The Importance of Quick Decisions - Second lesson learnt

The Importance of Quick Decisions - Second lesson learnt

10:38 PM   advice, best practice, boldness, decision making, entrepreneurship, experience, learnt, lesson, personal, start-up, time, wish,

The one important lesson I learnt during last three months is quick decision making during the startup days.

[Image credit: BigWhitePelican, on Flickr]

One think you may be super courageous during your start-up days are taking decisions. That too being at the management role in your start-up means you are responsible for both success and failure. We would always want things to go in a success route but going forward I understood that more than just success it's more about how you handle failures.

At the early days since we don't have much of people in our team, it would eventually fall under my roles and responsibility to take decisions from picking logo to which investor to date. I had at times spent a lot of nights thinking about taking the final call on execution. I would like to admit saying spending sleepless nights and taking decisions comes with a biased feeling to make it work in some way. But after course of time and exploring things I had figured out that taking decisions are critical sometimes even mission critical but what is more important is taking quick decisions. As times it had happened that though we have taken decisions it had already passed the critical stage and it's of no use.

Having someone during your decision-making, thinking that he/she would help you in guiding you is a complete waste of time. Decisions come with no warranty. Only guarantee that we should give to you is I will decide fast and carry on hence I could save time on taking another decision. Just spending time on taking decisions is the worst ever time I had wasted in startup days.

That too people who kick out regular software company lifestyle and step forward to believe on the power of idea and willingness to startup is having just one advantage and it is TIME. Some decisions should have been predefined.

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Going back to college as an entrepreneur after three years

Going back to college as an entrepreneur after three years

10:27 PM   best practice, college, entrepreneurship, experience, learning, learnt, lesson, start-up, tinywall team, wish,

The biggest advantage of going to college according to me is the alumni network. The best schools are made of strong alumni support.

About the Event
The department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Computer Science and Technology of Karunya University (KU) conducted the second national IEEE STEP EVENT 2014 on “GROOMING ENGINEERS AS ENTREPRENEURS” on 27th October 2014. IEEE-Young Professional, Madras Section. The objective of this event is to transform budding engineers as entrepreneurs.

In this regard CSE department of KU invited Mohankumar Swaminathan, an alumnus to be the resource person for the session “Spark of Inspiration” for one hour duration to talk on "Show inspirations of start-ups; Alumni-Start-ups; Incubation Advantages".

My Preparation:
Thinking about going back to my college was early waiting moment, that too for delivering a guest session for a national level event to talk to my own juniors made me work over nights to make sure I give my best.

First, when I decided to prepare, one thing that came to my mind was NOT to make it a boring session. It's NOT about, I got a stage to proudly say what we did, instead i was very keen on take away i wanted to pass on to students.

While i was studying in college, I would start opening my text book just few hours after our study hours in night. But this time absolute opposite, spend more than days digging all my previous tweets and started to put it up in one PPT and organised.

I wanted to make sure even the photos and references i use should be from Karunyans. And when a junior listens to me his expectation would be more of brotherhood. So I need to be open minded to say real inside out, give tips and build bonding.

My Talk

Spark of Inspiration - Karunya alumni Start-ups from Mohankumar Swaminathan

My Experience:
Got up early, grabbed some breakfast at home, got into car on a drizzling climate and took a back seat to make sure I enjoy every second of my travel recollecting my college days. Its about 40 kms from my home and while i entered the college area, I still couldn't accept that it's been three years since I left this place. Smile built up itself and was measuring every step I had recollecting moments spent with friends and teachers.

My session was second in morning and with the above PPT walked them through how we lived in Karunya? and how i was able to find co-founders and build a small start-up from our own hostel rooms.

Had lunch in our hostel mess, went to my department. Had chance to interact with staffs who believed in me even when i was in college being an average student.

News coverage:

MaalaiMalar: http://epaper.maalaimalar.com/showtext.aspx?parentid=43344&boxid=15388984&issuedate=coimbatore/30102014

HTcampus: http://www.htcampus.com/article/workshop-grooming-engineers-entrepreneurs-karunya-university/

Being an alumni
Getting out of college with a campus placement would be a great thing for us at that moment, but the real happiness for teachers is when you go back visit them and share your industry experience with juniors. It's our responsibility to make sure we keep in touch with our college/department often and give back what ever we learnt to the juniors.

We schedule our vacation and family outing, it's equally important to visit our college every year to meet our juniors, staff and contribute as much as possible. Alumni contribution is very much important to build a strong freshers out of college.

Would like to listen to your experiences on helping or guiding your juniors after coming out of college. Lets get to know your experience in the comments section.

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Come out of your comfort zone: 1st entrepreneur lesson learnt

Come out of your comfort zone: 1st entrepreneur lesson learnt

2:42 PM   entrepreneurship, india, learnt, lesson, start-up,

Being first generation entrepreneur is not that easy, there is always a fight between your thought and heart, common sense and business sense.

Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/eiFJk3

The first comfort zone we break as an entrepreneur is accepting to take risk on our own. Yes, I do agree but that's just the beginning. It took nearly six months for me to understand the importance of coming out of my comfort zones.

Some of the comfort zone which i had came out are,

• Starting up on a very new domain in my life (Recruitment)
• Taking up a role that I always wish not to be in (Sales and marketing)
• Compromising on living an upper middle class lifestyle
• Travelling on most affordable mode of travel
• Skip unnecessary spending
• Moving from boss attitude to leader attitude (teach your team hands-on)

Mind voice: Why should I come out of comfort zone?

Bootstrapping a start-up is not that smooth process. All your contacts who used to listen to you when you were with a title "xyz" will not expect you to listen to them now. It could be easy for an outsider to think you are living on your own world and comfortable but the reality is totally different.

It's important to unlearn all those corporate things you learnt and the comfort zone we lived. The best way in start-up is to DIY (Do-It-Yourself) model which required you to break your comfort zone and do even the plumbing work for your start-up.

"The crying baby gets the milk" 

Let me know the comfort zones you had broken so far.

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