II. The Importance of Brutally Honest Feedback

GROWING FAST IS IMPORTANT FOR A START-UP

Wikipedia defines a start-up as “an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing a viable business model around an innovative product, service, process or a platform.”

We (Attentive AI) are one such entrepreneurial venture that aims to meet the needs of the remote sensing industry who are sitting on petabytes of satellite imagery and need our AI to generate actionable insights on a daily basis. We are currently building a strong business case through an innovative product for a industry segment that needs regular insights from satellite imagery.

But what we often ask ourselves — Are we a fast growing business?

Since that is the most critical question/litmus test for any new venture. A start-up is designed to be fast growing company and that is what distinguishes it from any other business venture.

Once you have got the basic ingredients ready (problem, user profile, team), start-up founders should focus on growth. Because once you get healthy growth, everything falls into place. To ensure that, one often has to make hard decisions like pivoting into newer directions. We ourselves shifted from CCTV surveillance solutions to geospatial analytics when we realized that we were just not growing fast enough.

However, growing fast is easier said than done

BEST HABIT TO GROW FAST

An important habit that helps your start-up grow fast is being brutally honest about everything. Being honest is the quickest way to find your flaws and the sooner you identify them, sooner you can fix them and the faster you will grow.

Our team gives honest feedback to each other everyday. We always encourage our investors and partners to do the same. For me that is what their purpose is, to give us a reality check.
Everyone understands that this is critical to grow fast.

Be it your idea’s business potential, your personal capabilities or your team’s outputs — being brutally honest about all of them is extremely critical to be a successful entrepreneur. Only then, will you understand your limitations and work towards improving them.

Having said that, it is not easy to take criticism on a daily basis. It takes a lot of patience to execute this everyday. A good mantra which works for me —
“Ego is like your underwear. It is important to have it, not necessary to show it.”

This article was written by Shiva Dhawan in Feb 2018. Founder and CEO of Attentive AI