A golden era in entrepreneurship has begun....

Are you an entrepreneur?

Do you wants to be an entrepreneur?

Good , because today I am going to tell you that why you are at best time and place to be successful as an entrepreneur. I am gonna tell you why you are so grateful to be in an golden era of entrepreneurship.

Can someone tell me what is the most important that resource you need to build a successful company? Well you can think a lot of them. I am going to talk about top three resources that are drastically shifting in the favour of start-up ecosystem. These are money , market conditions and Talented people.

You might have greatest idea but if you don't have the required money to materialize that idea, nothing 'll happen. And all most all successful startup have to raise external capital at some point to sustain the competition. And guess what ,right now there is more cash available for your endeavors than anytime in the history. Today high wealth investors are not left with many options. Government bonds pay negligible returns, stock market is too volatile, and you can see what is happening to commodities like oil and gold.  As a result cash is just sitting idle on their balance sheets. It is there for you to go and snatch it to fund your dreams.  And you can do that because in last five years investors are getting more returns on their start-up investments due to favorable market conditions. 

Going forward this trend is going to pick up even more. The catalyst is alarming levels of debt in US and geo-political instability. The external debt of US federal government is hitting #18 trillion. But something that is truly sizzling under the volcano is alarming levels of internal debt such as student loans. The overall student loan debt is $90 trillion. If you know a little nit of economics 101, you would say the result is hyperinflation. You might wake up once day and all your once swollen bank account is worth nothing. These consequences are not unknown to high wealth community. Just look at last 5 years investments of Warren Buffet. Most of them are into hard , tangible assets and very few in monetary assets. Investment in start-ups especially that are low on Maslow's triangle are excellent non-monetary assets that these high wealth investors will pursue in 2015. This is an opportunity for all entrepreneurs. Just put together a presentation and knock the doors of investors. 

In last five years investors are getting more returns on their start-up investments due to market favoring the start-up exits. Earlier when a small company starts to become successful , all the bigger companies who feel the threat tries to do everything they can do to kill that small company. They will copy the product, raise price wars , engage in cartels etc. But in recent years they have stopped doing so . Can someone tell me why ?

Because now they can buy them out. Big companies have stopped innovating. All the new innovation is being done by start-ups these days and too in a very capital efficient way. If the innovation complements them they 'll keep it , less they will kill the company. Either way, both parties benefit. What is the direct result? More and more start-ups are successfully exiting in the range of 15-20 M.  You can see the trend in tech hubs like Vancouver of starting a successful technology company and exiting for 15-20 M in 5 years. Many of them had not even done the break even.  It is more easier to sell a company than ever. 

Anyone who wants to start a company and sell for millions in few years , say YES.

" You can do that because you are at the right time and right place to do that. Lets talk about the people & talent. Canada is an immigrants fed economy. The brightest students around the world come here to study.  If they want to get a permanent residency in BC  , they have to work in a job for 2 years. There is no other choice. Why does government make such a policy. They want to provide the easy talent to Canadian start-ups. Period! These talented people don't have very high expectations as compared to the locals. More importantly they are here to succeed and will sustain through the rigors of start-up life. 

From 2000 to 2009 was the golden era of real estate in India. Most people in their late 40's like my dad and his friend circle had the money to invest in real estate. My dad and few others grabbed that opportunity and now can afford to send their kids to world's best schools. While others cannot afford. What made all the difference is that they took the action. Similarity right now we all are in the golden era of entrepreneurship, some of you will take action and others wont, and that will make all the difference.
Stop thinking about your dream idea and take action!

Breaking the Danish culture code

As I arrived in Copenhagen, it didn't take me enough time to understand that Danes are culturally savvy. Right from the architecture of buildings to the design of furniture there was a uniform uniqueness which was in sharp contrast to that of diversified North America or modernizing Asia. Not to my surprise, our first group visit in Copenhagen was Danish design museum. It showcased the stories behind the evolution of design brought by Danish designers of mid twentieth century.  These designers not only revolutionized the furniture industry with elegant and futuristic designs but also spread a socialistic viewpoint in the Danish society. Their intent was to craft simplistic furniture which could be afforded by a common person. However on a funny note they always end up producing a design which couldn't be produced cheaply to address common society.

Although Danish designers were not able to bring cheap furniture to every common man, the idea of promoting equality remained embedded in the minds of Danes. Today, Danes are proud of leveled distribution of wealth and happiness level in society.  I came to Denmark with a big question in mind, how Nordics became the leaders and a compelling example on how to develop prosperous and balanced societies? Today Denmark is dealing with problem such as population growth balance when 100% of women workforce is working. It is believed that America will face these problems 20 years later while Asia after 40 years. A lecture by one of CBS professor on Danish history pointed that bank unification of early 90’s exploded the Danish economy.  After the crisis of 2008, it is once again emphasized that economies with unified banking system such as Denmark or concentrated bank oglipoly such as Canada are healthier and more immune to economic crisis.

After getting pleasant surprises into Danish history, I was excited to dive further into their businesses in a 3 day trip of company visits. The impressions of design museum printed on my mind started to engrave when I visited Fritz Hansen and Fredericia.  After visiting Fritz Hansen, I was shocked to experience that the chair being manufactured in their factory was all over the country. Right from the airport to restaurant I have seen that chair unlimited times and contemplated that perhaps this might the cheapest chair. The myth was busted when I was told that single chair cost $500. It is just that Danes love elegant furniture and are willing to pay such premiums. Fredericia is another example of the culmination of Danish designs. A high end handmade luxury furniture that sells in European market for heavy premiums, exuberates Danish recognition.
How can one not learn about Vikings on a visit to Nordics. Out next stop was Vikings museum. I was not as amazed by the Vikings tale as I was amazed by learning that Viking headgear with 2 horns does not belong to Vikings period but is a common misconception in the world. The scout told us that to construct one of the museum’s ship from excavated pieces took 10 years, It was one hell of a puzzle. I wondered in my mind, they could have outsourced it to India, not to manually reconstruct it with cheap labour but to construct a computer program to reconstruct the ship digitally by trying all possible permutations of fitting the pieces. Or may be its just my geeky mind.

On that trip we visited many other companies such as  Danfoss, A.P. Møller Maersk and Carlsberg but most amazing was Gartneriet PKM, a pot plant manufacturing company. I was not amazed by the beautiful flower pots but by the level of automation and the size of empire they built on flowering business which is traditionally as family owned small family business. Talking about family business, this visit changed my preconceived notion that family businesses are small. Contrary to this viewpoint, most of the major companies we visited were family owned including Danfoss, Maersk – world leaders in their respective business. This reflects the strong business sense and professional ethic of Danes even if company is run by husband and wife from their living room.

Witnessed in the field visit of companies such as Carlsberg, reinforced by the presentation of CBS professor was the efficacy of implicit corporate social responsibility. Unlike the North American companies that boast their efforts of social responsibility and explicitly market their initiatives, Danes believe that a strong business ethic incorporates the CSR responsibility and need not to be advocated separately. A number of survey by consulting firms such as Boston Consulting group or KPMG, it is confirmed that Denmark tops the world’s list of CSR effectiveness. North American companies have to learn from these pioneers the way of achieving sustainable business practices. Explicit CSR will never be effective until it is treated as a different unit in an organization; it has to be blended with business culture and underlying values.

The final piece of this wonderful experience was working on a case challenge with CBS students.  Teamed up with 5 different nationalities around the globe, I felt an amalgamation of personalities. First day was a complete chaos, communication gap was overwhelming and opinions clashed all the time. In spite of the rough start, we managed to structure our meetings in later days. Again, I learned that in diverse teams, it is quite important to start communication about roles and duties right from the beginning. Contrary to what I experienced about diverse team at Sauder, diversity doesn’t only come from ethnic backgrounds but also from academic backgrounds. It was quite tough to reach consensus while dealing with Master’s program students because of their theoretical and lack of corporate experience. Though that was not a showstopper but was definitely an inefficiency in team to overcome.

Although there is a lot to learn from the Danish culture but I do not advocate the replication of their policies in other struggling societies of world. They are successful because they understood their culture really well. A strong social or even economic policy must reflect the underlying values of culture of the society, and then only it will be truly successful.

Entrepreneurs - my second speech at Toastmasters

Remember when you were a kid you believed that you can do anything .You can still do anything because a lot of what we consider impossible is easy to overcome. In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a world where an individual can make a lot of difference. Just look at the people who built America. They were immigrants and newcomers who were ready to make their mark. Maybe they came with very little money, or perhaps they didn’t own anything except for a single brilliant idea. These people were called thinkers, doers, innovators until they came up with the term “Entrepreneurs”.
They changed the way we thought about what is impossible .They had a clear vision of how life can be better for all of us even in tough times. They had driven innovation, changed people’s lives, created jobs, fueled growth and built a better world.
Entrepreneurs are everywhere. They run small businesses that support our economy, design tools that help you stay connected with friends, family and colleagues around the world. And they are still in the pursuit of exploring new ways to solve society’s oldest problems.
I believe if we can groom our kids to become entrepreneurs we can alleviate looming problems of India such as hunger, poverty and unemployment at a faster pace than what we are doing today.We need such entrepreneurs in India but we don’t the culture to groom entrepreneurs.
The death of a famous entrepreneur, Steve Jobs has sent a shock wave across the global youth who saw him as a role model. The death of Steve Jobs made huge headlines and the response it received shows that the youth across the globe saw themselves in him. Very often we come across the question” why don’t we have someone like Jobs in India” and with his death this question is being strongly reframed.
I believe the answer lies in the society and educational system in which we are raised.
I want to tell you the story of an Indian elephant,
You might be aware that in India elephants are used for manual labor. But, how do you train them and use them for labor tasks?
Their Mahout’s came up with an idea to train them while they are very young - by setting self-imposed limits to their thinking.
How does it work?
When the elephants are very young, weighing around 100 kg, they are tied to a heavy rope.
All day long, the elephants try to get rid of it; they whine, tug at it and some of them even try to chew it. But they can't break free. Finally, the elephants give up and the fight is over.

From this moment on, they strongly believe that there is absolutely no chance to get rid of that rope. They accept the "fact" that the rope limits them. And with this imprinted belief in place, their Mahout’s are able to tie them with extremely small ropes!
Even as adults, weighing 4000kg and more, they never attempt to break free because they "believe“ that they have no chance at all!

As you can see, the elephants’ limits are not real; they are imaginary and exist only in their mind. The same thing happens with us, since childhood we are programmed with built-in-boundaries.Our inability to take risk is also not real but exists only in our minds.
One of our entrepreneurs Ajaero Tony Martins rightly said “I have been within the four walls of school and I have been on the street. I can confidently tell you that the street is tougher, challenging, daring, exciting and more rewarding. In school; you play alone. But on the street, you play with the big boys.” Instead of teaching our kid’s to become book smart, we should teach them to become street smart. But sadly, while almost every MBA program in USA has a specialization in entrepreneurship, none of the Indian IIM’s has a specialization in entrepreneurship.
As an old saying goes, “give a man a fish, you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. Instead of teaching our kids, how to get a good job, we should teach them, how to create a good job.
Ask any Indian kid, what will you become, when you are a grown up. Most of them will say, I will become a doctor, a pilot or an engineer. But I want my kid to say, “I want to be an entrepreneur and employ all these kids”.

What is positive thinking and what can it do for you.

Here I will talk about few general questions about positive thinking?

What is positive thinking ?
I know what is positive thinking. These are all theoretical things , practically it is very difficult , you can never be positive all the time , then why the hype behind positive thinking?
I am always positive , then Why I am not getting desired results?
Do you think thomas edison, bill gates, mark zuckerberg or Rockefellers were always positive in life , never a negative thought came in their mind?

Ego is good or bad.

Ego is not an emotion , but Ego can drive emotions
Ego is not self respect, but Ego is in self
Ego is not Pride, but can be used to earn pride
Ego is not restraining , but can make you stretch beyond
Ego is not self-worth, but ego realise you self-worth(you are worth a zillion)
Ego is not reasonable, but can be a reason to loose a friend

So Ego is not good , when used with people who care bout you,
Ego is not bad, when used to get a challenge

World, I coming with something bigger than nuclear fission

Hit of the desire , rolls the wheel of cognition
The stir of wheel, brings the genesis of a mission

The maturation of idea, an adherence to belief and vision
With courage and belief ,started on a road dream driven

Never expected muddy and broken Road, can shake the ambition
Indecision, lack of precision, is now my condition

Energy is exhausted ,but remember belief is my ammunition
With only one option, I have to push the started expedition

I am up again, with lot more faith and a new path apparition
World, I coming with something bigger than nuclear fission

Mind blowing psychology quiz....you can also experiment...

pawanjot took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! ""Longs for a loving, caring, and supportive relati..." Click here to read the rest of the results.