You don't necessarily need to have a degree to start a business or a startup. What you need is a solid problem that you can solve.
Here is the core of being an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is about creating something out of nothing. It could be a product or a service that solves a problem for someone, so that someone is willing to pay for that solution. That is what entrepreneurs are good at. They do that by using their creativity, unbridled enthusiasm and tremendous perseverance.
Today people who want to become entrepreneurs are obsessed with fund raising. The attitudefor many is that, hey let’s see if we can find someone willing to invest their money in my idea. We will try with their money to see if we can succeed, if not we did not lose anything it was only the investor’s money, what the heck? However true entrepreneurship is about solving problems for people. I personally believe in courting customers first, because your customer is your true partner since he trusts you and takes the risk of using your solution. He also pays for the solution because it is helping him keep his customers happy. There is a real value he is getting and he is willing to pay for it. I would focus on solving my customer’s problem with as little money as possible and do a great job at solving the problem for the customer and add value to my customer, build my revenue that way. That is why many businesses originally started as a consulting services business. Eventually, they productized their service by building all the best practices as a cluster and selling that as a solution.
I think if you want to become an entrepreneur you need to do three things very well:
1. Turn your adversity into an opportunity
2. Always hit two or more mangoes in one stone – the higher the number the more money you make and more opportunities you create for yourself
3. Follow and execute this principle – The best Offense is the best defense
1.Turn Adversity into an Opportunity
There is this story of a gentleman who had this beautiful bone china cup in which he would enjoy his tea, while reading his books. That was such a nice experience for him he relished that experience everyday. Even I remember growing up during my teens reading the morning daily newspaper with a fresh coffee by my side. With no disturbance catching up onthe morning news with a fresh delicious coffee by side in a serene ambience was such a nice experience, like this, this gentleman was enjoying a book with tea in his favorite bone china cup. One day while doing that, he accidentally dropped his bone china tea cup and broke it.The gentleman was disappointed thinking that he was never going to be able to have such a calm. relaxing reading experience with a nice cup of tea by his side in his favorite beautiful bone china cup. He didn’t have another one and he wasn’t able to find another one that was as sleek and beautiful as the one he had. So he asked his master craftsman to fix it. But that master craftsman was not able to think of any way to fix it. So he pondered over it for a longtime and finally came up with a clever idea. He made a golden glue by adding some gold powder to the glue and then glued the broken pieces together with thegolden glue. By doing that, he not only fixed the cup, he made it reusable. The oldman can have his reading experience back, but also with a nice design to the cup and made it even more beautiful than it was before. So this master craftsman transformed an adverse situation into an opportunity and made that cup even better than it was before. It is very important to see those adversities that happen to us as an opportunity and turn those adversities around and make something better out of them.
Another example is how Apple leveraged its hardware to build an emotional connection with its consumers. The overall trend in the industry is that no software company wants to get into the hardware business, because the hardware business is hard. The fact that you have to ship hardware, the hardware needs to be there physically in front of you to fix it which makes it hard to survive in the hardware business. Even Microsoft at one point tried very hard to just remain a software company, primarily making Windows, Office products, Internet Explorer and related Software products. At one point in time, Microsoft tried to build this MP3 played called Zune and did a really crappy job at it. But Steve Jobs, on the other hand, while building iPhone made it shiny, so beautiful and so sexy, people loved the beauty of the iPhone, especially the ladies. They built an emotional connection with the beautiful iPhone and they bought it. Of course beauty only opens the door, then utility and quality sustains sales. Beyond the beauty, the iPhone also solved a great problem for the consumers. Up until the iPhone was launched, Blackberry was the most popular Smart Phone and it did two things really well: make calls and sending and receiving emails with its keyboard. Apple enabled one more thing, which was browsing the Internet. Also the overall quality of the iPhone was so good everybody started creating apps for it and the whole app store phenomenon happened. Even Steve Jobs was against the app store idea because he thought people would bastardize the iPhone with their poor quality apps, but he eventually gave in looking at the requests to open up the iOS for developers to create apps. Steve Jobs smartly created the App store concept and also put in a thorough vetting process to ensure the apps the developers developed were very good quality apps. Steve Jobs did not look at this as a hardware business; instead he turned that disadvantage into an opportunity and created a masterpiece leveraging that hardware to build an emotional connection with the consumers, which made the iPhone such a successful product.
2.Always Hit Two or More Mangoes with One Stone
The higher the number, the more money youwill make and or the more opportunities you will create for yourself. The best most recent example I can think of is this electric bicycle made by Manoj Bhargava that makes enough electricity to run your home for 24 hours if you work out on that machine for one hour. This machine does two things really well, it burns calories to make you slim and it also spends those calories increating electricity, which is even better. It is so optimized, that electricity can last for 24 hours. And above all anybody in the world can buy. Also if you think about it, it is common sense what he has done, I am sure you thought of it, I thought of it, but we both never took action. What is even more beautiful is people at the bottom of the pyramid can buy it. The people that live in the villages in India and China and in many other third world countries can buy them and use them,there is a great value prop to it. All they have to do is, whatever money they spend on electricity, take a loan and pay that towards this loan that they took out to by this machine. That is a great business model.
So that is how to hit two or mangoes with one stone, technically I would say this guy hit 3 mangoes with one stone:
1. He is making people healthy by burning calories
2. He is eliminating the need to buy electricity, so that money is saved
3. He is selling this to people at the bottom of the pyramid, which is a huge market
4. He also has a great business model, so they will buy this machine right away, because they can start paying their monthly electrical expense towards this machine and own this outright one day
5. Above all this is common sense, everyone will understand it, not difficult to explain at all
3. TheBest Defense is the Best Offense
This concept is being proactive and doing something bold and preemptive about the problem you are facing instead of just being passive and just complaining about the situation by defending it. It could be that in your job your boss is giving you a lot of crap because you did not do so well. Instead of just passively reacting to it, come up with reasons why you did not do well, take a proactive step and get a big task done and show everyone what you are capable of.
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