6 things to embrace as an Entrepreneur
This is an updated article on the one I wrote for Technode in 2021 when I was running my startup.
Some time back, I was asked to share my thoughts with a group of students on what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, and I wrote these 6 words on the whiteboard:
1. Poverty
2. Humiliation
3. Dependency
4. Failure
5. Loneliness
6. Sun
I remember telling the audience that there is nothing romantic about being an entrepreneur and the media tend to sugar-coat the successes of those who managed to land big investments or nice exits and almost never feature those who didn’t make it. I also wondered why many students and even institutions would consider entrepreneurship as an imperative rite of passage for a holistic student experience.
If Jack Ma is right, then the first thing to do after graduation before we turn 40 should be to find a good boss to work with and hone best practices from young instead of trashing it out in the wild and figuring out as we go as startup founders, often ending with lots of scars and pain. Trust me, some lessons are better learned through mentors than having to go through it ourselves. Some mistakes are too costly to be made and take too much time in our life to remedy.
And not all of us are entrepreneur by design.
In my view, entrepreneurs are misfits in society: we can’t seem to work with people in a team, and we have such a crazy belief to solve some problems in society that we are prepared to stake it all to realise that belief. Some of us make it, but most of us don’t even come close.
So my six words broadly translate to what I have learned in my last 20 years as an entrepreneur:
1. Poverty
When I first started, my startup registered phenomenal growth within three years and I became a rich man before I turned 30. For a middleclass family boy with just 2 years of working experience prior to starting up, that was a lot of money to have on hand. I even had an offer to acquire my company then for a nice tidy sum, which I wrote about how I managed that offer as a lesson for first time founders in my book: The Fast Founder: from Startup to Exit in 36 Months.
I was so bullish about our traction that daringly (and in hindsight, recklessly and foolishly), I devoted the profits to growing the new business and investing in a whole lot of stuff, only to discover a few years down the road that they weren’t relevant enough to the customer, and I nearly went bankrupt at one point.
From that point onwards, I learned to save and that practice helped sustained the company for several more years without raising significant amounts of money from investors. The company turned profitable over a good number of years and those where the best days for me as an entrepreneur.
I learned the value of money when I eventually became poor; and I learned to save. The more I saved (money), the wealthier we got.
These days, I look to invest in entrepreneurs to have been poor and have that relentless desire to “never want to be poor again. Ever.”
Poverty is a powerful driver for material success. “Material” is the word here. Physical Poverty may not be a driver for emotional or spiritual growth. In fact, many people who are materially poor could be driven to desperation and depression and this process needs to be managed.
2. Humiliation
I (and many of our colleagues) have been humiliated in one way or another; and because I probably have been humiliated the most in the company (by would-be, current or past investors, customers, business associates etc), I learned the value of dignity. And so, I learned to treat people, especially my colleagues and associates, in a dignified and respectful way, yet expecting nothing less than the best of our efforts for a just wage.
When I was running my startup, educational qualifications mattered less than ability; where we work matters less than how much we deliver on the job. I have seen first-hand and been inspired by many of our colleagues who, despite being considered less qualified than their peers in the same role at other firms, have flourished so much more than those same peers.
These days, when I get to work with founders and business owners and even students who have commendable aspirations to solve some of society’s most complex problems, I remind myself to always treat everyone I meet with the respect they deserve. Be prepared to hear them out and deliver feedback respectfully. If they appreciate it, that’s great. If they don’t and are haughty, remind myself that I was like this when I was a younger entrepreneur who haven’t seen failure enough to be wise. So I learned to give space for them to grow. If I can, I will make time for them when the time is ripe.
I found this formula has worked for me as some entrepreneurs would return to look for me for advice and help when they eventually met with some setback or roadblocks. Had I been a nasty investor when they first met me and humiliated them, I wouldn’t have been able to make the friendships I do now.
3. Dependency
I used to think that I should be the smartest person in the room and didn’t listen enough, which led to Failure. Now I know all too well that to succeed, we need to do it TOGETHER, that the smartest person in the room can never and should never be me, and that the honest and passionate views of our team matter.
When I was running startups that raised money from investors, I learned that choosing and depending on the right investors was really important. Not everyone with money to invest is useful, and I have learned this the hard way. Investors ask important questions about the company’s plans for growth, and this is their right. But those who offer constructive advice and go further to put in resources like network and contacts will go a lot further with us than those who just put in money, sit back and question all too often about the decisions of the management and the fate of their investment.
Then there are investors who would promise lots of resources to assist the company and would request to come in at a bargained price for a larger share of the company and the rights to influence how it is run. On the surface, this would sound great as it means getting an investor “who can help”. But founders should be cautious and not believe too much into the “we have the ecosystem to support your growth” narrative. Always test this narrative by asking to collaborate with some of the players in their ecosystem to see for yourself if this claim is legit or whether you could work with them in the first place before going further and get married in an investment deal.
The more we can depend on each other, the more value we create. So, I have learned to choose who we depend on these days.
4. Failure
This really sucks, especially for a person like me, who play to win; and so, when I lose, it really hurts. But here is the thing:
Let me be clear: I hate to fail. But some of my best traits as a business leader and mentor today have come from experiencing such failures, taking hard looks at my actions and decisions, getting up and moving on.
I have since learned that nothing we do the first time ever works. For me, any first-time launch of a product is meant for us to put out ideas in concrete form and find out what needs to be changed, improved, removed or added in order to make people love it.
A product launch is our way of learning more of what the market really needs -- no amount of focus groups can give us the insight on what the customer really wants, as compared to an honest conversation with the customer, and no amount of positive market survey results can beat an actual sale. And unless we can frame our failures as successes in learning more to help us pivot the right way forward, failure on its own can be very paralyzing.
As bad as it feels, I have learned to always expect to fail and learn. If we succeed somehow at first launch, be sceptical and assume that we just got lucky or be wary that the problem may be too easy to solve for competitors to jump in and any initial success could be short-lived.
5. Loneliness
I recently met a founder of a deeptech company who hasn’t drawn a salary for the past 10 years and have relied on his savings from his previous exit to fund his business prudently and raising little money for a deeptech company. He is passionate about his product, but jaded in how the market may receive it. Well, at least he has enough personal funds to carry the enterprise forward all these years. And he has an equally wealthy co-founder to share the burden.
But what about lone founders like me when I started my company way back?
As the founder of a business, I know that no one should ever take the responsibility for a failure other than the guy at the top. I have learned that when the Company runs out of money, the CEO should be the only one to take a pay cut, and when that’s not enough, he should freeze his pay, and if that too isn’t enough, then take on a loan–and doing all these while finding ways to grow and fund the company so it can take care of its employees.
Our staff give us their future; the least we can do is to be responsible for it.
And the journey can be nerve wrecking. This founder whom I spoke to told me that he was diagnosed with depression and needed medication to manage it. He was fortunate he got out of it well enough to carry on. But he isn’t alone.
Here are the statistics from a research that was approved by the UC Berkeley Institutional Review Board and published in the journal Small Business Economics
Entrepreneurs can be:
- 2 times as likely to report a lifetime history of depression;
- 3 times more likely to have bipolar disorder and
- 3 times more likely to experience substance abuse and addiction.
They are also twice as likely to attempt suicide or be hospitalized in a psychiatric institution.
There are many articles online that advise entrepreneurs on self-care and how to manage chronic stress that is an integral part of entrepreneurship. Sometimes, it helps by getting a team of like-minded people with complementary skills to co-found a new venture than going at it alone. It helps to have someone to bounce ideas and share burdens with.
Another way is to manage setbacks by looking forward to the Sunrise.
6. The Sunrise
I was once asked by a group of MBA students if I have ever thought of giving up—I was then in a panel of entrepreneurs who shared their experiences with these bright-eyed individuals with dreams of striking it out on their own. My entrepreneur-peers all shared that thoughts of giving up never came to their minds or they wouldn’t have been able to sustain their businesses and live their dreams. I had a somewhat different take, and my answer was simply:
“Thought of or felt like giving up? Every other day! But what I feel and what I decide are very different things!”
I went on to share a rule in the company I was running:
We are all allowed to be sad, to cry and to grief whenever we lose a deal–that’s a right we have earned since we have lost something that belonged to us. BUT we can only do so for one night. As the sun sets, we lament and grief. As we sleep in the night, we heal. And as the sun rises the following day, we get up to the new opportunities that will present themselves before us in this bright new day, and we go hunting. Again.
Thus, I have learned to embrace the Sun, as it sets and rises.
When I was done speaking, one student asked me, “If being an entrepreneur is as hard as you have described, why do you still do it?”
To which I answered:
“You know, when you find a problem in the world that only you seem to have noticed at that point in time, and you know in your gut that it’s a real problem when many naysayers tried to put you down. The day when you managed to solve that problem and proved to yourself that you weren’t wrong in the first place … that feeling is priceless. That’s why I am still doing what I do.”
So what are entrepreneurs?
We are, at the core, people who seek out and solve complex problems in society.
A problem worth solving is enough to proper true entrepreneurs to give their all.
We don’t give up.
But we need to be loved too, like everyone else.
For many, they are the quiet superheroes who sometimes need a pad on the back for the tries they make, or a gentle advice on what to do next, whether to pivot, double-down, or move on to something else.
Reference: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-018-0059-8
