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.

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