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 ☺.

Comments

[Tarun]

Hi Rohit,
I had been trying to find some info on recent TIECON conference in delhi and this is really smashing blog. Thanks for summarizing the sentiment of the conference. I guess India's social/family structure also discourages risk taking, Parents who greatly influence what kids do like to see them nicely settled in a plush job at a top company than sweat it out building their own start up. But no pain no gain is a universal law and it is certainly taking root in India now. It is really exciting times.

I just started blogging on Indian startups, have a look when you get a chance:
http://bootstrapindia.blogspot.com

Cheers

[Sunny]

Entreprenuership is the need for today, infact in a economy like ours, this term has a key role to play.

We have already seen advent of new portals & tech companies like http://www.ninthcafe.com , etc. I think they r doing pretty good work if not on a large scale then atleast something is started somewhere. What do u think?

www.ninthcafe.com