Cactus Chords

I recently had the opportunity to meet up with a few entrepreneur friends of mine in Bangalore and Cochin to discuss the prospects of my upcoming project.  They all greeted me with the same question everyone was asking me, “Hey, what happened to your old company? How come this new company?”. What can I say? I shake my head and respond, “I just chose the wrong team and wrong place. Simple!!!” That itself is self explanatory.

From the little experience I have gained when I indulged myself in the facade I termed “entrepreneurship”, there are a few points that surpass the rest before you start your company or at least call yourself an entrepreneur. I am going back to basics.

1) Have a product
2) Have a product of your own
3) If you are outsourcing or reselling, you are merely a salesman, not an entrepreneur
4) Release your product
5) Make it profitable

You can have other products initially to keep the revenues trickling in while you work on your dream product. But if you do not have one, it is not entrepreneurship, its reselling.

I was a salesman till I left my old firm because we did not have a product thus we lacked a focus. A bunch of guys who did not want to work for anyone but themselves. We did manage to make money, quite a bit of it too. But what is the use when you don’t have a focus. We did not launch one product, though we had 2 fully developed platforms we could have called our own and still do infact, in our cute little server.

Every time, something bigger always came our way or rather we thought it was big and the focus shifted to that. Why did we shift focus to that, because we did not have a focus in the first place. This was the string of events and emotions we went through;

- Excited that we were doing something
- Happy as money was flowing in
- Thirsty for something new
- Frustrated that we couldn’t come up with something new
- We then found something new, developed it and the stage was set
- Something bigger came our way and the old project was shelved
- Something new came our way again
- This time we developed it and launched it
- I reserve my comments on what happened to it but it couldn’t be made profitable one bit
- We later inquire what the problem was, we just f@#$%d up!!!
- Lost faith in the whole team and business
- The firm still stands and money still trickles in
- How?What do we exactly do? Ummmmmm…………..

If you have just read the above list, you might be wondering, “What the hell were you guys doing?”
Frankly, I don’t know, but I would answer that question with, “Probably testing my level of patience”. But now I know what I was doing there. Making mistakes over mistakes over mistakes so I could learn from them once I was out. Now I am surer than ever that, I will not repeat the same mistakes, but probably make new ones.

There comes a time when money flows in to your company but you are not satisfied with it because you know you didn’t set out for this. It was to make a difference in the society, give something back to it. Not just make money. This phase, ladies and gentlemen, is known as REVELATION.

An entrepreneur does not have a debugger where he can just amend his errors. The mistakes you make at your work might cost you your project, promotion or job. Whereas for an entrepreneur, a mistake can turn his life around. For better or for worse.

Entrepreneurship is not a job, its a way of life.

I am not at all proud of the way things have turned out in my life. But this was the time to experiment. It has given me the courage and will to work with a focus. I have found my product, my focus and I am working on it. I will pursue it till its launched. Whether its a success or not is not an issue. Not to prove to anyone, but me. And trust me, it is worth every bit.

But everything in life happens for the good. As long as you are optimistic and take every event in good stride, learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them, you will climb up the ladder of success and that too gracefully, take my word for it. All the best.

Cheers!!!

image reference: www.gettyimages.com/detail/82399221/Lifesize

Industry surveys have revealed that 9/10 start-ups fail within the first 3-5 years of operations. Why does this happen? Is there a common thread of failure mantras that people subconsciously follow?

Here are some of the reasons why, I feel, a start-up can tumble down the ladder to the pits. I often wonder what made my first venture a failure. Was I at fault or was it my partners? We had everything a start-up required, an office, a set off brilliant minds, each of us had our field of expertise, finance, marketing, international operations, sales. An esteemed clientele, promising ideas and products. Then what went wrong? We just couldn’t work together, just couldn’t.

We personally have no qualms, but professionally, it was 100% effort and very little output. It never matters how long you have known each other, even the presence of one entity that has a wrong intention can lead to an intermittent firing of the team. And when it is a team, one person is never accountable for the failure. It is the whole team. And despite several tries, if the matter can not be resolved, it has to culminate in failure. Individually, all will excel in life off these experiences. One of the greatest traits of a true entrepreneur is to rise from the ashes of failure like a phoenix. Some of the reasons that can lead to failure:

- Lack of focus
- Weak business model or no business model
- Individual goals that vary greatly from the rest of the team
- No or wrong mentors/advisers
- Wrong team
- Lack of trust
- Variation in character
- Immaturity
- No prior industry experience
- Lack of punctuality
- Over confidence
- Black sheep
- Loss of faith in business
- Mentality to quit

The points mentioned above could be in various combinations. If the combination involves all the above, you have close to a week before you wind up and my condolences in advance. If you haven’t kicked off yet, then take sometime off to work on these problems and then kick off. Also a few questions you should find answers to before you jump into a start-up;
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1) Where do you see yourself in 2 years whether this is a success or a failure?
2) What are you planning to take away from this venture?
3) What is your monetary share in the firm?
4) Is this specific business your cup of tea?
5) Are your partners trustworthy?
6) What is your role in the firm?

If you have justified answers to the above questions, you are well on the right path to success.

I have moved on and turned a new leaf and so far, a pretty successful one too. This time, keeping in mind the mistakes I made and avoiding the probable potholes when I sense one.

Cheers!!!

image reference: www.swsalestalk.com, www.press.princeton.edu, www.twitip.com, www.tolmol.com