Go Start Up: Your Best Guide to Unlocking the Values and Culture of Success

By Karan Kashyap

In today' s times, the most valuable currency for a start-up is the environment it creates and fosters, for its clients as well as for its employees. Be it Droom, upGrad, OYO Hotels & Homes, or Swiggy, the founders of all such successful companies have leveraged the golden rule of protecting and promoting their organization' s values and culture systems to help transform their enterprises into the fabled Unicorns, and in the process garnered enormous goodwill in the market as well as inspired prospective entrepreneurs to achieve the much-coveted start-up success. Karan Kashyap' s Go Start Up provides a starting point for young enterprises' owners to make minimal errors on this risk-driven road of start-ups. Based on intensive interactions with businesses in India' s third-largest start-up ecosystem, the book effectively caters to the demands of small business magnates, who often face time constraints as they execute multiple roles in their journey of entrepreneurship, and offers a blueprint for them to establish their legacy as founders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354403095

Book preview

SECTION 1

MINDSET

CHAPTER 1

BUILDING BASE

You are finally paying attention to that thought in your head that tells you to become the next great name in entrepreneurship, soon to be spoken of in the same breath as today’s established business leaders. In pursuit of this dream, you will come to realize that starting an organization is not an easy task; it involves a lot of discipline, hard work, and anxiety.

It will not matter whether you are young or old, rich or poor. It will not matter if you are just a student. All that will matter, when you think of starting an organization, as the Greek philosopher Plato said, will be: how much you know thyself. Other than the return on investment, a start-up will require the knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses, an apt name, a support structure of co-founders, mentors, and family, an opportune time of birth, and a well thought of location.

And, it is going to require continuous support in terms of your time and resources at each stage of its development.

Know your strengths and weaknesses

Aspiring founders often establish an enterprise based on their personality traits and the skill set they possess, and work tirelessly to overcome their weaknesses. Before starting up, they must assess themselves to identify their capabilities, growth opportunities, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings. They must also analyse their emotional, mental, and financial resources to conceive an idea and to venture out on their own.

With entrepreneurship, you are striving to ‘create’ something new in the market, and it’s difficult to do so unless you know something really well and understand what is happening in the sector. Therefore, specialist skills and knowledge of the subject are the keys to achieve this feat. Typically, entrepreneurs tend to build businesses in areas they are comfortable with and understandi.

Meena Ganesh, Co-founder, Portea Medical

Naming of the Enterprise

A suitable name provides a distinct identity to an enterprise and plays an important role in the marketing strategy, especially if it is a start-up; it must be descriptive of the nature of business and easy to recall. Your name must also be legally appropriate and distinct from others in the market.

An ideal name is short (4-10 letters max), consists of all the advantages, and overcomes the disadvantages of its category. Changing the name afterwards can be an expensive and a time-consuming task, hence, you must be extremely careful while selecting an appropriate name from the very beginning.

Support Structure

Ekaterina Walter, founder, Branderati, says: Sometimes what makes us faster, better, smarter is our network! There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are all made of hundreds of others. Behind an entrepreneur lies a support structure comprising of those who perform both menial and important roles that are essential for a start-up’s survival.

a) Co-founders : Early days in the life of a start-up are full of uncertainty and chaos, as it cannot perform any task on its own; it is entirely dependent on your skill set for its survival. Thus, after assessing yourself in terms of SWOT you must wisely choose a co-founder. An ideal co-founder complements you in terms of your capabilities, by supporting you to overcome your shortcomings. Before getting a person on board, you can work with him/her on few smaller projects. Alternatively, you can also start an organization on your own and sustain it till the time you can figure out the exact role for your co-founder.

However, do remember that co-founding is like a marriage, if it does not go as per plan, separation can lead to emotional turmoil and drain your monetary resources.

Running a venture is a lonely game, so if you have someone on board, the journey becomes a lot easier. I felt that I would certainly need help in scaling up my business and bringing on board venture funding. It was with that objective I reached out to my current partner. What started off as a consultancy initially developed into a partnership later.

Jatin Varma, Founder, Comicon India

b) Family : During early stages of an enterprise, friends and family members who can offer low-cost skill sets and emotional support might also be taken on board as employees or partners. However, rather than building the start-up as a family affair, entrepreneurs often foresee the role and the duration of their involvement; they involve people based on purely professional reasons rather than just personal equations.

As this career often involves a feeling of solitude, long erratic work hours, a lot of stress and financial uncertainty, family plays an important part in this jigsaw puzzle. They are the first ones to bear the brunt of demands of such a career. Your family, despite being in a particularly challenging and thankless position, will have to play the role of an anchor that holds your ship, even in rough seas. It must act as a source of financial or emotional support for an entrepreneur, be a space for you to unwind, and an outlet for you to share your pent-up emotions.

In this profession, even though it might feel as an unnecessary constraint, it is imperative for a founder to convey the demands of this career to the life partner or immediate family members. A lot of times prominent business families understand risks and constraints involved in such a profession, ergo they choose to marry their children only amongst other business communities. Especially in the Indian context, belonging to a salaried family with a risk aversive attitude and a secure lifestyle can prove to be counterproductive for any aspiring entrepreneur.

Also, at times when your family does not agree to the idea of starting up, you must seek out, trust, and confide in your close friends, who will act as your support structure.

The family is the primary anchor that helps to provide the security, stability, and comfort. It would have been nearly impossible to manage and maintain sanity on a journey as turbulent as an entrepreneur’s life, had it not been for my wife Avantika and parents, who provided infinite support for whatever I needed to achieve success. Their contribution is absolutely core to my ability to do anything worthwhile.

Prashant Tandon, Founder, 1mg

c. Mentors : Oxford dictionary defines the word ‘mentor’ as an experienced and a trusted advisor. These individuals are the great Sherpas who navigate entrepreneurs to ascend the mountains of business; they are the pivotal factor in a successful climb towards the peak. In time of trouble, mentors provide you with a comfort zone to share thoughts and feelings without the fear of being judged. They work as your guiding light and can be trusted and depended upon for the knowledge they possess. Therefore, you must be extremely careful while choosing individuals for this category.

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & Group CEO, OYO Hotels and Homes, was mentored by legendary entrepreneur and investor, Peter Thiel. While sharing his thoughts on his mentor, Ritesh said: Having set out on my entrepreneurial journey at a noticeably young age, the words of my mentor Peter Thiel, who played a huge role in shaping my dreams into reality, have always stuck with me. He encouraged me to think big, reminded me of the importance of believing in my ability to create an impact. As entrepreneurs, we are wired to take risks, we are eternal optimists and I learned how to channelize this in the right direction.

CHAPTER 2

FACTORS TO KEEP IN MIND

More often than once, the elders in your vicinity are likely to question your age, lack of work experience and dismiss your passion and idea for a start-up. To effectively answer their concerns and increase their confidence in your abilities, you must state out loud your strengths to pursue a start-up venture. You do not have to worry about family responsibilities, EMIs, debt, savings, and standard of living at this juncture in life. Also, while justifying this decision to start up, you must do a thorough research over other miscellaneous factors including macro-economic growth rate, interest rates set by Reserve Bank of India, change in government policy, i.e., FDI, which can influence economies of scale, the number of competitors in your sector.

Along with this, you must choose an apt time for execution of your eureka moment, after many deliberations and preparations, taking a cue from Sunil Mittal, who founded Bharti Airtel in 1995, when the Indian government decided to implement reforms in the telecom sector. Similarly, Rahul Sharma was working towards establishing Micromax in the year 2000, when the smart phone revolution was just starting to take shape, and Sachin Bansal was still working for Amazon, a company that he left to establish Flipkart in 2007, when the internet was beginning to gain prominence. Rather than mere coincidences, these organizations were launched at the start of a revolution in their respective domains.

Therefore, as a founder you need to get the timing of launch to be spot on. You can neither be late, when another person launches a similar idea before you, nor be too early, with customers and market that have not evolved to demand your product and services.

Place of Birth

The birth of an enterprise in its embryonic stage involves a lot of unwanted complications, therefore to ensure survival of your enterprise you must opt for an ideal place of birth, which must be tailor made to fulfil your start-up’s niche demands, such as amount of usable office space, infrastructure, and budget; it must include facilities that are also favourable for its future growth.

City of birth: Every city has a unique character and culture, which reflects in the work force that it has to offer to your organization. Cities in India are classified into tier 1/2/3. A city is likely to become a hub for start-ups if it possesses skilled workforce, financial resources such as banks, venture capitalists, angel investors, and the prerequisite infrastructure of roads, power, and technology.

Bengaluru, which accounts for the third most start-ups globally, and New Delhi