The 14 commandments for young founders
1. Co-Founders
Co founders — Don’t look for another you, look for someone who fills your void. Techies should search for a biz guy and vice versa. Who’s even crazier and believes in the idea and equally crazy to take the blind leap of faith with you. For who you might even forgo an ego clash.
Avoid people with superiority complex (no matter how talented they are) It’s just not worth it. Now, I understand that where there is talent there is ego but the vice versa is never true.
2. Core Team
You should hire people who have the ownership and are crazy about the idea. Big basket’s CEO gave a speech at an event recently and he mentioned that he used to ask candidates point blank if they are willing to come on board for 30% lesser salary. If the answer is yes, hire them blindly.
3. Important Hires
During nascent stages, avoid people with wordy resumes, hefty pay cheques and fancy titles. They are not gonna come in and weave magic. Look for people who actually execute the work rather than just strategists.
4. Relationships
A recent study by Harvard, which spanned over 75 years concluded that the secret to happiness was having better relationships. Well it doesn’t just apply to your personal life but it’s immensely critical over here too. Coz inspite of the “Chewing glass and staring into the abyss” situations, you have to have that internal happiness that you are finally doing something that you love. Right from your relations with your co founders, your core team, your employees to mainly and especially your investors — respect them, hear them out, treat them like how you would want to be treated. Not just these people but every member that you meet in the eco system.
5. Tiny celebrations
Do these tiny celebrations from time to time with your team for achieving certain milestones. Well, obviously it cannot be a grand buffet dinner at a star hotel but something to even from biryani to a couple of beers.
6. Perseverance
Resistance to the thought of failure. When Elon musk said that “Entrepreneurship is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss”, he damn well didn’t sugar coat it.
7. GMV — Gross Merchandise Value is so Gross
Long gone are the days of fancy valuations related to GMVs. A testament to that would be the legendary valuation corrections that happened in the industry — Morgan Stanley devalued Flipkart from $15 BB to $11 BB. Profitability matters, at least there must be a clear road to it.
8. Water tight revenue model
Get your revenue model right first and then sit down to write the first line of code.
9. Metrics
Unit economics — Your ARPU should be always less than your LTV
LTV = ARPU*Duration
Duration = 1 — retention
Retention (can differ from case to case) = Repeat Purchase Rate and Booking rate
Stickiness is the key — What is the probability of people using my product
10. Super disciplined spending pattern
It’s very easy for startups to enter the dark side where the spending pattern just goes haywire. Every month, it should be a mandatory habit of planning for the apocalyptic scenario, that is if you had just half of the money, how efficiently would you spend it to maximise your runway and how adversely will it affect your growth.
11. The motto
Service is God! Just aim at providing the most impeccable of service to your customers every time. Get down to the grass roots levels of the customers problems. We’ve had instances of an extremely disgruntled customer who was on a rant about us for a mishap turn into a super loyal customer. What was the magic? Just listen to them, don’t retaliate, accept your fault and most importantly empathise with them and be very solid about the exact time frame within which the issue will be solved, take a buffer and quote this time frame but live up to your promise this time. Coz there is definitely not a third time.
12. Culture
Slowly but steadily inculcate your company’s moto into each and every employee of your company. Conduct huddle meetings every morning and make sure that this point is driven home at the end.
13. Don’t be afraid of greatness
Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
My dear comrades, entrepreneurs belong to the second breed and never ever have a second thought about punching above your weight.
14. Stay humble
There is someone who’s always better, faster and more knowledgeable than you. So, be grounded — If you fail to do this, then fall will definitely come after the pride.
