Starting your own enterprise

Starting your own enterprise is also like buying stock of a company. The only difference is here you buy 100% of it. I have seen lot of IIT/IIM startups, most of them unsuccessful, which never made it to any newspaper article. I always made my point to also learn from the losers, they know better about businesses than the winners. There are thousand wrong things which you could do, but only one right thing. The winner knows only about that one right thing, losers know at least about 20 wrong things.

Here are some points for you to learn, when you think about startups.

1. Never be where majority is.
If everybody is doing something, its not a great thing to do. When you follow majority you will always loose, or you have to put too much fight to win. The competition will be intense, since you have been in a cushy job, you have least animal instincts to survive. The person you are competing with, does not have anything else to do for his survival, he will be a savage person.
Always think of the next booming thing, also make sure you are not getting into next-to-next booming thing. Timing the next boom is also important, because your company might die down before the boom comes. If the next boom is known to everybody, it is not the next boom.

2. Never think of excessive marketing ideas.
People come up with ideas like web-portals/ craig-list / social networking sites, the problem with such ideas is that people should start using your website. People will never start using your website, until it is not used by a lot many other people. You need to excessively market your site first to just get it started. Once, it is started, people will build it up.

3. Always think of ideas for corporate rather than individuals.
When you think around individual, individual will never pay for 10% efficiency. If you are targeting individuals, you should first become a big enough brand. Never think about targeting individuals when you are a startup. Corporates are ready to pay for even 1% efficiency and they don't care much even if you are a startup. Corporates are also hesitant of a startup, so don't expect advance payments.

4. Cashflow should start coming soon.
In case of product companies, it takes 1-2 years for first taste of money. These sort of ideas die down early, because of lack of our patience. Two years is a long enough period to get depressed. However tiny, cash should keep coming at specific intervals, they act as moral-boosters. Your first 10,000 in your own enterprise will give you more happiness than your first billion.

5. Never think of a labor intensive business idea.
However great you are at Human resources, dealing with labor class is the last thing you can do. Especially when you think about your business idea sitting in air-conditioned offices or sessions at a pub or a coffee joint. You will know the ground realities of labor intensive ideas only after starting it. Most of them have been failures.

People will tell you to give it a shot. But think before giving it a shot, it might not turn than hot.