I left my cushy job a couple of months ago to become a full time entrepreneur. After working with companies of varied sizes and nature, I took time off to pursue my dream of setting up my own enterprise. This has been one of the most humbling experiences in my life till yet and this short journey has taught me a more than what I had learnt in my past career of 15 years.
I thought it would be a good to list an account of my learning based on my last entrepreneurial journey. I am mentioning below my learning as my suggestions to anyone who intends to start a business. In fact these are a few of the many things I would keep in mind during my next entrepreneurial stint (never say never).
Don’t waste your time in creating that “perfect” offering: I am not saying that you should not aim at achieving perfection or don’t focus on quality, but it just delays your launch and the opportunity may be high-jacked by someone else in the market. Also, we try to perfect the product / service based on our own assumptions of what the user wants. Get your product out and market response will help you perfect your offering.
Grab that space: If you are launching an innovative product / service, grab that space. Announce your entry. Try and position yourself with the market leader and focus on the innovation. Try spending time with the journalists and bloggers who focus on that industry domain. Give demos and share your thoughts and passion. Note: Please remember that your innovation or offering should be news worthy. PR is something that cannot go wrong.
Don’t overstaff: One of common problem with people who leave their well paying jobs during mid career is that they assume certain things as granted. One of the most dangerous things is to start hiring people reporting to you to do things for you. This action stems out of the fact that we start taking our self worth for granted basis our last job. We start assuming our self image / value and start believing that certain things are not worth our time. Ur necessity to do things ourselves is low and we start hiring a support team. This is one big cause of increased cost and depletion of funds.
You don’t necessarily need a proven team: We tend to believe that proven teams comprise people who have worked with large corporate and brands for the last couple of years. Some of these guys could have been pure lucky. Believe me, it is a different ball game when you are playing with someone else’s money while your own income is secured. Proven teams to me are people who are self-starters not backed by brands, but most of these guys are busy with their own ventures. While building my next business, I would rather go with young, inexpensive people who are hungry to achieve results. Larry & Sergey did not have a proven team when they started Google.
Do not ask everyone for advice: Select the people whose advice you matters to you and stick to it. Don’t ask just anyone or everyone for advice on what you should be doing. Each one has his/her own experience basis which they will guide you, while your circumstances and nature could be very different. Also, you cannot trust everyone with your business plan. I would think it is better to carefully select a mentor and one or two advisors with whom you can discuss your business. Ensure there is no complicit of interest. I would also think it is wise to share some small token stake. People work more willingly for their own interest.
Don’t insist on a VC fund to sign a NDA: Venture Capitalists are approached with various business plans each day. Some of these could be similar in nature your business. It is unfair to believe that no one else could think the way you think and VC should not meet anyone else because they have met you. When I joined Google, I was bustling with ideas, till such time that I saw many of my, so called “unique” ideas had been in the development stage, if not already developed and scrapped 😉
Focus on cash flow: Nothing is more important in a start up than having enough money to pay your bills. This means that you structure your business and deals with short business cycle and payment terms. It may take time for you to get profitability but in short term, having cash to keep the operations live is important. Keep the costs low. It is important that the founders take just the lifestyle fee than the market salary till such time that the business attracts funding enough to be able to afford that. While I say this, I also believe that founders must pay themselves first. You are the only indispensable employee of your company till it has grown and has investments from third parties.
Set realistic & measurable goals: While it is good to plan for the Rs. 100 crore milestone, it is equally important (if not more) that you focus on how to achieve that first Rs. 1 crore. I have seen that when we keep our ambitions very high, we tend to spend as if we have already achieved that target and alienate ourselves from the reality. Break your large ambitions into small and short time milestones and track them.
Focus on sales: A person like me who has the passion for creating new products and taking them to the market, get carried away with the picture of creating that perfect product that we keep delaying the sales process. Nothing is more important than bring in revenues. So keep your focus on sales and your product can keep getting refined and evolved, in fact even better with continuous customer feedback.
One last piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs is that if you have a dream then live your dream and do not operate from the fear of failure. It is more fulfilling to live with a business which has not taken off than to live with regrets of not trying. Your business did not fail, it’s the way you did it which failed.
