The Startup Journey

Extracts from a blog post by AnnMaria of The Julia Group (emphasis mine). 1. Show up when you are supposed to show up. ...The point is that if I say I will be in Fort Totten, North Dakota at 10 a.m. on April 10th, if you come into the office at that time, you should find me there. Reliable competence is worth more than unreliable brilliance. I can make promises to a customer based on reliable competence and know that those promises will be kept. ... 4. Don’t just do the bare minimum! Most jobs offer a great opportunity for people to LEARN and unlike college, they actually pay you to do it. What a deal! At The Julia Group, you can learn how to do everything from complex statistical calculations to use the video editing software. Specifics may vary from one job to the next, but the more you learn, the more valuable you are to us and the better it is for your future. Don’t just do only what you are specifically asked and then sit on your hands. Suggest something! Ask questions!...

The "work ethic/culture" of initial employees at a startup is often a crucial determinant of the success of the venture. I have also often wondered how much of work ethic/culture of an employee is determined by "nature" (i.e., individual specific) versus "nurture" (organizational level stuff like vision & mission, work culture, etc.). Personally, at my first (and so far last) job, I used to break down my salary to a "per working day" number - to be used to ask "Have I done justice to that number?" at day end. And, if the answer was No, to try harder. I therefore found it quite interesting to read about the employee credo at ratings & research firm Crisil in the book "Doing what is right: The CRISIL Story" . Extract from Page 92-93 (describing a pre placement talk at an MBA school by early employees of the firm):     "What is the work culture at CRISIL? What is your management philosophy?" It was a bespec...

Cross Posted from the Venture Intelligence Entrevista blog : Latha Rajan & K. Pandia Rajan of Ma Foi ( B i o s ) In conversation with K. Satyanarayan , Co-founder of regional language publishing firm New Horizon Media. (Recorded on August 15, 2012 in Chennai.) Highlights: Takeaways for Other Entrepreneurs: (Click on the links for the video segments) Don't add artificial constraints when it comes to entrepreneurship KPR: Separating home and work, politics & business - we tend to have many boundaries where none need to exist. These are Western notions and mind blocks that we can revisit. Being a Husband-Wife Entrepreneur Combination was never a major hassle for us. In fact, as Latha says often, we would have probably fallen apart but for Ma Foi! Latha Rajan: In the early days, he used to travel 25 days a month and I used to travel 10 days a month. But since I was there within the system, I could understand (the pressures and issues). Both of us knew what we were workin...

It takes a village to raise a child, says an old African proverb. It takes more than just the founder to raise a startup. It takes people of all types, some who join and stay, some who join and exit rapidly, others who join and after a while move on, and finally those who join, grow and become leaders. It is the last category that needs to be nurtured by startups. Large companies have elaborate HR plans and policies for identifying, training, nurturing future leaders. In as much as it is a truism that it is more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep and mine existing one, it is also true that growing talent in-house, especially in a startup, is crucial. VC backed startups splurge money on attracting and hiring the “best” and “most experienced” from larger companies but then apart from raising expectations all round (within and without the startup), it is hard to put one’s finger on the real value of such hires. The situation is particularly acute in India because of the over...