Value Creation v/s Value Creation
This may seem like a funny topic for a blog post. The idea is not to come up with a title that draws attention (I hope it does) but to write about an inherent dilemma that lot of bootstrappers go through. I go through it and I know a few other people go through it. I am not sure if its true only in the Indian context or globally. I have a feeling that it has to do a lot with India though and you will soon know why I feel that way.
Why is someone not doing it? People Need it!
When I was in IIT Guwahati we were a small campus with about 500 students. Compare this with other IITs that have that kind of intake for undergrad program alone per year. I think the first few batches are really entrepreneurial in the sense that they try to define the culture of an institute. In our case the culture meant a lot of technical and cultural festivals that other IITs hold too. Stuff like Alcheringa, Techniche and having chapters of societies like IEEE, ACM, SPICMACAY etc. Fewer students meant fewer people to attend and even fewer people to organize these festivals (they are almost 99% student initiatives). The first few batches could have easily ignored these things as we were small and not there yet but they did not. They fought hard to get these festivals, chapters going. They wanted IITG to feel what other IITs feel every year. They wanted juniors to come in and feel part of a legacy. They wanted to get there … and they tried to do on their own. I am sure they could have focussed their efforts elsewhere and may be achieved something more for themselves and not cared about this, but they did not.
When I joined there were lots of things in place and lots of things not in place. Like some other classmates, I played a role in SPICMACAY, Technical festivals and the IEEE chapter. It took a lot of time and sometimes I wondered why I am doing that (so did many of my friends). The answer was that I just felt responsible and felt bad for not helping in shaping the culture when I would crib about a lot of missing things. I think thats what it is. Some people just feel responsible for shaping up the culture in a place and feel ashamed in running away from it when they can clearly see something missing.
Aren’t we talking about the web here?
Yes we most certainly are talking about the web here. I feel that web (in India atleast) is no different from what we described above. We know how its in the west and a lot of us crave for those kind of webservices in India too. It could be web-ifying your daily needs (like food, medicine, reading, shopping etc) or building online communities around hobbies (say photography, music, writing etc). Lot of times we feel the need for a service and start building it. No one else would attempt it probably because there is no VCish value creation there (millions –> billions) but there is a lot of value creation in terms of touching a lot of lives.
Once you start building a service that people actually like using, you find out that it takes a lot of time, energy, thought and money. Time is not free as most people think because you can always use that time to pick up another consulting gig and make more money or just plain spend it with family. So in the end you end up asking yourself why you are doing something that may or may not scale up to millions of dollars (or say to the salaries that your peers would draw for the next few years). I think again the answer lies in the fact that most times when you crib, you also feel responsible for fixing things up. You go out and create those missing services creating a lot of value but not value enough. I am quite certain many entrepreneurs around me felt a need (and a business too) and started up. However only later you realize that not all needs are needs enough for VCs and people around you. Ofcourse the lack of any kind of angels (people like you, the dreamers but with more money) makes things very tough along the way.
So what am I trying to say?
May be this is a very personal post but I do know some other people going through this dilemma. I know that in India there is a need for lots of everyday products but once someone builds them they are gonna get into this classic problem of not creating “enough value”. If you talk to the “experienced” people (people who create real value or nothing at all), you will get to know how well they know the broadband penetration numbers, the mobile penetration numbers and how semantic web is the future of the web and nothing else is worth solving. I am quite certain that it happens all the time.
Sorry if you were looking for a solution to all this … as I write .. I am looking for one too.
Thanks for reading so far!
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Something that intrinsically doesn’t have enough value should not be built unless it connects the developer with like minds.