Kalyan Banerjee
Last month, I moderated a panel discussion with entrepreneurs who shared their experiences of entrepreneurship. There were five panelists, spread in age by a generation.
The youngest was Sandeep Hegde who founded dotCORD even before completing his engineering degree. At the other end was Parthasarathy N.S., co-founder of MindTree.
Then we had Subramanyam Kashibhat, who has founded several innovative technology ventures; Bal Krishn Birla, founder of Asklaila.com, a local information service across India, and Potluck, a restaurant.
Finally, there was Narayan Raman, author of Sahi, an award-winning open source web test automation tool. In this blog, I’ll share many interesting facets I learned.
First, while entrepreneurship can be glamorous, everyone need not be an entrepreneur. The glamor soon wears off, and it’s more about hard work. If you are enjoying your job, why look elsewhere?
Bal Krishn made one very interesting point: “If you are disturbed by things you cannot control, don’t be an entrepreneur.”
If you need clear objectives from your manager, or you cannot operate if the environment doesn’t cooperate, clearly entrepreneurship is not for you. Entrepreneurs create their own opportunities, they don’t wait for them to be handed out.
The entrepreneur needs a “pioneer” mindset; the pioneer does not complain about the rubble but instead creates the road. Followers find a well laid-out road and have a comfortable journey.
Again, at work we often complain how our environment is difficult, so we cannot perform. Entrepreneurs have no-one to complain to and must take responsibility for problems they did not create. Entrepreneurship needs tenacity.
While the criticism can be hard to accept, it’s important to find people who will criticize your ideas. If you do not listen to early criticism of your ideas, you are likely to pay a heavy price and learn the mistakes when it’s too late.
Smart people learn from other people’s mistakes and can synthesize diverse lessons to apply them in their specific context. While entrepreneurs will certainly have their critics, they will also find supporters.
Some of our panelists have such experienced people as mentors or even members of their boards. Narayan pointed out that win-win is one thing we don’t learn in IIT, as everyone is competing to beat the rest.
Another critical success factor discussed by the panelists is an entrepreneur’s ability to attract and nurture the right people. Partha stated: “We are what we are because of MindTree minds.”
Sandeep said that he succeeded because he recruited the best people for his company. This discussion thus re-emphasized the principle that if you find the right people and provide them the right environment, they will ensure that you succeed.
The discussion soon turned to ethics. Can business and honesty go hand in hand?
It’s interesting, the panel showed unanimity on this point.
“Only honest businesses survive and grow,” said Subbu. There was another interesting perspective on this: being an entrepreneur is about choice.
Bal Krishn Birla raised the question: “Why be an entrepreneur if you can’t choose to be honest”.
The question remains, can all this be taught?
There are certain basics of business that must be taught – every entrepreneur must learn about cash flows, for example. But an MBA program cannot produce the fire.
It’s the learning mindset that’s more important than what is taught. A good learner will learn from every situation, from every mistake, and from everyone he engages with — not just from the teacher or a textbook.
So what are the essential traits of an entrepreneur?
I’d put a pioneering mindset above all else; the overwhelming desire to change a part of the world and the willingness to take personal risks to make that happen. This means creating our own path and embracing the challenges that go with it.
Such passion needs to be backed by self belief, tenacity, thinking big, accountability, learning from mistakes and from the experiences of others, honesty, creating win-wins to leverage support, along with, of course, a mindset for problem solving.
Then, not least, there’s having fun in the midst of it all.
