2 truths for your entrepreneurial journey

today i’m just

going to give you two quick honest

lessons that i’ve heard

and learned from my personal experiences

as an entrepreneur and just in life

so what i’ll do is i’ll give you the

life lesson

i’ll give you the story behind that

lesson and then i’ll convert it into an

entrepreneurial lesson

and i think that starting off as an

entrepreneur doesn’t matter what stage

you are at if you have come up with an

idea

if you don’t know about entrepreneurship

whatever it is

this is just two stories that i want to

tell you which will give you the biggest

pitfalls and the biggest starting points

to becoming an entrepreneur

so two honest lessons from my side two

stories

and i hope that this helps you start

your entrepreneurial journey which is a

long road ahead

but this is a great starting point and

you can learn from what mistakes i make

so lesson number one

always listen to the tingles now i know

tingles is a funny word and i know that

you had expected something

entrepreneurial lingo to be on the first

slide like a pitch tech revenue model

and how to identify unicorn ideas

but we are going to start with tingles

and before i explain what the word

tingles means

as promised let me give you the story

behind it

so this is most of you and it was

definitely me where indian parents say

um to your doctor or engineering

profession first and then go on to

decide what you’re passionate about and

then follow your dreams

to sort of lay out the foundation and

safety net that they think they’re

laying out for us

before we pursue entrepreneurial dreams

or our true calling

so i did my time i became a mechanical

engineering

engineering student from pune university

and i graduated as a mechanical engineer

and immediately joined tata lxc which

was an entry-level design firm

and i was a very junior engineer then

which meant that i had to work

night shifts and i used to come home

sometimes at around 1am in the night 2

am in the night

and i always used to ride my motorcycle

and

every time i came back home late at

night in the first couple of months i

used to see something in the middle of

the road

and i just used to pray please don’t let

this be what i think it is

but it almost always was what i thought

it was which was a dead dog

in the middle of the road that was run

over by a car

a speeding car so

i thought that this was an isolated

incident this is what happens right

cars speed um there are no street lights

and dogs

come in the middle of the road and they

get run over that’s the

order of life and that’s just how it is

but as more months went

by four to six months went by i

realized that this is happening every

month and the number of occurrences

if not increasing are definitely

remaining at the same level

which meant that there was a pattern

there and there was a problem there and

somehow this situation was just calling

out to me to do something about it

to find out more about it so i set out

to do just that

i set out to talk to almost 80 to 100

people

who have been in close encounters or in

actual accidents where they had to run

over dogs or they missed at the last

minute

and all of them obviously had the same

thing to say which you have

guessed by now which is that they don’t

see the dogs at night

but a new input that they gave me was

they don’t see the dogs

early enough they needed to see the dogs

from a

considerable distance to make sure that

they can take the time to take a

conscious decision

to slow down or change lanes or

completely stop so as to save the dog’s

life and their own lives

so that was the problem and which was to

make dogs visible from a distance

and because i was a design engineer in

an automotive firm i had access to some

retroreflective materials such as this

and we used those to create callers for

dogs

and because most of our group were

students i was just

starting to earn and we didn’t have a

lot of funds to use the base material

which is something cheap and available

easily

we decided to use denim pants and

jeans as you call them in different

households which

all of us have in our cupboard and we

think we are going to fit into at some

point in the future but we never will

um so we collected a lot of those denims

we cut them up as base material and we

made 500 callers in the city of pune

and we call it 500 and then we waited

in the next 24 or 48 hours um we

started getting all these anonymous

comments that oh i was speeding on

xyz road and i was i saw something shiny

in the middle of the road and i had to

slow down and turns out it was a dog

or that i was taking a turn on a blind

curve and i was startled

by something shiny in the distance so i

stopped and it was a dog

and all these anonymous comments started

validating

what we had set out to do and the fact

that this solution

was working and pretty soon it as you

can see it blew up

um media houses picked it up it was

getting featured everywhere because

let’s be honest a bunch of students um

cutting up their impacts making corners

and making

dogs shiny in the night was pretty

interesting to some people

and soon enough mr ratan tata who is an

animal activist himself caught

this caught his attention and he became

the primary investor

in what we call this motor walls

but the moral of the story here is not

how amazing everything turned out to be

the moral of the story is again tied to

the word tingles

tingles is that feeling that i was

getting every night

when i was passing the circumstance and

i could feel the situation calling out

to me

asking me to do something to go out of

my way out of my daily life

and do something about this particular

situation that strong calling that

strong pull that strong need for

attention from that circumstance

was what i would call a tingle now you

might say shantanu

how great and how lucky to have found

you found that thing well it converted

into motor balls

that’s just amazing it turned out for

you but we don’t have tingles

that’s just not true every single person

watching this

has tingles day in and day out and every

single one of you chooses to ignore it

and i’m going to tell you why you ignore

it because it doesn’t meet your short

term goals

it doesn’t meet your career background

it doesn’t mean your educational

background

it doesn’t mean what you’re going to do

in the next two three months or whatever

you are going to give or that one track

trajectory that you’ve mapped out for

yourself

which we so often do even as indian

students to get from point a to point b

everything outside of that is not of

interest to us that is how you miss out

on these things which are something that

are calling for attention but as

promised the entrepreneurial lesson here

is the best ideas are in the biggest

problems

the number one email that we get in mr

tata’s office

is mr data i have the entrepreneurial

spirit but how do i come up with that

one

magical problem which will earn millions

or will convert into a unicorn

well the solution to that is not to wait

for a chance of luck

but the solution to that is to actively

remind your brain to be constantly

receptive to the

things people are complaining about you

what are they pumped complaining about

what are they cribbing about what are

they constantly being inconvenienced

by those are the things that are causing

them so much trouble

that they will pay money to get sold and

those are the problems

you need to be constantly receptive to

listening and because of our one track

lives we are completely

averse to everyone else’s problems and

we tune those off

but these problems that people are

constantly bringing up

are the potential startup ideas this is

where you get these startup ideas

beat in daily life beat at your

workplace beat a bad coffee machine for

example i went to starbucks

last week and i realized that every time

i come here people in the queue

are complaining about how much time it

takes despite

all the counters in the front being

empty

so if people are complaining about that

day in and day out probably starbucks

can

pay you for a solution to solve this

issue this is just an example but

i agree that now that you have heard

about this from me you will do this for

two three days you’ll start being

receptive

but like every other human being you’ll

forget about this session you’ll forget

about what i said

so i would recommend this particular

exercise to you

put down three to four problems that you

observe in daily life that people are

complaining about gripping about or that

you observe

on an excel sheet and at the end of the

month that should give you about a

hundred problems on an excel sheet in

front of you and you can try and solve

them

and a hundred of these hundred problems

that you put down

can be absolutely useless and that’s

fine

but at the end of three months six

months nine months

you will have 300 600 900 problems on an

excel sheet in front of you

and you can’t tell me that it’s not not

10 to 15 problems in there which one

which can be converted into great

startup ideas

so follow this exercise train your mind

into constantly

being receptive to the situations around

you being receptive to what people are

complaining about

and that’s how you come up with the

startup idea

all the startups that you idolize

and respect all started in this place

which is a great problem to solve for

example

amazon was listening to the customer who

was complaining constantly about

i don’t want to leave my house to shop i

want to be able to get stuff

here without leaving the house google

was trying to solve the problem

that you want information at the snap of

a wrist

and you want it in that very instant

without having to refer to a million

books or making assumptions

all these big large conglomerates

started with the problem they didn’t

come upon a stroke of luck

they were receptive to something people

were constantly complaining about

they took that gave the solution and

created the startup

lesson number two and the most crucial

lesson in your entire entrepreneurial

journey is going to be this

go off-road but first research

so after my engineering i decided to

become an automotive designer i wanted

to be that automotive designer who

designs these sexy lamborghinis and

ferraris and was

known all across the world as the guy

who designs these beautiful expensive

cars

and i went to my father and i said i

want to become an automotive designer

and he said no

and i said why and he said what do you

even know about becoming an automotive

designer

and i gave him very superficial answers

that there’s this course and that course

and this program and he wasn’t satisfied

he said if you want to become an

automotive designer come back to me with

a big

fat file of why you want to be one how

you can be one

and why you think you have something to

contribute to this field

so i started on my journey i researched

a lot and the more i started speaking to

students and people who have been in

this field

i realized how difficult it is to be an

automotive designer

it is extremely difficult and especially

from india and you might just end up

designing the door of a car that nobody

ever heard about

on my final day when i was supposed to

decide i went to iit bombay where they

have an industrial design center

and i spoke to the graduating students

there and that one person told me there

is a one to three percent chance you

will make it as a successful automotive

designer from here in india

and i was not okay with that statistic

and you know what there is someone out

there who’s okay with that statistic who

would have said

yes one to three percent i don’t care i

will be in that small segment i will

become that automotive designer

but i wasn’t that person and at that

moment i realized why my father made me

do this it was basically to

make me differentiate between

infatuation and love

for automotive design and turns out i

was infatuated

i repeated the same process for my mba

i got good statistics good answers i

realized i talked to a lot of people a

lot of people in the mba that is the

whole

point of the story i talked to a lot of

people

and they gave me some very real on the

ground facts

which i was assuming to be something

else and i decided i liked the answers

and i went for my mba

but the most important entrepreneurial

lesson here

is it’s not the best idea because you

said so

the only single most absolute living

thing

on planet earth who can tell you that

your idea is amazing

and that it will work the only authority

on earth

is the customer who is going to use your

product or service and nobody else

nobody gets to do tell you that it’s a

great idea not industry experts not

google research reports

and the last person who should be

telling you that it’s a great idea

is you we when we come up with the idea

get so

married to it that our ego refuses to

believe

anything else i like pineapple and pizza

but i can’t go out and say that everyone

has to like pineapple and pizza because

i find it so tasty

in fact there’s a whole community out

there who would stone me to death

if they found out i like pineapple on

pizza that is how much they hate it

but i would never know about that if i’d

never stepped out and asked them

instead i chose to assume that because i

like it so much everyone has to like it

it is not the best idea because you said

so

i’ll give you another example you can

design the world’s best

bottle opener it can have aluminum

finish it can have bluetooth it can have

an led light

but it’s just not getting sold why

because when you go out and talk to the

customer they are telling you that the 5

rupee 10 rupee bottle opener that we

bought at the general store

is still opening bottles in our house we

don’t really need

a bottle of money which brings me to the

most

important reason the number one reason

according to financial times

because of which startups across the

world fail

is the lack of market need number three

reason is not having a good co-founding

team number two reason

is not having enough funds but number

one reason for startups to fail across

the globe

is that there is no market need for

whatever you created

and this is the reason why because you

think that it’s a great idea and you

assume

that everyone else also thinks it’s a

great idea fortunately for this big red

flag there’s a very easy solution

an easy approach and this is called get

out of the building approach

and it is exactly what it sounds like

you get out of the building

and you talk to a minimum a minimum of

100 people

and you run your idea by them there will

be one of the outcomes

majority of them will say what an

amazing idea i have been looking for a

solution to my problem and if you came

out with this i would buy it

excellent you just got validation close

your eyes and go to the next stage

the second outcome the most important

outcome is people telling you

this is not something we want or this is

not going to work or this is not

important to me

this will be a crucial moment for you as

an entrepreneur because at this moment

you need to keep your ego aside

accept the fact that the people who were

supposed to pay you money

for coming up with this idea are telling

you themselves that they don’t want this

and move on to something else if you are

a true entrepreneur you will find

another problem to solve

apply a spirit and create a startup but

you should not

ever say that the customer doesn’t know

what they want let me

anyways go ahead with it and convince

the customer that they need this

no and the third outcome is the customer

telling you

majority of the customers telling you

why don’t you make this xyz

change in your product and i will buy it

if majority of them tell you the same

change

then it’s called a pivot a change of

direction you incorporate that with eyes

closed because

these are the people who are going to

give you money and you go to the next

stage

that is how you avoid a lot of

savings on time effort and money because

you’re going to put your life on the

line

and put in so much effort and money

don’t you want to know if it’s

going to work or not and this is the no

cost solution to go out there and talk

to people

and find out if it’s going to work or

not don’t make those assumptions don’t

get married to the ideas

and definitely don’t be this person you

have to take criticism in

entrepreneurship if you

imagine your idea as this big rough rock

in the beginning and you cling on to it

and you say

nobody attack it nobody criticize it i

will take it to the

end at the end it’s still going to be a

big rough rock

but if you let people attack it at every

stage criticize it chisel away at it

then in the end it will be resembling

some form of what you need it to be

which is a good refined sculpture

and in the end customers are people and

people are complicated they have

emotions they have moods

they have complex problems

within them that you cannot capture in a

google research report

with your laptop in front of you in four

between four walls

it will only be when you go out and have

these face-to-face conversations when

you can observe what they’re saying how

they’re saying it

that invaluable data that you collect

that is going to be the true crux of

whether or not your idea will be

successful because you’re listening to

what

the person who’s supposed to pay you is

saying