DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

Day 1 highlights: Traits of a successful product entrepreneur:

This was a power-packed session where Prof. Vivek Wadhwa and UTV’s God-in-Chief Vishal Gondal slugged it out to find out if entrepreneurs are made or born.

 

Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research, Centre for Entrepreneurship and Research, Duke University:

There are a lot of wrong assumptions on what an entrepreneur is. The common myth around Silicon Valley is an 'entrepreneur' is a young white male who is a college dropout and sometimes they may come across as Chinese and Indians. In all the research that I have conducted and papers that we have published we have found out that the average age of an entrepreneur is 39. Of the 500+ successful entrepreneurs we have interviewed we saw that the major criteria that make it successful is the experience that he has gained in his work, his management team and of course luck, it is crucial. It is safe to say that entrepreneurs are made not born. When you are an entrepreneur you need to 'fail fast' and 'learn faster' .

We need to understand that most of the learning of product entrepreneur can actually be received in the service sector itself. You learn a lot there, you learn how to sell to a customer, you learn how to provide customer satisfaction. A lot of these valuable skills you learn here, which applies to product enterprises.

Vishal Gondal, CEO, IndiaGames.com:

You cannot really deduce from research if entrepreneurs are born or made. The real issue is 'knowing the path and walking the path'. Our ecosystem is not smart enough to teach us or does not have a proper guideline to become a product entrepreneur'. We need somebody who has 'climbed down Mt.Everest and shares his experience' with us to tell us the way to success. Our SME ecosystem is scattered. Hence, it's all about which entrepreneur can make it on his own.

As a product entrepreneur you need to understand what the customer wants, because the customer here themselves do not know what they want. The major challenge that a product entrepreneur faces is the business model that he needs to follow. It's all about finding the optimum solution for customers and not just throwing more people to develop the product. You need to balance the two out. Also one very important issue that a product entrepreneur should keep in mind is to know when to pull out. Do not get obsessed with the products, if you see them failing more than three times. That's when investors and mentors come into the picture.

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