Ashwin Upadhyaya's Blog

Why do I like writing? Because the writing process forces me to generate new ideas, refine those ideas and put those ideas in understandable format.

Why do I like networking with people? Because I can discuss ideas, obtain feedback on those ideas and convert at least some of those ideas into action.

Why do I love teaching at schools? Because school kids ask questions which have a totally different and special perspective which fuels my creativity further.

Why do I love working at our company? It is a huge laboratory where we test so many ideas and get the best possible feedback on those ideas.

Do you get bored sometimes? If yes, I think you should start working on an idea.

“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.” – Australian psychiatrist W. Béran Wolfe

Avik Pramanik sends me this interesting post: Business advice plagued by survivor bias. Do you learn lessons only from success? And not hear the “lessons learned” from a guy who hasn’t yet learned those lessons himself? If the answer is yes to some extent at least, then you should read that post. The world war II anecdote in the post would definitely keep you interested.

I think even I have been biased this way for a long time now. And the important part is, I didn’t even know about it. Now if I think about it, the tiny tiny successes that our company has had till now are not due to replicating the successes of others but due to analyzing the mistakes that we did in our past. Had I looked at the mistakes of others rather than the successes of others, probably we could have avoided some of our own  mistakes.

However, human psychology works that way. We typically want to read about successes. Successes typically make a good read. And then, we want a simple formula which the successful ones followed so that we can replicate it ourselves. That rarely works. The outlier principle says that “success is not due to simple, controllable factors”. Amazon didn’t work because they followed some set of rules. They don’t even publish a telephone number on their front page. (You have to dig the site to find it)!! (Sorry, I had to use a success story again ).

My point is, rules don’t exist. Outliers just do it anyway.

Eximius was an entrepreneurial summit held at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. If you had written down the names of each of those present in that event, and 10 years later calculated the total of the net worth of those people, it would be a billion dollars at the least (If not more). And if you calculate the jobs created by them, it would be a few thousands at the least. And I am definitely not exaggerating. Entrepreneurs, Venture capitalists and angel investors were all together, in one place. And also, we won the 2nd prize at Genesis, a venture validation platform from among 6 finalists selected from 100+ companies.

Rashmi Bansal of stay hungry, stay foolish was one of the star attractions at the event. In her own words, she did a mini session of the book by conducting a panel discussion with 4 other entrepreneurs.

Krishan Ganesh (TutorVista) had a lot of clever lines to say: “You have to be stupid to be an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, IIMs hire only the clever ones”; and “Businesses are like bulbs and aircrafts. Accidents happen mostly during the startup phase”; and “Behind every successful entrepreneur is a devoted wife and a surprised mother in law”.

Sanjay Anandram (Jumpstartup Ventures) shared his memories about how he started his first venture out of his dining table and how he named his first company NETA (Net-A in English and neta meaning leader in Hindi). What a motivational speaker he is! He talked about how positive thinking and creative destruction can change the world.

Satyanarayanan (Career launcher) told us why he joined IIMB. “I was just playing cricket all the time. Someone told me, it would be difficult to get a job and getting into an IIM was the best way to get a job. So, I wrote CAT”. And at IIMB, according to him, he was 11th in grade rankings, from backwards.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon) was the other star attraction who gave the keynote address. She gave a glimpse of the situation that existed during the time she started Biocon, how she didn’t take a salary for the first 3 years and how she raised money from banks! In her words, “If I, as a woman can do it, anybody can”.

Sudhir Sethi (IDG Ventures), Samir Kumar (Inventus capital) and Saumil Majmudar (SportzVillage) were another three who kept the audience mesmerized. Like the Intel ad says “Our heroes are different”, these  were the heroes of the entrepreneur community.

As Sanjay Anandram said,  “entrepreneurs are not some special type of people. They are just a statistical fact. Of every society, 1-2% of the population will be entrepreneurs. If you happen to be one, great. Otherwise too, great!” However, if you have that itch, to disrupt the status quo, creatively destroy existing institutions, if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, then Eximius was a great place to be.