I am convinced that there is no single trait that matters more to achieve your dreams than self belief. Any amount of talent and resources cannot do what self belief can. This “belief” was reiterated yesterday when I met with Tushar Bhatia, CEO, Saigun Technologies, and Ankur, VP, Marketing, after a long time. Prayag had worked with Saigun some years back when they were trying to sumultaneously launch empXtrack, their flagship HCM product, in India, the US and ME. As a self funded company with big dreams and moderate means, the going was not easy. But I was amazed at Tushar’s passion and desire to make it, and hence receptivity to ideas and willingness to experiment.

Today, some two years later, we continue to stay in touch, and though the company has not yet become a house hold name, they have acquired nearly 100 customers across the three markets, and Tushar and Ankur say this is just the beginning.

Need more proof?

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Earlier today I finished reading an essay by Malcom Gladwell called the “Six degrees of Lois Weisberg: which originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Its about Lois Weisberg, an extraordinary woman with a marvellous ability to connect to just about any kind of person – from painters, artists, Chicago administration bureaucrats to flea market sellers. At the centre of her vast colourful social web, Lois was able to help people within make connections when they needed – for instance , it was at her Chicago house that Arthur C Clarke first met Issac Asimov. As Gladwell puts it, this made her one of the most powerful women in Chicago, not because she had money or worked in a power centre, but because she had something infinitely more intangible and hence more precious – social capital. Lois went out and made friends because she loved it and not because she was architecting this social web consciously.

The reason I write about this is because I believe that this is a key value of good entreprenuership – the ability to make connections that help somewhere along the line. A lot of successful businessmen – a former boss comes to mind – are inverterate networkers – and they are good at it because they enjoy it. And they are catholic about it – they will chat up airline staff with the same vigour and enthusiasm as the CEO sitting next to them in business class.

Shameen Prashanthan of the University of Glasglow explored the same ideas – that networking was a key value for entrepreneurs to focus on – in his research. (We carried an excerpt from it in an e-book that Prayag created for NASSCOM last year). He carried our research covering around 100 emerging companies which indicated that those that had spent more time building social capital also had better market knowledge – and by inference were better positioned for growth.

So, now there’s no reason to not to make that call and keep that old contact alive!

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I was invited to be a panelist in this recently held conference. Organized by Silicon India, the purpose of this one day seminar was to have women leaders and senior professionals talk to fellow women professionals on the various aspects of being successful in their careers. I was on a panel on Entrepreneurship and, though it was the penultimate session, it was heartening to see a lareg turnout.

As fellow panelist Uma Balakrishnan, CEO, Axcend said, we had never participated earlier in such a “for the women by women” forum of this scale, and the sheer numbers, as well as the interest shown by the audience was inspiring, to say the least.

Our panel was moderated by  IT industry veteran Revathi Kasturi who is now spearheading her second start up, Laqsh.

We shared our experiences on funding, creating a core team, hiring talent and getting and keeping customers. One of the most important points we spoke about is the mind set required to be an entrepreneur – self belief, passion, commitment, tolerance for ambiguity and persistence – were some of the attributes we emphasized. 

There was a lot of enthusiasm, plenty of questions during, and after the session. Made me come back with the feeling that we should see many more women in IT and business in the years to come.

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I read an article this morning in Mint titled, Bootstrap Now, Get VC finds later, that resonated a lot with my views. In the last several years, I have come across many budding entrepreneurs during the course of my work who want help to get funding.

Most of them do not seem to have explored the option of bootstrapping and I have wondered why! I strongly believe that bootstrapping helps create a more robust and enduring business as you really question every move, and moreover, exhibit a passion and hunger that sometimes is missing when you have the cushion of VC funding.

Many people I meet lament at the lack of an evolved ecosystem in India to support tech startups (read funding mechanisms) but I also equally feel that we still do not have sufficient people who are willing to sell their shirts to back their idea.

As the Mint article mentions, some of the world’s most successful tech companies including Microsoft, Dell, HP and Infosys had taken the bootsrapping route to glory!

Any thoughts?

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