Attitude is everything
Are we still living and communicating in a crisis? I would most definitely say YES. The definition of a crisis is a time of intense difficulty or danger. We are living in times where things are not “normal” nor predictable. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. While we all have adjusted to this environment, we must look ahead to being openly agile in 2021. While this year was challenging, it has turned out to be one where you see things with a more realistic and relevant context, focus your time and energy better, and think about living a more sustainable, healthy, and impactful life both personally and professionally.
For me, one of the highlights of 2020 was starting the Antler VC Cast. It was thrilling to see it make the Top 15 list Podcasts on Entrepreneurship in Asia, barely two months after our launch. Jussi Salovaara and I started the Antler VC Cast on April 1, 2020, to take a closer look at the transformation that is taking place in an increasingly global and digital world. In it, we speak to individuals who are playing a key role in building, investing, and shaping the next wave of tech.
The common thread was finding the intersection of psychology, business, culture, and tech in these conversations where we talk about what leadership and human behavior is essentially about. Attitude is everything- it showed me that the attitude one has when addressing any problem or situation is everything, regardless of how difficult things get.
When the pandemic hit, it became even more important to hear from leaders in the global tech ecosystem to get some perspective on what was going on. The goal has always been — and will continue to be — to have as much of a positive impact as we can on the way people think about entrepreneurship, founders, and the ecosystems in which we operate.
After 14 episodes with entrepreneurs, VCs, and investors from the global tech ecosystem during the most unprecedented year in recent history, we picked some gold dust from the rich insights these exceptional people gave us.
What motivates them to keep going? What is the best part about working with entrepreneurs? What makes people build hurdles? Is it in your mind? Is there an ideal age to become an entrepreneur? Do you need a risk-taking mindset to become an entrepreneur? What part does failure play in the journey and how do different cultures deal with it? How should one view gender in the workplace? What’s the one thing in common you see in successful tech founders?
An attitude to take a step at a time:
Episode 1: Balancing Sustainability and Profitability with Steve Melhuish
“If you have an idea and you believe in it, you need to just take the first step. It might get a bit messy and look ugly to start off with but just put that one foot forward. Then the next foot forward. And then you look back two years later and think: how did that happen? You need that constant focus.”
An attitude of empathy:
Episode 2: Creating content people care about with Nas Daily:
“I cannot go and make a video about a table. I don’t care about the table. You always must make videos about things you care about deeply. The audience doesn’t care about anything. It’s your job to make them care about something they haven’t cared about for 40+ years.”
A positive attitude towards challenges:
Episode 3: Navigating through crisis with Nick Nash & Oliver Rippel:
“A crisis is an opportunity for the best companies to get bigger and to bring on great people and to strengthen themselves and to actually push themselves a bit. It’s kind of like a challenge level in a video game.”
An attitude to not think it’s all about you:
Episode 4: Giving power back to customers with Abhishek Gupta:
“People talk about Steve Jobs being this great entrepreneur or this great business person. The reality is, he would not have managed to do it without a great team. We hear about how Mark Zuckerberg came up with the first version of Facebook, but the truth is, he probably managed to inspire a team to work in a certain way. Hence, having no heroes, and having a system where people feel they can speak up and talk about anything, no matter how complicated a topic it is, how touchy a topic it is, was very important.”
An attitude to not think of your business as invincible:
Episode 5: Adapting to consumer behaviour with Roshni Mahtani:
“Today’s pandemic might be affecting the whole offline world a lot more than the online world, but tomorrow’s pandemic might affect the online world. No business should be surviving on being purely offline or purely online, I think it needs to really be an all-to-all model.
An attitude to take action:
Episode 6: Inflection points in the new normal with Abheek Anand:
“What we’ve been trying to sort of impress upon people, over the last several weeks is that the worst thing that you can do is not act. It’s fine to make small adjustments, small changes to try to anticipate the world and where the world is going. Then adapt when you get more information. But waiting for the perfect amount of information to show up before making the “perfect decision” may not be an option for most people in this market.”
An attitude of confidence:
Episode 7: Entrepreneurship — Nature or Nurture with Patrick Lee:
“One thing among all my tech founder friends that have been successful is having “irrational confidence” — they have tons of folks out there saying no to them over and over and over, but they still go out and do it.”
An attitude of independent thought:
Episode 8: Reimagining EdTech with Aditi Avasthi:
“I don’t see gender in the workplace. I just see personality, and I see ideas, and that’s just how I’ve been from the beginning. I will wear my sparkly shoes, because like I said, I don’t care what other people do. That’s my little thing, I’m always wearing sparkly shoes at work or something or the other like that. You’re allowed to be yourself in your own company, so you don’t have to portray yourself to be a certain type of person, just for the sake of it. It’s a very ‘be yourself’ kind of an attitude, and I extend that to the whole team like they’re supposed to be.”
An attitude to be comfortable with taking risks:
Episode 9: Filling the gap in the Indian tech ecosystem with Rajiv Srivatsa:
“There are a lot of people in a country like India, for whom risk has not been something that we are trained to be okay with… Now, thanks to social media, to so much information out there, thanks to platforms like Antler and more, I think it’s okay to fail, it’s okay to grow out of your comfort zone.
An attitude of self-awareness:
Episode 10: The Kahoot way of learning with Eilert Hanoa:
“The biggest borders and hurdles are normally inside your own head. It’s about how you think beyond that and focus on what is realistically achievable.”
An attitude of finding comfort in the uncomfortable:
Episode 11: Providing a pain killer e-commerce product with Hande Cilingir:
“Leadership is an endless journey. And when we take into account that it’s all about people, leadership is mostly about giving comfort to people to make their own decisions. I think learning from other CEOs who have faced the same challenges in the past is the best way to learn. I think leadership is pretty much relevant with feeling uncomfortable.”
An attitude to understanding your blind spots:
Episode 12: Different founder mindsets with Qiming’s Helen Wong
“I think that in some ways Chinese companies are ready to go overseas. They have accumulated lots of experience in technology and operations. But what they lack is people who understand foreign cultures. Sometimes, especially in some merger and acquisition situations, they may not be able to manage foreign talent very well. There needs to be a lot of learning from both sides.”
An attitude of cause and effect:
Episode 13: Mastering your product & productivity with Nir Eyal:
“All human behavior is about a desire to escape discomfort. So if you can be that product that is the first-to-mind solution — that when I feel X, I do Y — that’s a huge competitive advantage.”
An attitude of humility:
Episode 14: The evolution of the VC ecosystem with Anurag Srivastava:
“I would tell anybody to be an entrepreneur. And being able to work with these amazing entrepreneurs just keeps you relevant. As you get older, one thing you always worry about is becoming irrelevant. When you talk about your “crystallized knowledge or intelligence”, it’s all the knowledge that you’ve acquired over the years. But your “fluid knowledge or intelligence”, which is all your ability to innovate, starts to decline. And these entrepreneurs are filled with fluid intelligence, they are just constantly innovating. And that just keeps me going.”
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Puja Disha Bharwani is a PR & Marketing Director at Antler, Southeast Asia.
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