Earlier on ThoughtsPrevail; we reviewed Sramana Mitra‘s book Entrepreneur Journeys-Volume I here & here, in this article we review her book Entrepreneur Journey’s [BootStrapping : Weapon of Mass Reconstruction]

Like her previous book, Sramana follows the same format where she interviews successful entrepreneurs however this time around they are the ones who have successfully bootstrapped their business. The interviews provide vital answers as to whether a startup really needs VC funding or it can be entirely bootstrapped. It also gives some insights into why mentorship is so important for any startup.

Notably the book includes interviews of the so called sultans of blogosphere-Om Malik of GigaOm and Rafat Ali of paidContent [which was acquired by Guardian for $30M].

Though there are many inspiring interviews, the only downside of the book was that the focus was mainly on US based startups but this does not take away the core message delivered through the book i.e “How to bootstrap a business”

Some of the useful tips from the bootstrappers interviewed in the book are given below -

• Find an entrepreneurial mentor, and if you are going to bootstrap, find a mentor who has already bootstrapped a business
• Bootstrapping is a discovery process. Rather than building an ark, waiting for animals to come, and hoping the tide rises-you take an incremental approach and discover a legitimate, real world value proposition.

• Nothing is more expensive for a business on a personal and financial level than client and customer churn.
• The right relationship with an experienced operator is more important than the valuation you can achieve in fund raising.

• You can have the best technology and the best product on the market, but without good team chemistry your business will fail.

• I think that a lot of people do things for money, and it’s the stupidest thing we can do for ourselves. Everybody thinks money is the answer, but it is not. What made me tick was writing; that’s what I was born to do. How can you ignore your natural animal instinct ?
• A lot of people make the mistake that when they outsource, they outsource it all. The reality is you outsource the physical function of it, but not the mental piece.

• The thing about email newsletters, which is still true today, is that you have a viral presence in somebody’s inbox day in and day out.
• I learnt that when you start a company, you need to spend money on keeping the books in order.

• We always knew that in the worst-case scenario, we could go into the cockroach mode and just hide out in the dark for a while and let the content grow.

• I remember seeing National Geographic drawing of a big ocean device to create energy, and I kept thinking that there had to be a way to make energy out of those waves. That’s how it started.

• For me, being an entrepreneur is so much trial and error that I would rather make the mistakes in the lower dollar range than at the Super Bowl advertising level.

• No matter how many businesses you start, it just takes one successful business to make up for all the other attempts.
• If you are going to build a service and it has a good chance of becoming very popular, make sure you address the scale needs up first.

• Everybody who tried our product wanted it. All we had to do was get into the taste test.
• A lot of startups are based on hypothesis- they build something and start interacting with customers, but they never verify it. What they are doing is rationalizing the hypothesis rather than evaluating & verifying it.

• If you raise a lot of money, you are leveraging the hell out of yourself. And you probably have a lot of people wanting to grab the steering wheel if things don’t go right.
• A Lead User is typically a person who has such a strong need or pain that they go out and build something on their own to solve the pain.

In few words, it is an interesting as well as inspiring read for Entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping or wannabe entrepreneurs thinking of bootstrapping.Let’s wait to see what Sramana has to offer in her Volume-III !!!

Few months back, there was a guest article by best-selling author Scott Fox[of Internet Riches fame] on Internet Riches for Indian Entrepreneurs[articles here & here]. This time we review Scott’s new book e-Riches 2.0

A short review
Let me start off with one of the best reasons to read the book – “Today your customers are online, even if your business has nothing to do with the Net, computers or Technology. To keep up with the competition, you need to promote what you sell by using the latest online marketing techniques to interact with your customers”. This is where e-Riches can help you to use the medium of the internet to establish your brand, make money and outsmart your competitors.

In depth review
It does not matter whether you are a web startup since this book covers a broad range of topics which might be helpful to four kinds of people

1. A corporate marketer or agency employee
2. A small business owner or partner
3. E-business curious and
4. Worried about your financial future.

In the current economic situation, most of the people can be put under the category[4] and internet can definitely be an alternative source of generating some income. This is where e-Riches 2.0 comes in very handy since it covers the various aspects of Web 2.0 and beyond. Also, even if you are not able to earn online, the book would definitely help you/your business to create an effective brand.

It touches upon the various aspects of the Web namely -

1. Email marketing
2. Social Media Marketing
3. Importance and usage of mediums like Blogs and Microblogs
4. New online Public Relations[PR] and Promotion tools
5. Online broadcasting [How to use Video Marketing]
6. What makes a winning online marketing strategy

Most interesting chapters
Although the entire book was quite interesting to read, few of chapters entered in my favorites category. They are -

Social network marketing
Whether you are Web startup or not, Social Networks have become very important since, all the conversation about your brand is happening there. Many times, I hear that we are not internet-savvy & hence you become unaware about what is being told about you as a person/your company. This is where this chapter comes in handy since it touches upon all the aspects of SN Marketing namely -

• Why should you/your startup use Social Networking.
• Which Social Networking medium is best for your business.
• Strategies for success in Social Networking.
• Quick start guide for guys who are new to this medium.

Era of Blogging and Micro-Blogging
Everyone [or should I say most of us] know what is a Blog, but how many of us use the medium effectively.This is where this can be an excellent starting point if you want to use Blogging to reach the right set of people and to promote your business. It explains the Do(s) and Don’t(s) of blogging and touches upon each & every corner of the medium.

Microblogging especially Twitter has now proved an effective medium for marketing and the chapter talks on Twitter for Personal use as well as for business use.This complete chapter was a delight to read !!!

Who should read e-Riches 2.0?
If you are already quite acquainted with the Web and the various aspects of Marketing, this book would help you with some important pointers which can be used in your daily routine. However, if you are new to this entire Web arena, e-Riches could turn out to be an excellent starting point of your journey.

What else could it have?
1. The chapter on Twitter could have been a bit more exhaustive and should have included some interesting tweets on how businesses are using that medium. A small Q&A with few business owners could have made a huge difference giving it a more dialogue oriented approach.

2. Though Facebook had a huge mention in the book, Orkut was left far behind. Some more detailed analysis on how Orkut could be used a marketing machine would have been insightful [Note-Orkut is hugely popular in India though Facebook is catching up ...]

My personal learning
It has been long[4.5 years] since I am blogging. I have been thinking of booking my own domain[which would stand as my own brand] but had been delaying for a quite a long time.

After reading Scott’s book, I understood personal branding in a much better way & have now registered ThoughtsPrevail

Final Words on e-Riches 2.0
As stated before, it could be an excellent starting point or an excellent resource for detailed reference on some of the activities that you perform on the Web.

My personal thanks to Scott Fox for including my Facebook profile[as his Fan] in his book.Scott, if blogging wouldn’t have been there, we wouldn’t have connected with each other !!!

In the past, there have lot of articles mentioning useful books on Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Management etc. Today we have a look at some of the non-business books that would be useful for Entrepreneurs [or we can say for any working professional], let’s have a look at them.

[Hat tip : Amber Johnson of Online Universities]

All of us know about the famous saying “Birds of a feather flock together“, needless to say that all of us are always in search of like minded people i.e. the guys with whom you can share your passion & interest;be it anything- Technology, Movies, Travel etc.The search for the very first like-minded person becomes very critical since (s)he would be backbone of the entire group a.k.a Tribe.

My current read is a short interesting book- Tribes by Seth Godin.As explained above “Tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader and connected to an idea“.A group needs two things to be a tribe – shared interest and way to communicate.

The book has some great case studies on the so called Tribal Movement and focuses on “How either a Single person/Tribe or a small group of Tribes or a large group of Tribes can make a significant difference.

Every Tribe has a leader but a Tribe needs followers too.But a follower can be a person who is eagerly following[eg. every blogger would be passionately following Techcrunch since,it has changed the complete blogosphere] or is compelled to follow[eg. A person who has less interest in technology is forced to follow Techcrunch ], a single word compel makes a HUGE difference.The book had a short paragraph[quoted below] on how a single word- Compel can create a difference in an organization.

Any organization needs people who aren’t just willing to follow, but are eager to follow.It’s a mistake to believe that the best tribe recruits are the blind sheep.Folks who do nothing but mindlessly follow instructions let you down in two ways -

First, they are not going to do the local leadership required when the tribe members interact.They are going to be so busy following the playbook that they will hesitate about engaging in the interactions that make a tight tribe such a vibrant organization.People don’t engage merely to remind one another of the status quo.Instead, they eagerly engage when they want something to improve.This micro-leadership is essential to the health of your organization.

Second, they are not going to do a very good job of recruiting new members to your tribe.That’s because evangelism requires leadership. Leading someone towards giving up one worldview and embracing yours isn’t easy and it is not always comfortable, consider any vibrant group-political activities, nonprofit volunteers or brand fanatics.In each case, it’s the microleaders in the trenches and their enthusiastic followers who make the difference, not the leader who is ostensibly running the group.

Tribes are meant to make a difference but the Tribe that really MAKES a difference is the one each one of us need/create !!! To summarize, the title of the book says it all “Tribes – We need YOU to lead US“

In continuation to the review of Entrepreneur Journeys by Sramana Mitra, today we have look at the other Entrepreneurs featured in the book & some useful tips for the Entrepreneurial community.

Philippe Courtot,CEO Qualsys

• Too many people crack under stress. In venture, you must thrive on bad news. If you don’t thrive on bad news, move over, because every day represents something uncharted and new where you sort of sit down and say, “How do we deal with this?” And you make mistakes every single day too. As soon as you realize you made those mistakes you go back and you fix them.
• On “not” getting selected for a job in France : In France, we have psychological tests and when they turned you down, they did not tell you why.So when I wrote a letter to them, they wrote me back saying that their policy was not to tell why they had turned down people.But I insisted..insisted and finally they responded saying that my Psychological test showed me that I was far too much of an independent thinker.They were looking for people who were willing to be directed and they said that I would not be happy working with them.
• It is very important to see yourself, what you do and what you have with the eyes of the customer.
• American society was based on what you can do.So,it was than I realized that it would be best for me to come to US and work internationally.
• I went extreme skiing for 9 months.I have done that every time between jobs- take a sabbatical.It allows me to digest what I have learnt.To digest and forget, essentially and than I come back fresh and new.
• Lessons learnt from skiing : I learnt to push myself from a physical standpoint.The biggest thing I learnt to address was fear.In business it is the same.If you look at your competition, if you are afraid of your competition and you focus on that, and you don’t look at where you should go, you get lost.The big trick in business is to transcend your fears and be aware of the obstacles, and then focus not on the problems but on the solutions.
• Difference between Asian and Western mentality is that Asian people look at life as a complete interaction, while the Western mentality is about the immediate success.
• A lot of VC(s) micromanage everything and they are on your back constantly, which doesn’t work for me.
• The only piece of technology missing today is ubiquitous broadband wireless access.

• My parents were educators.I launched Hotchalk to actively involve myself in raising the quality of education worldwide.
• Through the experiences, I realized the tremendous potential of web-based educational technology resources.I was inspired by my own experience as a parent and the frustration that parent teacher conferences always seemed filled with surprises.Since I did not have any continuous visibility into the daily or weekly goings at the school, I discovered all sorts of things at these meetings.
• We[Hotchalk] know teachers intimately.We speak with them daily through surveys, feedback forms and phone dialogues.These open lines of communication with teachers enable us to offer resources on their sites known to provide value to educators.Schools cannot afford to waste funding on products that do not benefit their teachers, yet it happens all the time.
• When teachers work together with students and parents, academic achievement follows. We don’t try to work with school administrators. We work with the teachers, and they’re the most crucial element of the education value chain.
• It can take a long, long time to sell any new product to the schools, by going through the school administrators.
• We do not accept advertising from fast food companies or anything that is sexually abusive.Hotchalk only presents tasteful advertising to meet the needs of students in a positive way.
• Leaders work for their followers and it’s the leader’s job to make sure that the team has the tools, training and resources necessary to carry the day.
• 2.8 million teachers need to be recruited over the next eight years to meet education demands. These future teachers are students in universities who use Web 2.0 applications daily, so using a web-based application is second nature.Hotchalk’s product is simple and easy to use, so even less technology-savvy teachers can get on board.
• It’s time we remove politics from education and support teachers, making sure that they are given the best resources they need.

Harish Hande,Founder SELCO

• SELCO is my first job and hopefully it is my last.
• A lot of things get lost in translation.Between Orissa and Bangalore[since my mother is from Karnataka], we chose the latter.Another factor was the lack of money in my pocket, and I had relatives there who could subsidize my cost of living.
• The focus in the initial period was not looking at where money was, but rather looking at what the success level of the technology was and if people would accept it.When you have no money, you tend to become more innovative.
• In our company, we have to think of ways to help the poor, not sympathized with them.
• You can always create a product that matches poor people’s needs,it does not matter how poor they are.World bank has always said that solar does not make sense for them because they were not poor, but here you can see if the need is matched, then it is a productive fit.
• The pressures I see today are when young people want to join the company, and their parents call up and ask how long we are going to be there.Convincing the families of my applicants is a difficult task.
• Message to Entrepreneurs : There is no short cut to creating good processes.A lot of people try to solve it quick, and that can’t happen.Some people do it by numbers, I would never do that.Concentrate more on the processes and the numbers will come.

With the new year starting off on a good note, I had the fortune to read Entrepreneur, Blogger & Forbes columnist Sramana Mitra‘s book Entrepreneur Journeys.Though, I am a voracious reader;this article would be the start of a new innings – my very first book review

Anyone who is interested in startups would definitely be a reader of her blog but after reading this book, I feel it is a great boon to the existing as well as aspiring Entrepreneurial community !!! The book touches the various aspects of startups namely Bootstrapping, Venture Funding, Business Models, Ups & Downs in the life of an Entrepreneur etc. using a simple medium of Q&A. She also focuses on how Internet has changed the entire game of Business & why Web 3.0 is the next big thing.

Though these simple words describe the simplicity & depth of the book, I would like to couple it with some of the notable excerpts:

Jerry Rawls, Co-founder – Finisar

• We did not have any outside investors, so it was clear that we did not have enough money to support both of us. So, I stayed at Raychem and Frank Levinson went off and got started. At the end of the year I left Raychem and joined him fulltime in Finisar.
• While we were doing product development we supported ourselves, probably for four years doing mostly consulting work.
• I heard a guy a few years ago give a talk and somehow in the talk, he threw a line “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” & I completely agree with that.
• We have a culture where we accept nothing, there are no sacred cows.We want to continually improve every part of our operation.We have a culture that says we are going to hire bright people who have good interpersonal skills and can really handle pressure & work well in small groups.
• Because it is a company policy that everybody travels Economy, I myself also travel economy.

Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Adventnet

• We at Adventnet hire young professionals whom others disregard.We don’t look at colleges,degrees or grades.Not everyone in India comes from a socio-economic background to get the opportunity to go to a top engineering school, but many are really smart.We train them and in nine months, they produce results at the level of college grads.Their resumes are not marketable but these kids can code just as well as the rest, sometimes even better !!!
• We found we could reach customers directly.Today we have most of the new customers through the internet.It has become much easier to supply companies directly.The internet is allowing us to reach all these customers.
• I am not ashamed to compete on price, that is our main strategy.
• Keep the marketing costs low, that is our strategy.If we do the SalesForce economics, 75% of their revenue is spent on acquiring customers.There should be a better way of doing business than charging the customer for acquiring him.Why not give it away for free,if all the money will be spent on acquiring the money elsewhere.
• Most attrition happens from boredom related issues.We try to keep our team motivated and challenged with interesting work, and as a result, they don’t leave.

Steve Hafner, Co-Founder – Kayak

• On working at Orbitz: I saw a company start from a few PowerPoint pages and grow to the point that when I left it was booking $4 billion a year in tickets and hotel rooms.
• Kayak helps users find deals from all of the other travel websites.We thought by doing a bit what Google does, which is build a very simple and sleek interface which goes out and searches on behalf of consumers & brings back the results in a comprehensive display, we would give consumers a choice of where to buy.
• In the first year or two of Kayak, we focussed on building a great product.We felt if we build a great product, consumers would stumble on it, like it and tell their friends.
• We are of the mentality that for every dollar which could be placed into marketing, we would rather place it into engineering and make the product better.We spend next to nothing on marketing.
• On the internet, there is always going to be a lot of competition because it is easy to build a website.The hard part is to make the website scale.
• There are three things you need to do to have a viable Vertical Ad network.You need to get a set of publishers, you need to get an audience and you need to match them with technology.

Gautam Godhwani, Co-Founder – SimplyHired

• What we saw in the employment space was an incredibly large market.There is a market of $100 billion market in US alone.At the same time,the market had services that we called pain killers versus vitamins.If you needed a job,you really needed a job.If you had to hire someone,you really needed to hire someone.
• From the beginning, I have believed the value of a vertical player, search engine or otherwise, is able to participate in a greater lifecycle of the user.

I hope you enjoyed reading the review cum insights of the book Entrepreneur Journeys.There are many more exciting lessons from the other Entrepreneurs featured in the book which would be unveiled in the Part-II of the review…till then, keep breathing the fresh air of Startups

There is an interesting e-book “Testify-How remarkable companies are creating customer evangelists” which focuses on how companies are winning customers and effectively making each one their evangelist !!!

It is a very interesting compilation, the companies about which I enjoyed reading the most are:

You can download the ebook from here

This weekend, I picked up an interesting book titled “The Smart Crow Never Goes Thirsty” by Moid Siddiqui.It is a very short book which stresses on some of the finer points of creativity [starting from the initial period of Childhood , where parents have the maximum chance to unlock their child's locked potential].

One of the interesting lines in the book is “Ask your child not only to think WISE but also think OTHERWISE ” The book than talks about the corporate culture, the changes that can be made and the effects of those changes…. In few words, it is a book which talks about “INNOVATIVE Culture Building”. One of the interesting topic’s in the book is “The Mental Lock” and for most of us,the reason is closely related to The Aslan Phenomenon.

Below are some of the excerpts from the book :

The Aslan Phenomenon:
If we don’t challenge the existing practice, there is every likelihood of two potential dangers.The first is that you get locked in one approach, method or strategy without noticing the other approaches that might be more appropriate.As a result, you may tailor your problems to the preconceptions you hold and which enable you to solve them in your own way.The fact that rules should be challenged is called the Aslan Phenomenon ,which runs as follows:

A person liked to jog every morning.He had many different routes he could take but he invariably took the longest route as his friend used to stay in the neighbourhood where he used to stop and gossip.His name was Aslan.So, stopping at Aslan’s house became a rule for having some fun.One day, Aslan moved out of the neighbourhood but the man continued taking the same long route to stop at the same place even though Aslan no longer lived there.

This is what happens to most of us and since that time, the name Aslan became a phenomenon.

QWERTYUIOP:
As many say : The best ideas strike ,when you think the weirdest kind of things

The QWERTYUIOP configuration of the keyboard is just one of the examples that aroused because of the so called Ani-Aslan thinking.In 1870′s , Sholes & Company, a leading manufacturer of typewriters received many complaints from users about typewriter keys sticking together if the operator keyed too fast.The solution was to slow down the typists.

The result was an inefficient keyboard configuration and the most commonly used letters ‘A’, ‘I’ and ‘O’ were positioned in such a way that the relatively weaker fingers were used to depress them.Since then, the QWERTY logic has been used in all the keyboards !!!

The bottom-line is :

Many organizational practices are a result of the Aslan Principle.There are many business practices that are obsolete or dead or being followed for many years.Once a rule is used in practice, it is very difficult to be eliminated even though the original reason for its coming into force has disappeared.Creative thinking involves not only generating new ideas, but escaping from the obsolete ones as well.

In continuation to my previous article , today we would look into another interesting topic from my current read What Self-Made Millionaires really think,know and do. Due to my association with an early stage startup, the current article on “Successful Entrepreneurial Qualities” looked very much relevant.

Well, I should agree that I could really feel the things during the process of writing this article Though, Qualities and Execution may sometimes seem disjoint , it is only when they get married; a successful business is made !!!!

A sense of mission :
Successful entrepreneurs set out to improve the lives of their customers.They do not simply set out to make a big pile of money.They are workaholic and love working hard at something that they love doing.

Self-Belief :
They believe that they will be successful.They expect to be successful.Even when bankrupt, they still believe that one day they will be successful.

Acceptance of responsibility :
Successful entrepreneurs are found to accept responsibility for themselves and not to blame others.

Resolution to pay the price :
Entrepreneurs understand the price that must be paid to achieve their goals, and they resolve to pay the necessary price.

Commitment to success :
Successful entrepreneurs have a 100 percent commitment to becoming successful.They focus and concentrate on their area of excellence.

Judgement :
They are not necessarily clever with words,arithmetic or mechanics.However,they have developed social skills, intelligence and judgement.

The helicopter view :
Entrepreneurs can see the big picture, acticipate trends.They have foresight in that they always look to the future, understanding that the rest of our business lives will be spent in the future.

Leadership skills :
They set goals, have high expectations of themselves & others and listen carefully.They have the ability to draw extraordinary performance from ordinary people.

Excellence in selling :
Entrepreneurs generally are excellent at selling.They focus on benefits to the customer, satisfying customer desires and relieving customer fears.They make excellent presentations and show the product or service in its best light.

Managing time effectively :
They develop the ability to focus on the 20 percent that brings in the 80 percent of success, and delegate the 80 percent to others.

Excellent communications :
Successful entrepreneurs tend to be excellent in private discussions, conducting meetings, giving presentations and submitting reports.

Persistence :
Successful entrepreneurs persist.They understand that it takes time to make it really BIG !!! They are prepared to go the extra mile and do that little bit extra for which they do not get paid.

Related Article
Money – A startup Killer

My apology for not having been active on Thoughtsprevail , was held up in activities that kept me away from my blog This week, I picked up a book titled “What Self-Made Millionaires really think,know and do” which has some exceptional content on business.Though reading the book won’t make me/you a millionaire but it would definitely help in understanding business in a much better sense !!! After reading a few chapters from the book, I came across a very interesting topic that focused on BUSINESS FAILURE and this article would be a GIST of that chapter.

The reasons are split across four categories, namely:
a) Specialization b) Differentiation c) Segmentation & d) Concentration

Note:
Though many of these reasons might be quite common, but it is important to keep them in mind since , most of the times, we forget the so called COMMON THINGS

SPECIALIZATION

1. No mission, no clear goals, stated OBJECTIVE to make a pile of money.
2. CUSTOMER not perceived as a top priority.
3. Loss of momentum in sales, poor SALES performance.
4. Impatience, trying to get RICH quickly.
5. Operating outside own area of excellence, diversification into UNASSOCIATED BUSINESSES.
6. Failure to focus on PRIORITIES, failure to focus on 20 percent that brings in the 80 percent.

DIFFERENTIATION

1. Failure to establish COMPETITIVE advantage, failure to be better, cheaper, faster or nicer , trying to sell a commodity.
2. Product not suited to customer REQUIREMENTS.
3. Poor QUALITY of product and support.

1. Failure to IDENTIFY CUSTOMERS.
2. REACTIVE rather than proactive SELLING.
3. INCOMPLETE marketing STRATEGY, poor sales performance.

CONCENTRATION

1. POOR LEADERSHIP, lack of integrity and COMPETENCE of KEY STAFF, lack of commitment & persistence.
2. MISMANAGEMENT of working CAPITAL.
3. Failure to analyse and respond to trends, CHANGES in MARKET PLACE.
4. No BUSINESS PLAN.
5. Inadequate financial records, POOR BUDGETING, poor cash control.
6. Action without planning, FAILURE to collect the RELEVANT FACTS.
7. Paralysis by analysis, TOO much ANALYSIS, not enough action.
8. Poor RELATIONS with STAFF and employees, poor communications, command and control mentality.

As this book is a great resource hence, the next series of articles on Thoughtsprevail would be focusing on such interesting topics[from the book] that relate to business, hope you enjoy them !!!