DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

DARE 4th edition, Entrepreneurial week, third day had Ashok Shastry, Founder & CEO, ConsultGenie. He shared some valuable tips to minimise overheads and ways to manage cost at the initial stage.

Ashok Shastry Founder & CEO, ConsultGenie

He started the session saying there are three mistakes that entrepreneur makes. They are -
a) Providing too much money on to the table
b) Spending too much
c) Chasing the wrong accounts.

To avoid these mistakes, an entrepreneur should follow the scaffolding structure. A scaffolding structure is a temporary but safe structure used to build permanent structure in an organisation.

He suggested the following steps in order to get a highly productive team without increasing the overheads.

a) One should use milestone based hiring and not time based hiring process-think if you don’t reach your milestone?
b) Hire experienced consultants; they can change your world.
c) Motivate your team and they will share your pain.
d) Be ruthless, don't wait to fire inefficient people.
e) Hire for capabilities and not for charisma.

The veteran entrepreneur suggested tips to get high returns from the sales and marketing team by following the below mentioned strategies:

a) Be careful of margin suckers. Identify your margin suckers. A margin sucker can be a price buyer, convenience buyer and value buyer.
b) Value your loyal customers-do not lose a single loyal customer.
c) Use your network, it works very well to generate leads. In my case it worked to get 80 % of sales in my business.
d) Manage your partners well.
e) Social media and web marketing- Use FB, Linkedin, the social media marketing tools. Be precise in choosing outcome based models-be it consultancy or social media.

Financial prudence
a) Reduce time to breakeven. Find breakeven as early as possible. It’s very important for startups.
b) Focus on profit drivers (price, cost, volume)
c) Bootstrap-avoid using investor's money in early stages.
d) Don't shell out equity just to have a big name on the board. You will need it to grow later.
e) Focus-stick to core business.
f) Get a good financial adviser. Because your problem may be bigger than you think (E. g. debts and taxes). Don’t underestimate these issues.

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