Since I moved into the startup zone with two interesting media and news projects, I have come to realize that you should seek a lot of advise and guidance but conclude and do only what you think works. Madness is a necessary ingredient in dreaming big and every step must be savoured and enjoyed. No leaders were born, no companies were successful on inception.
It's not magic but madness which precipitates the success of the best leaders. They are bordering on crazy. And for good reason. They didn't need career counsellors, they didn't chase mentors, almost all of them studied something they wouldn't pursue later in life. They were lost and okay with that, and they did well in life by moving on after listening to those who doubted their passions. Our best-laid plans just remain that, plans.
Since I moved into the startup zone with two interesting media and news projects, I have come to realize that you should seek a lot of advise and guidance but conclude and do only what you think works. Madness is a necessary ingredient in dreaming big and every step must be savoured and enjoyed. No leaders were born, no companies were successful on inception.
How many of you have got asked – what's your business plan? And then got another question following up, but how will you make money? And then suddenly gone back wondering what the hell you were doing, whether you were getting it right, whether following your idea was the best way forward. I never forget what Richard Branson said, "Making mistakes is part of the process of building a company; quickly recovering from them is what's most important. It's all part of the adventure of entrepreneurship." I remember reading a piece by Paul Brown, a contributor to Forbes, and he articulated this problem quite well. "Why doesn't creating a business plan make sense? Because you can plan and research all you want, but the first time you encounter something you didn't expect out in the marketplace, the plan goes out the window. Once you are underway, things never go exactly the way you anticipate."
At 25, a lot of people in India are taking risks and starting up. We are luckily not alone. Millennials are running businesses. They are leading teams. Many of them have a 'number' they are chasing—50 crore, 100 crore, a billion dollars, or some such other. There is so much available to partake from and learn along the way. Some rules are getting rewritten and others stay around cast in stone. Most leaders who I featured in my book 'When I Was 25', shared some of these with me. Being a great leader is about personal relationships, connecting with people, learning from mistakes, and going beyond success as the sole benchmark in life. All these leaders were seeking direction, looking for big ideas, collaborating, struggling, and challenging the status quo around them. These learnings are not mine alone. I hear them from every entrepreneur I meet, every CEO I interview, every successful and failed idea I come across.
As India's startup story succeeds, learns and unlearns, there will be simple takeaways for all of us. Algorithms, valuations, investors and angels will be part of it but at the heart of will be drive, passion and perseverance. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh put it well, "Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you."
