Some may say you’ll ace it and some may say you can’t do it . No matter what they say or what you feel, you must give a thought to following factors before you quit your well paid job or drop our of college to startup:
- Motive – Some Entrepreneur startup just to make money and there are few who get the thrill in solving real life problems. Recognize yourself, what is the motive to startup and the Ideas will follow. No matter what your idea is, it is the reason which will always motivate you to sail through in the bad weather.
- What To Do – Identify a problem that you believe, needs to be solved. Carry out a brief research on factors driving the problem. Don’t bother about feasibility of problem solving because all problems are not solved just by addressing the problem itself but it is more important to address the root cause.
- Core Team – It always was and always will be Team work. Identify the people who share a similar vision as yours. Sharing the same vision does not mean you both have same personality. Rather the co-founders should be diverse in personality because people from different background always bring fresh perspectives to the table. Do not offer commitment to become co-founders in the first meeting itself. It is always better to spend time first to know each before you enter into partnership. It is similar to entering into love relationship. You should always understand each other before making big commitments. For some it may take days, for some it may take weeks and for some it may even take months.
- Perseverance – Promise yourself to never give up. There will be all sorts of days, happy days, happier days, bad days and the worst days. There will be problems you can never think of. Situation and people change due to circumstances not under your control. But you must always remind yourself of the reason why you started and you will be fine. Do you know Angry birds was the 52nd game of Rovio Mobile which made them superstar. But they failed 51 times before that. What if they never tried again. Never Give Up.
- Finances – No matter you belong to Finance world or not, it never requires rocket science to understand your finances and taxes. Always make sure you know how much you need to startup, how much you need to survive the bad weather or your rough phase, how much you need to set aside for your family, how much you need to save for contingencies. If you face any issues with how to manage your finances, you can always post your questions to finance blogs where experts are waiting to help you.
- Personal Relationship – Parents the most important and biggest pie of your life. Before you startup make sure you make your parents understand what you are exactly going to do and how it may affect your life because whatever affects you also affects them. Gain their confidence and take their blessings. Your parents are the only people who never give up on you even when the whole world has.
If you have figured out the above aspects, then you are ready to take plunge into Entrepreneurship. You have one life, make it worth, make it big, follow your heart.
(If you believe this article has helped you or you have any thoughts to share, reach out to me at bjatiani@gmail.com) Link to Article published on LinkedIn
Tweet me @BhupeshJatiani
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
I call it the Furnace Test 🙂 Check
Almost every other day I get an odd mail from someone in a B-School or working in a corporate job wanting to ‘start-up’. I am polite to all of them saying ‘think again’ but I am now inspired to write the ‘FURNACE’ test. Take this if you are in a start-up state of mind.
F = Format
Are you a ‘format’ type of guy or gal? Someone who lives by dos and don’ts and ‘this rule’ and ‘that theory’? If yes, just abandon even the dream of starting-up. It will be a nightmare. You need to be re-formatable- like a hard disk. In my dad’s socks factory, I took on an export order that could be profitable only if I bought ‘unfinished’ yarn and then did something at my end to make the sock look wearable. My factory floor manager of 30 years freaked out. He whispered to my dad that we were doomed. The yarn I had bought was twisting and turning because it was unfinished. I knit 30 pairs of socks with that yarn and did everything conceivable to make the twisting stop, until I hit bull’s eye – washing the socks! (Much later I found out that the last processing of that yarn was washing and they charged 20% premium for it).
Be ready to make a ppt in the cab – or speak extempore. Don’t live in a format.
U = Ultrarian.
Forget being a contrarian – how ‘ultrarian’ are you? Are you ‘ultra’ everything? Passionate, never saying it’s over, working on Sunday like it was a Monday, being able to cry with tears when you miss a deal? Putting work before family?
Start-up entrepreneurs are Ultrarians. They take their passion to the limit and sometimes that hurts.
My second daughter was born on a Sunday, and I told my wife as I drove her to the hospital that this kid was a ‘practical’ one. She didn’t care to hear what I said. On the Tuesday my wife was to come home, I wasn’t around. I was signing my first term sheet of my life and Neeraj Bhargava (E-Ventures) and I were putting our pens to paper at the Oberoi Lobby. My wife never forgave me for this. And let me confess that I am guilty of my action.
R = Ravenous.
Start Up entrepreneurs are not hungry – they are ravenous and starving. They are GREEDY – and I use this word in Capitals because most of us are taught not to be greedy. I contest that. The biggest wins in the world come from entrepreneurs who are starving – Steve Job’s hunger is to create art forms in hardware and the Google founders to make everything so easily discoverable.
I remember making a fervent non-stop marketing pitch at the L’Oreal office in India a few years ago. The marketing head – Ashwin Rajagopal (a close friend) at the end of my long non-stop pitching asked – ‘Alok – oh my god – why will you do all this for us’? I looked at him and said ‘to become rich’!! There was the deadly silence in the room – they did not come across hungry, ravenous and starving entrepreneurs often.
N – Naïve.
Being uniformed can be the best blessing as a start-up entrepreneur. In IIMs and MBA colleges I usually get asked by the students out there will become great entrepreneurs and my honest answer is ‘NO’ (thank god I haven’t been hit by an egg or a tomato yet).
I think the world has changed so rapidly now, that textbook case studies are not relevant. Companies peak out in 5-10 years & that’s just about the time they would become a formal case study. Also, is this is relevant for a start-up? Typically you are trying to do something that has never been done before – so who could have written about it?
When I began pitching contests2win, the ad gurus in agencies I met, said, ‘bad idea’ – you don’t know marketing or positioning or Maslow’s hierarchy. You are not an MBA and have not worked in a marketing function before. I nodded and never met them again. Instead I went and met 4509 brand owners in the next 10 years (Just counted the count of visiting cards I have) and convinced them that consumers (LIKE ME) – wanted to win free stuff by playing a contest, and a brand could benefit in that interactive process. They all agreed and we created an industry that never existed before. I was naïve and I won.
A = All hands on Deck
Will you sweep your company’s floor? Will you be the receptionist? Can you hand out your start up’s fliers in a mall?
Start-up entrepreneurs usually do everything – simply because there aren’t others to do stuff for you! Also, this gives you a bottom up perspective of each and every process of your operation. You have to be all hands on deck.
During contests2win first few months, I could not afford an office boy. So, at the end of the day I used to drive and drop of the prize consignments to the local courier office. One day, the clerk said ‘Sir I have to ask you a question that’s been bothering me – You drive in an Opel car to come here and yet drop packages yourself’? I chuckled and said to myself – the car is a family gift to me and I have gifted myself a start-up!!
C = Captain
Are you a leader? I’m not asking a question that appears on the covers of those books you see in Airport bookshops. A captain is not only the guy who dies when the ship sinks. He also assembles teams, motivates armies and gets drunk with his men.
This is important. Can you fire someone without remorse? Can you shout and scream? If you can’t, that’s fine – get a co-founder who can and become ‘co-captain’. One of you will have to be the toughest SOB that ever existed.
One of my favorite Captain tricks is to arrive in packed conference rooms, sit right at the back and then ask the first question of the floor. It takes guts. Why? It gets my company noticed since I announce my Company and myself before asking the question. If I am not on the panel, I still leverage the panel. I play Captain even if it’s not my ship.
E – Excitable
Even today, a 2000 US$ game license or media buy gets me excited like a kid getting a chocolate bar. I walk around, get a coffee or just start making conversation with colleagues. I get the same high that I used to get 10 years back.
You have to be excited about your business and company and also be excitable so that your teams visibly know what makes you happy and strive to deliver to see you jump up and down!!
************