An entrepreneur must know when to quit...

We all feel that entrepreneurship is all about starting a business. I think that it is also very important for an entrepreneur when to close down the business.

There are a lot of reasons why entrepreneurs continue operating a business even if they feel that the business is not operating as per their expectations or initial thought. This might be due to reasons like:
- the fear to fail: Failure is such a stigma, in our society especially, that most feel that failures are the end of their journeys and the end of their self-confidence.
- the entrepreneur's bias: We all feel that our business is the best and at times we tend to have unreasonable confidence in the same. In the daily running of the business, we fail to assess how we are performing and whether the business is performing as per expectations and is becoming into a sustainable business.

A good entrepreneur must avoid falling prey to the above and at all times, must analyse and assess the venture in an unbiased and logical manner. If the business is not looking steady and sustainable going forward due to reasons like a lack of differentiation, a lack of a robust business model, continuous under-performance on internal estimates, a lack of a pivoting option etc, the entrepreneur should definitely keep persisting but should know when the right is to close down the business as well.

So in the end, the moral is that the entrepreneur should be at all times in total control of his/her venture and should understand the nitty gritties of the same.

Sales - one skill every entrepreneur must have

Sales is the core of any business.

- An entrepreneur has to sell his company's products/services to generate revenue which in turn can sustain and grow the business.
- An entrepreneur needs to sell his company to potential recruits so that the business can pull in the best talent.
- An entrepreneur needs to sell his/her vision and ethic to all the employees in the business so that a unified culture and work environment can be developed.
- An entrepreneur needs to sell his/her company's working ethic and style so that the business can attract the best stakeholders to work with.

Hence an advice for any entrepreneur: Develop and master the skills you may have, but definitely work on your selling and communication skills as well as they are must-have for all.

The Importance of a Good Founding Team!!!

This is a very sore point for me. I cannot emphasize enough how important a good founding/management team is. Currently I have some good ideas in my mind and have this great urge to start out again on one of them, I am just staying back because I don't have and am not currently being able to build a good team around the idea. I believe that ideas contribute around 30% of a startup's success, the rest comes from the ability to execute the idea. And to execute well, you need a 'good team'!

Let's take an analogy to understand this. In raising a child, the mother and father both have a significant role to play. The mother can provide the child with the warmth, love, care and the finer things in life. The father is more responsible for the safety, comfort and the more basic needs of the child (this is generally the case and differs totally from case to case :). Hence, the parents need to jointly complement each other and provide the child an environment where the latter can fully grow and realise his/her potential. Same is the case in a startup as well. Founders, with complementary skills, need to come together and create a structure and culture in which the business can grow and flourish. Skill sets of the initial team are key. For example, in the case of a Online Tea Retailing company, ideally founders should have the following skills within the team:
Online - Technology Expertise
Tea - Domain Expertise
Retailing - FMCG Retailing Expertise
Not necessarily will all teams have all requisite skills. But I suggest that each founding team should try to incorporate as many skills as we can within the team as it betters the chance of success.

Startups are all about risk. A good team is a big factor which can help mitigate the risks involved. So the better the team, the better will be the execution and the better the chance of building a sustainable business.

Inspiring Entrepreneurship Story - Elevate!

"In 1998 I was a copywriter/account manager at a small ad agency in NYC. I liked what I did, but working in jammed quarters with ten people (and one stinky bathroom) and being told when to show up and when I could go home was getting old.

I was just twenty-seven but knew I was doing good work for our clients and that I had some talent. Then I noticed a freelancer coming in and out of the office on his own schedule yet doing pretty much the same work as me. He'd come back all tanned from the Hamptons and would do his work while he was there.

I was so envious. And then I found out he was making way more money than me.

But then I realized my envy simply meant I wanted more freedom for myself. So I didn't get mad... I got smart. I took him to lunch, asked how he got started, and once I kind of understood the first few steps I quit my job.

I didn't have any clients, I had never taken a business course, I was cash-poor and in over $15,000 of credit card debt. But I somehow knew I could hustle. And it was just more painful for me if I had stayed at that job and never known what would have happened if I didn't try.

I stopped at Staples on the way home and put a new printer-fax machine on the last bit of room I had on a credit card. I printed business cards that said I had offered marketing communications services. I attended any networking meeting I could find. I asked for referrals. I met a lot of people but nothing was happening. And I was getting tired of ramen noodles.

When I didn't have the money for my next rent payment on my tiny apartment, I was getting nervous all this wouldn't work. But one day, after praying for guidance, the phone rang. One of the agency's clients had looked up my number. They said they had no reason to stay with the agency if I was gone. They became my first real client--one that at least paid for my rent, groceries, and Metro card.

And from there, you couldn't stop me." -- Ali Brown, founder & CEO, Elevate.

Moral: Believe in yourself!

5 Things Entrepreneurs Need To Know About Themselves

Strengths – Spend some time to find your strength, improve on it and find ways to maximise it. Feel confident in these abilities to an extent that you don’t question them. Find out if your core competency is finance, marketing, negotiating, leading. Once you know, you can instil faith in your stakeholders and employees.

Weaknesses - Knowing and accepting your weakness allows you to work on improving them. More importantly, you can seek help in this regard to sail through business smoothly.

Know your passion – Know if you are doing it for kicks or are serious about creating a large company out of your start up. Knowing what drives you and what will help you meet your business goals will keep you motivated.

Limits – Know when you shouldn’t proceed with a task or project. Understand your boundaries and that of your business to maintain balance.

Fears – Business is risky. Know what your fears are so you can overcome them if they occur. At the very least, you should be able to face them or make peace with them.

(nice pointers taken from eazyhire.in)

'Passion - the Genesis of Genius'

I want to top the Maths exam, it's my favourite subject!
I want to make my girl friend feel really special this Valentines!
I want to make my mother proud!
I want to be the best husband and an amazing father!
I want to create the next Facebook!

The common ingredient is all of these is PASSION. If I 'want' something, then I have to be passionate about it. The same argument goes for your startup as well. If you really want to create a sustainable business, you have to be passionate about it and it is this passion you have which will ensure that you keep persevering.

My next startup - Bitequest!

It was 2007 and I was in Oxford doing my Masters. Frankly speaking, the course turned out to be much more theoretical than I thought and I barely used to go to class. As a matter of fact, I attended barely 3 classes over the 9 months I was there :)  I got involved with a host of entrepreneurship activities there. I was interacting with local entrepreneurs and also headed the Entrepreneurship Network at the Business School.

During this time I came across Toptable, a restaurant listing and reservation portal. I really liked the concept and felt that India should also have a similar concept. And hence came up the idea of starting Bitequest. The name was quite easy to come up with and I felt it was catchy. Bitequest - your quest for the perfect bite ends here :)))

I started contacting some website development vendors through email. I came to India and finalised one and got the work started. Thereafter, I started contacting restaurant managers/owners through email to make them understand the concept and get them on board. We were not charging anything. We were just hoping to get discounts from restaurants and wanted to list them with us. The ball started rolling.

I realised that probably I can look at the operations and marketing. However, I was a more 'serious-about-life' type of guy and had hardly frequented any restaurants/bars even when I was in India. I wanted to rope in some people who were more into the social scene as I thought they must have a better idea as to how restaurants run and also had a better social network. Then I roped in a friend of mine who was studying in Melbourne. Thereafter, 2 more friends joined and we started growing the company and really enjoying ourselves in the process. We were able to scale all over Delhi/NCR and had tie ups with more than 300 of the most premium restaurants. Also a lot of the time when we went for tie ups with bars/lounges, we used to end up drunk after the meeting ;)

Came February 2010 or even earlier, I started having differences with my team members about how to scale up the business. I wanted to make it an online restaurant discovery tool and expand the business geographically. On the other hand, the rest of the team wanted to scale it up by setting up a call centre where customers can call and we reserve the tables for them. Due to these differences, I eventually backed off from the business.

The website is still live and being run by a close friend of mine. They some awesome restaurants on it and some great deals for users. Check the website out www.bitequest.com. 

The Birth of an Idea!

The common way an idea is born through an experience. A bad experience, a gap in some particular service, an unmet need, all of these lead to the birth of an idea in most cases.

However, entrepreneurs, being the versatile lot they are, need not limit themselves to their experience. Some identify opportunities in any Field/Industry. As is said in the quote above, "Opportunity will necessarily not knock on your door. If it doesn't, build a door!"

Patience - a Very Crucial Quality for an Entrepreneur.

A very typical situation: a good idea -- a good team -- a good start -- failed startup.

What was missing in such cases? A lot of the times we see it is patience. Entrepreneurs need to maintain the momentum especially during the low phases.

What failure teaches you...

I've failed in my startup ventures till date.. I've tried more than a couple of times and have had to close down the ventures within 1-3 years from inception. I've lost money, confidence and respect towards me from my friends & family. I stand here today reflecting on what I've done. All looked bleak initially. But then, on analyzing further, I feel now that I have taken a lot from each of my ventures (which I will individually detail in other posts).

Failure has taught me things right from the importance of a business plan, team building, building a robust business model, having concrete estimates and expectations, having good mentors & advisers in your journey and so on. Probably, if I had to succeed in my first venture, a lot of this learning would not have come to me in as detail as it has.

So, failure is not bad at all. It's important to try and if you fail, just make sure you take back as much learning as possible. Repeating a mistake and failing a second time because of it is stupidity and a complete waste of time.

Why do they keep asking for 'Unit Economics'?

'Business is about profit'. Sounds weird right... Especially in this era of scale and growth and volumes, no one thinks of profit. Then why am I saying this?

Yes, business is about profit in the long term. We can start off with no intention for earning profit in the early part of the business. We can look to invest, scale and grow and all our emphasis can and should be on that. However, to sustain the business, profit will need to start flowing in gradually. To estimate what that profit can be, unit economics becomes of prime importance. Unit Economics tells you the exact revenue, expenses per unit of sale. These economics can be estimated using future figures (eg. once we do 20,000 transactions a month, our courier charges would come down to Rs. 20 per kg), but they help us ascertain what we could earn going into the future, thereby giving us a direction and fair estimate of what the business can generate.

These economics can be for the operations of a business and also for customer acquisition. The numbers for operations can help us ascertain the business profitability. The ones for marketing acquisition can help us ascertain how much money we are spending to acquire new customers vis a vis the amount we are earning from that customer (this obviously has to be positive to generate value for the business).

Hence it is very important for an entrepreneur to come up with these figures and to use them in the business plan.

How big is the market???

This is one question entrepreneurs have to deal with.

At times, a lot of us wonder why. Even I did when I had attempted to start a 'Zomato for Spas' back in 2010. I used to see the number of spas growing exponentially in Delhi. Seeing so many spas, I thought that there should be a service which could tell users which spa is better, what massages do different spas offer, pricing of services in different spas and so on. I could see a gap and could also see physical growth of the Industry. However, one thing I did not take into account was the existing size of the market.

Think of it like this. If I have a vision of disrupting an Industry and becoming a leader in it (which has to be a vision when starting up especially in the technology space), I would eventually want to capture a 5-10% of the total market share. So if the Industry size is bigger, the business vision automatically becomes bigger. If the vision is bigger, the opportunity cost of doing something else (like doing a course or a job) becomes comparatively smaller and it makes more sense to start a company. If I target a small market, the potential vision for my company becomes smaller and comes close to the line which separates doing a startup vs getting employed elsewhere.

Also if you look at it from an Investor's perspective, they know that typically they will only make good money from 1-2 ventures out of 10. Hence, if they invest in smaller markets, the multiple of returns for them in that particular ventures becomes smaller. Taking into account the money they will lose in some businesses, the averaging of returns doesn't quite work out for them.

So to sum it up, identify a big market, find a gap and innovate in it. It's better to go after a good idea in a big market than to go after a great idea in a small market (unless you want to set up a small/local business).  

My first attempt - COVEMAN!

I was in the last semester of my MBA in early 2007. I was bored of studying and wanted to start something. I was attracted to the internet and felt it would be a perfect time to start up in the online space.

I saw all my batch mates making CVs for the upcoming placement season. On interacting with some of them, I realised a lot of them did not know what to include and what not to include. Also they din't know how to display the information. This is when I thought that there should be an online tool which can help users make their CVs online.

I came up with the name COVEMAN (standing for COlumban VEnkiite MANdevian based on the educational institutes I had attended). A user could create CVs, store them and email them or print them out using Coveman.com. I got a web developer in Gurgaon to make the website. It was a very basic website and when I look back, the design was realllly bad :)

Though the interface might not be great, but looking back I feel that idea was great. There was hardly any competition then and the idea was addressing a common and genuine problem and was highly scalable.

However, I quit this as I had no idea how to run a startup and how big it would become. Also I got into Oxford University and that was way too big to let pass. And so Coveman died a natural death.

Lesson Learnt:
Starting up is about sacrificing. If you don't believe in your company, no one else will. If you feel what you are doing has great potential, just go for it. Don't get swayed by things happening around you. Only those who persevere will succeed. 

Why the name etrlearning???

A chartered accountant has a CA prefixed to his/her name.
A doctor has Dr. prefixed.

Why should an entrepreneur not have "Etr"???

What say guys........

Most Important Lesson - KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Just as the layout for my blog is the simplest layout blogspot had, that is how an entrepreneur should keep his startup. Focus on '1 simple solution' for potential users to start off with. DO NOT COMPLICATE your service and focus focus focus...

If a business cannot be defined in 1 simple sentence, you're not sure what you are doing!!!

Hello!

Hey guys, welcome to this blog.

I am Manish Hada. I have done a B.Sc, MBA & M.S and have founded 2 startups till date. I have also worked on a host of ideas which never saw the light of the day.

I have been trying to start and sustain a business for the last 10 odd years now. I've started a few, scaled up in some and have had to exit all :( I may not have the bank balance to show what I've done, but through this blog, I want to share what I actually have gained in this journey and also in the times ahead.

Hope this helps :)))))))))))))