What I learnt in 10 years as an entrepreneur

Past 11 years at MeGo changed my life. After coming back to India from US in search of becoming an entrepreneur, I definitely found more than what I was expecting. Now, when I am moving on from MeGo to start a new journey, I thought I could pen down some of my learnings here.

I found that the journey of entrepreneurship is not as romantic as they say. But it is definitely more fulfilling and more rewarding than what I had imagined!

You find support in places, people and situations you never expect. You also experience let-downs and betrayals from corners, which you thought were your safe places. But the thing I learnt is you should believe in yourself and keep powering through.

I found that failure is the norm, at least in the initial few years, but it is also a ladder, to success. Continuous struggle pulls you down, you suffer, but if you keep trying, it keeps making you stronger.

I found that the journey of an entrepreneur is a continuously changing one and also quite exploratory. There is absolutely no room for any comfort zone. I learnt that the best way to manage the uncertainty, is to make friends with it, embrace it.

I had thought that entrepreneurship is about taking big risks. But I found that it is more important to know when to take the right risks and when not to take the wrong risks.

I had thought that as an entrepreneur, you being the leader, can shape the life of so many people, your employees. It is true no doubt, but it is only half the story. Your employees, subordinates and colleagues also shape your life, as an entrepreneur. They shape your life when they work exceedingly hard for you, day-in day-out, to solve difficult problems for you; when they stand with the company during tougher times; when they reject better offers from outside to keep working with you; all because they believe in something and that they have seen that something in you.

"Entrepreneurship is about passion, not money", was what I had read, heard, but what I found and experienced was there is really no passion without money. May not be true in very early stages, but steady and predictable cashflow is the most important thing after a startup starts hiring regularly. But later in my journey, I felt that money is just a tool. A very crucial tool, no doubt, but that's about it. More important for an entrepreneur is the driving force, or passion, something, which makes you push just that one bit harder than everyone else, everyday. Money comes and goes, passion stays with you as long as you believe!

What kind of entrepreneur are you? Are you good at spotting problems? Good at designing creative solutions? Good at managing people? Good at engineering / technical / scientific aspects? Good at selling? Good at administration? Good at jugaad? I found that in the entrepreneurial journey, at some point in time, one needs to find an answer to this question. As the company grows, people change, customers change, work changes and roles change. It is important that the entrepreneur keeps assuming the right role at the right time in the company. Being mindful of one's limitations is also extremely important, I found out. If not, unrealistic decisions are taken leading to disastrous consequences. Limitations could come from any aspect of life - one's professional skills & capabilities, geographic location, situations in personal & family life, anything. Being an entrepreneur is also about being in tune with one's life.

Lastly, I also found that entrepreneurship, or running your business, is only one part of your life. It need not be an all-consuming thing. I'd even go to the extent of saying that making it a life-consuming thing is not sustainable, at all! It is extremely important to make time for your family & friends, to go on vacations, to eat well, to exercise everyday and to sleep well. Hard-work doesn't guarantee entrepreneurial success, smart work does. For staying smart one needs to stay fresh, and of course stay alive!

Top comments (4)

Jasur Kurbanov • Feb 5 '23

Wow great share Hrushi. I have question. How you started ? Can you elaborate about your journey ?

Hrushi M • Feb 6 '23 • Edited

Sure @jasurkurbanov, here is a little detailed version:

After completing my master's in US, I wanted to go back to India (my home country) and start a company there. Fortunately, I was able to do so immediately after completing MS. A friend of mine and I had discussed about starting up together. After I went back, he promptly quit his job and we decided to take the plunge.
Both of us had absolutely no business backgrounds. Leave aside parents, nobody from our extended families even, had ever ventured into entrepreneurship. But we found support in our families, which definitely helps in an Indian setting. Around the same time, both of us also got married. Our wives were doing a steady job and that really helped as well.

I was the techie and my partner would handle other aspects. That was the deal between us. We felt that it is always a good idea to grow from our own revenue. That way we'd retain control over the operations for a longer time. So we had no option but to go the services way, as we didn't have enough money to incubate and develop a product idea. Some might disagree with this but those were our thoughts at that time.

When we started, neither of us was naturally good at selling. So getting good and lucrative projects in the first few years was really hard. So we focused on delivering exceptionally well at whatever work we were getting. Slowly but surely, it started paying off. We positioned ourselves as a small boutique firm with really good engineering capabilities, that delivers better than others on hand-picked projects. It took around 5 years for us to establish a reasonably good reputation.

In those 5 years, living below the means, was our survival strategy. We didn't have a swanky office, nor could we pay very high salaries to our employees. But still, we were able to retain really good developers, probably because the work that was given to them was always on the latest tech stacks. People always thought of us as a great company to kickstart / catapult their career, a company where you spend a couple of years of your career, and transform your career experience-wise.

When we were in the initial survival mode, there definitely were mental struggles I had to deal with from time-to-time. For instance, most of my classmates, even juniors, were earning a lot, going on expensive vacations, buying expensive things, and here I was, being as qualified as them, still struggling to make a good living from my own money. But two things helped. One, family support was rock solid and two, I genuinely believed that there is more to life than the lure of money. In my experience, when you are in your initial stages, it also becomes a little easier to rationalize your hardships, because you can tell yourself that it is still early in your journey and you can still make it.

Eventually, we began getting good clients, started getting retainers from even international clients, who were leaders in their respective markets. Our team got bigger and we achieved good and stable cashflow with steady growth. All of this with zero debt.

Then COVID hit, but to us, it didn't really matter. Our work structure & delivery processes were robust and in no time, we were fully functional being fully remote. In fact during the COVID, in terms of revenue, we grew more than 300 percent.

It is funny that when you are in survival mode, you can hardly spare any time to actively think about just yourself. You never get any bandwidth to ponder about your evolving wants and likes. You are so constantly engrossed in making ends meet that you can hardly spare a moment or two, only for yourself. You never realize the need of some space and time, where only you are in the spotlight, not your company, not your business partner, not your family.

I found out that after I transcended the survival mode, these things began to matter. I was always a creator, a problem solver, an engineer at heart and that is what I loved the most. As the services business grew, I realized I was doing less and less of that. Both to the client and to us, as a service provider, things became more commerce-driven than value or innovation-driven. I began spending more time in meetings on inconsequential issues than spending time on building something with value. I tried to deal with it, but a point came, when it really became an everyday stress-creator.

That was when, I really focused on myself, just myself. I realized that my wants and likings have evolved away from the software service industry. I am no longer enjoying the thriving business that I had started a decade ago. That was the plain brutal truth. The more I procrastinated from accepting it, the more time I was losing everyday.

So after months of thinking & mulling over it, I decided to exit. I won't say there weren't any insecurities. What will the clients say? What will happen to my reputation that I have cultivated so judiciously? What will happen to the company after I leave? It was very hard to predict how the world would take it and react to this. But I knew I had to do it. And I finally stepped down from the CEO post. And over the next few weeks gradually and completely exited from the business.

That is a glimpse in my journey as an entrepreneur so far. I am planning a fresh venture now, which is more aligned with me. The exit has given me a runway for a couple of years now, hopefully I'll be a little smarter this time :).