What I Learnt From My So Far Failed Entrepreneurship Journey

• Every Business case is unique: This world has seen metaphor of entrepreneurship success in Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos; back home Sunil Bharti Mittal, Dhirubhai Ambani, N.R.Narayanmurthy and many more. Almost everyone has a book written on their life. But is there any similarity in their business, entrepreneurial journey; probably not. Similarly, your case is also unique. You are stuck with your own set of resources and constraints and there can’t be any copy cat answer of your problems. Though, there are numerous books with cookie cutter solution for every problem, but believe me, you will have to solve the problems yourself and others can only be a guiding force. Had there been any readymade formula to solve every problem, as many writers of the different book makes readers to believe, then this world would have been the happiest place, without any kind of strife. I also read lot books and journals on entrepreneurship and never occurred a situation where I could refer back to these books to get an answer of my problems.
• Configure Priorities: This world has more than 7 billion populations and so more than seven billion opportunities. I am playing safe with numbers here, because I am not that good at permutation and combination. With the limited resources, I tried to do too many things. I believed that every idea of mine is best and fit to be in billion dollar club. After wasting couple of years and few hundred thousand rupees, I realised that I should have done what is humanely possible for me.
• Not plan at your own peril: If you want to go on a holiday, you first figure out where you want to go, what could be the cost, what is your budget, what will be the time duration, what will be the mode of transportation etc. Etc. It never happens that you reach airport or railway station and then decide where to go on availability of tickets. Though having read about writing the business plan articulately and meticulously so many times, having done so many times while working for my employers, I did not do it in my own case. I was like, what is the need, who is going to ask, I am my own boss, everything is in my head, so why waste extra kb space in laptop etc. But what I lost by not doing so was the route to reach destination, because may be I was not knowing my destination. May be I was type of person, who looks for holiday destination after reaching airport or railway station and chances of party getting spoiled is much higher in this case. It is like gambling and not business.
• Talk to too many people about your business idea without properly setting filtering equipment and parameters : Some people are endowed with good communication skill and I am one of them. Having worked in sales profession for more than 10 years, this skill of mine has only improved day by day. But along with that one more thing I have got is the craving to talk too many people and convince them about perfectness of m ideas. This is what I did with my business idea as well. And what I got in response is too many ideas, which became difficult to filter and act upon. While doing testing of your business idea, you should set your filtering parameters and equipments right, so, your idea and steam passion does not get lost in flood of responses.
• Never talk to managers about your business idea, use them as your resource: This world is full of entrepreneurs and so with successful managers. Success managers are highly qualified people who earn millions as their salary and bonus from their employers. If you turn to take advise from managers about your business idea, then they will put so much emphasis on efforts to weed out the risk that it brings the risk of weeding out reward itself. Managers are fit to be resource only, so use them as resource.
• Never take people along who joins you for convenience: Four year back, my brother along with two more people had started a company to develop Credit Risk Management software. Out of them, only by brother had left the job to start the business and other two were continuing with their respective high paying job. One Sunday, they met over lunch at our place. From couple of days before that lunch-cum-launch of the business, I was engaged in verbal fight on how to set the business and I was an absolute failure in making him understand the benefits of writing the business plan, roles and responsibility of each individual, review, feedback and correction. On the D-Day, I met all three together other two looked in the mood of “ Chalo, aaj ek company banaate hain ( Lets build a company today)” and result came out as expected. My brother is busy crunching numbers and writing codes in the labs of IMSc and IISc, one fellow left for Dubai after couple of months of that lunch-cum-launch party and third one left the company after one year. Loss: One million rupee in investment, two years in time, four million rupee as opportunity cost which my brother would have earned in those two years, peace of life and many thing more. I also did something same and paid the price.

A lot has been written about entrepreneurship and a lot will be written in future. My journey so far has taught me these many things, may be next time, when I will sit on my laptop, I will be proposing some cookie cutter formula for success but till then I am continuing with my efforts to make living in this world on my own terms and conditions.