January 2007 Archives

Sanjay posted an interesting post on Venturewoods. His comment on acceptance of "delayed gratification" as a must for entrepreneurs caught my eyes.

One of the key things I look for in entrepreneurs is the ability to accept “delayed gratification” and the ability to deploy capital efficiently. In an Indian context “delayed gratification” could mean taking a CTC of Rs 20000 a month while your peers get say Rs80000 per month. Sometimes the delayed gratification can take very long and it may never happen.

As an entrepreneur, I do not agree with this view, or more specifically with the example given. Being a entrepreneur is hard. It means having to work insanely long hours, be on call 24/7, be accountable for every single thing that happens at work and make sacrifices on personal life. If, on top of that, VCs - especially in the Indian context, insist on delayed gratification in the form of taking a pay cut, it might as well drive most of us to harakiri. I am certainly not advocating exorbitant salaries. However, I think it makes complete business sense to at least fix founder/promoter salaries at an industry average level. This is specifically important in India because most young entrepreneurs would have almost no savings in the bank. By asking them to take a significant pay cut at a crucial stage in life, you put immense and unnecessary pressure on the folks who are at the helm. It also increases the level of risk involved in doing a startup. You could spend a good 4-6 years working like a dog and if you startup fails, you would be in your mid-30s (assuming you start in mid to late 20s as many entrepreneurs do) with almost no money in the bank. This sort of risk is unnecessary because the salaries of key executives, even at market levels (as per experience, not title) would be a small fraction of the total money invested in the business. Moreover, by insisting on low salaries, the investors increase the eagerness of founders to prematurely exit the business at the first opportunity.

We need to develop entrepreneurship as an attractive career option. While we wait for our first wave of successful startups to act as poster childs (I hope it happens soon!), prospective entrepreneurs need to be assured that the risk is not as high as it appears to be. There would still be delayed gratification because of immense sacrifices required in terms of time spent building a company as against climbing the corporate ladder. But at least it wont leave a failed entrepreneur burnt and broke.

p.s: Tekriti is self funded and we have not raised any VC money so far. The views here are just me reflecting on the common perception that its not a real startup unless there is a struggling and broke founder running it :)

Really good news from Marc finally forced me out of my blogging slumber. IBM is going to offer a corporate social networking solution. IBM's solution, called Lotus Connect, offers out of the box common social networking components for deployment within corporate environments.

The IBM package includes five applications: profiles, where employees post information about their expertise and interests; communities, which are formed and managed by people with common interests; activities, which are used to manage group projects; bookmarks, where people share documents and Web sites with others; and blogs, where people post ongoing commentaries.

This is great news because in effect IBM has validated the stance that social networking is indeed relevant in the corporate environment. The feature set mentioned above is a sub-set of what People Aggregator offers. And People Aggregator has been out in the market for several months now. But selling to corporates is hard, especially for  startups. IBM's announcement will have the effect of making big corporates take notice of social networking. The IBM marketing machinery will make sure that the corporate world gets adequately educated about the benefits of employing the "Web 2.0" and social networking constructs to the workplace.

It is also heartening to know that we were ahead of the curve by some distance! It was almost two years back when the idea of developing People Aggregator as a reusable software download was conceived!

So hopefully next time Marc goes pitching to a big company, at least he wont have to answer the "Why would we want that?" question!

Marc turns 50 today. Now generally it is considered bad form to suck up to a client on a public forum. But on an occasion which is very special to Marc, I think it is OK for me to wax eloquent about Mr. Canter.

I met Marc just little more than two years ago via email. Marc was building Ourmedia at that time and needed development resources. Ourmedia was built on open source technology which is diametrically opposite to the Microsoft background that Ashish and I came from. However, we went on a limb and told Marc we could pick up whatever technology in a matter of days. Marc immediately responded with a challenge which we worked hard to meet it. It was Marc's faith in our abilities (never having met us in person and not having any references to check with) that got us started as a company. I think very few would have shown the trust Marc showed in us back then.

So Marc - a very happy 50th birthday to you! It is a pleasure and honor to know you and work with you!

It has been over 2 years since I returned back to India. So it seems pretty outdated to write about "R2I" (return-to-India) but at the same time, I have been observing an interesting trend that is worth writing about.

One of the positive developments over the last two years has been that today R2I-ing doesn't come across as such a drastic step as it used to couple of years back. When I had returned back to India after quitting Microsoft, it had sent shockwaves thru the family and friend circles. Some even thought they must have thrown me out of Microsoft and hence I was forced to return! Voluntarily coming back to India seemed out of question. But that is no longer the case. I have come across dozens of people who have returned back to India. I know of many more who are planning their R2I right now. So today coming back to India after working abroad is "no big deal". That is a great thing because not only does it encourage reverse brain drain, it also reduces the pressure on bright young Indian kids to go abroad at any cost. There was a time when working in the US was the only measure of success. That is no longer true. If anything, rejecting overseas job offers seems to be the new in thing!

I am pretty confident that in a few years, we will see this return to India trend hit another extreme when even foreigners will want to come and work here. Its already happening in small numbers but I think it will happen more and more. It will be quite a high to see people worldwide queue up to get an Indian work-visa! :-)