With the huge wedding season just coming to an end, one is tempted to think about the prayers and hopes associated with such holy unions. Corporate marriages are as critical to the entrepreneur, who has nurtured his love for an idea and professed it to the world.
What is the amount of time an investor would give an entrepreneur’s idea? In other words, by when does the business have to start making money?
The ability to dream up an idea - and capability to get it going on ground - are often dumbed down and numbed down by the graphs and matrices of ‘angels’ and others. I know of several young men and women who would rather wait to find the investor with the right cultural fit, rather than jump at the first opportunity to let an idea mate the market. But then, there are several others who learn the truths of life the hard way. Short selling an opportunity is only the first among several things they end up losing.
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| Anurag Batra |
What even large entrepreneur-run companies that have been bought into, by even larger companies and investors, fail to realize, is that framing a fresh set of guidelines beyond a point of time is not practically possible. SOP cannot be changed in a day. Culture cannot be changed in a day. When you have bought into a company, please do not forget that you have not bought only the business but also the culture. You have not bought just the returns and the promise of returns, but also the means employed to get those returns. The services on offer can be toned down or fine-tuned to common objectives, but the way they are served to the market needs to be consistent.
We see instances of large-scale disillusionment in the managements and senior workforce of organizations, where they have thrust change upon themselves in their quest to multiply the scale of operations. Yes, change is not entirely bad, and is inevitable, but it has to be managed. Not many corporate alliances foresee management of this change as a core common responsibility – one that could become a sore thumb in an entrepreneurial marriage if left unexplored. Unfortunately, divorces in an entrepreneurial marriage scenario can kill; and in many cases, a divorce is possible only if an alternative suitor is ready.
What begs for attention in these corporate alliances is the individual-driven work culture that has been created over a period of time. When you walk into several organizations, you will readily look at a set of systems and processes, and even chaos in some cases, and say, “That smells of XYZ”. Does that mean entrepreneurial ventures are unprofessional? Not at all. You will find an individual’s management style tricking down to become the work culture even in the case of large corporations. And that would be more pronounced when the person driving that culture stays at the top for a long period of time. In the case of entrepreneurs, they have always been there, doing just that. So it is inevitable that they leave their stamp on the work culture.
Because of this consistency at the top, the culture of an entrepreneur-driven organization is more or less consistent. But its ability to change is not in question – entrepreneurs being entrepreneurs, are flexible and are used to taking decisions faster. So why would they not change? They simply need to buy into the idea that change can bring about better practices in the work place. They need to be convinced.
The day an investor comes in, it is assumed that the investor will ‘take over’. While that is far from the truth, several investors do come with pre-determined mindsets of having to set the standards. Improving standards with mutual consent is one thing, setting the standards afresh is another.
The truth is that entrepreneurs exist because of entrepreneurs within their organizations. This is not a New Year revelation but reality I have believed in, after waking up to this fact for several years now. To look through an entrepreneur’s crystal ball, you need to share that vision. But to truly add to his vision, you need to have your own crystal ball.
Which is why an entrepreneur can only marry an investor with entrepreneurial vision. And that marriage is not a happy ending, but a beginning with infinite possibilities.
To borrow from Kipling: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss The legendary poet ended the brilliant poem saying, ‘You’ll be a Man, my son.’
I think the lines apply to entrepreneurs too. If you can dream it and you can do it, you are an entrepreneur. Just make sure that you work with those with a vision that matches – be it your colleagues, associates or the angels that look over you.
Anurag Batra is real life, first generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Anurag is the co founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.
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