To dream is human, to do is entrepreneurship! (updated with new links)

(in this post, I thought I will use both British and American spellings of Entrepreneurship as I wished, but my readers have convinced me otherwise!)

So the big day arrived finally! For two weeks now, the entire system was gearing up to host the National Entrepreneurship Summit 2009, at PROTON Indore campus.

The entire event was being managed by a team of Faculty mentors, alongwith students of PGP2 (specialisation - Entrepreneurship & FMB), and members of the Entrepreneurship Committee.

And what a day it was! At a personal level, listening to five successful entrepreneur CEOs in a span of 6 hours was enlightening, entertaining, eye-opening and electrifying.

Here are my learnings from this Summit

1. Entrepreneurs are lonely people. It's always lonely at the top.*
2. When you are just getting started, it'll be nothing but business, business, business on your agenda. There is no scope for anything else. It's a matter of sheer survival, not any choice.
3. A lot of them are not going to make it (through the startup stage). It's too nasty, brutal, and short!
4. Money is a bad thing. It helps speed up the rate at which founding teams start to break up, unless wisdom prevails.**
5. Scaling up is quite a different matter, as compared to getting started. The rules change quite dramatically.
6. Ceding control in right measure at the right time is important, if you wish to grow up.***
7. Understanding what kind of financiers to align with is a life and death situation for many enterpreneurs. The fit has to be right.
8. Vishal Gondal (Indiagames) shared he knew little of the snappy financial terms that VCs would throw around, when he was a startup kid. He trusted his instincts always, and they've never failed him.
9. Prakash Mundhra (Sacred Moments) revealed that participating in business-plan competition at b-schools is a great way of getting started on the road to being an enterpreneur.
10. A common thread across all five CEOs' thought - you really need to hear the call from within you. If you don't, you are not meant for it.
11. Vivek Bhargava (Communicate2) shared that the cost of acquiring an extra customer is always nothing compared to the direct addition the acquisition will make to the bottomline. Hence advertise more.****
12. Sasha Mirchandani (BRV and Mumbai Angels) spoke about the VC's need to grow the X to 10X quickly, and exit. So offer them a plan that sounds plausible enough to be able to do this. Sasha also fondly shared the memories of one of the great Indian minds (who recently passed away) who was a mentor to Google founders.
13. A beautiful pearl of wisdom : "the joy of creating wealth always exceeds the joy of having the wealth."
14. Another : "the best thing that a government can do for enterprise building in this nation is to stay away from trying to help it!"
15. Every enterprise will face a death-like situation at least once. It could be the result of sheer audacity, misguided enthusiasm, wrong investments or plain bad luck. Those who survive this stage, emerge much stronger.
16. Holding on to your field force for a long duration is a really good idea. It inspires trust in your customers' minds.
17. An interesting idea that popped up : Pooja kits for education sector^
18. Good questions always create a good impression.
19. The five CEOs were unanimous in this^^ - "the use of technology (at PROTON) to leverage such events is commendable. Even in corporates, one does not find such uses of technology"
20. Smart and successful entrepreneurs are invariably EXCELLENT COMMUNICATORS^^^. It is such a pleasure to listen them speak. Such a pleasure!
21. One of them was surprised to see all students neatly dressed in corporate suits. I made it a point to clarify that usually Saturdays are informal T-shirt days, but this being such a big summit, we didn't want to take a chance :-)

So, an amazing day, with five amazing people. An excellent experience, even for an old-hand at enterprise-building like myself. At times I wonder, how lovely life is when one is willing to listen to others, to share their experiences, and to try and validate one's own against that backdrop.

Remember my habit of validation?^^^^ I asked them what they liked the most.

The feedback from the CEOs was

• We are surprised to see the number and quality of questions being asked^^^^^. This is a very healthy sign 
• We visit many B-schools regularly. PROTON is unique. Many others have huge campuses, but andar se khokha hote hain. The tastefulness and world-class standard of PROTON's ambience is unexpected and very pleasantly surprising
• The enthusiasm of students is very high. This is a strong differentiator
• The stress on values is interesting. This should really help in the long run
• Sasha said : "I am a very active & impatient kind of a person, and cannot sit still for more than an hour! I have spent the whole day at PROTON happily, enjoying every moment here!"

Jai ho!

WEB RESOURCES FOR THIS EVENT
Today's news
Check what the Hindustan Times says about this event. Click here
Check what the Dainik Bhaskar says about this event. Click here
Check what the Naidunia says about this event. Click here
CEO speak
Testimonaials! CEOs speak on their experience at PROTON. Click here!
Web Report
Detailed documented report of this event is here! Click to read
More?
Lots of photographs can be viewed here!


*irrespective of the organisation's size, be it 1, 10 or 10,000 crores. There are things that the top guy (the enterpreneur CEO) just cannot discuss with anyone. This probably explains the success of "Enterpreneur Only" type of societies
** that is, grow beyond a successful start-up stage. The first stage is the romantic one. it gets serious beyond that, and one needs to understand that the game will change
*** I have personally seen partners (educated, MBA-degree holders from some of the best B-schools) become sworn enemies the moment the business (that they founded together as a team) starts generating good revenues. The camaraderie of the founding days evaporates overnight. Such incidences leave me wondering - what is education teaching these guys?
**** example of the travel industry, and a hotel room going empty comes in handy while discussing this point
^ exams... tense kids... tense parents... got it?
^^ at PROTON, I have personally driven the installation of video-conferencing technology and live streaming kits, so that what we do at any one campus can be transmitted live to any other number of campuses (thereby multiplying the learning effect)
^^^ I advise all young managers - work very very hard to improve your communication skills. It is the single biggest differentiator in today's world. All your talent may lie undiscovered and untapped if the world can't see it - and communicating beautifully is the way to make the world see it.
^^^^ to understand more of "validation", see my blogpost http://smblog.proton.in/2009/08/validation-beautiful-validation.html
^^^^^ this means that at many b-schools, the level of participation in such programmes from the students' side can be improved significantly. Does this reflect inherent pedagogical limitations? Have the students been trained into being inquisitive always? I personally feel we have won a big battle as our students ASK a lot of intelligent questions always. Good, good. Asking questions is the most difficult thing to do. You need to know a lot to be able to ask sensible and intelligent questions, that go beyond the "pedantic" and "demonstrative" to being genuinely inquisitive
~