Way back in my past, an unknown reader read a blog post on Sukshma and showed up at our doorstep to be recruited. We interviewed him and liked him a whole lot. We hired him and he worked with us, helping us build out a complete web application.
I wish all recruiting stories were that simple and I’ve learned that they’re not.
It still strikes everyone as odd when a company makes a bold claim to it’s prospective investors that it ‘might never make money’. I know a bit now about traveling this path and I’ve begun to believe in why something like that should even exist in the first place. On finding a fit with market, the company sinks it’s teeth deep into it and burns through fuel faster than anyone else in an attempt at land-grab. Before long the company has grown to a massive size, it’s survival depends on large tranches of resources to continue to touch millions of customers. Few stories can make it this far. At this point even a tiny weakness in the complex thread that binds the company together can be their undoing.
Are startups owed an exit? It sure felt that way when I wrote this piece. Somewhere down the line, my thinking changed.
All founders are desirous of the big exit. Be it a venture investment, IPO or maybe even being acquired. An investor and startup come together when it’s a win-win, right? The investor believes that the startup is a compelling story, that they would miss out if they didn’t invest. The startup believes taking the investors money and involvement has greater rewards than the trouble.
Then there are dire situations where founders are struggling and they believe they need a cash infusion to stay afloat. I know of many such journies. I too was at that point once. It felt then that an exit was owed. I denied myself the reward of persisting. A lesson learned.
You deserve an exit when a competitor believes they have to buy you out, an investor believes that you’re a must-have investment, a strategic investor thinks you’re going to deliver on a key priority, or it’s just simply too hard for you to go on. I imagine I might have missed some other rational or irrational scenario, but otherwise, there’s no exit.
Then there is future. There is always future. When we’re looking into the future, the exit goal clouds the constructive, path-finding attitude. So set it aside. You can build a future if you believe you have one. Surprise your self and those around you every day. Look to inspire and get that next customer, that next user, the next investor, the market and so on towards the larger more complex ideas. Trust me, as the future unfolds – you’ll see there are limitless possibilities to surprise you. I don’t say this trivially, I did find a future myself and I’m sure you’ll find yours.
Angels who can trace a connection back to Pune and willing to invest in Pune-based technology Startups.
I know of *many* such stories.
The idea of Pune Angels has the potential to do tremendous good in our backyard. It came up in two different conversations. It goes to show you really can’t stop a good thing from happening.
I’ll continue to bubble the idea through the many digital back channels in our local eco-system.
At today’s deAsra Foundations’ Entrepreneur Excellence awards, Sonali and Anand Deshpande shared 5 ingredients that they believe were instrumental in Persistents’ remarkable success. They are dream and dream big; create your team, you must know you can’t do it alone; focus; be ethical and lastly persist. These are certainly great ingredients for me to take back with me from the event, especially that last bit.
I’ve written about perseverance in the past. I believe it’s the most necessary ingredient of the five. There’s always more to write about it as there are several miles to go before I’ve made it.
I do work with people who care about their work deeply. The upside is that when they’re charged up, it’s inspiring to watch them go at it. The downside is that when things aren’t going to plan, frustrations and tempers can tend to get in the way. I also know of colleagues who can be both passionate about their work and calm, composed all the time. I admire that quality, I don’t have it and if you know you don’t perhaps my experiences will help.
The temptation to simply give up due to change always lurks around the corner. It isn’t easy for all you entrepreneurs, innovators and even the smallest of revolutionaries out there. If you’re selling a product- perhaps the market’s changed, or if you’re leading a company- your backers believe you’re CTO material and not CEO (i), or there’s just been something unprecedented. Or imagine for a moment, you’re in the middle of that umpteenth pitch to a customer for a partnership you want, and it goes south in the exact same way that all the others went in the past. As you walk away disappointed, that recognizable thought crosses your mind “I think I’d like to just walk away from all this” (ii).
A similar sequence of events regularly triggers the urge of giving up from inside me. In the first of my many encounters, I’d cave in, respond aggressively by taking none of the responsibility for working on the root cause. Over time I realized that my response was working against me. If I wanted to thrive I’d have to figure out a way to beat that. While I’m now better at staying in the game, the cue still leaves me dispirited and it takes a day to recover momentum. I’ll need to make more progress to beat that response as well.
I’ve read about and applied a simple habit reversal training (iii). I’ve seen how it can help adapt and change responses to everyday situations. But can it work with the more complex and infrequent triggers?
The way it works is to help you in unraveling the instinctive activation of the response you want to change. A good intervention should allow your higher decision-making capability to step in and take control over instinct. Simply put, you then decide if you wish to respond differently.
The first step is to observe and list triggers that lead up to the behavior. Next, you’re required to notice and write a post-it or card for every instance you believe triggered the habitual response even if you went through with your habitual response. An x on the card can help indicate if you successfully sidestepped the cue, or a check mark if you gave in. At the end of the day, you count your cards and start over the next day. Repeated enough times, the act of writing “did not give in” notes on cue ought to replace the expected reward you’d otherwise get by giving in. If you stopped writing the “give in” notes altogether you shouldn’t even have that thought cross your mind (iv).
I’m optimistic that anyone can work on changing themselves and I’d like to give it a shot and share what I’ve learned here.
(i) I just couldn’t help that quip :-).
(ii) I’ve been there and it still takes me a while to bounce back from such an event even if I’m not going to give into it. Realising that you’re not going to give in also sheds light on what you really want from the situation.
(iii) Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg.
(iv) I wouldn’t say they never cross your mind as learned habits don’t really disappear but become dormant.
A little and a lot, both can be said about business networking. To write about the little is to summarise all the many little things I’ve learned over the last 9 years. Its quite simple that every business conversation starts with give and take. As a novice I’ve found learning this simple protocol to be long and confusing. A short article can help accelerate that process.
The one word that I’d use to capture this idea is Reciprocity*.
The take: Knowledge of what you need right now is distilled from your priorities in that day, week and even quarter. You get the idea. Articulate what you want and suggest ways you can be helped. You can help me with <…> just fill out the blanks.
If you end a conversation without speaking about what you require, you’re missing out. Business relationships work both ways.
The give: This the part that I’m good at. I tend to offer more than I have to in the hope of getting things started off on the right foot.
Nevermind the generosity. What I figure works best is to understand who you’re speaking to and what their priorities are. Remember how you’re priorities helped you out earlier? That’ll work here as well.
Not all give an take has money on one side. They can also be sophisticated barters. Welcome creativity!
Once you’ve established some common ground, its time to apply the idea to the many types of people you will meet.
Investors are not different beasts as is commonly misunderstood. They too want things to be done. Maybe they’re priority on that day is to identify that interesting deal which will make his year. You’re deck or elevator pitch may not necessarily be sufficient if you get where this is going.
In that same picture, always ask based on your priorities. It need not always be an investment. It maybe something the Investor will know (an Analyst’s report perhaps), or maybe someone he knows (an Investee company?).
Moving on, time-based engagements (consulting) also follow this principle. This applies to people who are supremely busy, or have something you want desperately.
Sounds simple, right? I’m glad I’ve had good mentors to help me figure out this idea in its entirety. The biggest temptation being to avoid leaving the take to the context. Doing things this way leaves little room for grudges, disappointment, or entangling yourself in confusing priorities.
I enjoy meeting new people as a part of my work and I hope that by doing business with them it’ll lead to larger things down the road.
* The Key to Getting Meetings with Insanely Busy People, Fast Company.
After what has been a while, I’ve put thoughts down on paper. I decided to write about my experience attending SLP Pune 2015. It was in the nick of time too. Admissions to the next SLP batch close on 15 August 2015.
In a way, I’m glad SLP came along when it did. Mid-way through 2014, I was in half a mind to move to Bangalore and start from scratch there, which isn’t altogether a bad thing*. I turned in my application from Bangalore staying over at my brother-in-laws on an extended visit. Attending weekend sessions and meeting peers grounded me just long enough to continue to find a solution in Pune.
My complete experiences are captured in this post for punestartups.org.
* Bangalore was recently in the news for having made it to #15 as a startup destination globally.
The central question around contrast in cognition is that you’d never know what you’d know before you knew it. No matter how much we try, we can’t be perfectly immersed in a different way of thinking without perhaps a deliberate effort and a great deal of abstraction.
What if you could ask how Bill Gates felt about his two lives? One as the founder of phenomenal software company and the other as the eradicator of polio. Is the choice of his second life a subtle hint that his first life wasn’t enough?
A short snippet from his “Ask Me Anything” with Bill Gates:
dgeek: Mr. Gates, Any advice on how entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow should go about balancing business and philanthropy… or do they have to succeed first in order to give later?
Bill Gates: Just creating an innovative company is a huge contribution to the world. During my 20’s and 30’s that was all I focused on. Ideally people can start to mix in some philanthropy like Mark Zuckerberg has early in his career. I have enjoyed talking to some of the Valley entrepreneurs about this and I am impressed and how early they are thinking about giving back – much earlier than I did.
The good news is the world’s just gotten smaller thanks to the information age. The bad news is that we’re still using second-best crutches to make decisions.
As an entrepreneur, I’m faced opportunities to make a terrible decision if I simply go with the fact that they’re available to me now. This applies to fundraising, who to partner with, who to hire, what technology to go with and more.
The underlying phenomena is easily explained when you look at how timing can sabotage the best laid processes. Let’s say you’ve just started putting together your business plan and haven’t yet gotten around to hiring just yet. Someone writes to you on having visited your website. Her credentials are definitely above average. Do you decide to hire her or not?
If not, you’re losing out on someone with intent to join you. If yes, you’re losing out on the other several hundred better potential hires.
What will you do?
The disciplined approach to avoid this bias is to be decisive about your position. For instance, ycombinator advises founders to think as follows “Either you’re fundraising, or you’re not”, “Either you’re hiring or you’re not.” and more. Most entrepreneurs won’t make this error if each step they take is thought out in terms of definitely timelines allowing them to reiterate if the previous round was inefficient.
Wish you dear reader a brilliant new year 2015!
This weekend brought with it an opportunity to background-think over the contents of design thinker Manoj Kothari’s talk to my SLP class.
We understand and appreciate innovation thanks to its promise of improbable outcomes. Occasionally, an entrepreneur’s first attempt hits the mark as a wild success. The norm is that entrepreneurs wish to learn to repeat the innovation process through practice.
No one’s done more work to dispel the hero myth than Richard Bach. As I mulled over what I’d learned, I made an odd connection back to a parable* written by him. It is a parable I’ve enjoyed telling myself over and over again which adequately explains how innovation suspends existing beliefs, allowing the re-imagination of the old as new.
The story is a short story of a creature that lives in a colony at the bottom of the river bed. Through the story, I believe the author wishes the reader to observe directly the nature of change; pay as little attention to the emphasis on the apparent heroism and other words that bring with them the unknown, or mystery.
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all — young and old, rich and poor, good and evil — the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.
But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”
The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed against the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!”
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the messiah, come to save us all!”
And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”
But they cried the more, “Savior!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a savior.
– From Illusions, Richard Bach.
When explaining a concept, a teacher’s intent is to share a complete understanding of the idea with the student. They often risk over simplifying it, or over exaggerating it and putting it out of reach of the student. I’d love to know how you felt about any insight that you receive through the parable.
* Parable’s are simple stories that I’ve found extremely useful in capturing wisdom and its context.