MODERN ENTREPRENEUR
17
Encourage failures/success
alike
Everyone is bound to fail. Mistakes
are part and parcel of the job. Never
discourage a person for failing. Risks,
experimentation and repeated efforts
pave the way for the success of a
company.
18
Sense of urgency
The clock is ticking every
second. For an entrepreneur, it gets
tougher to sustain momentum with
passing time. One can never take
anything for granted. Each moment
lost in a useless activity is a moment
taken away from building the company.
Everything adds up and matters in the
long run.
19
Understand the legal
ramifications
Sort out the legal issues in the planning
phase itself. Know what is needed and
when it is needed.
20
It takes time
Even the genius of Edison took
more than 25 years to make an electric
bulb. It took 20 years to develop the
Xerox machine.
The greatest of ideas are not always
magic. It takes time to build great
stuff. It needs a real big effort to build
something that can create an impact.
Give sufficient time to try things out.
However, sustaining a start-up becomes
tougher with time. Ultimately, one must
find the time to try new things.
21
Creating a brand
Even start-ups need to create
brands. There are four stages included
in the process:
• Brand awareness, which means
people begin to recognise your
existence.
• Brand quality is when they trust the
quality.
• Brand association is the attitude or
feeling towards a brand, call it affinity.
• Brand loyalty is when they begin to
recommend your brand to family and
friends.
22
Power distance
Communication is the greatest
asset of a start-up. When teams
communicate and collaborate, great
things are possible, but when there
is a communication gap, things are
messed up.
How accessible is the senior
management? If the distance is large,
it means that there are lot of people
involved in the process and at times,
this may take a longer time for decision
making.
The need is to enable communication
between groups and allow the best
ideas to find their way through the
ranks into the products and services.
23
Know when to step back
One needs a good structure to
be in place to make people replaceable.
It is important to have a system
wherein others can take charge when
the founder members step aside. A
company is never scalable when it is
heavily dependent on particular people.
about living on the edge. It is a very
tough job. Most of them work hard, yet
the majority of start-ups fail. All is not
rosy. Be honest and assess hard before
jumping into entrepreneurship. One
needs to be prepared to work tirelessly,
even without results.
Research shows that most business
ideas fail. Most companies start with
one idea but succeed with some other
idea. They gradually find their way to a
better idea or sometimes even refine
the initial idea. They take a proactive
approach, expect problems and find
solutions in advance.
Be open, be adaptive and don’t hang on
for too long with the same approach
when things are not working.
“When you try long and hard for
anything, eventually, a moment comes,
when it happens. The important thing
is to keep trying until that moment
comes.”
24
The right pricing strategy
Deciding the cost for a product/
service can be