Entrepreneurship

I attended NITK alumni meet event "Elevator". Listening to Shashank N.D. of Practo, Ajit Pai from Delhivery and Sandesh C. from Chai-Point was very insightful.
The panel discussion was moving on opposite poles. Sandesh and Shashank had contrary advises to share. Shashank has good words of wisdom from his experience of building Practo. My thoughts were more aligned with ideas of Shashank.

He explained "entrepreneurship is like process of self purification". The ups and downs are true test of individual belief in what they are doing and process itself acts as touchstone of character. Many time one has to swallow his ego. Every day is faced with new set of challenges.
For him, the zeal of entrepreneurship came from the problem on which he was working. It was not money or fame or comfort. Instead the idea was to make life of people better. He derived his motivation from the problem itself thus he is able to build such a large organization in short span of time.

The most important thing in building a company is to "get the team right". If your internals are right then investors, money and other things will fall in place automatically.
His passion was infectious. For him, having a plan B means your plan A is dead. This was opposite to the idea of Sandesh from Chai-Point who considered that some basic floor is necessary and having plan B gives more confidence, risk taking ability and peace of mind to the person. Person understands worst case scenario and knows where to start again in the event of failure.

Shashank explained that joining a start up is like working on a accelerated MBA program. So its better to join a start up than pursue MBA. Other speakers also believed that MBA does not really matter. There is no right time for starting your own venture. Best time is to do it now. He mentioned "regret minimalisation framework" i.e. in life we should try to minimize our regrets. If there is something we wish to do, then do it now so that we won't accumulate regret of not doing it.

A company can create value by promoting its money generating power or through showcasing its vision. According to him, both are good but value or attraction created through vision is much more than monetary aspect. So his views were against the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurship is about money. Rightly so. For me as well, Entrepreneurship is about being enterprising, building something, creating something and taking self-motivated initiatives. I do not see entrepreneurship as money motive.

He talked about concept of VUPIM in dealing with dilemmas and taking quick decisions. V stands for vision, U for users, P for practoian (employees of his company), I for investors and M for me. This helps me in keeping the right focus and conduct the business in ethical manner. For him, If every one says your idea is good then probably your idea is not good. If 99% of the people laugh on your idea then you should go with that idea, picking your co-founder and employees from 1% who believe in you. Anyway, all the big changes and revolution in the world originates from small group settings. Hats off to him. keep going dude.

Other guys also chipped in with their words of wisdom. Sandesh talked about importance of grand vision and constantly working towards that. Ajit Pai from Delhivery said "difference between idea and business is execution. A successful execution is function of time and focus you put in that idea".

I have a habit of asking senior people about wisdom of their life. So I met two guys during dinner. I asked them to share their experience. One fellow told me "Life is Hard. Enjoy it." Other person was quite cryptic. He mentioned the inevitability of organizational politics as his learning. I could not decipher much but just kept smiling.

We had good fun talk with a fellow from Booth School. A 1988 batch guy was lean built but very humble and modest. He was quite amiable and discussed good memories and traditions of NITK. I feel NITK is class apart from all the other schools of India in terms of overall extra curricular and co-curricular activities. Though we have not marketted ourselves well but 3 names in top 30 under 30 on forbes magazine is testimony to this. A college with private beach, party politics, pan India look, extensive club culture and very enlightened crowd is rare in the world.

The booth fellow (Himashu Sahu) was a hardcore capitalist. He explained me typical money oriented consumer behaviour. I tend to disagree with him and we had good laughing moments together. Some other fellows were Santanu Bishwas, Pankaj Agrawal, RajKamal, Jaswinder and Harpreet. I pitched my idea of "connect" to all these people. All of them were excited and happy about it. Pankaj Sir were looking forward to communication over idea of Connect, so this is due on me.

People explained power of network and i realised the same. In last few years, I have built good network of civil services aspirants but unfortunately all my tech connections are lost. Some times i feel disappointed about this. But it is just matter of few months. I am sure, I'll pick up in no time.

Day was very happening otherwise as well. But not in the mood to write about other events of the day. Tomorrow again a very hectic day.
Good Night.