“Thou shall have balls & not business ideas”
We present to you the commandments.
Ideas are dime a dozen. To be an entrepreneur you don’t need business plans but the courage and conviction to break through the initial challenges and bring your ideas to life.
Develop relationships & not transactions
Entrepreneurs should go out, meet people and invest in building long-term relationships. Those who can’t help you today may prove to be valuable tomorrow. Don’t be transactional about it, make lifelong friends!
Focus on real pain-points
India is the land of opportunity because it has tonnes of problems for entrepreneurs to solve. Instead of aping solutions from the West, we should look at solving local problems – something not many entrepreneurs are doing today.
Be among the top 2
It’s imperative that you be No. 1 or No. 2 nationally or internationally in your defined sector to ensure you create a larger market for yourself. There is no point in becoming the nth player in an already competitive marketplace which has established leaders.
Focus on 20 %
As an entrepreneur, you must focus on the 20% that gives you 80% impact. Entrepreneurs tend to waste their time and effort in a number of non-productive activities just to be everywhere. This should be avoided at all costs.
Avoid MBAs & spreadsheet makers
The education system is designed to train students to fill up competencies required to work in large organisations. Startups are meant to disrupt and are run by talking to people and constantly taking feedback from the ground. The mindset required to excel at a startup is very different from one that is required in a large company where there is time to invest in building year by year projections.
Celebrate failures & enjoy your journey
As an entrepreneur, you will have many moments of failure. Organisations where failing is not okay tend to become bureaucratic. As a startup, you should build a culture which celebrates failure and people have the independence to experiment and execute new ideas without worrying too much about failure.
Not want to sell
Don’t build your company with the intention to sell. You can’t build a great startup by dreaming about selling it someday. As an entrepreneur, your startup becomes the core of your life and you have to nurture it like your own baby.
Be fit
As an entrepreneur, one tends to put their health on the backseat but there is no point in building a billion-dollar company and having boiled vegetables with a IV attached to you. If you aren’t fit both, in mind and body, you cannot operate a company.
Win with Passion
As a startup you will have a small set of people who won’t always have the best skills or resources at their disposal. In this case, the only thing you can motivate them with, is PASSION. As an entrepreneur you need to make your team believe that this is their chance to do something remarkable with their career!