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!