Founders Are Like Train Engines
Success mantra I believe that the journey for an entrepreneur, especially those starting up for the first time, has a phenomenal learning curve. It’s easy to get lost in solving day-to-day problems and not pay attention to how you need to grow yourself. I take out time to reflect on how the company will grow in the next three to five years and what I need to learn in order to facilitate that growth. The speed of a train is limited by the speed of the engine. Founders are the engine of their respective start-up train and they need to learn to be the fastest.
The driving force behind your journey The democratisation of technology has given us, specifically those in tech, a tremendous amount of leverage. Tech entrepreneurs can create platforms that can impact millions of lives within a few years. Such a leverage was unimaginable a few decades ago. It’s this ability of creating widespread impact that gravitated me towards entrepreneurship. At zoojoo.be we are on a mission to measurably improve happiness in the world. We are doing so by creating technology that can help members form positive, healthy habits.
Business advice Every entrepreneur is told to dream big. But to build a valuable business it takes years of single-minded effort. So it’s important that you stay patient and have the grit to commit to long term goals.
Tips for budding entrepreneurs While it’s exciting to explore new ideas, it’s important you stay focused. Most startups fail within the first year because the problem they are trying to solve has no real world market. Your job in the first six to nine months is to quickly and effectively find if you have an opportunity to execute upon. Stay focused on it.
Government support India has a thriving startup ecosystem to support early stage ventures, but it still hasn’t produced many IPOs which are important if the ecosystem has to mature. Government can facilitate this by loosening up regulations around IPO.
The team I define “right team” as “right people at the right places doing the right thing right”. I believe that building a team that can effectively execute on the idea is one of the core responsibilities of an entrepreneur.
Inspiration I admire Subroto Baghchi (co-founder of Mindtree) a lot. In the few conversations that I have had with him, I have learned about the importance of focused work and perseverance. I also look upto Atin Sharma (partner at RoundGlass) who has taught me patience.
The next step We will be working towards consolidating our learning in the Indian market and build a team that can accelerate the company’s growth based on those learnings.
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