Entrepreneurs have a mind of their own. Agreed? You can’t buy someone else’s brain and become an entrepreneur. Today, entrepreneurship in India is also about hype. Some people get into the bandwagon of entrepreneurship for the heck of it and then lose interest and go back to a job.The first objective of entrepreneurship usually is independence. If you have a bent of mind to create something, entrepreneurship is a viable option. This process of creating something is borne out of the creative side of the entrepreneur. To create something, you need to think how you can do it. When you first conceive a startup, you need to assemble various parts of a business together. First is what you are going to do. Whatever you do should be your strength. If you are good at coding, maybe create a software that will help someone. The second part is finding customers for whatever you have created. This is the toughest part. You have to mend your skills to what your customers want. Here is where a lot of learning takes place. The third important part is maintaining a steady flow of income, the so-called cash flow. Creativity plays a huge part in how you are going to design your startup. Creativity is not only designing sarees, arts and crafts, or doing exotic things. It is also being able to create something on your own.
After you have found your niche, chose customers who will buy your products or services, and able to maintain a steady cash flow to sustain your business, you have done the basics right. Then about being alone or with a group of people. Cofounder teams have been found to be successful than single-person teams. Either you select a cofounder to take you through the growth phase or hire professionals for each area like sales, marketing, operations and you taking care of business development. Or any combination that your business demands. Your creativity again plays a huge part here too. How you choose your team and how you define their roles and responsibilities in addition to learning the ropes of running a business that is growing, the learning curve you should go through, the new skills you require, the networking you need to make – all these are essential parts of growing your business. You should be multifaceted in taking care of daily ops, thinking of future, maintaining steady income for the business, finding new customers, entering new markets and domains that ally with your skills or strengths of your organization. All this demands a high level of critical thinking and imagination. You could have role models or find inspiration from one or many people. But it ultimately boils down to your execution skills on how you design and run your business.
The book High-Performance Entrepreneurship by Subroto Bagchi is a must-read for entrepreneurs who have just started or aspiring entrepreneurs. He talks about DNA of the organization as part of the designing process. It’s important to think through what you need to start your business instead of letting business take care of it as it grows.
--Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, chief evangelist
