5 Screw-ups, 5 Learnings, 5 Things Right - Suresh Sambandam, Founder and CEO of OrangeScape

Murali D 191 Stories

Tuesday October 01, 2013 , 3 min Read

Suresh_Sambandam — A few years ago, I had listened to Suresh Sambandam, Founder and CEO of OrangeScape, speak about 5-5-5, that is, ‘5 Screw-ups, 5 Learnings, 5 Things right. “Can you please send me the 5-5-5 ppt you used at SiliconIndia? Wanted to do a telephonic interview on that,” I messaged Suresh, last week. Little did I expect Suresh to engage wholeheartedly in those slides and come back with a whole new set; but that is what he did, in right earnest. “It was a learning experience,” Suresh said, when we got to talking about 5-5-5, on a Sunday morning.

5 Screw-ups

Misjudging ramp up of new geography
Engaging "Experts"doesn't help always
Health equity is worth more than sweat equity
Personal wealth –Putting all eggs in “Startup” basket
Tell bad news early - easier said than done

5 Learnings

Sales is intuitive, marketing is not
Platforms need an application façade
Money comes in different shades of green
Networking doesn't help beyond a point
Mentors > Advisors > BoD - Less vested, more value

5 Things right

First learn, then delegate, make “them” successful
Keep cool at all times, live the present
Roll up the sleeves, growth changes only the task
Spot and hire good talent –Team is all
My wife, son, and dog still love me

Suresh

One of the many recommendations on Suresh’s LinkedIn profile sums up the person, thus. “Suresh is down to earth; his ‘I am here to learn’ demeanour hides an extremely sharp intellect and incisive business acumen… With his eye on the ball at all times and a response time to insiders and outsiders that is lightning fast, he sets the pace for not just his own company but all others that go along the ride with him.”

Worth reading is the ‘Patents’ section in his profile, where you will learn about ‘Procedural computation engine for providing complex calculated data results to an object-oriented server system accessible to service clients and agents over a data packet network’ (2006), ‘Method and apparatus for transferring data from a sending system to a receiving system, and program storage devices’ (2008), and ‘System and method of defining a hierarchical datamodel and related computation and instruction rules using spreadsheet like user interface’ (2011).

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