by Sanjeev Bikhchandani (naukri.com)

Be early. You can make your mistakes while it is cheap to make them, when there is no competition. 

Do not exaggerate in your business plan. Under commit and over deliver 

Get great people – sell them the vision, the idea and share the wealth, be generous with offering stock. 

If you are starting a business to make money, don’t do it. Chances are that you will fail, because there WILL be hard times. And if your motivation is not something beyond money, those hard times will test you. You will quit and go back to your job. But if you are doing something other than for money, you will rough it through the hard times. 

I spotted the opportunity but I didn’t know how big it was, how big it was going to be. I just said this is a smart idea, I love it! And it happened to be a great idea, at the right place at the right time… If you are in enough places, enough times and long enough, you get your breaks in some form or the other. You just have to be smart enough to take them. 

Scaling up is also a lot about letting go. Get smart people. If they are truly smart and if they have their self-belief, they will create their own space and they will do stuff that maybe you can’t do. Or may be you haven’t thought of. 

And do keep in mind that every choice you make impacts the family. If you live in a particular part of town, it will obviously impact the kind of school your kids go to. Frankly, these were the choices, the implications of which I did not consider. Thankfully, things have turned out well; the children also, the family also. 

When I am talking to entrepreneurs, I always say base your business on deep customer insights, the way naukri was formed. 

I could see my future, had I continued as a manager in the corporate sector. If I was lucky, at the end of 5 years I’ll be senior product manager, in 8 years I’ll be marketing manager…. In 25 years I might be CEO somewhere. All this if I am really good. I used to ask myself: is this what I want in life? 

As an MBA from Ahmedabad, we all have a hunger for multinational companies. Because it’s prestigious. But to my mind, it is false prestige. You are prisoner to your visiting card and the logo on it, a prisoner to your EMIs… Taking a risk becomes all the more difficult. 

I didn’t want to sign complex agreements, have somebody breathing down my neck and be under pressure for growth. I was comfortable leading an uncomplicated life. 

We knew the value of money because we had always been short of money.