don't work out, but life is so fluid, life always throws up something good. For example, one company I started never got off the ground, but it made the next company possible - so I don't consider that a failure."
Manish Sabharwal discusses the journey taken by his first company, which tried several businesses before succeeding as an HR outsourcing company, "Were the life insurance and the pension businesses failures? Probably. But the question is: how do you define failure?"
This evolutionary progress played out in Manish Sabharwal's first company, "We just kept mutating. Entrepreneurship is the art of staying alive long enough to succeed. Of course, you may run out of runway, or investors may pull the plug, but part of the art is managing that."
What if the investors had pulled the plug? "I would have taken the business plan to ING or Sunlife. I would have implemented it somewhere else, financed it differently - it would have been a different kind of project. I wouldn't see it as a failure," concludes Manish.
Sometimes one does have to shut down a company. In that case, "I think you have to redefine success - maybe the company doesn't make it, but you become an expert and build your network in a great market space, and you become a consultant and sell that expertise to others," says Mike Lanza.
This attitude towards failure and the ability to redefine success along the way highlight a skill critical for entrepreneurial success: adaptability.
"Entrepreneurs have to have 'intelligent flexibility'. Of course you have to stick to your guns, but at a certain point, you have to adapt. Maybe you build your product and the market feedback is bad. Or by the time you're ready, there are too many similar companies in the field, and some of them are ahead of you. You have to change what you're doing," explains Mike.
"The hallmark of the successful entrepreneur is the ability to be passionate and driven, and at the same time dispassionate, objective, and honest about whether you're doing the right thing, or need to change what you're doing," explains Kanwaljit Singh, co-founder and Partner at Helion Ventures.
If entrepreneurs don't regard business challenges as failures, does that mean they never fail? No. And their surprisingly consistent definition of failure may reveal the core of the 'entrepreneurial mindset'.
"The only time I've ever been disappointed is when I try to be something I'm not. When I try to conform to someone else's thinking. When I feel I have not been "true to myself"," is how Mike Lanza defines failure. Manish Sabharwal's definition ran parallel, "It's when you 'lose the faith'."
Prakash Mundra, a young entrepreneur just two years into his journey, explains "I would consider failure when one's life is too much controlled by society's pressure and not by one's heart."
What shines through in these comments is a true independence of mind. Entrepreneurs live in a world where they set their own measures for success, and failure. And it's this freedom from the common perspective that may enable entrepreneurs to see opportunities where most others do not; and liberates the entrepreneurial mind to innovate and create. As Heidi Neck, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson, says, "Fear of looking like a fool is the number one barrier to creativity."
Some individuals may be born with an inherently independent nature. Others may achieve the independence, in which case, context matters. In India, achieving this freedom may be more difficult than in some other cultures.
"Particularly in India, in this context, we are born and brought up to be successful in certain visible ways: 'my son earns X million Rupees' or what your title is. These are considered very important manifestations of success," explains Kanwaljit Singh. "I think for society, success is who you are externally - for example, where you were educated, versus what you learned. This results in fear of failure." And this creates barriers, says Kanwaljit, "For corporate executives, concern about being seen as a 'failure' is a huge barrier to getting started."
A supportive culture does help, believes Randy Komisar," Genuine entrepreneurs are natural optimists. But if they don't have a supporting culture, their optimism will take a beating. A place like Silicon Valley is not distinguished by its infrastructure, or capital, or intellectual talent - it is distinguished by its culture of accepting momentary failures as a way of life and encouraging entrepreneurs to keep trying and to reinvent themselves and their ventures with the benefit of experience."
Kanwaljit does see a change starting in India, "In India, a new attitude has just started emerging in the entrepreneurial community. If the entrepreneur has given it an honest shot, and has been willing to take the risk, that is worth something."
The emergence of role models is one element contributing to the more supportive climate. Manish Sabharwal explains, "We don't really have a track record of failure from the past 5 - 15 years. It's too short a time. We're just starting to have role models; it's changing today."
Developments in education are also encouraging young people to think more entrepreneurially, more independently. Many institutes of higher education are starting to incorporate entrepreneurship in their offerings. These programs usually include exercises that require students to solve problems, and provide the opportunity for them to experience "small successes and failures - where there is no given 'right answer' - in a risk free environment," describes Tina Seelig. This marks a clear departure from the lecture-based, standardized-testing system that dominates.
The decrease in societal pressures, encouragement of critical thinking in schools, and the emergence of role models are changing the entrepreneurial landscape in India. Within an increasingly supportive culture, it may be easier for more individuals to develop an entrepreneurial mindset - one characterized by independent judgement and the freedom to define one's own successes and failures. This would be good news.
"Failure, defined as the inability to achieve one's objectives, is a matter of life for entrepreneurs and those that support entrepreneurship. Without the chance to fail, no one has the opportunity to achieve great things," summarizes Randy Komisar.
The Well Balanced Team: Me, Myself, and I
The Well Balanced Team: Me, Myself, and I
By George Gendron
George has been writing about entrepreneurship for over 25 years. He was the founding editor of Inc. Magazine, one of the world’s leading entrepreneurship magazines. George created the Inc.500, the definitive listing of the fastest growing private companies in the US. He currently leads the entrepreneurship programs at Clark University in the US.
Teams. Just say the word anywhere in business these days and we all nod our heads solemnly. There's no "I" in the word team. You know the mantra. And don't get me wrong: we believe it. Or at least we think we do. But for all that's been written and preached about the subject, there's still one thorny problem that's rarely discussed. We like to be surrounded by people like ourselves. This is particularly true for those of us who pride ourselves on being conceptualizers, idea generators.
We pay lip service to the idea that a well balanced team requires people who are terrific at execution, at getting things done, but if we're honest with ourselves we still place a huge premium on traditional creativity - the ability to come up with good ideas, and lots of them.
There's a problem with this way of thinking. It's outdated, old fashioned - not creative. Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the information age is the extent to which new ideas can be shared instantly and everywhere. If you're like me, barely a week goes by in which, in some context or another, I find myself thinking there are too damned many new ideas out there. In fact, I'd argue that in many instances new ideas have become commodities. What is rare is the individual with the experience, drive, and commitment to take ideas and execute them well.
Now all this may sound very remedial. It's not. It's one thing to believe it in the abstract, and quite another to act on it. I took over my first magazine when I was 25. I confess that it took me a decade to truly appreciate the role of a world-class managing editor. I like to believe that my magazines were consistently good, even excellent, when it came to editorial quality, positioning in the marketplace, brand building. They were also a mess internally.
My organizations weren't messes because they were mismanaged but because they really weren't managed at all. When I hired, I hired for conceptual horsepower, even for jobs where I should have been looking for management skills. In other words, I was on the lookout for more me's. (I've since learned that one me is about all most organizations can tolerate.)
Then in 1985 I hired a managing editor who was truly gifted at managing. From the start, she had this habit of making everyone accountable for deadlines, including me. She introduced systems, shared schedules and budgets with the entire staff. Meetings began and ended on time. I have to confess I didn't like her much, or at least what she was doing to my magazine. And then the most unexpected thing started to occur. Writers, editors and designers - the most creative people on staff-started coming to me telling me how much more they enjoyed their work since the new managing editor had arrived. Not only that, but they went on to tell me that they felt they were able to better work in this environment. In other words, the order introduced by our new managing editor didn't stifle creativity, it enhanced it.
I don't believe in epiphanies, but this was one for me. It forever changed how I thought about talent, about the importance of balance and diversity on every team. Don't believe me? Ask that managing editor. She's easy enough to find these days. She's my wife.
By George Gendron
George has been writing about entrepreneurship for over 25 years. He was the founding editor of Inc. Magazine, one of the world’s leading entrepreneurship magazines. George created the Inc.500, the definitive listing of the fastest growing private companies in the US. He currently leads the entrepreneurship programs at Clark University in the US.
Teams. Just say the word anywhere in business these days and we all nod our heads solemnly. There's no "I" in the word team. You know the mantra. And don't get me wrong: we believe it. Or at least we think we do. But for all that's been written and preached about the subject, there's still one thorny problem that's rarely discussed. We like to be surrounded by people like ourselves. This is particularly true for those of us who pride ourselves on being conceptualizers, idea generators.
We pay lip service to the idea that a well balanced team requires people who are terrific at execution, at getting things done, but if we're honest with ourselves we still place a huge premium on traditional creativity - the ability to come up with good ideas, and lots of them.
There's a problem with this way of thinking. It's outdated, old fashioned - not creative. Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the information age is the extent to which new ideas can be shared instantly and everywhere. If you're like me, barely a week goes by in which, in some context or another, I find myself thinking there are too damned many new ideas out there. In fact, I'd argue that in many instances new ideas have become commodities. What is rare is the individual with the experience, drive, and commitment to take ideas and execute them well.
Now all this may sound very remedial. It's not. It's one thing to believe it in the abstract, and quite another to act on it. I took over my first magazine when I was 25. I confess that it took me a decade to truly appreciate the role of a world-class managing editor. I like to believe that my magazines were consistently good, even excellent, when it came to editorial quality, positioning in the marketplace, brand building. They were also a mess internally.
My organizations weren't messes because they were mismanaged but because they really weren't managed at all. When I hired, I hired for conceptual horsepower, even for jobs where I should have been looking for management skills. In other words, I was on the lookout for more me's. (I've since learned that one me is about all most organizations can tolerate.)
Then in 1985 I hired a managing editor who was truly gifted at managing. From the start, she had this habit of making everyone accountable for deadlines, including me. She introduced systems, shared schedules and budgets with the entire staff. Meetings began and ended on time. I have to confess I didn't like her much, or at least what she was doing to my magazine. And then the most unexpected thing started to occur. Writers, editors and designers - the most creative people on staff-started coming to me telling me how much more they enjoyed their work since the new managing editor had arrived. Not only that, but they went on to tell me that they felt they were able to better work in this environment. In other words, the order introduced by our new managing editor didn't stifle creativity, it enhanced it.
I don't believe in epiphanies, but this was one for me. It forever changed how I thought about talent, about the importance of balance and diversity on every team. Don't believe me? Ask that managing editor. She's easy enough to find these days. She's my wife.
Glamour in entrepreneurship?
Glamour in entrepreneurship?
By Ashish Kumar
Ashish Kumar is the co-founder of Tekriti Software. Before founding Tekriti, he has worked with Microsoft where he was involved with the development of different products.
I was once interviewing a person for a position in our company. Trying to read more into the candidate's mind, I asked, "What do you really hate about your job?" The answer that came out was 'lack of flexibility' He said he had to go to the office everyday even when he didn't feel like it. On further probing, he thought that the way to fix this problem was 'having his own company'. He will have no boss, and he will have the flexibility to work only when he felt like.
However funny it may sound, it was not the first time I was hearing such a statement - though not necessarily in a job interview. I could see the sparkle in the eyes of the candidate in my interview when he mentioned "having his own company"
.
There is some kind of glamour around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs - sort of what we have around the film industry, albeit with less intensity. More people are getting smitten by this, which is apparent by the number of entrepreneurs who are nominated in the various 'Indian of the Year' lists - traditionally populated largely with cricketers, film actors and politicians. I am beginning to get fascinated with this fascination and delusion. Not to say that I don't like it when it happens to me - I, honestly, love the attention that one gets because of being an entrepreneur - but I want to point out a few things which any entrepreneur/ budding entrepreneur should keep in mind, to maintain being fascinated about, and not meet the fate of most reality show winners after the show is over.
It is easy to guess that what the gentleman in my interview wanted to achieve through entrepreneurship, is not possible and is a myth at best - I must add that it is not the only one. The number one rule in being an entrepreneur is to know that you will, more often than not, work the hardest (and hopefully the smartest), will have the most number of bosses (stakeholders, employees, customers - with you being answerable to all), will have to make many personal sacrifices, and will end up annoying your girlfriends/ boyfriends/ spouses/ parents like they have never been annoyed before. And, in spite of all this, at the end of the day - you have to hold up yourself well, motivate your people and get going with work. From my personal experience, I can tell you that looking glamorous isn't easy. Drawing a parallel, I can only feel for those Bollywood actresses who have to put on their makeup even at 3.00 am in the night - it's time that we all learn to respect Mallika Sherawats and Priyanka Chopras.
And, remember that in any glamour industry, you are not known as much for your effort as you are known for the final output. And, despite this, an entrepreneur needs to be selfless not to think about the output. They say that behind every successful man is a woman - similarly, behind every glamorous entrepreneur is a list of failed companies and hands-dirty-with-mud-entrepreneurs. Even in successful companies like Infosys, Narayana Murthy was the one who became much more talked-about than any of the other six co-founders in the company. The intent is not to take away anything from glamour boys like Murthy but to emphasize that it is more common for you to find yourself in the not-so-glamorous list than the glamorous ones. And this is something which is common to all companies that have made it big.
You would wonder what I am trying to do with this article, other than bringing examples from Bollywood from time to time. I, certainly, don't want this to act as a discouragement to any entrepreneur. Instead, I want to point out that after taking the plunge, don't spend time and energy being glamorous. Easier said than done-but it is easy to forget your main vision which will land you nowhere, if you focus your energies on being talked-about. Remember that in the circle that really matters (for your business, money, vision), people will look through the glamour and see the actual stuff - being glamorous is also a short-time excitement and you get over it pretty quickly. You will very quickly realize that it's futile to seek attention; a better strategy is to focus on work, honestly thinking about the change you wanted to make and your vision - and leave the rest to media. They need heroes, plenty of them to keep their audience interested - they will find you sooner or later if you have substance … and luck.
In the end, let me conclude by saying that if getting glamorous is really your number 1 goal, it is a better idea to try your luck at Bollywood - that may be easier.
By Ashish Kumar
Ashish Kumar is the co-founder of Tekriti Software. Before founding Tekriti, he has worked with Microsoft where he was involved with the development of different products.
I was once interviewing a person for a position in our company. Trying to read more into the candidate's mind, I asked, "What do you really hate about your job?" The answer that came out was 'lack of flexibility' He said he had to go to the office everyday even when he didn't feel like it. On further probing, he thought that the way to fix this problem was 'having his own company'. He will have no boss, and he will have the flexibility to work only when he felt like.
However funny it may sound, it was not the first time I was hearing such a statement - though not necessarily in a job interview. I could see the sparkle in the eyes of the candidate in my interview when he mentioned "having his own company"
.
There is some kind of glamour around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs - sort of what we have around the film industry, albeit with less intensity. More people are getting smitten by this, which is apparent by the number of entrepreneurs who are nominated in the various 'Indian of the Year' lists - traditionally populated largely with cricketers, film actors and politicians. I am beginning to get fascinated with this fascination and delusion. Not to say that I don't like it when it happens to me - I, honestly, love the attention that one gets because of being an entrepreneur - but I want to point out a few things which any entrepreneur/ budding entrepreneur should keep in mind, to maintain being fascinated about, and not meet the fate of most reality show winners after the show is over.
It is easy to guess that what the gentleman in my interview wanted to achieve through entrepreneurship, is not possible and is a myth at best - I must add that it is not the only one. The number one rule in being an entrepreneur is to know that you will, more often than not, work the hardest (and hopefully the smartest), will have the most number of bosses (stakeholders, employees, customers - with you being answerable to all), will have to make many personal sacrifices, and will end up annoying your girlfriends/ boyfriends/ spouses/ parents like they have never been annoyed before. And, in spite of all this, at the end of the day - you have to hold up yourself well, motivate your people and get going with work. From my personal experience, I can tell you that looking glamorous isn't easy. Drawing a parallel, I can only feel for those Bollywood actresses who have to put on their makeup even at 3.00 am in the night - it's time that we all learn to respect Mallika Sherawats and Priyanka Chopras.
And, remember that in any glamour industry, you are not known as much for your effort as you are known for the final output. And, despite this, an entrepreneur needs to be selfless not to think about the output. They say that behind every successful man is a woman - similarly, behind every glamorous entrepreneur is a list of failed companies and hands-dirty-with-mud-entrepreneurs. Even in successful companies like Infosys, Narayana Murthy was the one who became much more talked-about than any of the other six co-founders in the company. The intent is not to take away anything from glamour boys like Murthy but to emphasize that it is more common for you to find yourself in the not-so-glamorous list than the glamorous ones. And this is something which is common to all companies that have made it big.
You would wonder what I am trying to do with this article, other than bringing examples from Bollywood from time to time. I, certainly, don't want this to act as a discouragement to any entrepreneur. Instead, I want to point out that after taking the plunge, don't spend time and energy being glamorous. Easier said than done-but it is easy to forget your main vision which will land you nowhere, if you focus your energies on being talked-about. Remember that in the circle that really matters (for your business, money, vision), people will look through the glamour and see the actual stuff - being glamorous is also a short-time excitement and you get over it pretty quickly. You will very quickly realize that it's futile to seek attention; a better strategy is to focus on work, honestly thinking about the change you wanted to make and your vision - and leave the rest to media. They need heroes, plenty of them to keep their audience interested - they will find you sooner or later if you have substance … and luck.
In the end, let me conclude by saying that if getting glamorous is really your number 1 goal, it is a better idea to try your luck at Bollywood - that may be easier.
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