Startup tips from my personal experience
"If they inspired you to push outside your comfort zone, thank them for inspiring you to take a risk, and let them know how it paid off." Starting a company at very young age will make you stand away from the crowd of common people.
Before you start a company, make sure that your business idea has a market value and it is scalable. How do you find your idea has a scope or a Market value? You have to find the right mentor for your idea and you should validate it. Most of the startups are born from colleges and institutions but all colleges do not have right mentors to support or validate the ideas.
Few colleges have Incubation centers which offer only space to operate the company. In 21 century competition for startups are huge and providing space alone will not make them grow and validate the idea. An incubation center should know to appreciate and value the effort and risk taken by the student to start a company. It should have right industrial contact and government support who are ready to invest in the revolution and innovative ideas.
Startups from Tamil Nadu, we don't have better schemes or support for Startup but having the right idea and choosing a right place of operation will help you gradually. Tech and Innovative Startups - Coimbatore and Chennai are best places with great Market value. Find your Incubation centers at these locations. Other few cities do have scopes, they can help you to scale up your company at large scale.
There are various central government schemes to support the innovative startups. Participate in Bootcamps organized by Incubators. Best place in Tamil Nade for Startup Acceleration and Incubation is Forge Accelerator, where you can find the right mentors and space to operate your business. Kerala(Startup Mission / Startup Village) and Telangana have introduced better schemes for Startups.
People ask us to go for a job to get introduced to great people and good contact with professionals and learn the skills to become an Entrepreneur. An advice to Engineers and other degree students, the world has changed a lot with evaluation of technologies.
We speak(voice, text, video) to people in the other end of the world with mobile in hand which was a herculean task year back. Engineers you have 4 years to learn the skills required to become an Entrepreneur at very young age, academics is not the only source to equip a skill, you will have get into the field and learn what you love and you need.
You have professional networks(LinkedIn and Twitter) to get professional contacts of experts. It all depends on how we utilize this sources in the academic calendars.
Before you take your first step into Entrepreneur life you need to take care of following,
Choose your business partners wisely who can really align with your Dream, the dream(reason) of your Company.
Be open to Negative comments, which will help you find the right path to success.
Never go behind money or fame as these are the by-products of your company.
Chase your dream with right mentorship.
Learn by doing Mistakes or failing not by success.
Validate your ideas or initiatives in the company with experienced or expert because they guide you on the right path than your same age people.
Have a better understanding of company's domain.
Explore as much as possible with all available resources. And resources can be anything, keep in mind money is not the only main resource.
In the beginning be satisfied with the experience you have come across not the revenue growth.
Have a good business plan. Spend your resources wisely.
When it comes to the team of the company, break the hierarchy in your company this will make your team operate more efficiently than the salary you give them. Choose people who can understand your company's dream. Empathy is the most powerful tool to understand your team better than anything. Pick up Satya's book Hit Refresh or look at Sundar's note to his team in the wake of the shooting at the YouTube headquarters both are about people and leading with empathy. It is perhaps what makes these Indian leaders the heads of global conglomerates like Microsoft and Google.
Dream:
Everyone has a dream and no one else can feel or understand because it's your dream.
Keep your dreams to be alive and work on it.
Wait for a Click
Designations:
A Person's Designation or position should react only to his THOUGHT PROCESS, not in the Character or Attitude to lead the team better and in a healthy way.
Building Product:
Take an idea; work on it by building a prototype; so that you fail in the beginning and find the right way to Hit the market in later.
If you really have a passion for product development and if you have a commitment towards it. You will end up with happy customers to enhance it more.
New Initiative:
When you do something different with what you learned or observed. You will get two outcomes Success or Failure. Success is for your effort you have taken and Failure is another learning to do something more different.
Target Audience:
Once you fix the Target Audience for the product or service solutions you provide, get into the field and try to have face to face interaction, to learn more about them and practical difficulties they face to adapt to automation.
Marketing:
Visited 40 + shops in just 4 hours, got rejected and humiliated in first 39 shops but 40 and 41 shops gave answers to all other 39 shops rejection reason in 20 minutes interaction."Be patient and Learn"
