I am an accidental marketer (and still trying to learn the art), and an entrepreneur. If I can see this, I am sure they all can see this, and know where they stand.
Hence this is a blunder that is being carried out in full knowledge.
Mistake or Negligence?
Your personal brand is what the majority of the people talk about behind you.
It can be very different from reality – good or bad. Never believe in this public perception.
Instead of building a forced personal brand – keep improving yourself and be authentic.
Successful IT service company needs excellence in 3S –
- Sourcing (of talent)
- Sync (of ops for profitability and cash flow)
- Scaling (of sales and narrative)
Finance is an interesting (and funny) profession:
- People who have not run companies, analyze and make comments on who is gonna make it and who will die.
- People who are not yet rich guide others to invest and become rich. Many who guide themselves are not invested.
How to be fearless?
Many businesses start to flatten out or even start declining after an upcycle. There can be several reasons for that, but one reason that stands out is ‘fear‘.
The entrepreneur stops experimenting and taking decisions due to the ‘fear‘ of losing out. And this becomes a vicious cycle. The less decisive one becomes, the more the momentum dies. And more ‘fear’ sets in. And the more difficult it becomes to lift it back, as it becomes part of the organisational culture.
In many cases the fear stems from our personal fears around financial security.
The best way to keep that in control is to keep your lifestyle expenses below your nominal value.
Nominal value is the salary you can easily get from competing companies for your services if your business fails and you have to go and take up a job!
Once you know that your lifestyle cost is below your nominal value, you have very little to fear, and you can take difficult and risky decisions. The biggest risk in life is “not taking risk” and “not taking decisions’. Be fearless.
Do your little bit for people around you. You do not even know their names. If nothing else, just be their concierge and arrange resources for people in distress.
Business, development, big plans can wait for a few days. The world is not coming to an end.
Never believe in your own public image or press.
You are what you are – different from how you are perceived (better or worse) or written about.
There are many casualties of over confidence which is caused by this echo chamber created by you and stories you / others say.
What should a scale-up company CEO essentially do?
- Sense the world to create a compelling future vision
- Create and fine tune strategy to achieve the vision
- Get the best people s(he) can get onboard, and align them to the strategy
When someone does not have anything to look forward to, they dedicatedly dwell in the past.
Common traits in very experienced professionals, directionless communities, and leaders.
It is very different from preserving our heritage, history and knowledge.
How do venture investors test their investment thesis or do a/b testing between conflicting ideas.
Challenges:
- The outcome takes 7-10 years
- The market dynamics may not remain the same in such a long time, hence the learning may or may not hold value.
If I have an option to go back 25 years in my career, I will bootstrap yet again. Why?
- It gives me true freedom to operate, take risks, and create value for the stakeholders who matter the most – my team members and clients.
- I believe in sustainable value-creating business, and not think about exit. A customer funded business has no pressure to create a liquidity event. Bootstrapping enables long term infinite play.
- It allows me to focus on strong unit-economics and be financially disciplined. This ensures slow but steady growth.
In India Angel and VC activities are set to further multiply.
Thanks to:
- low interest rate on debt
- several exits recently (IPO, secondary, buybacks)
- major innovation cycle triggered by COVID-19 and the impact on way of living and doing business
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