purpose

As a founder, you are challenging yourself against all odds every day. Your days are a sum of rejections, failures, and successes. It is like sailing on unchartered territory with no end to it.

One thing which keeps you going against all the naysayers is your purpose. It acts as a torch or light. The journey of entrepreneurship becomes easier. You become fearless and walk every moment with an absolute focus.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is not a badge of honour.
It is a purpose-driven everyday life grunt.
Things will break during the journey or work out. It requires a lot of focus and dedication, unlike what the media and internet portray.

The amount of hoopla startup press has created about founders; I won’t be surprised kids without going to school will aim to become founders.

The media glorifies all the successful companies and rags-rich stories about entrepreneurs.
A few tell us that 99% of startups die. It requires a lot of patience, perseverance, and luck.

Becoming a founder is not a medal, do it for yourself, not for social media swag. Be honest to yourself and your purpose, and take a long bet. It is not a get-quick scheme overnight.

Company

I will be turning 37 in a few weeks.
I have been struggling ass off with Krishna for over the five years in building Taghash.

We are finally somewhere in the journey of building our company.
The journey with limited resources can be challenging.
One of the few things that worked in our favor: was the people we worked with: the team, our mentors, and our customers.

There are books, blogs, and podcasts on the internet telling you how to run a successful startup. It comes down to you and your definition of success. You need to know what you don’t want and the options in hand.

We almost took five years to go out and market ourselves. We silently built products and sold them to customers by solving their pain. We made many friends and learned about life and business.

The company of people around made a lot of difference: quitting is the easiest thing in the entrepreneurial journey.

We have just begun and solved less than 10% pain of our customers.

unknown

We, humans, are still evolving. The fields of science, biology, and the human brain have just scratched the surface. We are still dying of bacteria and viruses. We are vulnerable like our previous generation. We are still working on finding the meaning of DNA and what it holds uniquely for us.

In short, we are living in so many unknowns. One thing which keeps us going out of all these is our will to live and hope for a better tomorrow.

We have to keep living in the world of unknowns.

outcome

I have been part of the VC industry for the past 7-8 years and have had my fair share of learning.

A founder should know what they are getting into and also the outcome.

You are one of the many founders your stakeholders are backing to maximize their wealth.

Our ecosystem had too much cash in the last few years, everyone or anyone ended up becoming an angel investor, and fundraising became easy. One could raise an idea and pedigree.

As a founder, you should know that your stakeholders are looking for a great outcome from their investment. It is risk capital for them, and clauses like drag along rights or liquidity preference as a few clauses added for the same.

As a founder, you have a few options.

  1. Build a monopoly and become a market leader
  2. Get acquired with a profitable exit
  3. Go IPO and give bombastic returns
  4. Get busted and let investors sell your company on peanuts
  5. Get yourself and team acqui-hired

In short, knowing the future outcomes: strategize and execute apart from paying yourself well, working hard, and breathing. In short, don’t kill yourself or live in misery. Enjoy every moment and learn from the journey. 

click

We don’t have to click with everyone.
It is perfectly alright.
We should focus on spending time with people with whom our chemistry matches well. We have limited time to live. We are not here to make everyone happy.

No two people are the same, and neither are their opinions or consciousness.

sales

I would recommend everyone to get into a sales role in their lifetime. The earlier one gets, the more experience it makes you better a person.

Sales teach us about rejection and celebrating our small win. It makes us more grateful and reminds us of the importance of personal relationships.

We become successful in sales by solving pain and delighting customers.

competition

Last few weeks, I have heard from a few friends about competitors and how one should run fast and whatnot.

In the last five years of building taghash, we have not gotten into FOMO of competition. The only thing that has worked for us is working closely with customers, solving their pain, and charging for the product.
We found everything else as a distraction.

As a founder, it becomes super important to stay focused and know where not to waste time.

matters

When we are in a team, we care about success together. It is more like an army working together for a cause. The incentive is the organization’s success above all. It is leadership 101.

We forget taking care of the team, treating everyone well, and keeping health above all are not something prioritized. Everything ends up being salary and shiny laptops and whatnot.

We are all different: work-life balance, an interesting problem to solve and respect matter to many others.