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Question answered in Quora - I want to become an entrepreneur after 12th, I will do btech cse. What


Entrepreneurship is a very broad area, you could do any of the following

1-You could start a technology startup

2-You could start a trading business, just buy and sell things

3-You could offer some service, where you get paid hourly like Accounting or Programming or Legal services

So whatever you do, here is how I would approach

i) - You need the technical skills to do the job, meaning you need to know whatever you are offering, it could be programming services or building a product or in the case buying and selling you need to know the technicalities of trading business, where to buy the product and where to sell the product etc. So I would spend some time and acquire those skills - Build enough technical skills domain expertise in the area you are going to offer the services/product in

ii) - You need sales skills - which is actually problem solving skills for your customer - meaning you need to clearly identify a problem that you are solving for your customer - that means you need to know what is the problem they have, in what area they have the problem, who has the problem - that is your ideal customer and tell them how you are solving that problem with your solution - it could be selling rice in a place where there are not a lot of stores that sell rice - let us say it turns out that there is no store in a specific area and the people that live in that area are traveling a lot to buy rice, then your solution is to open a store and sell rice in that area - that is the problem you are solving for them - then you need to articulate your solution's value prop with the right messaging - that is your marketing mantra to acquire customers

iii) - Then you have to have leadership skills - running an enterprise requires inspiring people to have them join you so they can help you in accomplishing your vision because you cannot do everything by yourself - so you need other people's help - that is where all the soft skills come into play - you need to build trust with these people, you need win their confidence, you need to help them have fun while they are doing it, you need to make them feel that they are in a worthy cause and whatever they are doing is fulfilling in their life - for some people it would be just making money, for some people it would be something else - that is where people reading skills, public speaking skills all that come into play

So acquire the technical skills, acquire the sales skills, acquire the leadership skills and start executing. This is a short answer, if there is a specific context, or in a specific field, will be happy to answer for that.

It is very good to have big goals, but don't get disappointed if you don't attain success to the level of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates got very lucky because of the timing, MySpace was going down because people started disliking the ads that were put in MySpace, that was one reason why Facebook took off, where as Bill Gates was early on in the PC business and he beat Apple by providing a shoddy product for much less price, and the timing was perfect, because people bought into the idea of one personal computer per home and per person, actually Microsoft aggressively took market share wherever possible, especially enterprises, even though the total cost of ownership was higher compared to an Apple product, for several reasons their market took off and they got very lucky.

Developing software is easy compared to manufacturing, especially if you can identify a problem, validate it thoroughly, make sure that problem is big enough and people are willing to pay for your solution, then hire bunch of programmers in India and develop the solution you can join an incubator, so you can create something really quick and fast and attain success, but often it takes 5 to 7 to 9 years to create a solid company that has great products helping their customers in an impactful way, so I wouldn't approach it as a get rich quick scheme, I would rather identify something that you enjoy doing, some thing like your life's purpose, just enjoy doing it, if you make a lot of money that is great, don't do it for the money, but do it for the fun of it, just enjoy doing it, creating a product itself is a joy and when your product solves someone's pain and when they tell you how their life is better because of your product, that is the real joy and fulfillment.

Good Luck.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology consisting of Smart Gladiator Wearable Scanguns, Tablets, Mobile Tech & Apps for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator Wearables have been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. Users love them for the lightweight, easy-to-use soft overlay keyboard, texting&video chatting ability, data collection ability etc. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 17 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com

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