Prabhu' blog

A blog detailing my business activities What i was upto and my notes and stuff... How to go about company and entrepreneurship

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Entrepreneurship event and plans

Chennai is seeing an entrepreneurship event

http://proto.in

Sixteen VCs have tied up for it Looks like a good event to be in.

As core members of CEL BITSAA we are also trying to perk up activities in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. The idea would be to hold events in India also. These would be an extension of the US CEL-BITSAA Silicon Valley Chapter meets

We are looking for volunteers from BITSAA. Please contact me if you are in Chennai, Hyderabad or Bangalore

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Saint and the entrepreneur- the beginner’s guide

The saint and the entrepreneur- the beginner’s guide
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Prelude
1) Definition of an entrepreneur
2) Evaluating your resource
3) Hey? What is my team doing?
4) The importance of Communication
5) Get a good mentor…..
6) The personal and the family issues
7) Where is the capital and where is my investor?
8) Other needed skill sets
9) The saint entrepreneur

Prelude

This book has been written to address the plight of young entrepreneurs who want to start up a company but do not know how to go about it. Running a company is mainly finding answers to questions which hinder the development of the company.

Here are the frequent questions which bother a potential entrepreneur.

I have an idea. Other than that I am clueless about opening up a company. So what do i do? Where do I go from here? What kind of team should I build up to take the company on the right path? How do I ensure that my chances of success are high.

The initial period is spent in searching the answers to the above questions. In order to answer these questions, it is critical to know the expectation of a would-be entrepreneur.

Most of them aspire to create a multi-million dollar company with a global presence.

They have very little capital but have the potential to make up for the lack of capital with their enthusiasm and hard work. They are not afraid to believe in their ideas and execute them. The only hindrance and the stumbling block is how to begin the journey.

So what kind of an approach would pay the maximum dividends and would benefit these people?

As such there is no hard and fast rule as to how a company can succeed. Hearing how others have gone on with their company is always a beneficial experience but circumstances and variables change and what clicked for one company may not click for another one.

I personally have observed that many entrepreneurs do not chronicle the initial stages of their company. By the time they write their books and recount their success stories, difficulties experienced in the later stages of the company dwarf out the original startup problems faced by them. As a result, their accounts tend to focus on second stage problems and many a times do not focus on the crucial starting stages which may make or break the company.

Here is a different take. This book has been written while I continued to search different ways to run the company. This book tries to address some crucial issues such as the lack of capital and how they play an important role in deciding the company’s success.

In addition to this, the level of preparedness needed to go ahead is also discussed. And last but not the least, what constitutes a resource and do you have enough resources to get the company done? Where do you look out for advice?

The purpose of the book is to make people lean towards entrepreneurship and help them start at a young age so that the enterprises they form will be bigger and stronger.
Everything has an advantage if you start early. I believe that the best time to start a company is in college when you can inspire other people by leadership and have little to lose.

When you do the company at a young age, many people are willing to help you. You are also free of the ego and the arrogance and the feeling of awe that take you down once you join a big company (not necessarily true.) At a young age, you are flexible, modest and are willing to ask people for their help. In addition you are relatively burden free and can afford to take the risk. Moreover you have the necessary technical guidance, manpower to leverage on, plenty of free time to research your idea and the guts to take on the world.

The above attitude entirely depends on the outlook of the person. There is no doubt that working in an industry will give you the much needed experience and confidence but if you ensure that the approach to the task at hand is balanced and treaded with caution and meticulous research, you can nevertheless succeed at a young age.



Chapter 1 – Definition of an entrepreneur
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Everything has a beginning. And there is no exception to this rule. A company also has its beginning in the minds of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur initiates the beginning of a long journey where many critical decisions are made and executed.

How would you define an entrepreneur?

Hmmmmm….

If you have read the above sentence, you will probably comment –

“I know who an entrepreneur is. He is the insane guy who never loses hope and continues to stick to an idea even if it does not make any sense.”

The above view is not exactly false. The success of a company is determined by how steadfast the entrepreneur is and the risk taking ability which he has. An entrepreneur is an innovator. He has an unflinching faith and devotion to the idea and charts a well defined path for the company.
An entrepreneur with a vision finally manages to fast track the company on to a rapid growth path which eventually leads to success. An entrepreneur is not only a leader but also identifies other leaders

Though the role played by an entrepreneur is significant, the entrepreneur alone is not responsible for the success of the company. There are also other factors that play a crucial role in the success of the company.

Team is one of the most critical aspects next to the entrepreneur himself and the entrepreneur also plays a crucial role in the team building process. The entrepreneur manages to build such a strong team– be it on the strength of the idea or his own strength.

Peter Drucker -“A company is what one man cannot do”.

It is unrealistic if you solely expect the entrepreneur to do the job. A good supporting cast (which is what a solid team means) equally plays a vital role. In a core team, all the people should have the characteristics of a good entrepreneur and have the capacity to assume leadership roles. Moreover this is true if team is young. Each of them has to make up for the experience which they lack and provide a combined focus. A motivated team can weather the storm together and take the company to safe grounds.

From the word go, the team should believe that the job will be accomplished. And if the team really believes that the idea will succeed, they won’t hesitate to take minor decisions such as quitting their job and investing their personal time and money into it. Such should be the belief of the team.

If you think – Come on. What I am going to do without the evenings at the golf club? What about a new cell phone every month? I am going to lose 500 dollars every month???

Hey man. Cut it out -You are speaking about your belief in a million dollar idea. Losing 10,000 dollars should not bother you.

Most of them who would make good entrepreneurs never take to entrepreneurship because they are attached to their smug and comfortable life. The rest of them are in so much awe of their existing company that they never believe that a similar organization on a smaller scale can be created.

An entrepreneur need not be an expert in an area to know that a venture will click. Rather it is the belief in the venture and the background work that counts. There are many potential entrepreneurs who never take up the path of entrepreneurship because of the belief that they do not have a concrete idea in their respective field.

This is partly due to the fact that people are trained to believe that they can do only what they have learnt. Many of them fail to realize that entrepreneurship if actively pursued can lead to success. It is true in order to overcome the drawbacks of starting in an unknown field; the necessary research has to be done. But this should not be a hiccup from preventing a sincere entrepreneur from following his dreams.

Even if we look at how many startup companies have expanded operation, we can find that they adapt to different situations and remain afloat. By the time the company is 1-2 years old, the vision of the entrepreneur changes according to the market tune and the company plays a completely different ball game (But this is not suggested. Stick to your original plan. The above is an example of how the entrepreneur is able to adapt). In fact if a person is narrow-minded, he runs the risk of never freezing on an idea at all. And some people tend to specialize in fields where intense hardware capital is required to start a company. It is not that these people will be able to start a company. But they should keep an eye open and also be on the look out for opportunities which they are familiar with.

Let us track down what an entrepreneur finally brings to the table not only to the company but to the country.

What is the difference between a developed nation and a developing nation? Economists offer different explanations for the above - the country should be self sustaining, the per capita income should be above a certain level, the unemployment level should be low and various other factors…

Hmm. Accepted. But can’t we simply narrow it down to two or three causes?

A reduction of the above problem would reveal that a country being developed or undeveloped is simply the money which it has its disposal. If the country has a good capital inflow, it is doing great and is taking rapid strides towards becoming a developed country. But who are responsible for the capital inflow and cash flow?

Entrepreneurs account for a significant portion of the cash flow. These people form the backbone of a country and attract investments and capital. They rotate money, employ resources, import and export goods and services, upgrade their infrastructure and do many more things.

As I am writing this book, India and China are witnessing the same phenomena. The pool of entrepreneurs in these countries has grown and is experiencing increased investments and inflow of money. (I intend to carry on with this view and try to cover more countries as I keep on writing the book)

(Note there also other factors- But we are simply trying to narrow it down and see how much part an entrepreneur plays in the above equation – a biased view but nevertheless a major contributing factor)

Wow – The definition holds for developing countries. What about developed countries?

It is no less different for developed countries. Most of the giants operate out of US, Europe and Japan. The number of established businesses in US, Europe and Japan are directly a result of the efforts of past entrepreneurs. The developed nations have been there for such a long time that the number of established businesses in these countries is very high.

It maybe that for a developed country, the contribution of a single entrepreneur may be negligible as it already has a number of established businesses but for a developing country, entrepreneurship is one of the main driving forces of the economy.

The above clearly shows that entrepreneurs are responsible for the flow of money. They are responsible for increased employment and increased revenues for governments in the form of taxes. In addition to this entrepreneurs feel obliged to give back something to the society when they are successful.

Entrepreneurship is an act which is practiced not only for personal and monetary gains. In developing countries, it is the satisfaction of creating jobs, training and educating people, and fulfilling social responsibility that drives an entrepreneur. Power, money and fame are only corollaries that are an added incentive. But ultimately it is the impact on other people and their lives and how you have helped them that finally gives you the supreme satisfaction.

As to the question – Am I ready to become an entrepreneur? You have to ask yourself whether you have done the below
1) Have you been proactive and expanded your contacts circle outside your company?
2) Have you been in touch with a prospective team who may be able to help you implement your ideas?

The roots of entrepreneurship start with being proactive. You should be active in pursuing your contacts and not be in awe of your immediate boss. Experience does not help you in becoming a successful entrepreneur (this book is supposed to promote young entrepreneurs – that is why we are highlighting what a young person misses) – being proactive and dynamic does.

When do you know that the time has come to begin business?

The answer is when you know that you can manage the two transitions below

1) I can manage myself and take on the world
2) I can take care of the guys who are going to depend on me.

The first is the easiest decision an entrepreneur can make. The second is the critical aspect and if you chose a flexible team, you will buy the necessary time to grow and ultimately take care of it.

There are many things to concentrate on while doing the company – market research, technical, general management, operations, marketing and sales. An entrepreneur is one who manages all that – technical, managerial and the marketing part.

If you have a good team, you can worry less about team management and concentrate on other activities that will buy you additional time.
For an entrepreneur, there can no other better beginning than a combined team working selflessly towards the growth of the company.

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Chapter -2- Evaluating your resource.
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This chapter speaks about finding the right people for your company before you actually do the company. Team building is an important step in building up your company. As in my case, sometimes you would have so much faith in the company that you would be the first one to hang out your neck and take the risk. You would feel that you can inspire your team to take the leap later on.

This is potentially a dangerous way of doing the company. It simply means that you don’t have a solid team. Ultimately it ends up is a situation where you are not completely in synch with the person. A person who is out of the company will never truly realize the challenges which the company is facing. His mind will be bent somewhere else and the decision making ability will be limited. His focus is elsewhere and he is just a help to the company. The same applies for the entrepreneur. A team which is not fully formed is the first worry of the entrepreneur and half of his time is spent in trying to get the people in groove.

Guideline one

“Get your team ready so that you don’t have to worry about who is in and who is out when you do your company. There are other things to worry about when you are doing the company”

Analyze these aspects in the partner you are looking for

1) Why do you believe that your partner will be a valuable asset
2) Is he proactive when you are not there?
3) What is his ability to inspire others in your absence
4) Does he have the courage to say – I can take a lion by its tail…
5) You can judge his passion for the idea by the way in which he speaks about the idea and tries to convince other people to take up to the idea.
6) Does he know what a stake means and understand the notion of capital??

Grade the answers to the above question:-
If you are not getting any consistent replies for the above, then you probably do not have a solid partner. Part time people never understand the root causes of the problem and hence do not contribute to solving problems at all.

It is better to start a company with all the possible resources operating on a full time note.
When everyone takes a risk – It is a do or die situation. And people tend to do the maximum when such a situation exists

I am not saying that a part time member is not dedicated towards the idea. But that he may not be able to play a vital part in the growth of the company. Maximum productivity may be limited due to the heavy demand placed on their shoulder to meet dual needs.

A good idea would be to have 3-4 full time people in and others as part time people. In this way you are maximizing resources working on a project.

A young entrepreneur knows what he wants to achieve and is ready to sacrifice his short time income for the company. But the trouble brews when he has to manage other people in the company. It takes a little time for the income to come in and the first step which he takes towards managing other’s paycheck is the critical part. It generally helps if the team waits patiently for a single year for the income to come and the expenses to stabilize.
Most of the quantum leap in growth is made in the initial 5 years of a company and as much money invested and saved will yield high dividends during this period.


As far as our company was concerned, we were a bunch of people who had done our engineering and on the lookout for an opportunity which will change our lives forever.- the average day to day techies who believe that they can be the seed of a great idea. As everyone would know by now, technical people tend to fail because they tend to focus less on critical issues such as management and are generally weak in contacts – both of which are needed for a strong company.

Technical people tend to be shortsighted. And especially if a company is being formed by technical guys, most of them are concerned with the product features or the offering they have. As the person who is heading the company, it is the entrepreneur’s responsibility to find likeminded and similar guys and focus them on the right path. Nowadays it has become a trend for entrepreneurs to expect windfall profits the minute they start a company.

The core team is also not willing to participate unless they continue to draw industry salaries. If you analyze closely you will find that most of the people who draw a specified salary spend only a fraction of the amount they earn and expect more from the company. The rest is only to meet the comfort level which they are used to. It is well and good if you run across a source which lets you take salaries at a growing stage.

Everyone will be starting companies if they are able to do the above and there would be no reason for anyone to work if there is no risk in entrepreneurship.

The core members of the team should not be born out of brainwashing. When you are crippled, they must be able to act and deliver. Each one should have the capacity to say –

Hey guys. I can manage it. I can hire the people to get the company moving forwrd.

The main reason why many youngsters fail is they don’t have the above attitude. The above reason explains why managerial people with experience succeed. Their long years at the office have given them the wisdom to deal with situations. If you have the right guy who understands these finer aspects and can deal with the above, you can go ahead with the idea. I see no reason why a technical person who pays attention to the fundamentals of management should be unable to succeed.

As long as you make since efforts to accumulate the skills which a management guy has, it should not be a problem. A management degree will surely help but should not come in the way.

The roles of team members in a startup can sometimes be blurred. People in their enthusiasm tend to get involved in activities outside there area of expertise. This is good for the company but at the same one has to ensure that respective team members finish the task allocated to them.

t
Chapter -3-Hey man. What is my team doing?
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You have started the company. You have done the groundwork on the product offering and the service of the product and are making progress. Down the road you are looking at clients and revenues. But your expectations become more and more high and you are becoming ambitious and eager to execute more plans.

To beat the competition, you have to stay ahead. To ensure this, you have to make sure that your team comes up with innovative ideas and also that new features and offerings are completed. Evaluating your team is one of the important steps that help you stay in touch with the team and plan for new ideas. You exactly know the distribution of tasks in the company and can come with a new work plan.

To evaluate your team, it is necessary that you frequently hold meetings and share opinions. Focus on team building activities and emphasize the need for transparency in communication and feedback. Frequent appraisals and feedback loops will ensure that you operate as a cohesive team.

Take steps to appreciate and motivate the team. At the same time, stress the need for a critical outlook in feedback meetings. Make sure that core members of the company operate with this outlook and come out with innovative ways to keep pace with the expectations of the market. Finally starting a company is about meeting the needs of the people rather than us telling them what they need. A critical view really helps to do this.

Start working on a feedback mechanism which will give you good results. For example it may be the six hat thinking strategy that can help you breakdown complex situations and analyze it. Adopt a mechanism that will help in decision making.

Evaluate whether individual members of the team have completed their assigned roles and tasks. If they have completed their existing tasks, assign further tasks to them.
This periodic reallocation of tasks helps the team to operate at a brisk pace and identify areas of improvement. In addition people become versatile and this results in overall personality development – skills which are needed in members of a small organization.

Appraisals, Brainstorming as a group, Redefining targets and goals are all crucial steps to benchmark and evaluate your team. These are key indicators of the progress you are making in your company.

Evaluating people and resources in your company is a difficult task and different organizations embark on different appraisal systems to evaluate their resource pool. This evaluation plays an important role in judging the motivation level of people and one can take the necessary steps to address the shortcomings.


The good point is that in a startup company, you are not that big to make this exercise a difficult one. The problem point is setting up a well defined process to do the above- this is where startup companies fail. As long as you ensure that you have a good feedback system and a well defined mechanism to keep track of the progress, the operations will be smooth and problem free with respect to team.


Chapter 4- The importance of Communication
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The stuff that is briefly discussed in this chapter is setting up a communication system in a company. This is nothing but having a good organizational chart and working accord to it. A startup company may not have one – So it is essential that you address this issue.

Communication plays an important role in the growth of a company. Communication in a startup assumes two shapes

1) Internal communication – Communication within the company
2) External communication – Communication with clients, customers and partners


Let us analyze these two in detail

Internal communication
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Setting up internal communication lines is a critical element in the operations of a company. Internal communication plays an important role in the growth of the company. You do not know when you will get a breakthrough contact. It is imperative that the entire core team is constantly in touch with one another and accessible at a short notice to inform each other about latest developments. This is also one more reason where a part time would not help. Resources are not available to fulfill the needs of a potential breakthrough contact.

You do not know when you may have to solve a critical bug or showcase the product in a new limelight to a prospective customer. You always need a team which can work on the above aspects. Also the contact which may bring a breakthrough is often achieved if you constantly meet people and emphasize the team strength.

What people doubt in a young entrepreneur is the ability to lead and deliver on the promise? So it makes sense to showcase your full strength

Work on establishing an information flow in the company. Set up guidelines and processes which help in the internal communication process.


External communication
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External communication is dealing with the external forces – customers, clients and partners. External communication contributes to the revenue of the company and plays an important role in the future growth of the company. If you have an effective internal communication system in place and are able to merge it seamlessly with the external communication, you create a strong communication backbone for the company.

External communication is necessary to execute customer deals and partnership agreements. They play a vital part in marketing and sales. A startup company has limited resources and there is a tendency to focus more on development efforts than marketing and sales. This is a critical blunder which may adversely affect the company.

Often in a startup organization, the external communication and the internal communication tend to be the same. This is done to meet the budget needs and cut costs.
But if this is the case, it is imperative that the team be able to meet both the needs – internal as well as external.

Make sure that there is an effective team which acts as a liaison between the company and its clients. The more effective the team, the more efficient the company will be in marketing and sales.

Looking back, I believe that if a tech company shows as much interest in building up a strong marketing and sales team as they did in building the tech team, the success ratio will improve dramatically.

Communication is the basis of information exchange. Planning out an organization hierarchy that accomplishes this transfer of knowledge is critical to the company’s survival. As discussed in the “evaluating your team” chapter, small companies tend to pay little attention to these topics.


Chapter -5- Get a good mentor
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The mentor plays one of the most important roles in a company. He is the morale support behind you and a person who has gone through a similar phase while establishing his company.
Mentor is one of the make and break factors of a company. Having a mentor definitely helps you cope up with problems

A mentor is a person with whom you can share all the aspects of your company. It may range from resource problems, marketing problems to even your own personal problems which may affect the running of a company.

You can even go straight to your mentor and say – “I am getting married. How far is this going to affect my operations?
The above question sounds silly but a mentor may be able to help you here also as he has gone through a similar stage in his life.

Ultimately you are looking forward to the guidance of a person who can help you run a company and tell you where you are going wrong. It is left to you to build upon his advice and execute them.

A mentor may be able to look at your problems and figure out where exactly you are going wrong and ask you to focus on that area. Half the time if you are able to do what your mentor says, you won’t land yourself in a hole. The challenge is to implement and build up the resources to execute the guidance of your mentor.


The very point of having a mentor is Knowledge transfer and Experience Transfer. A single meeting with a mentor may be able to familiarize yourself with a process and a topic which may take years to learn in a conventional setting.

All the people who have started their company have had someone to turn to and seek advice. Sometimes mentorship may come in the form of a family member or in the form of a professional contact. It is left to you to figure out the advice and

Chapter -6- The family and personal issues
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Everyone has some family and personal issues that prohibits them from following up their dreams. In many a cases, it may be born out of the need to support your family or take care of your parents. It is always good that we try to fill our responsibility towards family.

Most of the people do not take to entrepreneurship because of these problems. But at the same time these issues can be addressed.
If you feel that you are short of cash and your family members may be needing health care, you can cover them under an insurance policy. You may also need to cover yourself with insurance if a lot of people are dependent on you. Ensuring that your family does not lose much out of your risk taking appetite will ensure that you follow can focus and concentrate on your company.

Believe that there is a solution to a problem and work towards it. Set your internal affairs straight before you embark on your ideas. It is left to you to judge your state of affairs and decide upon a suitable course of action.

Plan your activities and start working towards your goals as soon as possible. Give yourself a nice time frame where you can actively pursue your idea and can focus on it without any distractions.


Chapter -7- Where is my capital and my investor?
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Capital is always a difficult issue when you start up your company at a young age. It is one of the things which people lack at an young age and people

I find that capital comes from your personal pocket, relatives, friends and investors.
At a young age, you are not a tested material and people won’t be ready to trust you.
You have to show the investors that you have managed operations and run the company on our own.

One more thing is that getting people to invest in your company may not be a short term affair and may take some time. Until this period, you have to figure out how to run the company.

Trying to manage on your own will help you expand operations and woo prospective investors. If you are really passionate about the idea and leads are starting to materialize, you can approach for a bank loan and run your company.

Loans up to one crore is a priority for software sector (in India). Similarly other areas such as rural development programs have also guidelines that one can make use of.
There are also other ways by which you can solve the resource crunch and manage operations. Search for channel partners, technology partners and solution partners to help you out in the initial period. In this way you would be able to reduce the cost of operations and may be able to postpone future investment until it is really required.

Find yourself a team which is able to identify the situation you are in and work with you in achieving the company’s goals. A flexible team will give you the leeway to work on your finances and set it right slowly.

Prepare a strong business case and keep on pitching your case at gathering and competitions while you run the company. .

Find a sustenance mechanism which gives you the revenue to operate the company. Focus on building up a strong pipeline of projects or a customer base which will help you keep up operations. Doing the above is the challenging part in a startup company and most people fail in these aspects.
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As you build up the company and your idea starts getting refined, try to attract angel investors. Once you reach this stage, you can take it to next level and look forward to seed stage funding.

Starting at a young age is an advantage in terms of investment and capital. You can take the risk and run operations without having a significant investment into the company.
Relatively if you are in your mid career and have a family and are accustomed to taking a huge salary, the tendency will be to start a company if you are able to get significant investment into the company. You can turn this to your advantage and this fact makes entrepreneurship at a young age an attractive affair. It is the perception with which you look at entrepreneurship.



Chapter -8- Other needed skill sets
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Running a company requires an expertise in a whole lot of areas other than your primary ability. In a small company, you fulfill a number of tasks in addition to the basic responsibility entrusted to you.

A company is not only about the service or product you are offering. To ensure that you continue to provide quality service and ensure your survival, you need to focus on finance, management and operations.
Since you are going to manage the company for a while until you hit an investor, the following skill sets developed if perfected will help you in running the company

1) Basics of Finance and Accounting – Keeping track of assets and expenses
2) Basics of Operation – Will help you run operations
3) Basics of Marketing – Unless you find a good guy to this, you have to take care of this aspect.
4) Management and team building skills

Make sure that you have a set of objectives which can be met. Work out the operational metrics chart. Be sure that you are able to address the cash flow problem for a smooth and efficient operation.

In terms of marketing, know how to sell the idea. This is needed to attract an investor into the company. Learn how to network with people and take the company to the next stage.
An important platform would be to get involved with professional affiliations which can help you grow your contact base. Get into entrepreneurship forums, networking forums, put the idea through and see what happens.

The above topics are a subject by themselves and familiarity with the above topics would help you go a long way in addressing the problems faced by a startup company.

Experience people would have built these abilities in course of their long career. As young people, we should actively pursue the above topics to learn more about them and expand our outlook.


Chapter -9-The saint entrepreneur
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As far as the title of the book is concerned, that is what an entrepreneur is. There are many things common to a saint and an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur leads an austere and disciplined life at some stage of the experience to ensure that his company has the necessary resources to succeed. He takes huge risks and even goes to the extent of sacrificing his short term goals to achieve his long term goals.

Both are committed to the welfare of the people who depend on them and look forward to improving the society. Both share a long term vision and work towards attaining their goals - “nirvana” in the case of a saint, “success for all the people associated with the company” in the case of an entrepreneur.

You have to be prepared to sacrifice your short term gains and focus on the long term. Just as a saint sacrifices his bodily pleasure and leads a disciplined life in the hope of attaining nirvana, an entrepreneur has to lead a disciplined life to lead his company towards success.

It may take a while for the benefits of entrepreneurship to be visible. Until then you have to wait patiently and perseverant for your hard work to take shape.

Don’t lose hope and faith and at the same time be practical and give yourself realistic chances to succeed. Get the advice of people around you, people who have gone through a similar situation – their guidance really helps. Be humble and modest. Put in your best efforts and the reward will materialize.

Learn to enjoy the experience of Entrepreneurship and pay attention to the aspects that you are learning out of entrepreneurship. Value it as a learning experience

Monday, November 13, 2006

Quotes - entrepreneur

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” – Peter Drucker

Captures the spirtit of an entreprenerur and what he hopes to achieve in a crisp and brief tone

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Networking for Contacts

These communities and organizations will be useful for expanding contacts

Linkedin
openbc
ryze

TIE
BITS CEL (centre for entrepreneurship and leadership)

Decision Making Tools

Attached are decision making tools which speed up process.
Try to use them . My favourites are six thinking hats (cool one to get different perspectives). Check out whether you are familiar with all the processes listed below


Brainstorming
Ideas writing
Disney method
Setting well formed outcomes
Mind Mapping®
Lateral thinking
Six thinking hats
Decision trees
Ishikawa fishbone diagrams
Force field analysis
Future pacing

Friday, November 10, 2006

My notes on Product Marketing for Telesto- general strategy

Business Case

Search is a growing segment with a good market. The future is expected to revolve around search where information management and retrieval plays a vital role. There is enough scope even among this competitive market to understand a particular vertical and deliver a particular solution. Relatively this is a new market opportunity where low profile companies are very few and there is a good ROI even if a miniscule segment of this market is captured.

Summary: Predicting strong future growth in search applications and a growing market with more players acknowledging the importance of search.
Abundant scope for distinguishing product as it evolves and identify a key USP for a vertical market (customised solution)
Even capturing a small section of the market will help us reap good ROI
Huge market which is still there to be tapped.
A Good understanding of the client network can offer addons which can be used for drawing other benefits (even offering Hardware based solutions and network solutions)

Positioning

We will position ourselves as a products company focussing on deliverng essential needs of customer and clients. The enterprise search product will be an end to end solution taking into account different aspects of a corporate company from intranet needs to their web based needs.

What we mean by the above statement is that we are trying to satisy two search requirements of a company

1) one is to satiate their intranet needs (and offering our solution to do it)
2) external web requirements of the company (we are addressing the search requirements of the company on the web)
B2B B2C

Addressing such multiple needs will help us position in a good way.

What kind of providers are we?
Low cost search framework. Since we are projecting the end product as a low cost search framework, it should allow us to reach more customers.


It will transform into a tool which provides a means of providing basic content management which will involve and provide a search based interface to project team to work on. This should also involve security aspects where accessibiliy wil be based upon access control lists


Summary

Positioning ourselves as a provider of search solution (software as well as hardware. The strategy will be to evolve from a software player to a hardware player)
Should address different verticals according to their needs (still have to evolve to this level as we have to identify two or three verticals to tackle)

The current verticals which we are targeting are midsized IT companies having a sizeable intranetwork presence where the need has to be that the same information has to be accessed by many people.


HR firms in IT industry

Mid sized IT companies with content management issues
Banking,insurance and Law Firms


Educational institues (where such a need for public dissemmination of information is essential)

Marketing Plan

The marketing plan will be based on a web based marketing strategy to increase the reach and widen the customer base.

The basic method will be do an evaluation and decide strategy.

Attracting prospective clients to the site will be done through a marketing team whose efforts will be to identify customer and get them to the company site. Customer referrals will also play a crucial part.

The following methods can be considered to market

1) emarketing
2) direct marketing through sales team
3) web marketing (the strategy would be that the other two marketing lead the customer to web marketing)

Distinctive Competence

In terms of the tool

The tool is flexible and extensibe and so can be adopted easily.
Platform independent, easy to deploy and maintain with minimal administration and no other operating costs
Can hande huge volume of data and at the same time provide good performance in terms of speed

In terms of other models
A low cost framework for search which can be considered by all companies
Since it is a low cost search framework , we are looking at a increased client base
So cost model is very competitive

Market sizing
(with respect to clients)

The ideal market for the tool would be a company which needs search for a sizeable number of its employee population.
The company can be anywhere from a 10 member strong company to a 500 member strong company (in terms of No of computers)
It would be a great value add if the organisation has intranet portals and other needs like content management


(with respect to our company)

Position ourself as a small team catering to the user needs through efficient use of resources

Since the concept is leveraging open source technologies, a few people having the technical know how in this field would be good enough.

There is a need for increasing the marketing team as this is a crucial aspect for a products based company.


Pricing

The product is prized at 1000 dollars with additional costs which will be support based costs . There can be additional AMC contracts for updates and further releases

The Hardware solution (according to specific client requirement) will have a corresponding pricing in addition to the software cost.

The pricing is very competitive to create a good corporate identity and will be for a user set of licenses

Say – 1000 dollar installation can be used for 5 deployments in a company
2000 dollar will be applicable to 10 installations of the product


If he needs security we can provide him security, people who will have access to search application based on user name and password

2)it wil be product installation cost + hardware cost(profit margin will
300 dollars ) + support ( our profit margin on support will be 600 dollars)

A long term model will be drawn on the response and the further features which we add to the product.


Sales Process—

Awareness plan –



Market Research

The Market Research was basically done by gathering materials on the net and analysing the reports of Major research frames.
This is because the company is a growing one and we don’t have resources to hire out actual reports

A need for search swf has been put up on the site projecting market and how it is poised to grow in the near future

Product performance

The product performance is that of industrial expectations with it providing and even exceeding benchmark goals

In terms of Volume – can handle Huge data

In terms of speed – Can retreive results fast

In terms of features – Support a wide variety of data sources (Plan to extend this)

In terms of end user operation – Very simple and no extra administration costs and personal required

In terms of deployment – a simplified installer package (there is also an option to go for a hardware integrated solution also which is a simple connect to the network and use concept)

Buy Build a partner

We should identify a partner who is also working on a similar technology and where a mutual relationship will benefit both the parties.

Thing on the do list – Chalk out such a unique partner.

Market requirements

Main pitch

Support advertisements in future (a revenue earner)

The market requirement are the software bundled with additional facilities. The client expection is in terms of

1) support for additional data sources (including database support)
2) security aspect
3) added features which support even advanced querying features
4) distributed search and indexing
5) internationalization (support for many languages)
In terms of market requirements, all the features can be completed as the product evolves. There is no timeframework for implementing the above details as these can be done as and when we get funding.

Support for mutli –languages is also there, but geographic marketing is not being currently done and this is already there in the tool

Cutomer Acquistion

There is no plan for customer acquistion by buying out any other companies or taking over some business area.

A prospective area would be to offer it as a web server hosting where we can try to get existing customers who make use of such indexing features provided on net


But such a thing may affect the intrinsic product value. But the advantage is it would take care of immediate funding requirements for maintenance and operations cost.

Still then this kind of customer acquistion would involve huge marketing expenses and additional capital from our pockets

Market problems


1)The market problems which we may face is due to geographic reach (running it out of india without marketing office abroad)
2) competitve environment ( already some of the big players have a presence in the field)
3) creating consumer awareness on criticality of the product and convince him of ROI
4) addressing security issues which also come along with the tool
5) availabilty off a bigger marketing team (in our perspective)


Operational Metrics

The operations would involve operating on a cheap low cost model. The idea is to eventually have a small team working in tandem to develop the product and keep it a debt free company.

Majority of the work would be done by part time specialists who are involved in this area and do a good job of it .

Low infrastructure and IT spending and more expenditure on marketing is what we are looking at.

Day to day metrics against which performance can be measured against

For example number of features complete, the no of lines of code written, the no of module integrations done.

Thought leaders

The future course of thought will be more directed by marketing requirements. The product ownership will be passed on to respective technical persons who will innovate and bring it to the market within a short time period

Innovation should be the buzzword.

Sounds a little clesche but this is what the company truly requires.


Product roadmap

As a product

1) A tool which will offer content management and knowledge management on top of our search engine architecture
2) Implement security aspects
3) Provide Database support and other data sources support
4) Support more file formats
5) Move towards a intranetwork portal solution where the portal will provide all the needed necessities for an organisation with a strong emphasis on its search aspects.
6) A distributed search and indexing solution

As a library

1) Which can be integrated with existing applications to provide a search platform for your search

2) This aspect is a crucial aspect as this can be a light weight component which takes care of this feature


Customer retention

Customer retention and customer referral plays an important role in the growth of the company and we would like to retain customers by offering value based services which will help them in their respective vertical

This should increase the quality of the product as well as distinguish the product for different verticals


Marketing Analysis

Technology assessment

Since the product is based upon open source, reliability and extensions in the future can be easily done.

The basic backbone technology is platform independent and can work unconstrained in different platforms

And there is also a wide variety of integration and sophistication possible by module wise integration. So integrating other modules and open source software with the package may result in an increased scope for the product as the value of the product can be extended beyond just being a search engine.

An example of this would be integrating WEBDAV which permits remote WEB Based Distributed Authoring and Versioning and hence will help in content management.


Competitive Analysis

Many companies are into the same foray and competition is a key area which we have to overcome.

But the enormity of the market allows coplayers to exist if they are able to adapt the product to respective environments.

Companies into this field

1) Google-Mini
2) Search Blox
3) Verity


Quantitative Analysis

Win/Loss Analysis
The Win loss analysis is based on the requirement that we break even and generate a 20 % earning on top of it.



Will have to do a technical analysis doing a justification here. But the chances of doing the above thing is a 70 to 30 (win to loss) based on a general market scenario



Product Strategy

The product should offer a unique USP.

Currently the USP when compared to that of competitors is the pricing and the ease of deployment. But in the future these two alone should not be selling point.

As we discussed above in the above points, the key will be selling the product and its services.

Services in the sense, setting up of a good network topology and add ons in terms of other tools along with which the full functionality of the product can be explored.




Product Planning

User personas – The end clients will be people with no exposure to technology with only the know how of the fundamentals of internet surfing .

Only the administrator is a person required to possess a reasonable degree of technical knowldege which will help him pick up the configuration aspects of the tool.

A somewhat a basic overview of the fundamentals would help him in configuring the product

We visualize a system administrator allocating a small share of his time to configure the product and get it working.

Product contract

Again is it end user license agreement and support agreements? Don’t have an idea .Should fill it up

Release milestones

We are still in a phase where we look forward to doing releases every 2 months which should offer additional features and advanced functionality.

Program Strategy

Buyer Personas

The top most things on the mind of the buyer would be the performance and security aspects. There can be a wide deal of skepticism over adopting the tool.

Advertising the tool over mail can also be a difficult issue as the user reception wud be different.

So the mindset of the customer should be changed to adopt this tool.




Market Messages

Launch Plan

The launch plan will involve a trial evaluation plan at the end of which the customer can make an informed decision about the product

Lead Generation

Sales Readiness

Collateral and Sales Tools

The tool can be installed with other tools which act as addons for exploiting the maximum feature of the tool. It can be used along with a LDAP server which takes care of the security aspects. Other aspects like ftp server can be deployed to use the maximum feature of the tool.


Presentations and Demos
t
The presentations and demos have been prepared with a view to highlight the Return on Investment which the organisation will reap out of adopting the tool . These highlight the comprehensive feature sets of the tool

White papers

The need for search has been compiled from the case studies of a few internet research companies.

Competitive Write Up

Channel Support

Product support will be done through emails and to an extent through telephone support based upon the request of the customer.
Specific Service Level Agreements will be reached upon based upon the kind of support requested by the customer.

Special Calls

Depending upon the nature of the client, special calls will be made to ensure that the customer is advised of a solution (either hardware or software) which will suit his requirements. This has to been done taking into consideration the network topology at the customers end.


Event support

The strategy has to be mended according to client needs. There is a need for flexibe plan which can be extensible as well as be the right solution for the client. In pursuing this goal, care has to be taken that marketing requirements are satisfied and goals adhered to.

Answer Desk

Answer Desk . It will be more directed via email operations.

Notes on forming a company

Go and get a particular name to the registrar of companies
They will check and see whether it is available and give it to u. This should be done with the Registrar of Companies.After doing this, file the articles of memorandum and associationship with the government and wait for the sanction.

Once you get the sanction,there will be a form which the government will give you. You can use this to get ur bank accounts opened

Ensure that your bank accounts are opened with the first day of operations

Ensure that phone connections and broadband are in the name of the company.

All payments should be done through your bank and this is to ensure that you can keep track of the expenses. STP registration is not required. It is only required and will benefit you if you are a complete exporter and if you dont cater to the indian market and only if you cater to the international market
Say 80% of all your company are exports, by registering in STP u will get tax sops and can purchase hardware . But u must cross the threshold limit to avail of the STP sops. Even software services can be considered under exports

VC funding - U are eligible for it once u have a good tech team 4-5 people and a good marketing presence .Important all VCs look for this a good marketing presence in addition .

VC funding - it is essential that u run the company for atleast 1 and half years to be a good candidate for a VC funding. I dont know how this works in the US. But as far as a beginner entrepreneur, VC funding can be expected only after 1 and half years. If you already have a successful company under u belt the process will be different

VC funding - it is advisable to delay the VC funding to the later stages to ensure that u get a good deal. Otherwise it will not be worth it and u wont be left with any stakes. So try to run the company as long as possible

Accounting - Since you are going to handle the company for 2 years, you must have a basic knowledge of accounting. Follow double accounting standards. This is especially necessary as we have to go for a VC funding later on

This would involve maintaining of journals, daybooks

Web site - Get this outsourced. Unless u want to save every penny and u are literally like us do it by urself . But even if u plan to do it get it done by people who are willing to help.
I wud say get this outsourced. Even 20 k shud be a decent to get a unique designt

Server - Get your own server with a public ip on the net. This is mandatory and nowadays it is cheap

Server tools - Try to do something innovative like running a SVN server and sharing code in time part time people work on it. The main aim get as many part time people to help u. This wud help u know how much the part time people are interested in joining you and whether they really deserve a good place in the company in the future

Version Control - As i mentioned above version control is very important and have it in place from day one

Resource - Start atleast with three people who are ready to face three years without money.
This is important.Since we are not putting in any capital, it is necessary that we alteast sacrifice our salary and not expect too much. keep it to 12 k or something . This may sound silly
2) Ignore people who want to be a part of it to enhance their profile and go for their MBAs. These people dont stick for long and are really not worth it and their loyalty fades
3) Get people who are as much interested in entrepreneurship as you are. When u start lying low, these people can run the show for that period
Other than the cofounders who will be probably of your age, the rest of the people whom u hire shud be younger than u. This feedback i got it from different people
You can hire old experienced people provided they are consultants or you have good control over them and will not interfere in the process
The more complex ur idea. the more hard u will find it to recruit and convince people. And they may not be able to help u much if the idea is very complex. This u will face unless u reach proper VC funding.

Open source - Get as much open source tools as possible . Try to have one machine with a proper build environment and pay only for this license. This is to reduce the cost but maybe some contradictory notes will appear

Biz plan - Have a good biz plan ready and keep on going to biz conferences and present it even if u dont want funding for the company . It will help u broaden ur links and contacts
I am trying to analyze what shud be under the biz plan and will make separate notes for it


Two people with contribution - Other than the minimum 3 people there shud be some person who guides u on the accounting side , bank transactions ( a good CA wud do i guess)
A good marketing person with experience - a marketing person who will fetch u links is necessary. This person is very much necessary for carrying out ur marketing to companies

Focus on mail marketing
operations manager interface - takes care of accounting, banking
marketing manager - takes care of interfacing with other companies and new ways of marketing

Cash Flow - Cash flow for a company in india provided they have above constraints can be run in say 1 and half lakh rupees. The project pipelines are equally important and u can disregard cash flow to some extent if u have a good pipeline of projects

Tie Ups - The name of the game is tie ups. Have technology partners in the form of solution partners, marketing partners and so on and channel partners. These u will find that u can do as u r company survives the ravages of time.

The board - The board is to be composed of people who contribute to the contacts and are influential and can guide its path. No tech people on the board unless it is cofounded by them and they are the cofounders.
Maybe it can be given to people who can adapt to both settings and play the roles with equal easeThere has to space on the board to accomdate VC. Don’t amass a team of tech people on the board unless the ideas is very unique and breathtaking.

Social circle - A membership in TIE and all the entrepreneurship . An association with all the colleges and their incubators cells. A circle which comprises of other CEOs. Pay attention to ur cards. Get as much as possible other people's cards. Start doing this immediately. As far as i know, TIE would not help that much and only in terms of confidence. Once u make the first million u can gain access to the next elite membership clubs where only a select circle is allowed. Business contacts will start flourishing only when u reach this circle.

Shares and capitals - Please split the shares when the company starts. U have to make sure that u have around 35% of the companies for attracting resources. Once the company starts to grow this wil be imporant. Other than the cofounders people who join the company will get 0.5 percent of the company outside the cofounders. Cofounders are those people who are from the inception and who stay stead fast

MBA- A MBA will probably help u. But if u know accounting and u know about capital and stocks and shares, it is enough. Anyway i feel a contacts woud help more than an MBA. Contacts, Money will help you hire a good MBA guy
Hiring a MBA guy is very costly
So it is better if one person in the team has done it.

Tools
---------
Screen sharing software- if you are a services based company, it is necessary that u share the screens for these projects. It will also be helpful for a company operating from different placesgotomeeting.com, instacoll

file sharing softwaring - it is a must that u have a file sharing system in place. U will save endless amount of time . Believe it . It is very much needed. if you start without a good system in place the timeloss will be days in a single weekexample groove
There are also offerings like Microsoft sharepoint portal.
What u go in for depends upon the amount which you can afford
Version control for appropriate environments
If your company can afford it, channels like working thru remote VPN. For a startup the costs may be prohibitve but if in place many things can be saved

Sufficient mail space- ensure sufficient mail space and a good mail client which lets u operate.
Issue of whether to go open source or with commercial offerings -it mainly depends on what environment u are working. Initially i was proo towardspen source butlater on realized that it is best to have a blend of operating systems linux and windows. If u have enough money, i wud say go for windows. This is a tough call. It depends upon the projects u get and the areas u are working in. if u go into the market of linux distribution and customizing ur software for it, then u can also maintain an open source environment. This is also determined by whether u are into embedded systems and other constraints making it necessary that u are upto date with open source also.

Audits
--------
if u follow good accounting standards, it will always help u. Later on after starting if u try to shift to some other system, it will be very difficult.
It is always good to have some standard companies do your audit for approaching VCs later
Note: you cannot go for companies like KPMG and mckenzie but to small CA firms conducting good audit standards.
As i said it varies, from what i heard if u have a BPO company with some reputed customer, ur audits shud be done by more reputed people.

Pay roll
----------
Our company never went into these systems and therefore i do not know much about this.
From what i perceived, there are a number of outsourcing firms ready to support u in the initial days,
But if you have a good accounting system in place and a person to oversee this, there is no reason why u urself shud not do it. This will probably result in increased savings as the outsourcing firms for payroll will start charging more as the company grows.

Investments
------------------
Another dark territory for us
From the articles of memorandum, the company can invest in anything which it likes to do Land, buildings(real estate) and any dealings which help the company
I think for the company to venture full time into market investments, one other license is needed. Most small companies do not do venture into this market investment
Big companies have an arm which does their financial investments in stocks and bonds.
Since u are gonna run it by urself for some time, personal experiences will always help u and rotate the amount.
A good knowledge of balance sheets and looking at them is necessary. There are items like PBT nd government prescribed rates of depreciation of computers, buildings which will help u save ur tax.


Valuation
--------------

As i said, valuation of the company depends on a good 3-4 tech team and a good marketing presence. I have repeated this always but noting it down
1) More areas into, more the value (ie the customer profile banking, insurance)
2) More countries more value
3) More projects more value (obvious)
4) More products with good marketing reach, more value
ie above depends on whether u are services company or not.
Once u become a brand, the brand also carries value. (usually a long way to go)
Market
---------
Definitely if the market is in other countries like Us and uk,it will carry more value. i need not say anything in this area as everyone is aware of what the big companies do
There is nothing wrong in taking up indian marketing if you are too short of cash. I was a little weak in the local marketing and did see promising signs but never clinched a deal despite repeated followups. Morover everything was about free deployments. It may be possible to do marketing in india also with a good local team.As karungu said logically being closer to the market wud help u.
But if u have sufficient money power and are really confident about it, u can break the rule. May be if we had done it later, few of our friends cud have pitched into the us marketing and wud have been in a position to help.
I believe roughly to market the product, 10 times more money than what went into developing shud be poured in (if u are a startup) . Money to market always helps

Thursday, November 09, 2006

mistakes one should avoid

One of the best articles on how to proceed with a startup
Catches all that can be wrong with the setup -- A must read

http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

The saint and the entrepreneur

The saint and the entrepreneur
-----------------------------------------

1) Prelude
2) Definition of an entrepreneur
3) Evaluating your resource
4) Hey? What is my team doing?
5) The importance of Communication
6) Get a good mentor…..
7) The personal and the family issues
8) Where is the capital and where is my investor?
9) How stingy I have to be
10) The saint entrepreneur

This book has been written to address the plight of young entrepreneurs who want to start up a company but do not know how to go about it. Here are the frequent questions which bother a potential entrepreneur.

I have an idea. Other than that I am clueless about opening up a company. So what do i do? Where do I go from here? What kind of team should I build up to take the company on the right path? How do I ensure that my chances of success are high.

The initial period is spent in searching the answers to the above questions. In order to answer these questions, it is critical to know the expectation of a would-be entrepreneur.

For most of them it is doing the below when they start their company:-
Creating a multi million dollar company with a global presence

They have very little capital but make up for the lack of capital with their enthusiasm and courage. They are not afraid to believe in their ideas and execute them. The only hindrance and the stumbling block is how to begin the journey.

So what kind of an approach would pay the maximum dividends and would benefit these people?

As such there is no hard and fast rule as to how a company can succeed. Hearing how others have gone on with their company is always a beneficial experience but circumstances and variables change and what clicked for one company may not click for another one.

I personally have observed that many entrepreneurs do not chronicle the initial stages of their company. By the time they write their books and recount their success stories, difficulties experienced in the later stages of the company dwarf out the original startup problems faced by them. As a result, their accounts tend to focus on second stage problems and many a times do not focus on the crucial starting stages which may make or break the company.

Here is a different take. This book has been written while I continued to search different ways to run the company. Infact this book tries to address some crucial issues such as the lack of capital and how they play an important role in deciding the company’s success.

In addition to this, the level of preparedness needed to go ahead is also discussed. And last but not the least, what constitutes a resource and do you have enough resources to get the company done? Where do you look out for advice?

The purpose of the book is to make people lean towards entrepreneurship and help them start at a young age so that the enterprises they form will be bigger and stronger.
Everything has an advantage if you start early. I believe that the best time to start a company is in college when you can inspire other people by leadership and have little to lose.

When you do the company at a young age, many people are willing to help you. You are also free of the ego and the arrogance and the feeling of awe that take you down once you join a big company (not necessarily true.) At a young age, you are flexible, modest and are willing to ask people for their help. In addition you are relatively burden free and can afford to take the risk. Moreover you have the necessary technical guidance, manpower to leverage on, plenty of free time to research your idea and the guts to take on the world.

The above attitude entirely depends on the outlook of the person. There is no doubt that working in an industry will give you the much needed experience and confidence but if you ensure that the approach to the task at hand is balanced and treaded with caution and meticulous research, you can nevertheless succeed at a young age.

In the entire book, I have followed a rudimentary question and answer approach. I have followed this approach because running a company is mainly finding answers to questions which hinder the development of the company.

Chapter 1 – Definition of an entrepreneur
--------------------------------------------------

Everything has a beginning. And there is no exception to this rule. A company also has its beginning in the minds of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur initiates the beginning of a long journey where many critical decisions are made and executed.

How would you define an entrepreneur?

Hmmmmm….

If you have read the above sentence, you will probably comment –

“I know who an entrepreneur is. He is the insane guy who never loses hope and continues to stick to an idea even if it does not make any sense.”

The above view is not exactly false. The success of a company is determined by how steadfast the entrepreneur is and the risk taking ability which he has. He has an unflinching faith and devotion to the idea and charts a well defined path for the company.
An entrepreneur with a vision finally manages to fast track the company on to a rapid growth path which eventually leads to success. An entrepreneur is not only a leader but also identifies other leaders

Though the role played by an entrepreneur is significant, the entrepreneur alone is not responsible for the success of the company. There are also other factors that play a crucial role in the success of the company.

Team is one of the most critical aspects next to the entrepreneur himself and the entrepreneur also plays a crucial role in the team building process. The entrepreneur manages to build such a strong team– be it on the strength of the idea or his own strength.

Peter Drucker -“A company is what one man cannot do”. I remember a friend of mine also used to quote this.

It is unrealistic if you solely expect the entrepreneur to do the job. A good supporting cast (which is what a solid team means) equally plays a vital role. In a core team, all the people should have the characteristics of a good entrepreneur and have the capacity to assume leadership roles.

Moreover this is true if team is young. Each of them has to make up for the experience which they lack and provide a combined focus. A combined group of leaders can weather the storm together.

From the word go, the team should believe that the job will be accomplished. And if the team really believes that the idea will succeed, they wont hesitate to take minor decisions like quitting their job. Such should be the belief of the team.

If you think – Come on. What I am gonna do without the evenings at the golf club? What about a new cell phone every month? I am gonna lose 500 dollars every month???

Hey man. Cut it out -You are speaking about your belief in a million dollar idea. Losing 10,000 dollars should not bother you.

Most of them who would make good entrepreneurs never take to entrepreneurship because they are attached to their smug and comfortable life. The rest of them are in so much awe of their existing company that they never believe that a similar organization on a smaller scale can be created.

An entrepreneur need not be an expert in an area to know that a venture will click. Rather it is the belief in the venture and the background work that counts. There are many potential entrepreneurs who never take up the path of entrepreneurship because of the belief that they do not have a concrete idea in their respective field.

This is partly due to the fact that people are trained to believe that they can do only what they have learnt. Many of them fail to realize that entrepreneurship if actively pursued can lead to success. It is true in order to overcome the drawbacks of starting in an unknown field, the necessary research has to be done. But this should not be a hiccup from preventing a sincere entrepreneur from following his dreams.

Even if we look at how many startup companies have expanded operation, we can find that they adapt to different situations and remain afloat. By the time the company is 1-2 years old, the vision of the entrepreneur changes according to the market tune and the company plays a completely different ball game (But this is not suggested. Stick to your original plan. The above is an example of how the entrepreneur is able to adapt). Infact if a person is narrow minded, he runs the risk of never freezing on an idea at all. And some people tend to specialize in fields where intense hardware capital is required to start a company. It is not that these people will be able to start a company. But they should keep an eye open and also be on the look out for opportunities which they are familiar with.

Let us track down what an entrepreneur finally brings to the table not only to the company but to the country.

What is the difference between a developed nation and a developing nation? Economists offer different explanations for the above - the country should be self sustaining, the per capita income should be above a certain level , the unemployment level should be low and various other factors…

Hmm… Accepted. But can’t we simply narrow it down to two or three causes???

A reduction of the above problem would reveal that a country being developed or undeveloped is simply the money which it has its disposal. If the country has a good capital inflow, it is doing great and is taking rapid strides towards becoming a developed country. But who are responsible for the capital inflow and cash flow????????

Entrepreneurs account for a significant portion of the cash flow.
These people form the backbone of a country and attract investments and capital. They rotate money, employ resources, import and export goods and services, upgrade their infrastructure and do many more things.

As I am writing this book, India and China are witnessing the same phenomena. The pool of entrepreneurs in these countries have grown and are experiencing increased investments and inflow of money. (I intend to carry on with this view and try to cover more countries as I keep on writing the book)

(Note there also other factors- But we are simply trying to narrow it down and see how much part an entrepreneur plays in the above equation – a biased view but nevertheless a major contributing factor)

Wow – The definition holds for developing countries. But what about developed countries?

It is no less different for developed countries. Infact most of the entrepreneurs operate out of US and Japan. The number of established businesses in US and Japan are directly a result of the efforts of past entrepreneurs. The developed nations have been there for such a long time that the number of established businesses in these country is very high.

It maybe that for a developed country, the contribution of a single entrepreneur may be negligible as it already has a number of established businesses but for a developing country, entrepreneurship is one of the main driving forces of the economy.

The above clearly shows that entrepreneurs are responsible for the flow of money. They are responsible for increased employment and increased revenues for governments in the form of taxes. In addition to this entrepreneurs feel obliged to give back something to the society when they are successful.


Entrepreneurship is an act which is practiced not only for personal and monetary gains. In developing countries, it is the satisfaction of seeing you create jobs, adding value to
lives of people, training and educating them, meeting and fulfilling social obligations, indirectly supporting charity acts that keeps you going. Power, money and fame are only corollaries that are an added incentive. But ultimately it is the impact on other people and their lives and how you have helped them that finally gives you the supreme satisfaction.

As to the question – Am I ready to become an entrepreneur? You have to ask yourself whether you have done the below
1) Have you been proactive and expanded your contacts circle outside your company
2) Consistenly in touch with a prospective team who may be able to help you out

The roots of entrepreneurship start with being proactive. You should be active in pursuing your contacts and not be in awe of your immediate boss. Experience does not help you in becoming a successful entrepreneur (this book is supposed to promote young entrepreneurs – that is why we are highlighting what a young person misses) – being proactive and dynamic does.

When do you know that the time has come to begin business.???

The answer is when you know that you can manage the two transitions below

1) I can manage myself and take on the world
2) I can take care of the guys who are going to depend on me.

The first is the easiest decision an entrepreneur can make. The second is the critical aspect and if you chose a flexible team, you will buy the necessary time to grow and ultimately take care of it.

There are many things to concentrate on while doing the company – market research, technical, general management, operations, marketing and sales. If you have a good team, you can worry less about team management and concentrate on other activities.

For an entrepreneur, there can no other better beginning than a combined team working selflessly towards the growth of the company.

An entrepreneur is one who manages all that – technical, managerial and the marketing part.


Chapter -2---Evaluating your resource.
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Team building is an important step in building up your company. As in my case, sometimes you would have so much faith in the company that you would be the first one to hang out your neck and take the risk. You would feel that you can inspire your team to take the leap later on.

This is potentially a dangerous way of doing the company. It simply means that you don’t have a solid team. Ultimately it ends up is a situation where you are not completely in synch with the person. A person who is out of the company will never truly realize the challenges which the company is facing. His mind will be bent somewhere else and the decision making ability will be limited. His focus is elsewhere and he is just a help to the company. The same applies for the entrepreneur. A team which is not fully formed is the first worry of the entrepreneur and half of his time is spent in trying to get the people in groove.

Funda one

“Get your team ready so that you don’t have to worry about who is in and who is out when you do your company. There are other things to worry about when you are doing the company”

Analyse these aspects in the partner you are looking for

1) Why do you believe that your partner will be a valuable asset
2) Is he proactive when you are not there?
3) What is his ability to inspire others in your absence
4) Does he have the courage to say – I can take a lion by its tail…
5) You can judge his passion for the idea by the way in which he speaks about the idea and tries to convince other people to take up to the idea.
6) Does he know what a stake means and understand the notion of capital??

Grade the answers to the above question:-
If you are not getting any consistent replies for the above, then you probably do not have a solid partner. Part time people never understand the root causes of the problem and hence do not contribute to solving problems at all.

It is better to start a company with all the possible resources operating on a full time note.
When everyone takes a risk – It is a do or die situation. And people tend to do the maximum when such a situation exists

I am not saying that a part time member is not dedicated towards the idea. But that he may not be able to play a vital part in the growth of the company. Maximum productivity may be limited due to the heavy demand placed on their shoulder to meet dual needs.

A good idea would be to have 3-4 full time people in and others as part time people. In this way you are maximizing resources working on a project.

An young entrepreneur knows what he wants to achieve and is ready to sacrifice his short time income for the company. But the trouble brews when he has to manage other people in the company. It takes a little time for the income to come in and the first step which he takes towards managing other’s paycheck is the critical part. It generally helps if the team waits patiently for a single year for the income to come and the expenses to stabilize.
Most of the quantum leap in growth is made in the initial 5 years of a company and as much money invested and saved will yield high dividends.


As far as our company was concerned, we were a bunch of people who had done our BE and on the lookout for an opportunity which will change our lives forever. Inshort the average day to day techies who believe that they can be the seed of a great idea. As everyone would know by now, technical people tend to fail because they tend to lose focus on critical issues such as management and are generally weak in contacts – both of which are needed for a strong company.

Technical people tend to be shortsighted. And especially if a company is being formed by technical guys, most of them are concerned with the product features or the offering they have. As the person who is heading the company, it is the entrepreneur’s responsibility to find likeminded and similar guys and focus them on the right path. Nowadays it has become a trend for entrepreneurs to expect windfall profits the minute they start a company.

The core team is also not willing to participate unless they continue to draw the existing salary. Infact if you analyze closely you will find that most of the people who draw a specified salary spend only a fraction of the amount they earn and expect more from the company. The rest is only to meet the comfort level which they are used to.

Everyone will be starting companies if they are able to do the above and there would be no reason for anyone to work if there is no risk in entrepreneurship.

The core members of the team should not be born out of brainwashing. When you are crippled, they must be able to act and deliver. Each one should have the capacity to say –

Hey guys. I can manage it. I can hire the people to get the company done.

The main reason why many youngsters fail is they don’t have the above attitude. The above reason explains why managerial people with experience succeed. Their long years at the office have given them the wisdom to deal with situations. If you have the right guy who understands these finer aspects and can deal with the above, you can go ahead with the idea. I see no reason why a technical person who pays attention to the fundamentals of management should be unable to succeed.

As long as you make since efforts to accumulate the skills which a management guy has, it should not be a problem. A management degree will surely help but should not come in the way.

The roles of a team members in a startup can sometimes be blurred. People in their enthusiasm tend to get involved in marketing and contacts and areas outside their expertise. This is a good time. But at the same time to ensure that each team member is productive, it would be better to establish ownership areas.

Everyone knows that in order to run a successful company, you need the capital and the contacts

At the same time, everyone does not have the capital or the background to make it successful but still nurture the ambition to start up a company.


Chapter 3-Hey man.. What is my team doing

You have started the company. You have don’e the groundwork on the product offering and the service of the product and are making progress. Down the road you are looking at clients and revenues. But your expectations become more and more high and you are becoming ambitious and eager to execute more plans.

To beat the competition, you have to stay ahead. To ensure this, you have to make sure that your team comes up with innovative ideas and also that new features and offerings are completed. Frequent appraisals and feedback loops will ensure comfort level for a startup environment.

To evaluate your team, it is necessary that you frequently hold meetings and share opinions. Be prepared to do a critical analysis. Make it clear to the team members that they are doing a good job and take steps to motivate and appreciate them.

But at the same time, there is nothing like a critical analysis which can help the team to improve the quality of the offering.



Communication

Communication plays an important role in the growth of a company. Communication in a startup assumes two shapes

1) Internal communication – Communication within the company
2) External communication – Communication with prospective clients, customers and partners


Let us analyse these two in detail

Internal communication

Internal communication plays an important role in the growth of the company. You do not know when you will get a breakthrough contact. It is imperative that the entire core team is constantly in touch with one another and accessible at a short notice to inform each other about latest developments.

You do not know when you may have to solve a critical bug or showcase the product in a new limelight to a prospective customer. You always need a team which can work on the above aspects. Also the contact which may bring a breakthrough is often achieved if you constantly meet people and emphasise the team strength.

What people doubt in a young entrepreneur is the ability to lead and deliver on the promise? So it makes sense to showcase your full strength


External communication

If you have an internal communication system in place, you will be able to address the needs of external customers and partners.

A startup company usually does not have the resources to afford a dedicated team towards marketing. Many of them pay little attention to building up a strong marketing and sales team. This is a critical blunder which may adversely affect the company.

Make sure that there is an effective communicator who acts as a liaison between the company and its clients. The more effective the liaison, the more effective the company will be in marketing and sales.

Looking back, I believe that if a tech company shows as much interest in building up a strong marketing and sales team as they did in building the tech team, the success ratio will improve dramatically.

forming a company

1)Decide upon an idea
2)Do the market research (if you cannot spend too much money on it, do extensive research on the net day and night- Most of the research firms rely on net to evaluate ideas)
3)Assemble a team
4)Evaluate resources
5)Write the Buiness plan. Share it with team members and constantly refine it
6)Register the company
7)Get everyone full time and start working
8)Assign ownership of modules and activities
9)Start working on the product/service
10)Parallely pitch the product/offering idea and business plan to potential investors
11)Get a good mentor, Follow his advice
12)If you have plenty of resources and can really manage, do service based projects (but it may lead to losing of focus. Beware of this trap)
13) Product marketing is an area by itself and it has got a number of steps
14) Target the Buyer persona thru direct marketing, cold calls

ideas

Market

Integrating free quotes from real time data sources and convert them into metastock compatible format.


Technical
Replacing SNMP with XML based tags to configure and manage products. Have a lots to research


Wireless

Location and detecting wireless devices based on Radio Frequency parameters.
Find out the sphere of influence and charting for deployments

Aptitude

Currently Indian companies keep aptitude test to select employees.
Create a common aptitude test which will be testing people and can be used for subsequent

Search
Always a favourite of mine and the idea of my first company with advertisement support