A thousand things...but one at a time

You need to get a hundred (maybe a thousand things right) to build a great enterprise. I realised this quite early in my life as an entrepreneur. Maybe in a few quick years if not months. But it took me many many years to realise that you can do it only one at a time.

Sooner or later Microsoft will have to choose

Microsoft has much on its hands to catch-up with google, apple, sony et. al. That's mostly on the consumer side. Which also is the most profit making part of its the business (at least that's so for its Windows and Office products). It might therefore chose to relinquish this space and fight IBM, Oracle, SAP etc. in the business software space or do it the other way around. It will be interesting to see. Or else it risks becoming a producer of not-so-great products.

The biggest opportunity today

Qualified and Quality Human Resource is the biggest void today in the Indian economy. And therefore Human Resource Development (Education) offers the biggest opportunity to entrepreneurs for both the reasons of making a contribution and creating wealth.

Most business are created & sustained without VC funding

VC funding is a mirage. Don't waste your time. There are 45 million businesses in India less then a few hundred may be get VC funded.

People leave even big brands for a little more money don't count on people's loyalty. Count on your vision and your own commitment to it. Find people to subscribe to your vision.

Sometimes we are so excited by our ideas that we can't stop ourselves from pursuing it. That is what entrepreneurship is about. However take one idea at a time. Pick-up the best one.

Classify your product into the cash cow, the drain and the star. Be the Vishnu (preserver) of the cash cow. Be the Shiva (destroyer) of the drain and Bramha(creator) for the star.

For a small company it is best if you are focused (single product company). Meditate to sort out the confusion.

Learn to do more with the cash flow. Figure out ways to cut costs. Maybe you can reduce your staff and outsource the intermittent work. It can save you a lot of money.

Build a franchise of loyal customers and partners(resellers). These are your VCs.

VC ecosystem in India is under developed.

VCs in India are more likely to invest in mature companies (with revenues of ($5 million or more) than early stage companies.

Individual Genius

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best;

But what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

So many opportunities

India has so much diversity, so much disparity, so many problems, so many people...so it offers many many opportunities for entrepreneurs who can fill the gaps, create the variations, use resources more efficiently...