Lessons learnt from my experience
I learnt 3 lessons over the course of these few years.
- Making the jump
- Management team
- Getting the right people to know you
Making the jump
I guess this is the WHY question. The first question which you have to ask yourself why you want to start up a business. To me, it’s more than just a first question. It’s the foundation question which will determine your career, if not your life. If you can’t answer truthfully to yourself why you want to start a business, then it’s likely that your determination will easily waiver when things go wrong.
If your resolve is not strong, the easy way is of course to fall back to work for others. Many people I talked to always tell me, “I’m giving it a try!” and “I can always find a job if I fail.” I mean, this is fine. But to me, entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go. Because if you do, perhaps starting businesses is not in your blood and not something you really want to pursue.
Making this decision is a commitment, just like a commitment to your religion, your family, and your spouse, even your boss. A promise that you will do your best, provide your best and be the best you can be in that role you play.
A commitment is about responsibility and accountability. I read this from Buck Rodgers from his book The IBM Way. In this journey that you are going to take, you are responsible to a lot of people whom you will affect or influence – your family, your colleagues, your customers, your partners, and the most important of all, yourself. Everything that you do affect these people one way or another. It is a power you have. As the saying goes, “Being powerful is about being responsible.” Bear this in mind as you walk this path.
At the same time, great responsibility comes with accountability. You must be held to what you believed in, what you promised and what you can deliver. Many people joined you in this path, because they believed what you believe in. They believed that you can give them a future that they want. Everyday, these people are watching you. And to take on this responsibility is to be fully accountable for what you do, however the minutest detail. Only by adopting this “Siamese Twins” principle can one truly run a great business. And businesses adopting these principles will last the test of time.
Building your management team
The next most important factor for success of any business is your management team. In this case, you, the founders of your company. This is what VCs will be looking for in any business they are going to invest in. It is true that they invest more in the people they trust and who can take the business far than the business idea.
Next, you got to ask yourselves this. What do you have as a team that is so compelling that VCs will throw money at you? Is it your shared vision, so strong and noble that everyone thinks it is a worthy cause. Just like Bill Gates, who dreamt of putting a PC in every family in the world.
Is it your experience? Were you all CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs of MNCs before, or were you the senior management of the same company and you worked closely together before? Or are you just a bunch of very good friends with the same ideals and dreams who grew up together?
Do you all have complementary skills – one with the vision, one has the ability to sell and another with the technical expertise?
In addition, the lesson I learnt from my own startup was that your team has to be geographically together. For us, we were puzzled as to why no one wants to fund us when no one said that our idea was bad. We only realized the real reason when one VC finally was kind enough to tell us that he doesn’t see the team would work well together when we are apart. Decisions cannot be made quickly, timely and decisively, especially at this most crucial period of the company. Thanks to him, we took his advice and pulled the plug on our baby.
Getting the right people to know you
The third factor for success really comes from you. As the saying goes, “In business, it’s not what you know, but who you know.” I’d like to one up this saying by changing it to “It’s not what you know, but who knows you.” Those who have done sales before would know this very well. The success rate of cold calls is perhaps 1-5%. And we always start from our warm market (which is exactly the who you know part). The limitation here is that you don’t really know more than 1000 people right? The more well-networked might know perhaps 3000-4000, but still there’s a limit. After that, you still have to run to the cold market, right?
Well, the answer is no. You can create what I call the “Celebrity Effect”. In today’s world of blogs, it’s easy to achieve it. Some very successful people in this space are Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi, Nick Pan, Bernard Leong, Justin Lee and Bjorn Lee. Are they big time businessmen? No. But do people know them? Yes. And if they want to set up businesses, is it easier to find the right business partners? Yes.
Of course, I’m not advocating you not do the necessary rounds of attending events, seminars, talks, forums, etc. But by sharing constructive views on your area of expertise, you might just have someone knocking your door for a business venture. Which is why, for me, this blog exists, and you’re reading it.
To do this, I suggest you become an expert / guru in your own area of knowledge. This means that you not only have to know what’s happening in your chosen specialty area but also you have to know what’s happening in the world and you give constructive opinions of issues in the world with your applied expert knowledge.
Take for example myself. This entrepreneur journey of mine. Because of all the research I have done, the comments and advice I have received from people and the experience I have gained by executing the business, I am now quite knowledgeable in the field of online education and online marketing. I know very well what works and what doesn’t. I believe I have foreseen what the future trend in online education is. I know what are the effective methods in reaching audiences in the online space. Some executives from a few local education company have even sought my opinion on some of the things they do. It’s just a pity I didn’t charge them consulting fees. So I’m now the online education and marketing expert. For those of you who’s thinking of doing education online or thinking to run an advertising campaign, you can talk to me and find out for yourself.
The advice I’ve given is what I’ve found important to me as I continue to travel this path. Although the path you’ve chosen or the business you’re doing may not be the same, I believe that there’s always something here you can take back, think about and put to action if you feel it’s worth a try.
Finally, I’d like to recommend a great resource to all of you. I found out that there is such a movie called Startup.com. It’s about the life and story of the founders of a startup during the dot com hey days and the successes, trials and tribulations they went through. I recommend this movie because it’s a great resource to remind ourselves why we are walking this path. If you’ve got to watch more than once, do so. I’m sure you’ll learn something new each time you watch it.
You can get it on Google Video here. Courtesy of Bjorn Lee for the pointer.
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