Sushrut Bidwai

Since the resurrection of dot com phenomenon and with astounding success of youtube likes, many entrepreneurs dream of making it big.

There is no problem in such dreams.

But problem is entrepreneurs think that making it big in very quick time with not much efforts is very possible.

They dont realize, youtube like financial success is very rare and almost fluke.

It is not a repeatable success story.

You can never know if your venture will turn out to be a next youtube story.

So stop daydreaming.

People who always keep thinking that some Google will come and buy us out, all we need to do is have the product out there, are just kidding themselves.

People who think, even if we fail in dot com venture, some company will buy out our user base and hence we turn investors, are kidding themselves.

If you are thinking about what to do with your success or with your failure when you are running a company, then stop running the company.

You are not meant for entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is also not for retirement minded people, who wants to just make few lacks or couple of crore rupees and live the rest of life without doing anything, are the worst kind of entrepreneurs. In fact such people should join bureaucracy, as they dont even deserve to be in corporate life style.

Startup, philosophy philosophy, startup adivce, startups

Many times in entrepreneurship you have to say no to certain things. Be it in hiring process, in some project negotiation or while selecting a particular vendor. Also many times you are also someone who is being analyzed and rejected with out even a formal no.

Question is if you are an entrepreneur, would you like to read an email saying “Thanks for your interest, but we have decided to go with other provider” or would you prefer hitting reload on your Thunderbird and awaiting response from the client?

I would prefer having to read a rejection letter. Also not only that, but I would love to work with a client who knows how to say no. For example we fail to get a contract which we worked really hard to get. The client not only wrote a good email saying - “You are equally competent and in case things don’t work out with provider I have selected, you are definitely next in line. I am making this decision not on what you presented but more on my instinct as both of you look equally capable of providing said services.” Later on when the client was looking for partner for another project he wrote me and email and we did work for some time together on it with much more respect we had for each other than before.

If the client has remained quiet and has not conveyed selection of other provider, it would have made it difficult for me to work with with him in future. Yes, ego is there but more than ego pressure is the problem. Because of the splendid letter he had written previously, I was under no pressure while negotiating for next project and working on the project. It lead to a very good understanding in working relationship which is giving both us excellent benefits.

So what do you think should someone say no formally or just keep quiet?

Startup, philosophy entrepreneurship, philosophy, startup advice

Please note this is just my take on whole concept of entrepreneurship.

Many entrepreneurs think and act like businessmen. I often see people who are looking to build enterprises are stuck with mindset of businessmen. Below are in my opinion differences between businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Power of equity:

You need to understand that you have an idea around which a success story can be built. The only power you have apart from your own skills is equity. If equity is put to good use i.e. in hiring great people, you are creating more  chances of success. Lot of entrepreneurs think that diluting your equity to mentors, advisers, great engineers, sales people is waste of equity. This cant be more wrong. When you hire people who are best in what they do, you give your company more chances of success. Hence effective value of your equity is increased, so essentially you are not diluting at all! I will even say if your customer is interested, sell him some part of your equity. More people involved in realizing one dream, more chances of it becoming a reality. Don’t be greedy about your equity spending. Its worth something only when you succeed. Take top companies and find out how much equity holding founders had when companies reached a exit point and you will know what I am talking about.

Strict control:

You can’t build a great company if you are not ready to give freedom to your team members. You are not a baniya (a shopkeeper) who will shout at his employees (? or servant?) for every little mistake. True he needs to do that, you don’t. Your job is to find good people and build a relationship with them. Sell them your dream.

Delegation:

There are lot of things that need to be done to build an enterprise. You can not do that all. Make sure you have your own path in the company. At first you will have to do lot of things right from HR to marketing to coding! Decide when you want to delegate some of those tasks. Find and groom people to take over your responsibilities. Don’t try to become hero and work 24 hours a day doing everything.

Brand building:

How people see you and your company is VERY important. There are lot of small bakery product chains in India. In north Maharashtra we have this chain of bakery products called Modak’s. They have close to 50+ shops now. But they can never become McDonald’s. There are numerous such examples in India. When you don’t spend on building your brand, well you will create a great business but you cant create a great enterprise, Period. Spend on branding, not just your companies, but your own too. Customers don’t differentiate from you and your company be it a consumer product or enterprise.

Openness and transparent operations:

If you can not trust some one, you can not include him in executing your dreams. You can not go and ask his opinion, neither involve him in any which way in your dream building. But once you trust, (after lot of background search etc etc) trust people. Be open about your professional relationship with them.  This is true for customer relationships as well. IF you tell your customers you were sick and hence did not answer email about something important, well you can do that once not always. Also demand money every time you help out some one. If you always try to make 10% on a 10K deal you wont ever get involved in 10M deals. Some things, some favors should be given just for building relationships. Don’t ask for extra money for home delivery packages, that’s not what enterprises do!

Uncategorized entrepreneurship, equity, philosophy, Startup, startup advice

These few list of things I found out working in a startup and on a startup.

Employers:

1. Great team does not necessarily have all star players. A team in itself can become all star if it gels well together.
2. Don’t hire some one just to fill up that vacancy, not at least for first 10 hires. Fill it up when you get good fit only. 
3. Be HR manager for first few months or a couple of years. Your team is your best asset and you need to be involved in building it.
4. Your culture, attitude and personality is going to be reflected in attitude and personality of your company. Be sure what you are projecting.
5. Be transparent to initial hires. Don’t be afraid to even share critical data like business deals or financials. 
6. Use equity to your advantage. Don’t be greedy on that front. Your equity will be worth something only if you succeed and for that you need great people.
7. Intervene right away if you see minor cracks in the team. Don’t wait too long for the matter to be strightended out on it’s own. 
8. Don’t create hierarchy too soon. First few years should be directly you and your team. Use this time to grooms few people to become mid-management people and intrapreneurs if you like that word.
9. Be social and let your employees have some social life. Its not very productive to work 24 by 7. Take 2 day vacation once in a while and encourage your team to take it too.
10. Don’t go too much on brand of top institutions like IIT’s and IIM’s. Make sure person also has ability and right attitude to work in the team that is already there.
11. Is you see someone not performing, fire them. Don’t keep giving them second and third chances. This attitude is very contiguous. 

PS: Dont know why numbered lists are not working on the blog and too little time to dig into it. Any solutions?

Uncategorized entrepreneurship, HR, philosophy, Process, Recruitment, Startup, startup advice, training

There are numerous applications which are developed to take advantage of mobile and SMS penetration in India. Vakow, SMSGupShup are just 2 such examples. All these entrepreneurs read blogs, industry data about how SMS is going to grow and mobile penetration is going to still grow. These blogs/industry experts give numbers like how many SMS delivered in a day, on particular day like festival, valentines day and all. They tell you how you can use SMS as content deliery channels to attract user base and create a killer startup with multi-million dollar revenues. All good, go for it. Before going for it think about what these blogs don’t tell you though.  Does any of the blogs tell you how many people who use mobiles for voice communication extensively are not using SMS? I dont think so. Do they tell why they are not using it? Naah, they just can’t figure it out. It takes lot of evangelism to understand your user base. 

One of the problems with web 2.0 startups that I recently talked to or I have seen mushroomed targeting mobile and SMS content delivery is, they focus on existing user base of these media. They are not putting lof thought about why lot of people are not using the media despite having access to it. If you are a budding entrepreneur then before creating your killer app consider these points that come up in this post. Its good to target a large existing user base and hey you got idea to get rich. But it will be better if you keep that scalability to your platform to reach non-existent user base and make sure your delivery channels reach them in short term OR long term future.

For example, SMSGupShup has lot of user base, market momentum and everything is good and they will make tons of money, or at least I hope they do as an entrepreneur myself. But problem is they are focusing too much on the Gupshup part of it. I recently developed similar app for a brokerage firm that wanted to use SMS as THE media of communication with its client base of 5000+ customers. Now I told them about SMSGupshup and they said they cant use something names so funny for professional purposes. Now I was trying to make them use it as I was not going to get paid for developing it as its my friends firm. Though he did send me Johny Walker Black Label 24 for my birthday! Why they did not want to use SMSGupShup, because its named Gupshup and gives impression that its for fun and ONLY for fun. So I think the brand does not have scalability, but that another post in draft about brand scalability.

Point I am trying to make is, think about existing user base of a media and think harder about non-existent user base and whoa you got yourself much better business model and hence more chance of making it big. Taking case of SMS channels for instance, can’t you reach to customers in villages/taluka places who have mobiles but don’t use SMSes? You can. I know you will say in comments section that these people can’t type SMS and literacy rates are low and every other problem. Instead think about can they read the SMSes? Yes they can, believe me I do lot of field work and I know lot of them (30% approx)  can. So who can send them useful SMS which these people, like farmers, can use for there advantage? Traders. For example, Nasik exports grape to global market. Lot of farmers who export them are not literate but are rich and have mobiles. Now you can bridge these farmers in Nasik to exporters in Mumbai using SMS channel. How? Let me explain. Go to traders in Mumbai and see how they work. For every day they will call n differnt farmers telling them todays market price and if they want to sell for that market value. Otherwise farmers go directly to markets and sell it for available market price with out holding for better valuation for tomorrow (or is it always yesterday?). So you can help farmers get good pricing for there goods and you can help traders in managing there supply chain using SMS channels. Makes sense? I thinkso. 

Though this audience is little harder to reach, but I think user base is so huge that once you penetrate in that market segment you are going to be rewarded n times for your hard work and evangelism.  Educate people and wider audience about your platform while you are doing good job at reaching to existing customer base.

Ideas, Startup, philosophy entrepreneurship, evangelism, innovation, internet, mobile, philosophy, SMS, SMSGupShup, social media, startup advice, startups, web 2.0

We learn history in school and then we forget it. Thats probably the biggest failure of education system. We just dont give importance to history and lessons we can learn from it.

Okay. So first lesson from history. Dont fight in the battles/wars . You are a leader and your job is to lead. Remember Third battel of Panipat? Battle between Peshwas and Abdali was won by Abdali and which started the down hill of Peshwas and Maratha empire. One of the biggest mistake which Sadashivrao Bhau (who was leading Peshwa army) did was he fought in the battle! Look at Abdali and how he lead his troops to victory. When Nawab started to run away from battle-field Abdali was there to stop him and send him back. When one side of his army was getting hammered, he was looking at it from a distance and sending reinforcements. And when Holkar/Shinde were running away where was Bhau? Fighting. When Vishwasrao was killed and troops lost the courage, instead of giving them hope where was Bhau? Fighting. He was a great fighter. Indeed. Very brave, very courageous. But was he a good leader? I don’t think so. In all his effort in building Maratha Empire, Shivaji Maharaj lead Maratha army to numerous victories. In how many those battles/wars he actually fought with enemy? None! Was it because he wasn’t a good fighter, brave, courageous person? No. He knew better. He knew his job is to lead and only he can do it. He is one with vision and hence he only can lead. Fighting can be delegated.

To all those startup entrepreneurs thats my advice, focus on leading, providing vision to your company and nurture your concept. Dont waste your time on coding/development/operations and other simpler tasks which any one can do. No matter how much cutting edge technology your building, coding is not your job. Get over your techie instincts if you want to be successful. I know its not possible to have entire dev team working for you from day one, but get over it as soon as possible.  If you keep wasting your time and energy on smaller tasks then you are going to lose.

Startup entrepreneurship, history, philosophy, startup advice, startups