DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

- By Vivek Ravisankar

Much has been said about the importance of team and how it can build or break a businesss.There are a lot of articles, blog posts talking about the most important factor in a startup and almost everything claims it to be the founding team. True, the founding team is a critical factor but that's more on a professional level, what about the emotional turmoil the entrepreneur goes through ?

Quitting a high paying job, losing out on a comfortable lifestyle, skipping dates with girlfriend, forgetting your anniversary – all of them are typical characteristics of an entrepreneur in the bootstrapping phase (6 months – 1 year). While you strive to get more customers and enjoy working with your team, I believe that there is something beyond (or more important? ) the team that should be taken care.

Priority #0: Family

The term family here can refer to your wife / parents / girlfriend depending on which phase of life you are currently in :).

Rejections are a norm, 8/10 people would not find value in your product and the remaining 2 would just raise faint hopes on using your product ( most probably only for free ). To accept the reality, come back home and still get rejuvenated to work requires a lot of support and encouragement from your family. Your team might have a rockstar calibre but if you can't
convince your family about your venture, there's no point jumping in.

There would be mounting pressure to get customers, iterate on their feedback and much more operational work than you expected. You might not be able to spend time with your family like how you used to few months ago. You would either skip all family engagements or attend them with your laptop. With such a state, if there is a lot of pressure from your family side about the work, you are going to breakdown.

On the other hand, if your family encourages you to go ahead and try harder – boy, the feeling is unparalleled and nothing can possibly discourage or stop you from achieving your goal.

Priority #1: Mentors

I had written a blog post earlier on how to choose a mentor.While you fall back on your family after a long day of work, interaction with mentors and their inputs contribute a significant chunk during the day.

Like how one chooses a co-founder, mentors play an important part on how the product evolves and marketing strategies. The mentors should have enough entrepreneurial experience to understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur and run a successful business.
There are some (a lot in fact) resource constraints a startup works under and decisions should be taken based on that and not try doing everything, resulting in a skewed product and unable to reach specified goals. This demoralizes the entrepreneur more. Focus is the key – accept the fact that a startup can do only much and proceed.

A lot of continuous small wins is much better than waiting for that large win in the early phase. I learnt all this from my mentors and believe it's an essential attribute that every mentor / advisor should possess.

Of course, the team's chemistry matters a lot in achieving things, but there are numerous posts that have dealt with it and hence not going to reiterate. An entrepreneur can proceed as long his emotional capacity can handle it and this post deals with people (apart from the founding team) who can increase it!

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This is a contributory blog entry by Vivek Ravisankar, Interviewstreet.com. The opinions and views expressed in this blog, explicitly or implied, is the personal opinion and observation of the author. The views and opinions expressed on this blog by the author and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views/opinions of DARE/CyberMedia (I) Ltd.