Manage your Time Well

As an entrepreneur, one resource which is scarce and of extreme importance is Time. Since an entrepreneur has to think of every aspect of the business, it becomes imperative to prioritize things.

During a working day, there are a host of small, tedious things which seem to be urgent and demand your time. A lot of the time we see entrepreneurs who get so involved in the day to day operations, they forget to focus on the bigger picture. Things such as assessment of the progress made, planning for the future, team building etc. are very crucial for the growth of the company and adequate time has to be given regularly to them. 

The Intangible Benefits of Entrepreneurship

There are many reasons to be an entrepreneur. Owning a business can be joyful or a pain in the you-know-what. Chances are you’ll experience both ends of the spectrum at times. It’s not easy to grow a business, and in frustration, entrepreneurs decide to quit.

Freedom

Freedom is the one thing each of us wants and needs. Freedom comes in many forms and can be the difference between truly living life or simply existing. Entrepreneurship provides many ways to be free. You get to set your schedule and spend your time each day on the things that are important to you.

Impact

You started a business to make a living, but what you do in that business helps people and changes their lives. The impact of a business lives beyond the entrepreneur who started the business. Look at a company like Apple and it’s founder, Steve Jobs, as an example.

Take some time to enjoy the freedom you have and the impact you’re making in people’s lives. Enjoy the little moments in the journey to build your business and live each day fully present. You’re creating a legacy that will extend beyond your lifetime. That should make you smile.

(taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249852)

'Eat your own Dog Food'

This phrase implies that a company uses its own product or service in it's operations. If I claim that our product is good and adds value to the customer and if my company or any part of it falls into my target market, I should be my own customer.

Using your own product helps in identifying the benefits and shortcomings of the product. As a customer, we can know exactly where the product pleases me and where it needs improvement.

Also if I do not accept my own product, why will the rest accept it? This is one situation I had faced when I was working in the Business Development of Meenakshi Public School, a CBSE School based in Gurgaon. We had identified a particular target market based on income, location and background and nearly all our own teachers fell in it. We felt that we are providing a very relevant offering to our target market. However, on analyzing, we realized that hardly any of our teachers were admitting their children into our own School. On analyzing further, we realized that the teachers felt that there is a lot lacking in the offering and we needed to improve in a lot of areas. This kind of feedback was great for us since it was internal and hence comprehensive, and also since it was very relevant coming directly from our target customers.

To sum it up, if your company or any of it's team members can be your own potential customer, it becomes very important to become one or analyse why you are not becoming one.

'Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever.' ... Mahatma Gandhi

On Martyr's Day, I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi, a man who through his focus and immense dedication was able to achieve the most difficult of goals. I take great inspiration from one of his quotes in which he mentions the importance of being positive and making learning an ongoing process. He believed that we should live in the present and not leave anything for tomorrow. He also states that learning should be continuous and one's learning curve should always be on the rise. 

'We rise by lifting others' ... Robert Ingersoll

I love this quote and feel it's very relevant to all of us. Gone are the days when a business was about individuals and their skills and personality. Today business is about teams and teamwork, and not about individuals. Certain individuals will always perform better than the others within teams, but only a good team as a whole can take a project towards completion/success.

The Art of Pitching!

Just having a detailed operational plan is not enough to impress investors, pitching it right plays an important role. Some pointers should be kept in mind while pitching.

Know your purpose – Don’t bore your audience with excessive details. Use your pitch to generate interest.

Concentrate on the essentials –  Keeping it short doesn’t mean you skip the important stuff. Highlight on your strengths and core focus areas. Do not spend too much time on talking about the market and consumers, instead focus on how your startup will solve a particular problem or demand and with what products or services.

Explain the plan – Tell them your plan, tell them where they and their money will be going and how it will come back to them.

Introduce your team – It is important that people see your start-up as a well-rounded team, rather than a smattering of disconnected talent. Showcase your people as a team of like-minded individuals sharing the same vision.

Be yourself – Be your authentic, 100% real, no-bullshit self. A startup usually grows from an innovative idea and the audience would love to see that it comes from an original source.

Believe it or not, take care of these points and, you will surely impress your investors!

(taken from eazyhire.in)

Competition is Good!

This may sound adsurd but believe me, entering a competitive market can be good.

A competitive market implies that a market exists and this fact already been proven by the players which exist before you. A competitive market must also imply that the market size is big as a lot of players exist in it. The biggest businesses cater to the biggest and most competitive markets. Also competition will always keep you on your toes, thereby making your startup lean and efficient.

If you look at the biggest internet space in India at the moment, it has to be the horizontal e-commerce space. Despite having the bigger players like Flipkart, Amazon & Snapdeal, you are still seeing a plethora of new startups entering the space (like Paytm, Shopclues etc.) and are scaling fast. This is because the market is big enough and growing at a rapid pace. The key to succeeding in such a market is by offering a superior experience and creating a distinctive differentiation for your brand.

Saala Khadoos

Just saw the movie today. It’s about an ex-boxer (R.Madhavan) finding a young girl (Ritika Singh) who used to sell fishes to earn a living. He saw boxing talent in her and trained and backed her, eventually resulting in her winning the World Championship in Boxing. Some may think that this sounds next to impossible. However looking at the plot of the movie, I feel that her winning the championship was an inevitable outcome.

Clear & inherent skill set: Ritika was shown as a fish seller who had a short temper and used to often get into fights. In one such fight, she was seen by Madhavan, who immediately realized how skilled she was and had immense potential if trained well.

Combination of passion & hardwork: Once Madhavan was able to convince Ritika about making a career in boxing, Ritika showed immense passion in pursuing the same. She was extremely energetic and could train under her coach for long periods.

Amazing mentor: Madhavan was shown to have the requisite skill (as he had nearly won the championship himself some years back) and the passion to drive Ritika. He held her hand through all her ups and downs and followed his belief that she could become a great boxer.

Distancing emotions from work: When Ritika was shown to fall in love with Madhavan which deviated her from her career, Madhavan kept pushing her towards her boxing. She faced a lot of problems at this time. Eventually when she realized the value of her career, she was able to put in immense hard work which led her to winning the championship.

I really liked the movie, though I felt that a little more about the hard work put in by Ritika and how she won her matches could be shown. It’s an inspiring movie which teaches us the importance of passion, hard work and grit to succeed in life.

First Time Founders - can they succeed?

A question a lot of budding entrepreneurs think when they start out. During my first attempt at starting up, I used to feel that I am young and have no experience in building a business. Will I be able to succeed competing against people with previous startup experience?

I feel that starting up the first time has it's disadvantages but also has a host of advantages. An untested entrepreneur will have no baggage, i.e. he will not have any bad experiences to be careful about and will not tend to over analyse things. He would be energetic about his/her idea and will keep on experimenting. His lack of experience may lead to him/her wasting some time and resources on some experiments, but overall having no previous baggage will ensure he keeps on pushing hard at all things he feels will deliver. Entrepreneurship is a lot about gut feeling as well, and a first time founder can use this better than an experienced one.

Quoting an article based on a survey by Shasta Ventures, they found that

'Surprisingly, it is most often untested founders, rather than experienced entrepreneurs, who are at the helm of large, fast growing companies. Three-out-of-four of the companies in our survey, of how billion dollar companies look like at the Series A, were built and run by people who were doing it for the first time.'

A Good & Novel Business Idea is Easily 'Rejectable'

One quality of a lot of business ideas which have scaled successfully is that they have been rejected many a time. Since some of these ideas have virtually created new Industries, many critics and investors have dismissed the ideas in the initial stages.

One such example is that of Airbnb. Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky has discussed this openly:

'When we came to the Valley, no one even wanted to invest in Airbnb. One of the reasons was they thought the idea was crazy. People thought I’d never stay in a stranger’s home. That’s creepy.'

A lot of such novel ideas seem very vague and unrealistic when they are born. The success of such ideas comes about primarily due to the value they are able to create and hence the loyalty they are able to build amongst the users.

How to be an Entrepreneur???

I cam across these lines in www.entrepreneur.com which fascinated me and made me realise that this is all it entails.

"If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, don’t start out wanting to be one. Start out with a customer problem and a product that solves it. Get capital. Make the product, market it, win customers. Someday you’ll wake up and realize what you’ve become: a guy who took a risk, started a business, and made money. An entrepreneur."

Hiring Challenges a Startup May Face...

A startup is as good as it's team driving the idea. Getting the right people on board is very critical and often tends to get very challenging for entrepreneurs.

Some of the typical mistakes startups make are highlighted below:

Pick the right team – Founders often have little to no experience in building a competent team of employees. The key is to pick a combination of talent, experience and innovation. Team leaders are just as important as programmers or rebel innovators.

Network – That’s the byword today. Don’t be bound by traditional channels of hiring. Look among family, friends, old classmates and past colleagues. Spread the word on social media. Be open to referrals as much as to unsolicited walk-ins.

Manage your weakness – Bolster up weak areas. Bring some stability to your development team by hiring somebody with experience, or throw the caution to wind by hiring some young blood for their bizarre ideas and joie de vivre.

Lack of expertise – In a startup, the founders’ plates are overflowing with a bevy of tasks. Furthermore, it is not necessary that they are an expert at everything. A founder may be good at many tasks, but not necessarily hiring, which may lead to bad hires.

(taken from www.eazyhire.in)

Customer is King!

We don’t realize that our business is structured around 1 stakeholder, i.e. the Customer. And if it isn’t, it’s should be. The customer determines how a business is structured and how it operates.

Marketing: Our entire marketing effort is based on our customer’s behavior. Looking at our customer’s activites, we should analyse what channels will give us maximum visibility and should use the requisite tools to maximum sales. For example in Beveragewala, we knew that one large set of customers would be health conscious people. So we tried to brand ourselves in health blogs and sent our promotional material through affiliates operating in the healthcare space.

Operations: Our operations and supply chain systems should accommodate our customers’ needs. In Beveragewala, we got feedback that our deliveries were quite late in general. Based on that, we started using a faster delivery service (though it costed us more) to satisfy the wants of our customers.

Business Model: Bitequest was a restaurant reservation portal and we were targeting a premium clientele for it. Hence our business and revenue models were structured accordingly.

Hence, we must realize that our business is should be structured keeping our target customer as the centre. This will help create loyalty towards our business and will make the sustainable in the long term.

The Power of Customer Testimonials

In this era of high competition and crowded markets, a business needs something which is credible and make it stand apart. In a particular space, we see that most businesses try to grab a piece of the pie with the same messages and having similar offerings. From a customer's point of view, it becomes very difficult to decide which company to do business with.

Building credibility with customers is how open leads get closed. Companies write detailed descriptions about themselves and their offerings to woo customers. However, the modern day customer knows that these stories may not all be true and there always remains a doubt. Here customer testimonials can help a business stand apart.

Customer testimonials are tools which create trust because
- they are written by customers and not by the company itself. Authentication of testimonials is key here.
- an unbiased review by a genuine customer can help build a lot of trust.

The Demise of Kodak

Kodak was an old company (founded in 1888!) and everyone in America and their grandparents knew that Kodak was synonymous with taking pictures. They used their powerful brand penetration and goodwill to thrive in adjacent markets, like VHS tapes. They even created Figment, their own Disney character, for Epcot.

Then digital cameras became affordable. Film sales dropped in 2001. Kodak unwisely attributed this to the September 11 attacks. By 2005, the increasingly obvious death of film had forced them to beef up their digital units, and they ranked first in US digital camera sales. In theory, Kodak had figured out the digital camera market.

But unlike intricate film cameras, which can only be manufactured by companies with large amounts of capital and require years of R&D to perfect, digital cameras were easy and cheap to produce.

In two years, increased competition made Kodak number four in the US. That same year the iPhone was introduced.

By 2010, they ranked seventh place, with traditional cameras losing market share to smart phones.

Kodak struggled to turn a profit. They tried making inkjet printers, laid off thousands of workers, and used patent litigation as a source of revenue. Before they filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak was so desperate for cash that they considered auctioning off their decades worth of patents.

(story taken from www.devicemagic.com)

Lessons Learnt from the Kodak Story:

- Always watch for the next big thing and be flexible to make changes. Being late movers and rigid leads to your company falling behind competition. As they say, ‘Adapt or Perish’.

- Always stick to your core offering. Kodak tried to reinvent itself when they felt they were lagging behind. Had to stuck to simple and easy to use cameras, they would not have fared the way they did.

'What gets measured gets improved'... Peter Drucker

This reiterates the importance of not just doing things, but also measuring them along the way. If something is not measured or assessed, it cannot be improved. Without improvement, you fall behind and eventually succumb.

Your first customer

The feeling this first customer brings to you is priceless. You know you are in business and the ball starts rolling for you.

Business works on Relationships!

A startup should always keep this is mind. Making a new customer is much more difficult and costs much more than retaining an existing one. Hiring a new employee costs much more than retaining an existing one. Business is all about creating and then maintaining these relationships. In startups, we often to tend to concentrate on 'acquisitions'. Acquisitions create growth. However, 'retention' is a more important formula for a business to sustain.

- Customer Relationships: At Beveragewala, in our initial days, we were only looking to acquire new customers and were totally focused on that. As we matured, we realised that repeat customers were nearly 70% of our monthly revenue month on month. We realised that besides having a budget for acquiring new customers, we must ensure that our existing ones are happy with our service and started focusing on how we could improve their experience and strengthen our relationships. We started taking constant feedback from them and acted upon it. We saw a steep growth in our sales, despite virtually no marketing budget. Our existing customers had started using our portal more frequently and also we saw organic growth in our customer base, i.e. the number of customers were growing with no marketing effort. 

- Team Building: I cannot stop emphasizing how important this is. Building a good team is one of the most difficult challenges an entrepreneur faces in this competitive environment. Finding a new team member is an expensive and highly cumbersome task. Hence, it becomes imperative for an entrepreneur to build a strong culture and bond to ensure a motivated and long-lasting team.

We should always focus on building relationships to create a sustainable organization. This also includes strong relationships with all other stakeholders which a business may have like vendors, suppliers, lawyers, auditors, media agencies etc. The rule should as far as relationships should be 'Create, Build & Strengthen'.

Naming your Startup

As trivial as it may sound, naming a startup is a big factor in building a business. Owing to the enormous number of startups we see today, a good name helps the business in creating a space for itself in the customer's mind.

A good name entails the following
- It should be short, simple and easy to remember.
- It should be relevant and should ideally suggest to the customer what the business is about.
- It should be easy to spell as difficult names tend to affect discoverability of the startup. One example for this is Quikr, a classifieds portal. For a new user, the spelling tends to make it harder to find.
- It should create a connect with users, usually by having an emotional or witty tone to it.

India's Most Celebrated Entrepreneur!

India too has its share of rags to riches heroes. And Dhirubhai Ambani is one of the best known among them. This founder of Reliance Industries was one of the three sons of Hirachandbhai, a school teacher, and Jamanaben. He also had two sisters. An anecdote from his childhood is that he once bought a tin of groundnut oil on credit from a local wholesaler and sold the oil in retail on the roadside. He earned a few rupees as profit from this transaction. Apparently, during weekends when his school was closed, he used to set up bhajia stalls at village fairs to make ends meet at home.

According to R-ADAG, when he was 17, he went to Aden (now Yemen) in search of opportunity, and worked as a dispatch clerk for A. Besse. That was in 1949. A couple of years later, the company became a distributor for Shell products and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company’s oil-filling station at the port of Aden. It was here that he dreamed of setting up and owning a refinery, which he later realized with his petrochemicals venture. After returning to India, he started his first textile mill in Ahmednagar. Though his businesses were a huge success, there were also issues regarding Ambani’s control over stock exchange. His detractors accused him of illegal or unethical transactions and acts but an investigation by the RBI did not find any evidence of it. By 2007, the combined fortune of the Ambani family stood at $60 billion, making Ambani’s the second richest family in the world.

(taken from yourstory.com)

'Work until expensive becomes cheap'

I love this one. I really think this is how an Industry/Space evolves.

When a new product/service is developed, a new space is born. The first companies to develop this focus on the basic product and what problems it is solving. The entire focus is on ensuring the product works well and is able to solve the problem it addresses. Slowly once this is achieved, features get added to the  product to enhance the experience of the user. Once the product is complete and the desired experience of the user is achieved, the focus shifts from the product features and experience to its cost. An expensive product can only be used by few. Now the focus shifts to reduce the cost of the product to ensure a wider acceptance of the same.

Hence, what this quote means, according to me, is that there is always opportunity to startup until the product finally becomes complete and cheap.

Business & Society Need to Grow Hand in Hand

As an entrepreneur, we need to realise and understand the importance of not only earning profit, but also contributing to society in whichever way we can.

When we run our ventures, we tend to take a lot from society. The air we breathe, the infrastructure we use, the society we have grown in, the experiences we have taken from our surroundings and so on. Since we are earning money and also using such services, it is our responsibility to give back to society. Just like in a house, a lot of tangible and intangible inputs go into raising a child. When the child starts earning, it becomes his/her responsibility to take care of not just himself/herself, but also to upkeep the house and take care of everyone inside.
Also if businesses start looking at this as a marketing tool as well, CSR should definitely be part of a company's growth plan. At Beveragewala, we had tied up with an NGO serving unpriviledged children, and we used to contribute 1% of our monthly revenue towards this cause.

If you look at what has happened in a lot of developing countries like India, we have been growing fast without really caring about society. Because of this, now we are facing a host of issues like extremely high pollution levels, big traffic jams, corruption etc. which are hampering business in a drastic way. Hence, for business to be sustainable, we need to assess societal factors as well and ensure business growth is complemented by social growth as well.

“You have to act and act now.” – Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

Larry Ellison was born in New York City to an unwed Jewish mother. His father was an Italian American US Air Force pilot. According to Wikipedia, Ellison contracted pneumonia when he was  nine months old and his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. His adoptive mother was warm and loving, while his adoptive father was unsupportive and distant.

He was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year without taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. Later, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to northern California.

In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000. In 1982, the company became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship product, the Oracle database. Currently, Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes List of Billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world. Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion.

(taken from yourstory.com)

Similarities between Startups & Poker

Suprisingly, running a startup and playing poker has a lot of similarities.

- Both involve taking risks. If you feel you have a good chance and you do not capitalize on it, you 

cannot sustain in either.

- Both have uncertain results. No matter how strong you feel you are, you have uncertain outcomes in either.

Some poker strategies apply to startups very well. These include

- Calculating the odds: Like we calculate odds in Poker as to what are the chances of me winning and what is potential winnings from the hand, we do the same in startups as well. While starting up, we see how we are placed with the competition. Also we assess the target market to see how big it is and whether it makes sense to enter.

- Avoid getting emotional about your hand: Like in poker, we should not get emotional about our startup and should always look at it from an unbiased view. Also at times in Poker, we tend to keep putting in more money even if we start realizing that our hand may not be the winning. This may be due to the money we have already invested. This is a big mistake we commit in startups as well. We should always keep assessing where we stand and should fold/close down the moment we see ourselves falling behind.

- Keep Learning: In Poker, we keep learning and analyzing our competition. The same should be done in startups as well.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." -- Vince Lombardi

Excellence is just one step behind perfection. When we try for perfection and we try hard enough, we can hope to reach excellence. Excellence ensures business growth and creates a barrier for others to enter.

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping is one of the best things a young startup can do. Bootstrapping means self funding your business, without external investment. Putting in your own money has a lot of advantages.

- Focus on Revenue: Since you do not have a lot of money to burn, you tend to be more focused on building a solid revenue model to be able to bootstrap further. On investor money, we have seen a plethora of startups throwing money at acquiring visitors and customers, without having a concrete revenue plan to monetize them.

- Flexibility: Since there is no investor overseeing you, an entrepreneur can experiment and innovate faster, without having to answer anyone.

- Builds Conservative Behavior: All expenses will be carefully planned and examined due to the shortage of money, thereby ensuring that money gets used optimally in the longer term.

- Saves a Lot of Time: Fundraising is a long and time-consuming process. With bootstrapping, you can focus and spend your time on developing your business rather than in finding and presenting to investors.

- Saves you Equity: The faster you raise money, the more equity you let go. The more you can bootstrap and grow the business, the less equity you will have to offload for the same amount of money (since the business traction is at a higher level and risks are hence lower).

Stress brings out the best in Entrepreneurs

In a startup, you will encounter stress and anxiety from time to time. As an entrepreneur, you should get bogged down by it. Instead, every stressful situation has a lot of learning hidden in it. It is the responsibility of the entrepreneur to learn from the situation and keep moving. As the stakes get higher, stress levels tend to shoot up and the true entrepreneur raises the bar and manages to rise above the situation.

The best way to counter stress at work is to think logically and practically at all times. Getting emotions in such situations can lead to rash decisions and eventual burnout. Be emotional about your startup, not in it's working.

The Flipkart Story!

A quick look into any success story shows a path breaking idea at the heart of the tale. Flipkart is no exception. It is not the idea itself but the conviction to convert ideas into action and action into results is what defines a true success story. Measured by that yardstick, Flipkart has been a hugely successful. Back in 2007, when Flipkart was launched, Indian e-commerce industry was taking its beginner steps. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who were working for Amazon had an idea to start an e-commerce company in India.

One can easily call that a risky move. In a country where people have various tastes and preferences, an ecommerce start-up will always have enormous challenges. In India, people often prefer to shop in person and buy goods they see and like. Today, thanks to Flipkart, e-commerce has become one of the fastest growing sectors in India.

Flipkart began selling books to begin with. It soon expanded and began offering a wide variety of goods. Innovating right from the start, Flipkart has been home to few of the striking features of Indian e-commerce. Flipkart was the first to implement the popular ‘Cash On Delivery’ facility, which every online shopping website in India offers as an option today.

In the first few years of its existence, Flipkart raised funds through venture capital funding. As the company grew in stature, more funding arrived. Flipkart repaid the investors’ faith with terrific performances year after year. In the financial year 2008-09, Flipkart had made sales to the tune of 40 million Indian rupees. This soon increased to 200 million Indian rupees the following year. Flipkart targets to hit the one billion mark by 2015. Going by their ever increasing popularity, it does not seem like a farfetched thought.

Back at the time when Flipkart was launched, any e-commerce company faced two major difficulties. One was the problem of online payment gateways. Not many people preferred online payment and the gateways were not easy to set up. Flipkart tackled this problem by introducing cash on delivery and payment by card on delivery in addition to others.

The second problem was the entire supply chain system. Delivering goods on time is one of the most important factor that determines the success of an ecommerce company. Flipkart addressed this issue by launching their own supply chain management system to deliver orders in a timely fashion.

Flipkart also acquired few companies like Myntra.com, LetsBuy.com etc., to better their presence in the market. With the entry of Amazon.com in India, the competition between the companies has seen many takeovers. Flipkart’s journey from a small book e-retailer to India’s largest e-commerce platform inspires a generation of start-ups.

In a country where stereotypes are common, Flipkart managed to break the norm and change the ecommerce industry in India for ever. Flipkart’s story proves that if you have a great idea, and you are a doer and not a thinker, success is not far off.

(taken from successstory.com)

"If Google teaches you anything, it’s that small ideas can be big."

This quote by Ben Silbermann, CEO, Pinterest sums up the power of small ideas, and no better example than Google. A company wanting to simplify online search has become one of the most valuable companies in the world. The idea should be small, simple and having significant usability. Complicating an idea also tends to confuse the core value provided by the startup.

Why Part Time Doesn't Work

In a lot of startups, we see founders working part time. The thinking is that they will build a prototype, get traction and join full time once they hit a certain milestone (like raising angel funding).

This model of starting up is not advisable and has a very low chance of sustaining. Reasons are

- If you cannot take a risk of leaving your job for your startup, it somewhere means that you are not fully convinced about it. If you are not convinced, you cannot convince anyone (including an investor).

- Since it's a competitive market, a lot of other teams would probably be working on the exact idea you are working on. Even if there aren't any companies currently, some will come up once your prototype goes live. To compete with them, since they are working full time, you need to go in full time as well.

- Since you are working part time, you will have other things on your mind. You cannot devote all your time and this hampers your focus and assessment of your startup.

So, Be Sure or Don't Start.

Keep Learning!

An entrepreneur should never stop learning. No matter how much you feel you know, there is always so much more happening out there. If you don't learn and learn fast enough, you face the risk of becoming old and obsolete. This is what happened with a lot of Industries in India. Taking travel as an example, most travel agents failed to realise and appreciate the potential disruption online travel was causing in the country. Hence, they did not learn and act and eventually suffered a huge hit.

The Story of Samuel Walton, Founder of Walmart

This American entrepreneur who built a small grocery store into the giant Walmart supermarket chain, amassing a fortune of over $23 billion, grew up during the Great Depression.

He had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he also sold magazine subscriptions. During his college, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. After graduation, he joined the US Army during the World War II. After the war, he left the military and started managing a variety store at the age of 26.

He took a loan to buy his first store, and thanks to simple innovations in business, he soon bought his second store. Within 3 years, his sales volume grew to $225,000. The first true Wal-Mart opened on July 2, 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. The rest is history. Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest person in the United States from 1982 to 1988. At the time of his death in 1992, he had 1,960 Wal-Mart stores, employed 380,000 people and clocked annual sales of about $50 billion.

(taken from yourstory.com)

Have a clearly defined purpose...

Every startup must have a clearly defined purpose.

- Clearly defining assists in spreading this purpose throughout the company and in aligning all the team members in moving towards it.
- A purpose helps in assessing which team members are aligned with the direction of the company and which are not, which in turn helps in weeding out people who are not aligned.
- Hiring and training of new team members should also be done keeping this goal in mind.
- Lastly, this defined purpose tends to unite and inspire the team during the journey of the startup.

Stop & Assess!

Keep assessing from time to time whether you are progressing towards your goals. If not, stop, assess and correct and start moving again. Activities not contributing towards achieving your goal are like steps in the opposite direction as time is limited and wasted time has an opportunity cost.

Jeff Bezos' 2 Pizza Rule

Jeff Bexos is one of the most legendary entrepreneurs and Founder/CEO of Amazon. He has been known to have and follow his own set of beliefs and has created the world's largest online retailer.

One rule he believes in is the '2 Pizza Rule'. He believes that a meeting should not be attended by people who can eat more than 2 pizzas, i.e. ideally a meeting should be attended by less than around 8 people. He believes that when the meeting has more people attending, the flow of communication gets inhibited. In large groups, the attendees cannot express themselves clearly and creative thinking and discussion gets limited. Large groups lead to group consensus taking priority over individual ideas and viewpoints, which in turn hampers the productivity of the meeting.

You have to do everything...

A startup is generally low on resources in it's initial days. The entrepreneurs have to do everything from routine tasks like making coffee, getting the space you have (if any) cleaned, managing utilities, payments etc. to things like making a business plan, managing the sales, operations, finance etc. One has to be ready to do all of this and at no point should one think that he/she will not to do something because it's too trivial or below one's dignity.

Be Clear & Upfront!

An entrepreneur must remember to be upfront about everything, be it discussing stakes with co-founders, sharing of responsibilities amongst the team, highlighting mistakes and weaknesses of different members of the team, discussions with investors and contracting with them, setting emoluments of employees etc. A lot of the time, especially in the case of first time founders, things tend to be unclear and hazy which eventually leads to disagreements and conflict.

Success of a Startup

There are many factors in the success of a startup. Nearly 90% of startups fail. I feel that an entrepreneur must analyse how equipped he/she is while starting up. A broad framework to use, according to me, is as follows:

A Good Idea (30%): the idea should have a competitive advantage/USP to help the business scale and sustain.

A Good Team (40%): a good team having all required skills to execute the idea is the most important factor having the maximum weightage. Ideas are a dime a dozen, it is the execution coupled with idea which leads to success. A good team ensures better executional capabilities.

A Big Market (15%): the market should be big enough for the business to scale and to pivot if required.

Low Competition (15%): A newer, novel idea always has a better chance of succeeding due to the early mover advantage it gets in such a space.

The idea and team play the biggest roles and should be looked upon very seriously. An entrepreneur must rate his/her startup on each of these factors and I feel if the final score (weighted average) based on the above exceeds 60%, its a signal to just go for it!