Courage under fire or Great Expectations — Do Founders’ families of successful bootstrappers have a claim to their success?
A fortnight back your truly attended a session on “Virtues of Bootstrapping” at India Digital Summit 2017 held at Hotel Lalit, New Delhi. Panelists for the session were Founders and Co founders of immensely successful minority bootstrapped Indian companies.
On being asked about the secret recipe of their success, panelists replied back everything from having the right “Startup DNA”, “Resilience”, “Adept at opportunity spotting”, “Ability to accept risk” and “Out of the box thinking” etc. over a thundering applause.
Being father of a similar successful bootstrapper, who has lived and breathed day in and day out with his son’s company from day one, my ears ached to hear the role (or sacrifices) families of these successful entrepreneurs would have made to make their success possible. Nothing of the sort however was forthcoming.
Was it founders’ courage under fire to pass on some credit to their respective families or families’ great expectations to seek any credit where nothing is due or sheer arrogance on both sides? This question kept haunting me till I reached home to a cup hot coffee with my lovely wife.
But again — the question continued to disturb me when I hit the bed. Reason was pretty simple.
I was disturbed. As a father, an ex food retailer with decades of management experience at leadership level at India’s reputed companies, I used to help out my son’s venture when it first started making revenue — handling the accounts first, taking care of the administration thereafter and eventually looking after the whole operations, with a single vision — to make my son’s company also as big and valuable name sometime like the companies I had worked in the past.
I could easily visualize how parents, spouses, siblings or kids of these successful bootstrappers on the panel must have also similarly contributed in one way or another during their respective company’s formative years. This was more obvious, particularly when the business was getting built without external funding. Even a bootstrapper has to pay bills and get his food, clothes washed etc etc….. More so in India where parents expect their sons and daughters to start earning the day they complete their studies. Getting such freedom to operate to work where success is not guaranteed and fear of failure has a parachute, is something only Brave-heart families can and will do as they have faith and trust in the ability of their bootstrapping family member.
But do the family members deserve to be labelled as Co-founders? I leave the answer to you my dear readers.
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