In my five years in an
entrepreneurial venture I have seen very few people who really know themselves.
When I say know themselves, it does
not mean a favorite color, favorite movie star or a favorite car. Rather, I
mean knowing about how you would react to certain situations when you face
them. It is only in adverse situations that the real character of a person
comes out.
Entrepreneur, the word,
has always been associated with adjectives like brave, visionary and a person
who has met eye to eye with every adverse situation and always looked ahead. We
have seen a lot of Entrepreneurs create fortune from a mere idea. In earlier
times the information and goods did not travel as fast as they travel now. The
competition has increased immensely with increase in technology, emerging of
the web and more resources at disposal.
This is where the Neo
Entrepreneur rises. The new breeds of entrepreneurs have to update themselves
with technology and protect their idea against all adversities. It is a known
fact that if you don’t grow, you stultify. The Neo Entrepreneur knows that in
this age, you need to grow faster and thus arises a need to learn the new
challenges technology brings up.
The technology is a major
concern for new age entrepreneurs. Most of the new business ideas since the
year 2000 are related to the web. So the companies who have been related to web
design and development have also been acting as consultants. There are a lot of
budding entrepreneurs who wish to start or migrate a new product line or a new
service on the web, who do not have an idea of the capabilities of the web
platform. So the development company who act as their consultant tries to impose
in a lot of products explaining them how they would benefit from promotional
packages. Since these companies did not come up with the idea, they are not
responsible for the outcome. So knowing about your product/ idea offline is as
important as exploring it online. A preliminary research of various companies associated
with a similar product is necessary, not just on the website but about the
business models.
When you have a new idea,
you are very secretive about it. You enter a very paranoid state where you are
not sure if you should share your business idea as it can be duplicated. I
remember an incident with a friend of mine who wanted to start a Tea Chain
where he would supply different types of teas. The idea was new for a smaller
city and it would have been very popular amongst the tea drinking population. The
landlord of the premises he wished to rent, forced him to discuss the idea as the
landlord made him believe that unless he understands what my friend is doing he
wont be satisfied that he will be able to pay rent. So he went ahead and
discussed it. After the discussion the landlord stalled my friend for a few
days and then turned him down. After 2 months we saw a similar looking Tea Shop opened in his premises. Since
it was a new idea, it was an instant hit. Although, after a few months, he
could not sustain the losses due to poor service and bad planning that led to
his downfall and the place had to shut down.
There are a lot of
entrepreneurs who think that if anyone else can do this, it was not worth doing
it. So he shares his ideas openly with people, giving them a first mover’s
advantage. On the contrary if we take an example of Steve Jobs and his secrecy
of launching products with a lot of speculations and no one knowing the actual
design and features, looks like a better model. Also since he controls the iPhone
app development platform, his USP is exclusivity besides innovation.
Not everyone is apple and
even apple in the starting days had to collaborate with a lot of different
companies for the development of its product line. The famous example of Apple
working with Microsoft and as a result Windows launched worldwide before the
Macintosh with a similar look and feel
is a known fact. Steve jobs then did not care about the contract; his mind
seduced him into believing in his innovative and exclusive product line and
simply ignored the simple business facts that led to his downfall.
The ignorance is not bliss
for a Neo Entrepreneur. If you have a vision or idea, you have to protect it.
You cannot let your mind or heart take control of you. It has to be a balanced
state all the time, since there will be times when you have to believe more in
your idea than the facts! Sharing an idea is not bad at all as you will get a
perspective into the various areas or situations you failed to notice. It is
very important for a Neo Entrepreneur to collaborate with various entities for
a faster growth, thus a compulsory need to share an idea. This new age inorganic
growth model is a big advantage for a startup provided there are no lose ends.
The collaboration is due to expertise of various companies/people in their
fields to ensure the quality of products or the process and it increases the
speed of execution with very less resources at disposal. Thus, the startups
have started offering shares as compensation for the services provided to
various partners.
Another major aspect for
the Neo Entrepreneur is Patents. Most of the patents that are filed for a
software service do not stand when disputed in the court. Since a minor change
in the code makes the whole source code invalid as a patent, you should avoid
patenting the source code of the software. The actual thing that can be
patented is an idea, which has to be structured as a method or a process while
filing a patent. I would cite one example of my own business group,
who owned a company and had patented this idea of a website and the process. Due
to some financial dispute, the team associated with the website decided to
separate from the investor and start a similar service with the same
connections. They were challenged in court by the investors and the team had to
finally shut down operations. The patent document was so precise that no
duplication of the process was possible.
Since the world around you
changes faster than you can comprehend, the only thing to learn is that change
is constant. You need to change from being an Entrepreneur to a Neo
Entrepreneur, a far more balanced breed of innovators and creators. You need to
learn about the change in policies, technology and new competitors (which can give you nightmares sometimes)
and be fast to comprehend. Being an entrepreneur is about knowing your limits
and then going beyond. It is a rigorous process where you should have a hunger
to explore new ventures and in the process know yourself! One thing I have
learned lately is that during this process of knowing yourself, your paths will
cross spirituality and yogic sciences. It is an endless pool of knowledge,
which gives you the wisdom to understand that since you cannot change how the world behaves around you, what you
should change is yourself. So get out there, the world awaits a Neo
Entrepreneur.
