Bootstrap in Bangalore

Perhaps its a coincidence that while I had this draft sitting on my computer other people wrote great stuff on this topic. Anyhow, here is what I had to say:

Starting early is perhaps the easiest step you can take to increase you chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Apart from the obvious advantages like less risk, more energy, not knowing the 100 reasons why your idea won’t work, more time, surrounded by eager participants in your plan etc etc I think two important overlooked advantages are: 1) Having a clear goal to guide you 2) Experience of early failures or small successes

When kids are growing up most want to become some kind of a “profession” when they grow up – like an engineer, a doctor, soldier or a train driver! Somehow an entrepreneur is not looked at as something you want to be when you grow up. Perhaps its because if your parents were successful entrepreneurs, you would be inheriting the wealth and the business rather than starting your own. If they were failed entrepreneurs, thats hardly a role model to follow and surely they will discourage their children to no end. Children of the majority, the working middle class, have aspirations to be the typical professional like their parents. So kids get inspired about entrepreneurship when they grow up and either meet a role model, read about someone, get repulsed by the cubicle, are simple trying to scratch their own itch or get a random inspiration.

Any which way, once this goal of becoming an entrepreneur sets in your whole perspective and decision making gets oriented and optimized towards that. Your reading habits, skills you wish to acquire, people you want to hang around with will get affected by this decision. Where people will see problems worth despair like the huge skill shortage of college graduates, an entrepreneur will see the opportunity of a training business. The dirt in our cities provide opportunity for someone to start a waste management company. It helped me make many of my important choices – joining a lesser known product company instead of a big 3 software services company I had an offer from after college. I wanted to learn how to make software products and this fitted well with that dream. A few months into the job I realized I wanted to learn how a software product company works and not just the making of it. This made the decision to join the product/program management group a no-brainer. That function interacted with pretty much every department in the company giving me an opportunity to learn a lot. A couple of years later I got the opportunity to be the first employee in a start up, my quick ascent to the offer (I think I made my mind in hours, if not minutes) even took the person making the offer by surprise. I wanted the experience of being around when things started off so much that I said yes without even asking what my salary would be! I ended up joining even before the company was incorporated and got involved not only in my role but also in helping create the team.

The point above is not whether I made the right decisions. They weren’t really, its just that they were my decisions driven by the goal to become the picture of entrepreneur that I had. It helped to take active decisions rather than tread along through chance happenings or peer pressure shaping your life. If you are still wavering about whether you should or shouldn’t become an entrepreneur, make that decision now and give yourself time – to learn, find opportunities, make friends, save money – to prepare for when chance arrives and then let other people call it luck.

Next part of this post on the other advantage of starting early.