Prateek Dayal

I had been thinking of writing this post for a long time now but never really got around to writing it. Partly, I wanted to know how some other people feel about this. I think it was good to have a discussion with Prof. Suresh yesterday at IIM Bangalore about these issues. So here it is finally :)

These days, Bangalore has atleast one entrepreneurship related event every week. More often, there are more. Some of these are conferences and some unconferences. Most events see a large number of aspiring entrepreneurs and a few people who have already taken the plunge. People who have been there and done that are always in minority. Specially in the unconferences, most people are aspiring entrepreneurs or people who are currently fighting it out to make it big.

If you attend these events and pay some attention, you can almost always catch words like amazon, google, youtube in the discussions. You can often hear about how Google came in when search was already a very competitive market and they revolutionized everything. How they did not make any money for years but focussed on building a great service and eventually reached great heights. People often talk of how the founders of these startups had a vision and they stuck to it untill they made it big. However for some reason the same people find it very hard to relate to the entrepreneurs around them. Entrepreneurs who are more or less like them, who worked with them before and are now on their own, trying to figure things out.

I find this very ironical. I believe there are somethings almost all entrepreneurs have in common. Some phases in life almost every entrepreneur/startup has to go through. Talking of the same phase in the context of successful startup inspires people whereas a startup in the same phase (but not big yet) cannot find many supporters (in the startup circle).

Confusion Rules a Startup

More often than not, people assume that by definition, startups would have it all figured out and only then founders would take a plunge. However if you zoom into the early life of most successful startups, they too took some time to figure out things. Paypal and Blogger are two great examples of startups who took sometime before they finally knew what it is thats gonna make it big for them. Things are never crystal clear right from the start. Zeroing in on something that can become big and can be monetized takes some time. Even in the context of an idea, there are several details that take time of figure out. Most startups do their market research on the way. Founders at Work is a great book to read to understand startups and entrepreneurs.

You don’t start a million dollar company. You grow yours into one

You can at best start a company. You cannot start a million dollar company. Atleast not most times. You identify a need, solve some problems and then scale it up. There are a lot of startups who have grown this way (Craigslist, PlentyofFish, Blogger). In fact there have been several companies in India too. The most popular of the lot would certainly be Naukri.com. All these companies took time to grow. Simply because you have not made a million dollar in the first year or two does not mean you will not make it in the next five.

You will make mistakes

Making mistakes is inevitable. When you are trying to do something new (again relative) and when there are no references/guides available for every step you take, you will go wrong often. Even the big companies have had failed products. Google had to buy youtube despite having Google Videos. Apple has had failed products. Several companies join the Techcrunch Deadpool every month. Mistakes are part of the whole startup experience. So if your next door startup just threw away their last 3 months of work because it did not take off the way they thought, don’t write them off.

Marketing IS a problem

“But how will you market your idea?” is a question I hear too often from the crowd in such events. Trust me when I say that we are all trying to figure it out. I believe all startups are finally an exercise in sales and marketing more than anything. So the companies that figure it out are gonna make it big and you know how long it takes to make it big. So don’t expect to hear in a few lines the answer to this question. Marketing is an ongoing process. Everyone is new in internet marketing. We all know how romantic social media is but very few of us have had a chance to go out with it yet.

Photo Credit: richardmasoner

Monetization takes time

Most companies put monetization last. I think its fair enough considering that no real monetization can happen unless you grow to a critical mass. Since every startup (atleast the bootstrapping ones) have very limited bandwidth, founders prefer to put that into marketing and gaining that critical mass rather than monetizing early on. Give these guys sometime. Google could monetize only after a few years. Facebook and Orkut are still trying to figure it out. Would you write them off?

Its not all romantic

Startups take time and this is doubly true in India, where internet has still not reached every corner of the country. There are not gonna be many quick exits. Most people would have to stick to their ideas for reasonably long and not everything they do during that phase is gonna look romantic. The Dip is gonna take over sooner than later and only perseverance would get startups out of it. During the dip, romantic is the last thing a startup is. However once out of the dip, that phase and the story of how founders could pull the startup out of it looks very romantic. So next time you meet a guy who has been trying to get to the next level for the last one year, don’t write off his startup. If you are concerned, try to analyze his bottlenecks and see if you or your contacts can help.

This post is not about not questioning a startup. Its about taking the right lessons from the successful (or failed) startups and then looking at startups around you in the light of that knowledge. If we want to develop a true ecosystem, we must begin to understand the startups well first. We must understand that they are different from big companies, they have different needs and different priorities. Thats what makes entrepreneurship so differnet and hence fun :)

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