What Does it Mean to be an Entrepreneur?

An article written by my wife, Bhawana Srivastava.

What Does it Mean to be an Entrepreneur?

There are thousands of people in the world who come up with thousands of great ideas every day, ideas that could potentially solve many of the small and big problems faced by us. Many people are very enthusiastic when they talk about their ideas, when brought to fruition, would change the world.

However, not all ideas see the light of the day; some for a very long time while others never. It’s not that those ideas are poor and should not be developed. Rather, the people who think of these ideas lack certain qualities that prevent those wonderful ideas from getting executed. Although those people have a vision for a great product or service or business model and they have the skills required to develop that product or service, they lack the attitude of an entrepreneur and the conviction of a believer.

I believe that entrepreneurship is a state of mind. It, more often than not, takes all a person has, at the professional as well as personal level.

Some of the primary qualities of an entrepreneur are listed below.

Attitude
The most important quality of an entrepreneur is the attitude. The attitude to take risks, lead, listen, plan, execute, and last but not the least, the attitude to accept failure, learn the lessons, and move on. Entrepreneurship cannot be a part-time vocation; it requires a person to make the sincerest form of commitment and 100% of his time, effort, and dedication.

Vision
An entrepreneur must have a vision — of a product or a service – that he is willing to work on to develop from scratch or improve. He identifies a problem that he sees around him and devises a solution that addresses this problem. He envisions a solution, clearly communicates his ideas to others, and brings his ideas to completion. It can be a new idea, or a better implementation of an existing idea.

Conviction
There should not be an iota of doubt in the entrepreneur’s mind regarding whether his ideas will work or not. There are always moments of self-doubt, which every successful entrepreneur overcomes, driven by conviction. If he doubts his ideas and vision, he will not be able to devote all his energy on the venture, and will start to lose focus on the first signs of difficulties. When Google launched in 1998, it was the thirteenth search engine in the market. Yet, it became a phenomenon because the founders believed that it was the best search engine available at that time.

Skill
An entrepreneur must have the skill to lead a venture — whether the skill is technical (for example, software programming) or business-related (for example, forecasting revenues and growth). Most of the companies’ founders possess expertise in their area of endeavor. Many research projects in graduate school result in successful products; for example, Research In Motion and Google. The co-founders usually have complementary skill sets, the most popular example being Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm oozing from an entrepreneur is the most visible sign of his attitude, confidence, and conviction, which helps the team members trust their leader’s vision and show their enthusiasm towards the work they are doing.

Flexibility
All initial ideas are not always the best ideas. An entrepreneur develops an early version of his product or service, takes it to the users, listens to them to collect feedback, and makes appropriate modifications to the product or service. An entrepreneur who is rigid about his ideas and unwilling to adapt will lead the product or service to fail. An example of flexibility is the founders of Flickr. They were developing an online game when they realized that the photo sharing feature on the Web site was being used more than the game itself, so they focused on developing the photo sharing feature.

Business Plan
A sound business plan is almost always part of an entrepreneur’s initial strategy. Developing a prototype, getting angel and venture funding to develop the product and scale or manufacture it, spending money on marketing and customer service, and eventually creating a successful company creating value for the stakeholders is all a part of the business plan. However, not all businesses take this route. Some, a recent example being Twitter, focus on acquiring users first and not thinking about money. They believe that if users love their product, money will somehow start coming, though it might sometimes leads to a business’s collapse.

An entrepreneur gives his all to his vision and makes great personal sacrifices to make sure his vision comes to life. He tries to convince more and more people to give his product a try and, if the product is good enough, keep using it. He comes up with ways to create value for the users for which they are willing to pay. This constitutes the business model part of the entrepreneur’s vision, which creates and increases value for all stakeholders – the founders, employees, and the big and small investors.

The business model may or may not be initially on the entrepreneur’s strategy, especially if the marginal cost of production or serving the users is very low. This is especially true in the case of Internet companies where the focus of the entrepreneur is to get more and more users to use the product or service and make money later. This is not always the best approach though it remains the most popular approach.

There are some entrepreneurs who try to address a social issue with innovative ideas. They focus on solving the problem for the betterment of the underprivileged, and not on making money for themselves or the stakeholders. A recent example is Kiva.org, a micro-lending company, which encourages and facilitates lending of small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in the developing or underdeveloped countries.

A key to successful entrepreneurship is doing something you love. Do it with the right attitude and a strong conviction!

At Last, The Right Message

President Obama addressed the students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia on Sept 8, 2009. The speech was televised nationally and most of the children watched it at their schools though there were reports that some schools did not allow their kids to watch it. Some parents didn’t let their kids go to school for the fear of the president spreading his socialist agenda through his speech. What a ridiculous thought!

The president and his education secretary want to increase the length of the school day and the school year in the hope that it would make the American children more competitive, which certainly is a faulty logic. However, this time he got it right. President Obama insisted the students spend more time studying, doing homework, asking for help, and help themselves and their country. The message was very simple and straightforward, but a part of media were hell bent on spreading the wrong message that he was trying to drive his socialist ideologies into the kids’ minds.

For the last few years, I have been studying how people learn and my conclusion is – study, study, and study – because there are no shortcuts in education. And this was the message delivered in his speech.

Watch the video and decide for yourself.

What Makes a Person Employable?

In my last two posts, I wrote about the length of school year and immigration policies with regard to competitiveness. In this post, I’m going to write about the differences between Indian and American employees, based on my personal experience.

Last month, Computerworld published a blog post in which it was mentioned that the CEO of an Indian IT firm, HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar, called the American IT grads unprepared and unemployable. They are not interested in learning about the mundane things and too expensive to train. How true is this statement?

At the undergraduate level, I think more people in India and China are available to work with the same level of skills. The number of people graduating with a degree in computer science and related fields is much more in India and China than the US. The number of jobs are limited resulting in fierce competition, which forces people to constantly upgrade their skills. They are also available to work for a lot less money than a person in the US. Many companies outsource IT work to India, some to cut costs, some to tap the available talent, and some both. The IT grads in the US don’t have to face a tough competition, at least until last year, which may lead to complacency and outdated skills. However, there is a small percentage of young students who are truly innovative and entrepreneurial, and they help develop products and create job opportunities. In short, Indian IT grads will beat most of the American IT grads hands down.

However, the stark difference is seen at the graduate level, both masters and doctorate. While thousands of people, both American and immigrants, graduate from the American universities every year with master’s and PhD degrees in IT, very few people even want to enroll in higher education in India. The main reason is that education is not valued and is considered a means of securing a good job and moving up the social ladder. Innovation and entrepreneurship are virtually non-existent in India, at least until very recently. Things are changing on this front though.

While the American companies focus on research and developing new products, the Indian companies just want to do the back-end job of software development and maintenance. This work suits the mindset of the employees. It’s part and parcel of the Indian culture of targeting the low-end of the spectrum. The talent is abundant in India but it’s not nurtured, not presented with the opportunity to bloom.

While I was managing elearning projects for a big American consulting company when I was working in India, the products were designed in the US. I had experience in instructional design but not enough knowledge to dig deeper to understand what makes for a good online learning experience. I completed my master’s at Stanford University, focused on educational psychology, and now in a position to better design products that help people learn effectively.

So do I agree with Vineet Nayar’s statement? Yes and no. Because it depends on the kind of work his company does. For some high-end design and research work, he won’t be able to find too many Indian or Chinese people. But for low-end work, he would do well to hire Indian and American people.

Does the Length of a School Year Help Increase Competitiveness?

President Barack Obama said in March this year that he would like to increase the length of a school day and a school year to help the American kids compete in the world. Last year too, he had mentioned in his speech that the American children need to compete with the Indian and Chinese kids. The Education secretary, Arne Duncan, echoed his views – “You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year.”

Are Obama and Duncan right in thinking that the American children need to be more competitive? In a word, yes. Definitely. But what about them believing that increasing the length of a school day and year would lead to the children studying more and being competitive? Again, in a word, doomed. This proposal, I think, is based on the assumption that the more time you spend at school, the more you study (or spend on academic activities). But is it necessarily true? No, it is not. While it’s true that the result of an activity is a function of the time spent on that activity, including studying, it’s a misconception that children would study more if they stay at school longer.

In the past, studies have been conducted with children in advanced countries across the world and it has been found that Singapore children score the highest on standardized tests though they spend lesser time in school than American children. India and China were not included in those studies so data is not available for Indian and Chinese students.

What increases competitiveness is competition. And the fear of competition, failure, and not getting where you want to be. The American children have always had it easy. All physical amenities from the day they are born. There is nothing to aim higher for. If you already have a house and a car, other things are pretty much way cheap. If you have a stable job, you can easily keep paying installments on the car and the mortgage payments on the house. There is a small fraction of very talented people who start up companies, help grow businesses, and in the process create lots of jobs, which are available to the rest of the population. When the children know that they are going to have everything easily, there is nothing to go after, and hence, there is no will or necessity to be competitive.

Macs Are Virus-Free? Think Again.

I read a very interesting article on ZDNet yesterday.  Security researcher Charlie Miller says Safari on Mac is the easiest to hack, and so is Firefox on Mac. This is coherent with what many people say – Macs are not inherently secure. There are just not enough hackers wanting to spend time and effort writing viruses for Macs becuase of the small number of Mac users compared to Windows.

Here’s the post – http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941

Here’s another – Apple security is ’struggling,’ researcher says

Microsoft vs. Apple – The Ad War

I’m not a fan of  Microsoft but I’ve been a PC user all my life. And I Admire Bill Gates – he is a genius. And, surprisingly, I admire Steve Ballmer too – he is a great CEO and very aggressive.

I’m not an Apple fanboy either but I admire Steve Jobs – he is a design genius. And Apple products are simply great.

Apple has been making fun of Microsoft for too long, but with a new $100 million ad campaign, Microsoft is hitting back. It is a clever campaign, not just ads, but a campaign. And it’s hurting Apple and I have a feeling it’s going to get worse after Windows 7 launches given the rave reviews it has received even from Mac users.

Though the initial ads generated criticism, I loved the Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfield ads. So here it is, the first two ads and the laptop hunter ads launched so far.

1. Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Buy Discount Shoes

2. New Family – Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Ad (Long Version)

3. Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

4. Laptop Hunters $1500 – Giampaolo gets an HP HDX

5. Laptop Hunters $1500 Lisa and Jackson get a Sony VAIO

6. Laptop Hunters $2000 – Sheila gets an HP HDX

7. Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13

And here’s Apple’s response.

1. Apple’s “Get a Mac” Web ad: “Elimination”

2. Apple’s “Get a Mac” Web ad: “PC Choice Chat”

Immigration Policies and Long-Term Competitiveness

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.
Excerpted from “Tech Recruiting Clashes With Immigration Rules ” by Matt Richtel (New York Times, April 11, 2009)

This Google engineer lives in Canada because his wife does not have a work visa that would make her eligible to work in the US. Every year, many highly talented people are forced to leave the US and return to their home countries or go to other countries because of arcane immigration laws in the US. When immigration bills are discussed, legal and illegal immigration are always clubbed together, which results in the bills not getting the approval of the house and the senate. Nobody likes illegal immigrants in their countries though millions of illegal immigrants have lived in the US for a long time and make an honest living working here.

Every year, thousands of international students graduate from American universities. Some voluntarily return to their home countries, while some are forced to return because they are not able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor a H1B work visa for them. The students get a one year optional practical training period after graduation to practice the skills they have learned in their study programs. This one year period is essentially becomes a narrow window for finding a job. The petitions for H1B visas are filed starting April 1. The number of applications received by the USCIS is much more than the annual quota of 65,000, and this quota is filled within a few days, sometimes on the very first day itself. If someone’s application is not files on April 1, chances are slim that s/he will be able to work in the US.

Silicon valley is long considered a hub of innovation. Sun, Yahoo, Google, Intel, HP, the list of valley companies is endless. These companies started as a typical startup and grew and provided employment to thousands. Many of the founders of these innovative companies were immigrants or children of immigrants. In fact, more than 5o% of the startups in silicon valley were launched by immigrants.  A high percentage of employees, who helped grow these companies, were also immigrants – highly educated, higly talented.

If these talented people were forced to leave the US, it would be difficult to imagine the innovative culture of silicon valley as it is today. If we put everyone in one of five categories, say 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, in increasing order of talent or capabilities, should the companies hire only people with a rank of 5? No, because there would not be that many people available. If companies hire people with ranks 4 and 5, these highly talented employees would help develop new products, create great services, and therefore help grow the companies they work for. These companies would then need more workers and they would be forced to hire people with ranks of 3, 2, and 1.However, if the companies start hiring rank 1, 2, and 3 people before rank 4 and 5, it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to happen to those companies. In the short-term, more people will get employment, but in the long-term, growth will stagnate or become negative, thereby resulting in decreased revenues, layoffs, and rising unemployment.

The Obama administration, by restricting companies that receive federal bailout money from hiring foreign nationals, has created exactly the situation explained above. What these companies need right now is the best people to help tide over the economic crisis. A much less publicized fact is that the USCIS has said that this restriction will be valid for only two years. The impact of this policy is difficult to measure but the damage to these companies would surely be done.

Should the government allow a free flow of immigrants? Of course not. This would lead to chaos and misuse of the system. But allowing the best people to live and work in the US without any restriction would help the country with maintaining the competitive edge, which many believe the US is losing to other countries.

My situation? I have a master’s degree from Stanford University. I’d rank myself 4 (if not 5). I work for a major publishing company and I’m happy with my job. However, if I want to leave my job to take a long vacation or become a stay-at-home dad, I can’t. Because I have a H1B work visa from my company. I can’t remain jobless even if I choose to. I have to be in another job or I’ll have to leave the US. Permanent residency (green card) takes many years to get. My options? I don’t have any.

Additional Readings
What U.S. immigration policies mean to Google
Bill Gates Says Immigration, Education Reform Needed For U.S. To Compete

New Year Resolutions – Quarterly Review

The first quarter of this year has ended and it’s time to review my new year resolutions and evaluate how I’m doing on each of the resolutions.

1. Stop procrastinating (this should be priority number one every day of my life) – I’m getting there. Better than before but not yet satisfactory. (3/5)
2. Spend more time with my kids, engaged with them, not just being home – Started off quite well but lost steam. (1/5)
3. Resume exercise, after a four months break – Had started hitting the gym three days a week but lost motivation. Have resumed after a break. (1/5)
4. Write a post on this blog every week and focus on what interests me most – technology-based learning – Getting better and trying. (2/5)
5. Learn PHP – Changed goal. Learning css-based Web design first.
6. Learn Economics (I manage the technology projects for Economics in my company so it makes sense to know the subject matter) – Had started but changed goal to learning about the current recession. (2/5)
7. Work on the prototype for a Web 2.0 learning product – Have started with learning web design. (1/5)
8. Improve focus (on personal as well as professional things) – Not much improvement. (1/5)
9. Not waste time (I don’t waste much time anyway but …) – Not sure how I’m doing on this one. Same as before. (3/5)

Overall, my self evalulation resulted in my realizing how poorly I’m doing on my new year resolutions. The good news is that I have not dropped any resolution, which means I still have a pretty strong chance of scoring 5/5 by the end of this year.

Happy Square Root Day

I happened to stumble upon this entry on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_day. Though I’m late by almost a month, I thought it would be  interesting to cover it in a blog post. The last square root day was on 3/3/09. The next will be on 4/4/2016.

My First Court Case … and a Small Victory

Yesterday, I settled my first court case.  I’d filed a case last month, which was an open and shut case, so the defendant decided to settle it out of court.

I used to live in Sycamore Creek Apartments in Cincinnati and moved out in October 2008. Per the rules, I should have received my rent deposit, an amount of $468 after some deductions, after two weeks. However, I received a letter detailing the deductions and the final amount but not the check. After waiting for a few days, I called up Sycamore Creek and was told that the check had returned because of incorrect address. My address starts with 727 and they had written 272 on the envelope. I gave them the address again and checked the letter I had received. The address indeed started with 272, and the letter reached me, but not the check.

I waited for a month and then called them again. This time I was told that the owner of Sycamore Creek – AIMCO – had sold the property to another business, and AIMCO would send me the check. I again waited for the check and contaced AIMCO. This time, I was told that the funds had been transferred to the new owner, so they should send me the deposit check. The lady at Sycamore Creek was dead sure that AIMCO would send me the money because when I vacated the apartment, the property was still owned by AIMCO. The property manager once told me that I would receive my check within a month, only to be told a month later that the manager had quit her job. And I was back to square one.

I shuttled between Sycamore Creek and AIMCO for a few months more. Then I read a blog post about a small business owner who had sued Google and won. This gave me an idea. I did some research on the Internet and learned about the municipal court in Cincinnati and it’s small claims division. The best part was that I could claim double the amount if the landlord didn’t refund my deposit within 30 days. One morning, I went to the court and submitted a short form along with a payment of $53. The clerk at the counter asked me for a convenient hearing date and put the date after 30 days on the form.

I knew that I would get a call from Sycamore Creek soon. And I did get a call. The new property manager told me that my check for $936 was ready and I can pick up the check any time and sign a releaase form. If I had decided to take them to court, they would have had to pay an additional $53 in court charges. I decided not to take this route. I was getting double the deposit amount anyway, so I took the check and signed the release form.

I enquired about how I could drop the case and was told that I can submit a form or I can just not appear in court in which case the case will be dismissed anyway. I have decided to submit a form. This was all pretty easy and convenient. I don’t know if everyone is aware of this facility that our tax dollars are paying for. I’m glad I’m paying my taxes and the money is being put to good use.