My startup story: Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk…

The Thought: For most of us with the entrepreneurial drive, our ventures are executed just like in the popular movie ‘Iron Man’; where Tony Stark’s A.I. butler JARVIS warns him that there are still terabytes of calculations that needed to be done before he could take his suit to the skies.

Tony responds by blasting off anyway in spite of this and learns how to fly his baby by learning first-hand.

Even I started thinking that I gotta start running (metaphorically of course) to achieve my entrepreneurial goals.

‘Iron Man’ image has been sourced from Google image search.

The Fear: Often it is the fear of achieving something insignificant, losing out what is going well for you at present, or falling on your face and being ridiculed by critics that holds you back. Even I harboured this fear for a long while, and it was exactly what stymied my growth.

However you gotta realise that going out there and doing it will teach you a whole lot of other things you won’t find in theory or staying in your comfort zone. In fact there are very few people (or mostly none) out there who can effectively teach you most things of value. To achieve great things in life you have to use your own faculties to think, learn, do, (maybe unlearn) and relearn constantly. This idea has been constantly reinforced throughout my life through my own experiences and all the inspiring people I could learn from (Including Alok and TheRodinhoods community, my work associates, mentors (gurus), friends and family).

The Execution: Very recently (May 2014) I started my business venture named iPnova to develop mobile application and game content. Company mission: Entertain, Educate and Inspire Creatively!

Since this is my first post on ‘TheRodinhoods’, I wish to showcase some of the content I have developed so far. 

I had been laid off my job as a mobile games project manager at my last company, where I worked for over a decade. Out of the fear of failure that I mentioned earlier, I was subconsciously blocking any opportunities that could have come my way.

With virtually no job offers in hand, I had very little idea whom to approach or what to do in order to get started on a worthwhile professional endeavour. Nevertheless, I took up the challenge to create something of business value and persisted.

I have always been creative through my childhood in my extra curricular activities, in my academic projects, like the digital image (metallographic image source) processing project I developed as a team project lead for Centre for Equipment Electronics & Management Dept. at BHABHA ATOMIC RESEARCH CENTRE, Mumbai, and the commercially successful and award winning projects that I lead the development on at my professional job at my last company.

It’s only that I had yet to create a structured business that would transition me into an entrepreneur in the real sense.

Now I’m making conscious efforts to meaningfully make the best of the opportunities that can nurture my growth and build mutually beneficial relationships with those whom I associate with.

The Learning: As I started executing my product ideas on the go, they started fleshing out in a way, where the level of learning I acquired from it had no precedence. I got encouraging response along the way from smartphone mobile content consumers across the globe on the Appstore business ecosystem. Since then I have started valuing the attitude of managing my time effectively across my range of activities and pacing my efforts accordingly to achieve all my goals. 

I am realising that it’s alright to make mistakes and fail in whatever you do, because they can teach you, what not to do the next time around. And the faster you fail the better is your learning.

One more valuable lesson I learnt is that the better you learn to adapt to and work around your ever-changing circumstances, the greater success you’ll enjoy and you will eventually come out stronger than ever before.

My entrepreneurial venture driven by passion, has also been a most humbling experience. I realised along the way, that creating something cool is not enough, it has to also make a meaningful impact on your target consumers so that they can derive value from it. To address this, I started doing an online tool based analytic study (Google, Flurry Analytics) of the behaviours of those who consumed the content I created. The gist of which is that people constantly seek content that fits to their ever changing cravings/needs/desires.

Although most of us love to glorify the pursuit of entrepreneurship, most often you learn that not everything will go your way most of the times and you need to persist in your constant endeavours to set things right. You’ll have to rise above your difficulties and use them to make yourself a better person, be it in business or life in general.

Will to reach out and collaborate: I am realising in my endeavors that to create something worthwhile you gotta share and give out, which in turn lets you receive more than you can envision. Your business has to be able to create opportunities for as many people as possible to contribute in alignment with the companies vision and goals to sustain its growth. To make this possible and effective, I am constantly finding ways to share my experiences effectively and collaborate with people who can relate to my work profile.

To achieve professional growth and propel my ventures to the next level, I am seeking tutelage of mentor(s) with whom I can build synergistic relationship(s).

I am open to receiving constructive feedback, brickbats, suggestions, collaboration etc from as many people as possible.

It is my humble request, that if you are a business, art, or technical professional and can relate to my work profile and would wish to professionally associate/collaborate with me at any level; please do contact me at ipnova@ianpinto.com or ianpinto1980@gmail.com so that we could discuss how we could build mutual synergies.

Please do view 

One a closing note, some more food for thought… We each just run at different speeds given our passion, risk tolerance and current capacity. The ones that run the fastest might take the biggest tumbles, but they’re also the ones that might get to their goals first and inspire many others to do so.

Think about it, running to inspire may be the best way to win!