Category: Entrepreneurship

Me-Time

During the IndiaWorld days when we were a small company, I used to often think about my day job as fire-fighting. I would wake up every morning and make a list of the 10-15 things that needed to get done for the day. And then, reality would hit! Something or the other would come up during the course of the day, and before I realised it, the day was over. Looking back at my list, I would find that I had barely done a handful of the tasks that I wanted to – and another dozen or so new tasks would get added to the list! That’s the feeling one has to like as an entrepreneur. Over time, I have come to realise that the ToDos list is an infinite one. It will never be over. The important ones will bubble to the top and get done.

But to make that happen, the entrepreneur needs “me-time”. It is time when you are alone and with yourself. No people, no meetings, no phone calls, no emails, no Whatsapp. Just you. Solitude. So, you can focus on the flow that’s coming, reflect on the meetings that have happened and the ideas that came, tap into the inner sixth sense to know when there is a new idea that is germinating or something bad that needs to be stopped.

In the past few years, the me-time bubble has become harder to come up. There are so many distractions that beckon. There is always that next urgent task that needs to be done. And before you realise it, life has become a clickstream of such tasks which while useful will not give the elevation needed for take-off.

That is why it is important to create contiguous time and a comfortable space for me-time. You have to get comfortable with yourself and solitude. Let the mind wander. I typically sit in a chair with my notebook and let the ideas flow. I think better when I write. For you, it may be walking or exercising or anything else. Whatever it is, each day needs a me-time slot. Because there is no one else in your company who can do this better – connect the dots, feel the new opportunities, think of the future. Your me-time may not ensure success, but lack of it can definitely stunt or kill the proficorn.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 18)

An Advisory Board

When one is running a business on a day-to-day basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Each day brings with it new challenges to be solved. One is deeply involved in every aspect of the business. Failure often becomes personal – because one is the engine driver in a train wreck. It becomes hard to hold people accountable – because everyone is in it together. You as the leader are part of every decision, so the responsibility for failure is yours. This is especially true in the early stages of a venture.

When Netcore was struggling to grow, I decided that I needed an outside-in view. I wanted a couple of people who could provide a view at a higher-level, and question me and the team. (Since I had no external investors, we did not have a formal Board.) It was then that I decided to set up what I later called the Advisory Board. It started with one member, and has since grown to 6 members. They have no fiduciary responsibility. We all meet once a quarter for 4-5 hours where the management team presents the quarter’s performance and the plans. It has worked very well in bringing discussion and debate which did not exist earlier.

The Advisory Board is now intimately familiar with the business and the team. They bring in their own experience to give us suggestions on what to do – this is something I lack since my only external work experience was 30 years ago! There is a good mix of expertise in our Advisory Board – management, strategy, financial and marketing.

As for the team, they present the numbers and plan as if we were a listed entity – because one day we will be. This creates a discipline of ensuring targets are given – and hopefully met. For the management team, there is not just an oversight (other than me) but also insight (on what can be done better). These quarterly meetings for the past decade have been a major factor in Netcore’s growth.

I would strongly recommend an Advisory Board for every entrepreneur at an early stage. Get a few people you respect and who have diverse industry knowledge. And then make it a discipline to do the quarterly reviews. This additional layer will go a long way in identifying mistakes early and reducing the prospects of failure.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 17)

The Sub-broker Moment

During the IndiaWorld days (around 1997-98), we figured out a way to make IPO application forms available for NRIs. We did this through smart software which auto-incremented the application number in the PDF form. Thus, NRIs could now easily get access to the IPO forms without those being physically couriered to them. We charged about Rs 15K for the service to securities firms for this service.

Then, in August 1998, RBI launched the Resurgent India Bonds (RIB) to shore up foreign reserves. I quickly realised that this was going to be big – NRIs would apply to invest in huge numbers. And if we continued to just offer the Rs 15,000 service fee each from about 5-7 securities firms who had a digital presence. A lakh or so was good money at that time – all for a few tweaks in the software.

It was then I got an idea. What if we could get a cut of the money invested – this could increase our revenues substantially. Was that even possible? Yes, if our contribution was tracked. And how would that be possible? One of our customers gave me the idea – become a sub-broker. In essence, every form could carry a special code allocated to us which allowed the brokerage to track which forms came through us. I loved the idea. I decided to share the risk in return for the upside.

And it worked! We generated almost Rs 10 lakh in revenue from the sub-brokerage fees. A simple idea, that increased our revenues 10X.

Later in life, I would refer to this as the “sub-broker moment.”  A few months before the RIB issue, I would have laughed if someone had said that IndiaWorld would become a sub-broker. And yet here we were! A proficorn is always looking for incremental innovations – small tweaks and pivots which open up new opportunities. That is how new worlds open up.

In Netcore, we had started in 1998 as a mail server company. We stayed that way for many years, even though we tried many new ideas – all of which failed. But the spirit of searching for pivots did not go away. We had corporate relationships for mail servers. When SMS started growing, we became an SMS aggregator. And then an email marketing company. And later, a martech automation provider. This “sub-broker” mindset of doing something better and spotting an opening to grow is what has led to 10+ years of continuous profitability. In every business, there is always something which can be done better. The proficorn entrepreneur is always seeking that out.

Will be continued soon.

Dealing with Failure

Everyone who says that learning through failure is how they succeeded is wrong. If that there were the case, failing first and fast would become the alternative to a business school education!

No entrepreneur sets out to fail. And yet, most do. Every entrepreneur believes they have a 70-80% chance of succeeding, and yet 99.99% of new ventures fail.  That is the reality of the world. It is easy to say that one has learnt a lot through failure. What else can you say? And it also sounds good. And yet, failure is the hardest experience for an entrepreneur to live through. It is gut-wrenching and emotionally debilitating. Each day seems like an eternity. It is a tunnel without any light anywhere.

I have had plenty of failures in my life. I never set to fail so I could “learn.” Each venture that I started had a dream, a vision, a rainbow that I could see. I kept imagining how the world would be a better place with what I was doing. And yet, many mistakes later, those same dreams would be destroyed. I had to face the reality that I had failed. And it is never easy – never mind all the previous failures.

Entrepreneurs live on hope and breathe optimism. As such, they are somewhat removed from reality – the same ability that gets them to see what others don’t also creates a distance when it is about coming to grasp with failure. As such, most ventures linger in a zombie zone for many more months than they should because the eternally optimistic entrepreneur always believes tomorrow will be the big day when everything will magically turn around.

The first step to dealing with failure is recognising it. Bad businesses need to be shut down and the entrepreneur needs to move on. Only when one door is closed can new doors be opened. Failure is not a business school or a ladder to success; it is part of an entrepreneur’s journey. Failure is the most likely and default outcome for a venture. What needs to be explained is success, not failure.

Proficorn entrepreneurs go to work each day to reduce the risk of failure. They also recognise earlier than others when something is not working and stop it. Without the willingness to fail, there cannot be success – because the journey would never begin.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 15)

Never Compromise Integrity

When I was running IndiaWorld in the late 1990s, there was an occasion in the early stages when I was asked for a kickback in return for giving me business. It was a lucrative deal. And all I had to do was to agree to give some money back in cash once I got the order. The offer came at a time when we were struggling for growth. It all seemed so easy to say Yes, generate some cash using fake invoices, and pay the individual. No one else would ever know. IndiaWorld would benefit and I would have more revenues to build the business faster.

The advice I got from a few close family members and friends was mixed. Those in favour had arguments like “if you don’t do it, someone else will – only you will be the loser”, “take the money and do something good with it” and “it’s not really a big deal – every business does it in India because that is the norm.” Those against said “you must build a business the right way”, “you cannot compromise your ethics for success” and “you only compromise integrity once – after that, you are one of them.”

In a highly competitive market, the additional revenues could help us invest in new initiatives. Getting that brand as a customer would have given IndiaWorld strong validation and helped me get more business from others. It was a moment of truth for me.

I said No, and walked away. My parents had always emphasised honesty – whatever be the case. That was a core value. I could not let it go. My wife gave me the courage to make the right decision at a time when I was weakening. I also knew there is never “just this one time.” I realised that if I did it once, I would do it again. That was not what I wanted to become. I wanted to succeed on the merits of what we offered and what we were building – even though it would take longer.

A proficorn is built when the foundation is right. One of the core values that can never be compromised whatever be the circumstance is integrity. Because you compromise integrity only once. After that, you are one of them.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 14)

Forever Mindset

When I look back, there is one clear distinction between my successes and failures. Whenever I have tried to keep short-term objectives (like I did in Nayi Disha), I have failed. The times when I have focused on the long future, I have done well.

Setting goals only a year or two in the future is very tempting. But the consequence is that the decisions will then also suffer from short-termism. There is no grand plan to create something big, no journey that is the draw. It is all about “let’s get this done and move on.” That rarely works.

In Nayi Disha, I had goals that I set for a year at a time. Create a movement to change India’s Constitution. Failed. Replace Mumbai’s Municipal Corporation Act to make the city free. Failed. Make Dhan Vapasi happen by forming a government of Independents. Failed. Each had a timeline of a year and failed. Had I stuck to one thing for the long-term (for example, changing minds on what can make Indians free and rich), I would have perhaps accomplished something. In reality, after 3 years of effort, I had nothing to show for it.

The same was true early in my career when I ran through a succession of ideas – and each failed. A multimedia database. Reselling software from US companies. An image processing solution. All in less than three years.

But when I started IndiaWorld, I had no finish line. The Internet revolution had just begun. I had many ideas. But the broad premise stayed the same through the five years until it was acquired – to create an electronic marketplace connecting Indians worldwide.

I did have a name to describe this mindset until I read Simon Sinek’s book “The Infinite Game.” Writes Sinek:

Finite games are played by known players. They have fixed rules. And there is an agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game. Football, for example, is a finite game. The players all wear uniforms and are easily identifiable. There is a set of rules, and referees are there to enforce those rules. All the players have agreed to play by those rules and they accept penalties when they break the rules. Everyone agrees that whichever team has scored more points by the end of the set time period will be declared the winner, the game will end and everyone will go home. In finite games, there is always a beginning, a middle and an end.

Infinite games, in contrast, are played by known and unknown players. There are no exact or agreed-upon rules. Though there may be conventions or laws that govern how the players conduct themselves, within those broad boundaries, the players can operate however they want. And if they choose to break with convention, they can. The manner in which each player chooses to play is entirely up to them. And they can change how they play the game at any time, for any reason.

Infinite games have infinite time horizons. And because there is no finish line, no practical end to the game, there is no such thing as “winning” an infinite game. In an infinite game, the primary objective is to keep playing, to perpetuate the game.

The world of business and entrepreneurship is an infinite game. This “forever business” mindset is what helps proficorns succeed.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 13)

No Two Bad In a Row

Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy (and author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense) tells this wonderful story in an EconTalk with Russ Roberts:

There’s a guy, I may not mention him in the book, called Francis Fulford, and his family have occupied the same, I think, it’s 10,000 acres in Devonshire that was given to them in something like 1240. And he’s inherited this, and the family still owns it, and they still own the house there by direct descent over about 800 years. And they asked him how on earth he’d managed this achievement. And he points up to the ancestral portraits and says–he’s a very sweary man, so I can’t report him verbatim. He said, ‘Well, if I go back to my ancestors, we’ve had loads of idiots. We’ve had drunken idiots, we’ve had gambling idiots, philandering idiots, idiots who get in prison for treason,’ he said, ‘But we’ve never had two in a row.’

When one hires to fill in senior positions, it is of course important to hire the right person. You will never know until a few months into the job whether that person is right or not. If there is a mismatch, best to let the person go quickly. But then make sure the mistake is not repeated. Because recovering from a succession of mistakes is very difficult, as Sutherland’s story illustrates.

I have made hiring mistakes. But generally, I have not had ‘two bad in a row.’ And that’s the key for a proficorn to succeed. The wrong person can be like termite – weakening the foundation of the business or the group being led. The damage won’t be visible initially, but the group and the sub-culture will be weakened. It will require another person a lot of effort to fix that, but it’s doable. However, two successive mistakes will be disastrous.

The converse is also true. For big success, the business needs a succession of good people at the leadership level. Netcore has grown under three excellent CEOs in a row. They are the ones who ensured the proficorn foundation which has stayed strong even in unexpected situations like Covid.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 12)

Life’s Daily Clue

A habit that I have developed over the years is to wake up early. I like the quiet that the silence of the morning brings. It helps me reflect on the previous day’s meetings and ideas. This helps me think of the important takeaways and learnings which necessitate a change in my thinking. Doing this the next morning rather than the previous night helps set a distance that brings better perspective. And it is in these moments that I get the clues to unravel the mystery of what to do next.

It is like reading a good murder mystery. Even the best of detectives don’t get the solution right away (or else there would not have been a book!) It’s a slow process – one clue at a time, one question at a time, one answer at a time. A good writer’s detective will slowly solve the mystery – and the reader is there for the ride.

Daily life too provides us clues – one at a time. Big ideas may have their eureka moment, but there’s a lot of hard work and small ideas which go into the making of the big idea. It requires time. It needs the daily discipline of thinking deeply about meetings, conversations and readings that happened. It entails connecting the dots. It is a process of emergence – where the whole slowly starts becoming much more than the sum of the parts.

There will be many false starts along the way. There will be many paths which will lead to dead-ends. That is why perseverance matters. The search for a better way or a new idea runs through analysing the clues left behind in the micro-moments of the previous day.

It is therefore important for the entrepreneur to go through many different experiences – talking to different people, reading widely, taking time off to be alone, travelling to new places. Each creates a new clue – if one knows where to look. Each prints a new dot – to be joined with others. It is from these clues that new patterns start forming.

For me, the idea of Velvet Rope Marketing came slowly – starting when I first read Peter Fader’s book on Customer Centricity. I had picked up the book at Strand Book Shop in New York – on the last day of a US trip a year ago. And that happened because my Air India flight was delayed six hours. So, I decided to spend 3 of those hours at Strand – looking at every book in the “Marketing and Sales” section. Even after buying it, I did not immediately read it. It lay on my shelf for a few months. (I am a firm believer that every book comes with its “Will be read on” date!) And one day, I started reading. The ideas I had connected – the dots joined – the clues led me to the solution. A new venture was born.

Will be continued soon.

Delegate to Grow

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is trying to do it all themselves. This eventually stunts their growth. Delegating is perhaps the most important factor for scaling an enterprise. It determines the eventual success.

For me, delegating came easily. I have always been a big-picture person. I don’t like to get into too many details. I had to do that early on, but as soon as I can find someone else who can take a task over and do it well, I get out of the way. That is the only way to grow – because an entrepreneur’s life is always about solving new problems as they come.

Delegating requires trusting your team. It means hiring people who are better than you at something. You cannot babysit them for long. It means trusting them to do the right thing – without second-guessing them. It is not easy. For an entrepreneur, the venture is all that is there – and there are so many worries about things going wrong. Yet, a balance has to be found. Because without delegation, decisions will all get stuck and eventually, growth will stagnate.

I was forced into delegating in the early days of IndiaWorld. I had to be the external face – meeting customers, and later potential investors. I would also travel to learn – attending conferences outside India. So, I had to necessarily start trusting my team to do the right things – I could no longer clear every story published or review every headline. Once I realised that my time could get freed up, I took to delegating even more. People also liked the responsibility and trust that came with delegation.

To make delegation work, one has to accept that some mistakes will happen. One has to deal with those carefully. Be too lenient and complacency can creep in; be too harsh and before one realises it, every small decision will be pushed up a level. It is this fine-tuning that entrepreneurs have to get right.

I am one who likes uninterrupted time to think, read and write. I like to think ahead – imagine what the world will be, and what I can do. This deep thinking cannot happen with a steady stream of interrupts via phone calls and Whatsapp messages. Deciding what not to decide becomes equally important.

For 10 years between 2009 and 2018, I dabbled on the periphery of politics. Netcore grew nearly 50X during this period. Netcore had professional CEOs, and I let them run the business. I separated ownership from management. Even now, as I play a more active role at Netcore, I report to the CEO for the tasks that I am doing. Knowing that there are better people than me to run and grow Netcore is a great satisfaction – that I made the right choices. Proficorns are born from such decisions.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 10)

Learning to Learn

Nothing that I learnt directly in the classrooms of IIT or Columbia University prepared me for my entrepreneurial ventures. My degrees were in Electrical Engineering. My first ventures were in software. What I learnt in every course over the five years of undergrad and grad education was how to learn. Every course was like opening a door to a new world. All it took was a few months of immersion to imbibe new topics.

When I began my Masters at Columbia University in 1988, I decided to take a course in the Computer Science department in Operating Systems (OS). A knowledge of programming and C was a prerequisite, and I knew neither. My advisor told me it would be impossible for me to do the OS course, given that I also had four other courses in that semester. I decided to go ahead – realising that I would probably have to spend a disproportionate time learning the basics of C. I had taught myself BASIC when I was in college and my father had bought a computer in his office in 1983. I figured another language couldn’t be that difficult.

I was wrong in the early days. My first test in OS resulted in me being the lowest in the class. I was advised to drop the course. But I decided to persist – confident in my ability to learn. And I did. All those years in IIT classrooms ‘learning to learn’ paid off. I spent a lot of time teaching myself C from a book and on a terminal. I finished the course second-highest in the class.

That was what gave me the confidence later in life – that I could learn any new topic in a few months. My entrepreneurial ventures have been in diverse areas – software, media, politics and marketing. In every venture, I have had to master new ideas in a few months. My advantage in each of these ventures is that I come to the problem as an outsider – with a new perspective. I am able to do “value-added aggregation” – combine the existing ideas in new ways to come up with something new and better. Lack of previous experience can actually be an advantage for entrepreneurs as they start their proficorn journey.

Tomorrow: My Proficorn Way (Part 9)