It doesn’t take a lot to figure out that Entrepreneurship is my favorite subject and I have written numerous posts on the subject. There are a few institutions which has been pretty active in talking about it and organizing events around that. National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), backed by Wadhwani foundation, is one such institute that I have known for more than a year now and have also spoken in events organized by them.

Babit from NEN informed me a couple of weeks back about the re-design of the site that they had launched - which is essentially a very complete online resource for entrepreneurs in India. I have been refraining from writing about it for some time but the more I go through it, the more I think that this is an awesomely well done site and acts as a complete resource for the Indian entrepreneurs - particularly the first timers. Having spent more than a couple of years running Tekriti, I wish that this existed earlier for me to have easy access to certain things that I learnt the hard way.

All in all - highly recommended for all entrepreneurs in India to bookmark this. They have articles / answers from VCs, have a weekly coverage on various startups and tons of articles / presentations on various things that a first time entrepreneur wants access to.

What I see missing is a link to their RSS feed that I could just subscribe in my blog aggregator that doesn’t force me to go to their website all the time to read the contents.

Lately I have been talking to a lot of people who are starting up or have started in the last few months. It’s always good to talk to people who have the courage to ‘move out of their comfort zone’ and do something creative. This is not to say that I don’t like to talk to people who are happy in their comfort zone

One question that I almost always get asked is “How can I trust my clients, customers, business partners, lawyers, accountants, employees and who not?”.

That is a very valid question. And this is something everybody faces - and I can relate it with my experiences. But let me turn around the question and ask you - what option do you have other than to trust? When you are small, you neither have the bandwidth or resources to hire ‘experts’ or expensive lawyers for documenting everything. At the same time, for the lack of experience, it’s almost impossible to think about a list of situations that one could run into - and hence it’s rather foolishness to even attempt doing it in its entirety. But here are certain things that one should do:

1. Spend money on the legal contracts: When you are small, it is very common to sign contracts without seeking legal opinions - as it helps save you a lot of money. Don’t do that - absolutely don’t do that. If you are signing a similar 2nd contract, it is still OK to not get it whetted by the lawyers but do engage the lawyers the first time you are creating a particular kind of contract. You wouldn’t realize the importance of it until you become a little bigger and then know the potential downsides of not doing that.
2. Spend time and keep an eye on all the major aspects of business: It’s good to follow the policy of ‘Divide and conquer’ with different heads for different aspects of business. But have regular meetings with the different heads and open all books (including yours) for scrutiny by all major stakeholders from time to time.
3. Create a Shareholders Agreement: This is probably much more crucial than what it seems initially. You could survive even if your biggest customer leaves you stranded / cheats you or your accountant did something to maximize their benefits. What will hurt the most is if you or your business partners lose trust in each other. Remember that we all are humans - there will be times when the misunderstandings will creep in. So, it’s important to create a shareholders’ agreement soon enough which exactly talks about what are the authorities of each person and the team as a whole. A good analogy is that if you keep the money lying on the floor with nobody watching, many people will turn ‘thief’ and steal but very few of them would actually do it if they know that somebody could be watching.
4. Communicate regularly with the stakeholders, customers, team-members and others important for your business: Yeah - follow all processes, have the legal systems in place and sign the right contracts but there is nothing to replace the regular communication with all the parties involved. Most people wont do anything bad with somebody they really treat as their ‘friend’. Communicate with people and be their ‘friend’ and you will mostly be in good shape. 

In spite of all this, trust people. As long as you exercise a bit of caution, you will be much better off by trusting people rather than spending your time and energy thinking about what can go wrong and who can do wrong. This is not to say that people will not cheat you - THEY WILL - most of the times unintentionally but sometimes (sad) intentionally. And if it happens, just increase the level of caution that you exercise but dont get too paranoid. Try your best to forgive and forget it and worry about the common long-term goal. But, yes, don’t hesitate in making your concerns very clear to the offending party and / or severing your ties if you absolutely cannot withstand what has happened. No loss will be as big as losing out when you become bigger.

Whatever you do, please remember that you should forgive me for being really irregular with blogging BUT dont forget even if you can’t necessarily find a common goal Instead, keep visiting the blog. I do intend to be regular, though not necessarily frequent.

One of the slides in the presentation deck that I use during a talk on Entrepreneurship is that ‘there has to be a higher purpose for creating companies than the acquisition of wealth’ for any entrepreneur. Before Tekriti happened, I never imagined how powerful can the ‘creation of a company’ be. As is the common wisdom, it affects not only your life but also affects the lives of people attached with it and their families. I didn’t have to wait 2 years to ‘know’ this but I guess I couldn’t have ’felt’ it if Tekriti hadn’t happened.

Let me ponder more of my thoughts here. In the last couple of months, I have gone in the introspection mode more than a few times - either because I was doing a lot of things but not able to focus enough on one or because I had to continue learning the art of ‘losing control’ as Tekriti grows or because I was not able to spend enough time on blogging, or may be because I was plain agitated at my incapability to increase the speed at which we were making progress. Don’t get me wrong - we are making enough progress and that will be evident by some announcements we make this year but, knowing where we want to reach eventually, no speed is really great.

Introspection is beautiful - it forces you to think about ‘Why’ and not just the ‘Hows’. So - I did ask myself again - why? Why am I doing this? Is it for one of the things: Name / Fame / Reputation / Money - what? Of course, I am not a saint to not think about these ‘earthly’ things - so it is not just because I want to benefit the mankind (it’s another discussion how Tekriti will even visibly help the mankind!) or whatever!!

Quite honestly - I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what keeps me in the office till quite late or forces me to continuously aspire to give my best or want to see not only myself but everybody at Tekriti successful. I don’t know why, for the first time in life, I am happy to see my name second to something - Tekriti. I really don’t know what gives me kick but what I know is money isn’t that. Money is important, lucrative and nice but just doesn’t have that power. Money just doesn’t give the kick!

Reminds me of something that somebody very wise told me once - I dont want money because I need it; I want to make money because I want to be considered ’successful’.

There has been multiple studies suggesting that more and more businesses are relying on bootstrapping / angel money to start their business and are not too keen on the venture capital, at least in the initial days. A part of this is because of the decreased cost of starting a company and lower development costs because of the open source tools AND the other part is because of the keenness of entrepreneurs to have more control of the company - for as long as possible.

The question to be asked here is: Why are entrepreneurs worried about VC investments, when the VCs truly bring in much more value than just the money?

Guy Kawasaki has a great post on The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) that created quite a buzz in the blogosphere. He writes his thoughts on the right time for a person to become a venture capitalist and points to a test that can help you figure out your VCAT. He stresses on the fact that one should become a venture capitalist after they have had the shiitake kicked out of them. 

I agree. It is very hard for an entrepreneur to trust a VC who doesn’t have the necessary background in the activities that the entrepreneur is carrying out and the experience in having run (or be a part of) a startup. Somebody who has never answered the board from a management team’s position almost always never understand how is it to run a company. So, while it is important to have people in your board who are independent Directors and aren’t involved in the day-to-day running of company, it is also important for the management team to be able to respect them. The respect comes automatically when the entrepreneur knows that the board member can (and does) empathize with the issues / challenges faced in a company and yet can give open and critical feedback.

Generally speaking - I am quite neutral about my impressions about Venture Capitalists. In fact, it’s been much more on the positive side than the negative side, based on my interaction. But it’s baffling to know that most companies (funded and not-funded) I have talked to have not-so-good things to say about the VCs. On the other hand - everybody have good things to say about angel investors.

Am I just plain lucky (and I have interacted with VCs who would clearly fail the VCAT)? Or is it that Guy Kawasaki has over-generalized his test? India has its own unique problems. On one hand - we need serial entrepreneurs who have been ’successful’ in the past and not just the 1st generation entrepreneurs AND on the other hand, we need Venture Capitalists who have been entrepreneurs before.

Unfortunately, I can not think of more than just a few names when it comes to people who have successfully build even a USD 50 million plus business in the last many years. There are people who have successfully exited on a valuation of less than USD 10 million dollar business but I am not sure if I can term them as being ‘really successful’ or not. But this is a never-ending process where more entrepreneurs will exit out of their venture in case of acquisition - what will be interesting is how many of them chooses to start again and how many becomes VCs? Of course - there are other options as well, based upon the interest and the exit valuation.

In more than a few discussions over the last couple of months, people at Tekriti have shown their desire towards brand-building and be better known. Everybody wants their friends, relatives to know about the company, without explaining. The fact that the person sitting next to us in a train knows about our company is also an ego-booster. Basically, what everybody hates is being in a scenario described below:

Stranger: “Where do you work?”

We: “Tekriti”

Stranger: “amm…what’s that?”

Fair enough! I also hate it when I have to repeat the name, even though the frequency has decreased drastically over the last 20 odd months. What do we do? And how do we do it? Before coming with solutions, let’s consider the following facts:

• A company like Infosys or Microsoft or Google also took many years before they became brand. So, it’s expected that you need to be patient. However, it’s still not a rule.
• Becoming a brand (’being known’ explains it better here) is a very generic term. There is a lot of difference in who knows you - your prospective clients, prospective partners, top executives, fresh graduates or taxi-drivers. Though it’s always a good feeling to be known by all, everything comes at a cost (money / time) and proper prioritization needs to happen knowing that you have limited resources.
• The time taken before you are known to general people also depends on the business you are in. A consumer-centric business is bound to be known sooner than a business-centric business - that is no measure of how successful the company is.
• Joining a brand and boasting of that is a short-term satisfaction; creating one and living that is a life-long satisfaction.
• Rushing to become a brand is really like creating a hype. Hype is good and necessary, at times, but the message is lost (besides backfiring) if one isn’t ready to live up to that hype. Patience is the answer, my friend.

Having said that, can a startup really make some conscious efforts towards brand-building without going over the top? So, even though, giving advertisement in a newspaper is easy and not that expensive either - it is not the answer. In fact, I will start by saying that I don’t have an answer but, in the true entrepreneurial spirit, will write in some of my personal thoughts as well as thoughts of fellow TeknoKrats - leaving the rest to suggestions from various others.

• Sponsor Technical Festivals at various engineering colleges
• Blogging about the stuff that we do; including the project delivery methodology
• Marketing the consumer projects / products that we are doing - so that it has users in India too and not just the western countries
• Participate in increasing awareness in the society and, generally, be active in social causes.
• Advertisements - direct and indirect. Being more active in open-source educational projects is a good indirect method.
• Build great products

‘Build great products’ is the approach that I like the most. I will end it by saying that -”The fact that one might not know about us is because we are creating an atom-bomb sitting in an underground cave and don’t want to disclose it yet. The voice will be heard wide and loud when it blasts - so let’s all be a little more patient.“.

Of course, the above statement is not supposed to be taken literally. Besides the fact that we have a decent office, as against to an underground cave, we will also make some mistakes and learn other things than just creating that atom-bomb.

P.S: CBI / FBI / Interpol, please note that the atom-bomb is just a symbolic way to represent the products we are building (which happens to be software); please don’t ban my blog.

Should you? Shouldn’t you? I get asked this question very frequently, whereever I go and talk to college students. Surprising? No. Interesting? Yes. Without doubt - more and more people are considering entrepreneurship as a career option along with the other ‘normal’ choices - medicine, engineering, design, journalism, and MBA.

But when I got asked the same question this weekend at BITS Pilani where I was one of the panelist on “Startups - Issues and Challenges” during a convention on Energising Entrepreneurship in Academia through Innovation, I thought to blog my thoughts in the hope of reaching a bigger audience. To begin with, I will mention that while it is very lucrative to start as early as possible (there is a school of thought which tells students that you can start either now or after you are 40), one also needs to be sure that they give themselves a fair chance to succeed. Let me make a few obvious statements first:

1. Starting just after college does not guarantee success OR failure. And the same is true for a person who has 30 years of industry experience.
2. There isn’t really a right or wrong time to start. Seriously! It’s all in the mind and in the minds of those who matter to you.
3. The entrepreneurial eco-system in the US is very different from any other country, including India. So, yes, take inspiration from the US examples but don’t assume that to be a rule.
4. Being entrepreneurial is different from being an entrepreneur.

Now, let’s talk about the basic skills required to be an entrepreneur:

1. Multi-tasking and team-work, with the maturity to be a facilitator than being somebody who can execute well.
2. Passion and Risk-taking
3. Craziness and ‘thinking outside the box’

Before you decide on whether you are ready to take the plunge or not, you need to evaluate yourself on the above criteria. The second and third points will mostly hold good (if that is not true - you should not even think about entrepreneuship in the near future or may be ever) but you need to know if you can really motivate a team working with you. Can you do multi-tasking - when you wouldn’t have worked ever on many of the tasks you will be carrying out then? Are you ready to work on something where you will have to spend most of your time on things that you are not ‘trained’ at? Do you have the patience to be a facilitator than being somebody who knows execution (being a good facilitator is a much harder job)? If the answer to all these questions is a strong (and honest) yes - you are ready, otherwise not. Nothing will still guarantee the outcome but, if you decide to go ahead on it, don’t let the thought cross your mind ever again then that you could have done better if you had a little bit of experience.

To summarize, my suggestions to those who want to start are the following: When you don’t have an industry work-experience, there is always a possibility of self-doubt on whether you have the correct skill-set to pull it off. If you have doubt - it’s always a good idea to wait. Give yourself some time - it’s always beneficial to work for a few years (your will still have a lot of time), gain some experience and ‘master’ one area that you know is essential for a business. There are so many unknowns in a startup - if you can reduce one unknown, it is a major win and more than compensates for a wait period of a few years. Always remember that the passion and energy that you will have for your first business is difficult to match for any subsequent business. It’s very important to give yourself a fair chance to succeed. And even though you need to be ready to be comfortable with failure, you don’t have to spend your energy in preparing for it.

In the end - even if you are not ready to be an entrepreneur, be entrepreneurial - there are similarities and there are differences.

Update: Syven has made an excellent comment on this post. It’s very worthwhile to read that comment.

One of the things that is very common amongst entrepreneurs is that they deliberately choose to underpay themselves. I, myself, have been a culprit of the same. The salary that I was drawing when we started Tekriti (and till a very long time) was not even enough to pay for my personal monthly expenses (Gurgaon is an expensive city). In fact, I had to transfer money from my US accounts a couple of times during that period to cover the deficit. And it was never because we didn’t have enough money in Tekriti’s accounts - we have been very fortunate in that respect, touchwood!

When I think about it, I can’t really come up with a reason why we did that. The only thing I can think of is that it was an ego-booster. I felt good to think that, yes, I am making a sacrifice by underpaying myself when I can easily afford to pay myself my market-value. How lame was that? And may be, self-centric too?

I was talking to few of my friends who have also chosen to become an entrepreneur and I know that they have also made the same ‘mistake’. Let me try to explain why is underpaying yourself such a bad idea.

• You are un-necessarily increasing your profit-margins: When you are starting up, the true ‘market-value’ salaries of founders form a big chunk of your cost numbers and, by choosing to underpay the founders, you are incorrectly inflating your profit-margins. Then as you expand and increase those salaries, the profit margins may dip down a lot and the comparison will only be unfair then. Even if your company is not making profits, you are reducing your loss numbers, which again is not the correct measure.

• Your company’s money is not your money: Seriously! Know it! There is a distinction - your company’s money is not your money. Your company’s money will (should) be used for the growth of the company or kept in the bank for contingency, if you have a surplus. But it is not your money. By the same logic, your money is not your company’s money and there is nothing bad about that. It doesn’t make you any less loyal. I have underpaid myself for a long time and also increased our salaries recently and, believe me, there have been absolutely no change in anything - except the fact that I cannot claim any longer that I draw a very modest salary (’modest’ still continues to be true ).

• It’s better to re-invest than draw less: A better strategy to drawing less salary and incorrectly inflating the numbers is to draw your market-worth and re-invest the money in the company, if needed. Re-investing money will only increase the valuation of the company since a re-investment of 100 Dollars by the founders is much more valuable than 100 Dollars of extra profit. And you get to eat that much extra at your favorite restaurant or treat yourself with the coveted drinks, if re-investment is not needed.

• Your personal savings are important: Money is an important reason for most (if not all) of us to work. If you have savings that you have made over years, there is a popular school of thought that says that it should not be spent for regular expenditures - and there is collective wisdom of many people behind that statement. And, it’s totally fine to be sensitive about that. So, if I have personal savings, I can utilize it for my education or education of my family members, buy a property or a car - but utilizing it for my regular needs will only hurt in the long run.

As I write this - I only remember my dad saying “Son, why do you people not take enough salaries when you have enough cash in the bank?”. Dad, as always, you are again right. I just refuse to listen to a few things that you say, but I still love you.

This is a cartoon I used (and loved) in a talk I gave in a Management School recently to explain the myths of Entrepreneurship.

Thanks Manish who came up with this cartoon where I was explaining that you don’t start with the mindset that you will be the boss. Instead of that, one needs to have a mindset that he / she is a facilitator.

That apart - I am going to be busier than usual for the next 4 days, so I don’t think I will be able to spend much time blogging or reading blogs till then (even though I have started another post, that should be interesting to people reading this blog). Till then, I will re-direct the readers to Manish’s blog who has started another innings at blogging and this time at his own domain name. Makes me wonder if a domain name gives a stronger feeling of ownership than a sub-domain at Blogspot or Wordpress or others. I will guess - yes!

When I was a child, I used to tell an uncle of mine that I will gift him and all my cousins a house each, when I grow up and start earning. Not that my uncle had any money problems but I was fond of him and I wanted to do something for him that nobody else would. When I grew up a bit, he asked me a question on what would I like to choose as a profession. I answered that I will go for Indian Administration services - as that seemed glamorous and royal and something that apparently commanded a lot of respect. He laughed and said that “Ok, I am sure now that you will gift us house easily because you get offered a lot of bribe when you are in that position”. Innocently, I asked my dad “Dad, is it good to take bribe?” My dad said “No son. More important is how you make money and what you do with it and not what you make.“ He added “It’s ok to be ambitious but also know your ‘market-value’ and try to be content with that for a happier life. It’s ok to be lucky at times but never demand something you know you don’t deserve.“

(Photo Credit: Review Journal)

It was a long discussion when I asked what is meant by market-value, how do I know what I deserve, etc. and the entire discussion had a profound impact on me. That is a philosophy that we have tried to follow at Tekriti too - most of the times knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. We have always tried to pay people what their market value is (most of the times, a little more than that) and pushing people continuously to increase their market value. That has resulted in people getting salary hikes many times a year and in big percentages - something which is not that common in many places. But then compensation decisions are the most difficult decision any entrepreneur has to make and, generally speaking, is one of the thing that everybody hates to do. I am no exception there, and have looked at multiple resumes in the past months and have also interacted with people from different backgrounds and experience - including people working at Tekriti and at other places. I think that I am in a position to compile my general thoughts on compensation and on why people are paid what they are paid. Most of this is common knowledge, of course.

• Experience / Education and Background: When I joined Microsoft after my graduation, I was offered a salary equivalent to a few people who had work experience of a couple of years. The difference was that of education and background. The company thought that even though I may not be as productive as the other person with more experience in the first few months but I had the capability to ’come up to speed’ in a shorter span of time. At the same time, there were people who had a Masters degree in Computer Science and they joined at a salary higher than mine. And we all joined at the same level. So, yes, we all hate it when it happens - but if we logically think, that is how it is and it makes sense too. Your education and degrees play a big role in deciding your ‘market value’ and hence compensation. It has a bigger role when you are starting your career. Like it or hate it, somebody from Tier 1 school / college is believed to be more valuable by the companies and is likely to be offered more compensation than somebody from a Tier 2 / 3 institute. Don’t get me wrong - this is by no means a reflection of the fact that the Tier 1 person will always keep performing better in their career but a good start is almost always justified by the output they produce.

• There is a range of salaries in the same positions and the ranges overlap: Typically, companies have a salary range for different positions. For example - the salary for a person at level X (eg: Software Engineer, Business Analyst) can have a lower limit of 100 units and an upper limit of 130 units while the salary for a person at level X+1 (eg: Senior Software Engineer, Senior Business Analyst) can vary between 120 units and 150 units. The multipler of units vary with companies and countries but the idea remains the same. So, there is a possibility that a person at level X+1 is making less than another person at level X - for a short duration of time. And this is also why 2 people at the same positions have different salaries. This is something I have personally seen at Microsoft, and at Sapient and I know that happens in all the different companies when I talked to my friends in those companies. 

• Medium term output potential: I wish I had a better term to describe this. The point here is, as I mentioned above briefly, that people are not paid for their output as soon as they join. They are typically paid for how productive they will be in the next few months, on an average. So, it’s possible that when somebody joins - that person might be drawing more than what an already existing person makes but then the expectation is that the new person will be much more productive in the coming months. That is why you see people with higher salaries when they join but aren’t as productive then. How else would you justify occasional higher salaries of a person with lesser years of experience than somebody with more years behind them?

• Keeping our compensation confidential is for our own benefit: This is a highly debatable topic. Every organization stresses on the fact that compensations are supposed to be kept confidential. And there is a reason behind this. This is a very touchy topic and, even though the differences can be explained, people don’t want to talk about it to avoid any unhealthy competition. This is something Microsoft was able to manage better than most other companies I know of. I remember that I used to be offended when somebody asked me my salary then. Apart from my parents and a few other family members, nobody knew my salary then. Contrary to that, I see people telling their salaries even in the public forums and social networking sites - which is one of the most insane things I have witnessed.

There are many other factors like “Working smart vs working hard”, “Relation of promotion with compensation” that I can talk about but the above points looks more important to me.

In a nutshell, from what I have learnt so far in my career is that, constantly comparing our salaries with others have the potential to cause more distress than good. The compensation decision cannot be totally objective and anything subjective can be mostly made controversial. The point is how much trust do we have in the company management. If we do, we trust them for a fair compensation as well and if we don’t, there is no point in working for the organization.

When I was returning back from my 1st US trip after having started Tekriti, I met a Director of Technology of a big software company on the flight. I introduced myself after asking for his introduction and after his first look of “oh really?”, the first question he asked me was “So, are you having trouble retaining people?”. My answer was “No, we are having trouble hiring people.” and that was a very true statement then. We were in a very small office, were very new to the business, had very few people and were not somebody who could have given market-beating salaries. In nutshell, the work-place was something not exactly inspiring until you talk to somebody who actually worked there. The positive way of looking at the same is that we never had to start in a garage (not that I think it’s bad) - we always believed that we will do the best possible that we can afford for people at Tekriti, even though it meant going into our pockets to begin with. We didn’t exactly have a state-of-the-art office and had our share of some embarassing moments when some guests came to our office. But one thing that we have always believed at Tekriti has been keeping the work-culture healthy. Knowingly and unknowingly (to be fair), our focus at Tekriti has always been to create a company with the best culture than be religious about a certain technology or domain. I believe we are very different from a lot of companies in that way.

That discussion was almost a year back and we have come a long way after that. Our hiring problems have definitely reduced since we have moved into a newer place and, if not state-of-the-art, it is something better than a lot of companies with small to medium sizes. We have spent some time in business, made some name for ourselves, learnt how to present ourselves better, are 30+ team and we all look very cheerful and young Having said that, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have our share of problems. As somebody wise once said “Who said entrepreneurship was easy?” - cant be more correct. Every day - I have so many things to worry about that I have stopped keeping the count. Is project A slipping behind the schedule, did we win the contract for project B, is the health of Product C good, did we send communication to all our clients we needed to, do I need to put in more money in the cost-center for the Product D and will it disturb the overall balance of the company finances - these are only a few things that are always in mind. Actually, let me add a few more significant ones to this list - is the project team well-staffed, do we need to add buffer to a particular team (and there are more than a few) followed by “Oh, I didn’t eat my breakfast again today. I will have to lie to Mom again when she calls”, “Man, I promised that I will call a friend who will only get more angry since I didn’t”, “I am dead today again - she will kill me saying I have no-time for her”.

So - what do you do? You know you cant solve all the problems in a day. You also know that your backlog will only increase with time and there isn’t a scope of reducing that over the weekend since you already assumed weekend to be a working day. So - you just prioritize - the long known wisdom that everybody knows and practices. The easiest and best way to come up with such a priority is to look for the long-term goal of the company. That brings me to the question that I raised in the title of this post:

What is really a company about?

Is it about the products that you have built over time? Is it about the clients that you have and are servicing? Is it about the goodwill of the company in the market that you cater to? Or is it about the infrastructure that you have accrued over months? My belief is that most companies are about neither of the above items - they are mostly about the people in the company and the culture that has been established. One could be focused on the products, clients, contacts - in the short-term but the one that is the most important is thinking about people. The short-term stuff is also very important at times but as long as one has the long-term goals in mind and is not compromised because of short-term stuff - the actions are justifiable.

So, yes, every company’s 1st priority has to be to think about “How to grow people?”, “How to improve their skills?”, “How to make sure that everybody in the company is bought into the vision of the company?”, “How to emphasize the importance of team-work?”, “How to make sure that the old ones pass the same values to the new ones?”, “How to make the company self-sustain itself even if the promoters are not in the company any more for some reasons?”. I truly believe that building a company is mostly about building the people - it’s not that much about building a technology or a product or anything else. Once you have the right set of people who are motivated, loyal, inspired, have the right self-belief and in you - you know that you are going to be a winner. You have the most flexibility to do anything that you want to. It gives you the abilty to quickly change the business plan if need be (something very common in today’s world), it lets you adapt to the changes quickly and utilize that to your advantage. And, above all, it gives you confidence that you are not alone in the journey - there are many others who share your vision and have the same zeal to do something, to change the world and that only makes the journey so much more interesting and eventful.

Let me pause a bit and talk about just the negative part of all this. So, what if you have spent all your time and energy in building the company? So, what if you truly think about everybody else in the company before you think about yourself? So, what if you think that this company is the best that anybody can get and is the best career option for everybody else too? Everybody else might not think so. It’s simple - just because you are passionate about something doesn’t mean that everybody else will be. People will leave you. Yes, the same people, who you thought belong to that ‘dream team’ that you are building. And, mind it, they might be totally justified. Everybody has their own way of thinking and have their own priorities - and everybody can make mistakes that they repent about later - including you. After all - not everybody who joined Microsoft, Yahoo, Sun or Google initially were in the company when these companies went public and made fortunes for those who remained there.

So, what do you do? You can either get upset about the fact or you can just let go those people and know that you don’t need everybody in the company who joined you initially. You just need a smaller group and those will, more than often, be the set of people who will create history with you - if you continue to be genuine and passionate about what you are doing.

Let me try to analyze a bit as to why does somebody join a startup and why do they leave? In my opinion, there are only 2 kind of people who join a startup and they are at 2 extremes:

• Very confident people: These are the people who are very confident about their skills and capabilities. They know that they can walk into any company they want to, if desired. So, their ‘risk-taking’ capability is higher. These are the kind of people who are very ambitious and are the ones who should belong to your ‘dream-team’. They have the fire in their belly which can create another Microsoft, Yahoo or Google. They are the ones who, more than often, will show enough enthusiasm to join “this company” and not joining a job. Treasure these people. If even a single one from this group leaves, there are chances that you are doing something wrong. Find that, and fix that.
• People who joined you because you were the first good option that came their way: Like it or not like it - a startup has to be ready to train people a little more than the bigger companies do. The bigger company has a lot more options while a startup has to identify the diamond in a coal-mine and polish them. Some of these diamonds are really Kohinoors, they just needed a better support and more confidence. But, at the same time, you have to realize that if you feel that they would have joined a big name had they gotten that offer at the time they joined you - they will eventually do so. They never joined you because they wanted to join you. They joined because you were the 1st good option that came their way. The day they can get into another organization, they will. And it’s okay too - everybody needs to think about what is good for them.

So, yeah, it hurts to see people leave but don’t be too upset - a lot of things are out of everybody’s control and it’s okay to leave those things to destiny. There are some who were never destined to walk with you till the destination but gave some company to you in the journey and then went their way. Instead of getting upset, you should feel happy for them. Happy because, in the process, you helped somebody get to their destination. Genuinely feel happy about them because the ones who have stayed are the one who matters and they are the ones who will be the world-beaters. And, then, a company’s aim is not only to make money but also to make sure that it benefits maximum people - in different ways. Try to do good for everybody - people who have left can also come back and hopefully they will bring back a lot more wisdom than what they had when they left - and you will have an option then. Remember - a token of appreciation from an ex-Employee goes a long way. I still think that Microsoft is one of the best big companies to work for.