The Tribal Way

Blocking Social Networks

I just read an article in India's Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper that spoke of Indian companies blocking access to Social Networking sites like mySpace and Orkut from work.   I must say i'm not surprised.

Social Networking sites are being viewed as a waste of productive time by companies.  It is not a surprise in a services centric market where productivity of employees is measured in hours worked, and a few hours spent a day on Orkut or mySpace could add up.  While there is not tangible proof of this vs. browsing for news, etc., I can understand why companies would react this way.

TechTribe believes that professional networking for innovation can be a huge positive for companies, where the employees network with others for advancement in their work lives.  One of the reasons techTribe focuses on the being India’s innovation platform is so employees can leverage a concept they’re used to – to connect with others so they could be more productive.  It makes sense for employees to leverage the collective experience of their trust networks in Tribes, where Tribe members could be colleagues across physical and client boundaries.

In addition, leveraging techTribe for mentorship and innovation helps bring newer employees up to speed faster, which is the real need for software and services companies in India.  India has 500,000 to 800,000 employees being hired each year, and a majority of them come from educational institutions and there is a gap between the needs of corporate life and what the student is trained in.  Companies like Zensar Technologies is leveraging this model to mentor college students before they graduate.

Like email, chat, and web browsing which were concepts for personal use before seeing widespread adoption in corporations, social networking too has a place in software and services companies – may not be just in the casual sense it is being used by most people today.  More will be revealed as companies like techTribe deliver on applications for social networking beyond the pure social usage.

I realize this may be a sensitive topic to many Indian professionals and students alike, and i'd love to hear people's thoughts.

What it Takes to be an Entrepreneur

I was in India last week for the annual TiEcon Delhi 2006.  An amazing event for innovators and entrepreneurs.  TiE stands for The Indus Entrepreneurs, a non profit organizations that connects entrepreneurs worldwide for Mentorship, Networking, and plain old discussions.  The conference was a huge success, with over 600 people attending, and the industry who’s who among the speakers, sharing their experience with budding entrepreneurs.

The message at TiEcon was loud and clear, and could be distilled into the following points – at least my takeaway.

1.    Ideas are a plenty – risk takers a few -  There were hundreds of people with ideas.  But, far fewer who believed in their own ideas to the point of taking a risk.  One clear message from the panels of successful entrepreneurs and investors was that unless you’re willing to risk something for your idea, no one else will.  A risk could be bootstrapping it for a few months until one had a prototype, quitting their jobs to pursue it full time, done a prototype on the side by working nights – there had to be passion and risk.
2.    Believe in one’s own idea -   I met several people who had 3 different ideas they were pursuing, and if I didn’t like one during a mentoring session, they had a backup one.  As an entrepreneur myself, that turned me off to no extent.  If one didn’t believe in their idea enough to take the criticism and learn from it or defend it, whew!!!!
3.    The importance of a team – One message that every venture capitalist delivered was they funded a team.  And what I found to be the best advice was – If you can’t convince people to join your team to back your idea, what makes you think you can convince people to invest?  I’ve been a big believer in getting partners/co-founders who believe in the concept to bet on it with their time and money, and take the risk.  Without that, techTribe wouldn’t have taken off on day 1.
4.    Stay the course, but be flexible – It’s important to have passion in your idea, and to have a team that believes in it, because the rest of the world won’t.  They’ll doubt it, poke holes in it, call you crazy, but this is where the team counts – they’ll have to endure it together and not lose faith.  BUT, at the same time, there’s a lot to learn from the early feedback, and the resounding message was – not one person ended up where they started – all ventures morphed over time, which is critical to success. 
5.    Entrepreneurship for money seldom works – While all entrepreneurs who are successful create wealth, most don’t start out with it as a goal.  They realize that if they find a problem that’s big enough to solve, and focus on solving it well before other people do, they see success.  YouTube didn’t dream of $1.65B when founding it, Google didn’t dream of $100Bn+, etc; they all started because they had a passion to create something.  The money followed. 

Overall, an amazing 3 days.  The folks I mentored, I had the following advice for.  If you’re a software startup venturing out, do the following math.  If you have 4 people who are co-founding this venture, the real cost of bootstrapping it in India is nothing.  One can live with the parents, and food and shelter isn’t an issue.  One doesn’t really need salaries beyond a cell phone bill.  The only expense is capital – for computers and a server – which is about Rs. 5 lakhs max, which can be drawn on a credit card.  So, one can do 6 months and build a prototype and show something.  If you can’t take that risk, don’t try and be an entrepreneur.  Second, do the back of the cocktail napkin math on your value – if you believe your startup should be worth let’s say $4 million at the end of year 1, that’s $20,000 per weekday day in value created.  Spending 3 months chasing money to start it ends up costing you $1 million in value – are you willing to give that up for the $10,000 you need to bootstrap it.  I just don’t get it.  Sweat equity counts for more than one can imagine, and demonstrates confidence – and that’s what gets funded.

I realize there are exceptions, and I realize not everyone can afford to bootstrap like I outline above.  But then, in my humble opinion, those should work for a company for a few years after college before venturing out on their own – not a bad proposition. 

The best quote I heard was when I heard a recently graduating student ask – “I’m being courted by Infosys, Wipro, and others, but I don’t want to be one of the 25,000 people that do the same thing; what’s your advice?”.  To which one of the founders of HCL responded – “Whether you’re one that is mixed in the 25,000 or stands out; whether all you do is code like everyone else – IS ALL UP TO YOU. Don’t expect the company to make you stand out – you have a responsibility to do that in a crowd.”  I loved it. 

I believe that it’s upon each of us to create our identity by our actions, and expecting that the world owes us a unique identity is just a recipe for ultimate disaster ☺.