Why We Wanted to be Entrepreneurs?
When you first learnt what entrepreneurs did, how did you feel? Were you inspired? Excited? Intrigued?
Chances are you were inspired and from there on started your journey to follow entrepreneurs globally — Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ratan Tata and countless hours spent on TechCrunch and Forbes trying to know more about their lives and how they built the amazing products we use today.
But you weren’t just excited with the wealth they created for themselves — yes you noticed their lifestyle and wanted to have one for yourself. But that’s not what got you high on entrepreneurship — being able to use their product, hearing their hustle stories, the ups and downs and how they slowly but patiently built their companies made us fall for BUILDING STUFF.
You were fascinated with entrepreneurs who built sustainable companies which created actual value and did not look out for a shortcut to success!
The first entrepreneurs I knew were my parents. They quit their jobs as government doctors to setup their own clinic and bootstrapped all the way to build a hospital in Gaya. They didn’t have any family backing to do what they did and no investor funded them. No, they didn’t care about hockey stick growth in terms of users and revenues — they cared about providing the best experience to every patient. And I loved every bit of what I saw — right from building a team, imparting skills to the staff, dealing with political and demographic hurdles of Bihar, to the art of bootstrapping. They could have worked in Delhi or some other country and probably done something different there like their classmates but they did not — they made Gaya their own and worked hard to change healthcare there. I saw how they worked like a startup team early on when they were on their own to how they became so good at delegating stuff and getting things done faster at scale. It gave me tons of knowledge into how to build a venture.
I was inspired by their dedication to doing things that are unsexy, ventures that take time to scale but over the long term are sustainable and create large value for those impacted — by creating jobs for people in the region as well as by healing those in pain. That’s why I chose entrepreneurship!
When I tell my dad about how all these OYORooms and TinyOwls raise millions of dollars to grow fast — he always tells me they’re building their companies the wrong way! We don’t discuss the specifics and business models of each company but our discussion usually centers around how companies are raising too much capital in a short time to finance unstable growth on top of unsustainable economics with inexperienced teams. We discuss about how how today’s entrepreneurs are more concerned about growing big too fast so that they can cash in and get rich. We discuss about how a lot of our generation entrepreneurs haven’t learnt what true hustling actually means — that all they think is building an app and getting a bunch of smart kids from A-listed engineering colleges together will allow them to raise funds. And I have to tell you my dad gets it right most of the times with his predictions — a year ago he told me TinyOwl won’t survive and I didn’t pay heed, but I guess we saw what happened.
I think we’d agree that we are becoming entrepreneurs for all the wrong reasons now — to build unicorns, to raise a Series A in the first year of business, to get acquired. This attitude is making us bad entrepreneurs. Today, you’d find news app founders living in kothis, and driving fancy cars after raising funds without having any revenues. You’d see glorified real estate web apps come up and their founders talk trash to their older peers who could have been their mentors instead. You’d find people hire a content analyst from one of the A-listed engineering colleges rather than going to a Mass Comm. university (maybe this works, who knows?). We’re building companies which are attracting customers based on senseless discount campaigns, and in the process ruining the whole industry. We’re creating jobs which are not needed, hiring people whom we don’t need, to get a high valuation and to raise a larger round. I think I can go on and on about this!
Let’s look deep, introspect, and come back to where we started — to the very same question — why we wanted to be entrepreneurs?
Do you see it now?? Our reasons have changed over time. We want billions over millions now, but at what cost?
They didn’t have to — but we let them change reading about how startups are making quick money (oops — raising quick money).
No! This isn’t why we took up entrepreneurship. There is no shortcut to success you know. Good things happen over a period of time when you’re willing to work hard every single day. And there will be highs of course, but far more lows in this journey. I think we need to go back to the time when we were growing up observing entrepreneurs — we need to model ourselves on that path.
Yes, the reason why we wanted to be entrepreneurs is not for fame or money, but for the kind of impact we can create with our work. We need to chase sustainable growth, and build companies not just for raising funds, but for providing jobs to thousands year-after-year.
Let’s do this!
