The Startup Journey

Pradeep Gupta of the Cybermedia Group has a nice article in Business Today on the topic: Another bottleneck is absence of delegation. When a company starts, the entrepreneur behind it often performs multiple roles, from chairman to caretaker. He takes a wide range of decisions from technical ones to marketing, from production to administration. His team too depends on the entrepreneur for every kind of decision. At a later stage, this hampers growth. The entrepreneur soon finds his knowledge inadequate to tackle challenges, or faces time management problems, which hold back the company. To achieve genuine delegation of responsibility, a second rung of leadership has to be created and empowered. Till this is done, businesses cannot scale up. Entrepreneurs often feel that by delegating they are giving up control. In reality, they are helping the business to bloom. ...There is also the pitfall of execution. In entrepreneurial companies, much work gets done without being formally recorded...

With more and more communication taking place electronically, one would think that marketing folks would be looking into each leveraging every interaction as a means of building a brand relationship. However experience suggests that there are miles to go before e-communication gets integrated into the traditional marketing plans of even leading brands. After checking mail in my “Inbox”, I usually review the mail in the “Junk” folder to ensure that no important message has inadvertently been routed to this folder. Upon a recent review, I came across a mail from “Webmaster” and had “Despatch of documents through electronic mode” in the subject line. Even though it seemed like this mail was in the right folder, wanting to be doubly sure, I clicked on it and was surprised to learn that it was a message from the Investor Services Division of a company where I am a tiny shareholder. The message contained an attachment – a circular informing me that all communication (including notices and co...

Great notes on people management and scalability. Had received this scanned copy of the relevant pages by email. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs reach out effectively to the investing community.