Sharing a few thoughts / observations on the TiE Summit held on Dec 20,21 at Goregoan, Mumbai.
Also these are not exactly their words – I am looking at my notes and I only have a few phrases. This is a venkatised version of it – essence is the same.
Kunal Shah of Freecharge : We are all engineers. We are good at solving problems. But where we suck at is defining the problem. Brilliant!
Kunal/Vijayanand of Proto and another Gentleman – didnt note his name : They discussed on traction and finally someone gave a nice sound byte : Traction is when you get customers without spending. That was a superb definition!
Ronnie Screwala, Founder UTV Group : First step to start something is big. But don’t sit there basking on it. So many first steps have to be still taken – getting funded, forming a bigger team.. it never ends. [ Perhaps thats why we call them as a Startup! ]
He gave more tips
- Invest in Teams
- Get a good vision / mission – this gives clarity more than anything else.
- Timing is important at every step – including Exits
- Scale > Control
- 1 good trait of an entrepreneur – he is a good listener
- Attract good talent – spend time on hiring the right team – even if it takes 6 months and multiple coffee shop visits. [ So true – keep reading about this courting process in Silicon valley ]
Ajay Piramal – has a pharmaceutical company and others – and is one of the top 50 Richest people in India [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajay_Piramal ]
- Stressed on the importance of Values. He gave a great definition of Integrity – Integrity is the alignment of thought, speech and action. [ Simple and straight. ]
- 1 good trait of an entrepreneur – courage to take a decision.
- Convert challenges to opportunities
- Be passionate but also be dispassionate from results. Focus on action and leave results out. He gave a supporting story on how they dealt with their acquisition.
- Associate with people of high value
- Avoid “slippery slope” – I will do a bit of this small short cut or concession – and this will begin small but will become big in the end.
Ganesh Natarajan, CEO Zansar technologies
- Innovation is destroying paradigms
- Dont assume that you have a great solution for today. It will change and your solution will become invalid ( explained how Aptech was no longer relevant when colleges started having IT in their curriculum )
- Scale quickly – that is what entrepreneurship is all about [ huh.. hate that word scale ]
Alque Padamsee [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyque_Padamsee ]
He gave the best talk of the entire event.
Leadership through Innovation
- Innovate
- Enthuse not enforce
- Vision Statement
There were 2 more sessions I attended.
One was Mahesh Murthy, Poonam Pandey and Ramesh Srivats – all Twitter superstars.
They brought Poonam Pandey just for the crowd? Boo – the time could have been well spent with another twitter celebrity.
- Poonam Pandey earns 80,000 per sponsored tweet. She does one such tweet per day – and a 17 member team manages her account – so what did the bunch of hard working entrepreneurs learn from it?
- All 3 have everything to gain from their twitter presence – so if the other two tried to make you believe that twitter is a good addiction etc.. – don’t listen to them.
There was one more session where Alok Kejriwal, Vishal Gondal, PK Gulati and an IAN member came on stage. It was good – nice sound bytes but I got distracted in an email/sms chat with a customer.
Overall the event was good. Met lot of unsung entrepreneurs – fighting their own battles. I am sure 10 years from now most of these unsung heroes will be on stage – inspiring the next batch of entrepreneurs.
