100 gms of entrepreneurship: What are the ingredients
Find what you love, and let it kill you - that's what an entrepreneur does on a daily basis. Half the time, he does not even know what he is doing as there is no carved, straight path. All he knows is that he has to get up everyday and bring his A-game to work, because if he won't, who will? What is entrepreneurship and what are its ingredients? Here, we decode.
Passion, according to me, is not an acquired skill. You can't fake it, you are born this way. It is not something you flaunt in a room full of people, it is that burning feeling in the gut you have, sitting quietly in your own space. Steve Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world." He himself is a perfect embodiment of passion, and God knows he has changed the world in more ways than one. Every entrepreneur needs 30 gms of his unadulterated passion.
You can love them or hate them, but you can't ignore their smartness, their un-evilness and their love for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. They are the best Stanford could produce in a lifetime - Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. As an entrepreneur, if you are born with a mind like theirs, you are 20% there. If not, you need to acquire their smartness.
We all have just one lifetime to make an impact, whether we choose ambition which serves a purpose or greed which is self-serving, is entirely upto us. The line is arguably thin. In Mark Zuckerberg's case, he chose both. I don't know about the virtual world, but the real world would have been a better place without him in it. They say, a man with too much ambition can't sleep. And, I say an entrepreneur does not need sleep. We need peace and not sleep, ambition and not greed.
Born to a teenage mom, Jeff Bezos is unstoppable. At 54, he is worth $130.5 billion, and by all accounts, he is just getting started. He himself calls it Day 1. He owns 16% of Amazon, has an aerospace company, Blue Origin and purchased 'The Washington Post' in 2013. One thing he taught me is - don't look for work life balance, but work life harmony. I can certainly use 10gms of this fine wine, which is only getting better with age.
What does it tell you about two geniuses who create a messaging app which is used by everyone in this world with a team size of 50? That they get bought for a whopping $19 billion, just 5 years after starting up? But, then they decide to leave all of it, reportedly bearing a loss of $1 billion. Why, you ask? Because the parent company's principles don't match with theirs. That is integrity, and one of the most important ingredients.
When you have to fill in the shoes of a legend like Jobs, you know it is not an easy task. But, if you are a legend yourself, you can deliver with absolute grace. That Apple grew multi-fold under Tim Cook, that he didn't budge to FBI and put his customers' interests first, that he is the first one to come to work everyday, that a shy man like him came out of the closet - if this is not legendary, I don't know what is. They don't make men like him, anymore.
Bill Gates is the real deal. He made coding sexy, and nerds Greek Gods. He also made personal computers mainstream, and capitalism look benign. In a world that celebrates multi-tasking, he is known to be a serial obsessor. His ability to focus on one task, persistence and discipline are the qualities every entrepreneur needs. From personal computing to eradicating malaria, this man has done it all.
What can I possibly write about Travis Kalanick - he is all things right in my dictionary. He challenged the status quo, showed us the future of transportation industry (which in my humble view was long due to be disrupted), broke the norms with absolute elegance and brashness. He is the hero the world needs, if only he knew how to apply a little brake. And, while we are at it, we all can use at least 2gms of his looks!
Let me come out clean - I am not a fan of Elon Musk's technical prowess. Either I am too ignorant to understand the genius or he has been faltering on his lofty promises for far too long. In all likelihood, it is the former. But, one skill he has really aced is - marketing. The man writes one cryptic tweet, and all the media houses go gung-ho. Shy or otherwise, every entrepreneur can use Musk shaped aura.
