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