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What I got from the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN.

I started this journey with a jolt this January, when I got laid off from my job as a Manager at a big MNC. In the notice period, they did offer me many other roles, one of which got finalized and was about to accept, but something in me kept telling me to use this opportunity to fulfill the startup dream that I was dreaming for a long  time.

First there is a bit of flashback. I came from humble background and during final  stages of engineering had to sustain myself and to get enough money to come to Bangalore. It is during those days I got hold of telephone coin box ads and became a reseller of them in the remote region of Karnataka. Within few months I made enough money to get through engineering and landed up in Bangalore. While the journey in software industry has been great and it provided me a huge exposure, I have often wondered what would have happened, if I had pursued the coin box business. That is the reason; I never brought EMI obligations on myself and kept myself relatively free to startup.

So I quickly connected with a friend with whom I shared a common passion of fitness. Started working on a software product (SaaS) idea for gyms. Our plan was to spend a year building the product and see where it goes. So in a way not a great plan. That is when I heard about the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN from iSPIRT and duly signed up.

In the hindsight it was one of the best decisions I took. The program itself was great, I learned a lot, but I was struggling in the class and didn’t/couldn’t complete many tasks specially ones focusing on the customer specs  and asks. Meanwhile things unraveled with my co-founder as well and I realized  that he isn’t ready to quit the job and we parted ways in a civil way. With things  back to square one I started thinking very hard about the whole thing. Everyone in  the batch from anchors (Prasanna, Rajan and Manjula) to fellow batch mates was trying to get me back on the trail.

Finally a hard, blunt discussion with Milindh a fellow batch-mate who asked me really hard questions made me wake up and I started applying the fundamentals that the boot camp tries to focus on.

First one was “What I know, who I know what I have”. I realized building software product with high-end technology is not my strong point and my biggest skill is selling things to folks. My telephone coin box experience was a good memory and  data point for this.

Second was the “bird in the hand principle”. I realized that while the gym software is a viable product, I didn’t really have the money until the product is ready which  could take months and will burn lot of money without a technology person on  board. My “affordable loss” at this time was only the opportunity cost and not  anything more.

So at around 9th week of the program (it is a 10 week program and I didn’t graduate), I simply decided to drop the idea and went back to the drawing board. I realized one of the problems that I was constantly facing was getting a water can delivered to home. There are just too many delays and multiple folks to call to get it  delivered. Most were unorganized and tracking them was very hard. I realized I  could potentially make this process simple smooth and efficient. What’s more? This could be a cash generating business very quickly.

Armed with this theory, I literally hit the road on my two-wheeler, chased down the water delivery guys, met factory folks and many corporates. It was an immense and  exhausting field research but the amount of real data I had convinced me that I am  on the right path, so I sat down and set up a website (www.bookacan.com) and started delivering to my first few customers. There is huge “co-creation” happening  with delivery guys and factories. I am happy to announce I have a steady business  now and lot of new things in the plan.

While I understand it is a long journey before I call it a success, I am happy that I  reached the clarity needed and am up and running. Please check my project at www.bookacan.com and drop me a line if you are interested in collaborating and co-creating.

Contributed by Prabhu Stavarmath, BookACan

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#ArthaSiddhi: Imparting life skills and effectual skills to pre-entrepreneurs…

2 week back, Rohan, Madhav, Milind and I graduated successfully from a first of a kind program, called ‘ArthaSiddhi’. This activity based program was conceived with the intent of imparting life skills to pre-entrepreneurs. The objectives of the program were to get participants to understand what it would take for them to embark on the entrepreneurial journey. Further, through various activities along the course, the capabilities of participants were assessed against the necessary and sufficient entrepreneurial skills that are required to start up.

Manjula, Prasanna and Rajan, the iSPIRT anchors of this program co-created these sessions under the guidance of Prof. Saras Sarasvathy. The course was designed based on the principles of effectuation, which is a way of thinking, discovered through scientific research, used by expert entrepreneurs to build successful ventures.

This program was very different and effective from the many offerings and public information that exists related to pre-entrepreneurship. This program was about participants getting aware about the process of entrepreneurship and intrinsic skills that would help entrepreneurs navigate the difficult situations. There was accelerated learning on many aspects of entrepreneurship, the key ones are highlighted below:

Examination of the behavioral side of yourself – to assess your readiness to take the entrepreneurial plunge

The first session of this program began by asking the participants to obtain INR 1000 from a third party, by convincing that person to support the participant on their entrepreneurial journey. This exercise led to discovery of one’s abilities and inhibitions as participants reported of different experiences in their attempts to complete this activity. The effectual principle of bird-in-hand was explained at this juncture, enabling the participants to discover who they are, what they know and whom they know.

Madhav, one of the successful graduates says that when you are asked to raise money from strangers whom you don’t know, when you attempt asking them and when you actually ask – all these chain of events provide a very different experiential insight about you as a person, which you have never realized. It makes you look back into you as a person (character), help you identify, acknowledge and mold your outlook as per your need. It was just the challenge of experiencing uncertainty and trying to cope with it. He further states that this course has helped in various explicit areas as well many more implicit areas which he probably don’t even realize now. Many of the times learning are just imbibed without we actually realizing it. This has changed me as person and my approach towards any of the activity.

Milind, a serial entrepreneur and another successful graduate of the program says that he had thought that he was a failure and had lost hope, when one of his startups did not work as he planned. However, on account of this training for the emotional part of being an entrepreneur, he got time to delve on understanding who I am, what am I bringing on the table and what more needs to happen.

Rohan feels that regular, small wins help keep the morale and build momentum. As a part of the group, it feels amazing to share a win and equally motivating to see anyone else achieve a win. He says that this sort of interaction really generates a lot of positive energy and brings momentum to one’s own tasks.

Key facts about this program

How will this help?

Through this course, the effectual way of working will be imbibed in practice rather than just theorizing the concepts. It will help participants to make the ‘asks’ much easily than what it would have taken to do so otherwise. The format of the course, where multiple smaller goals with targets being set and working towards it even when you are not sure of the actual final targeted goal is something very unique. This will help in realizing that entrepreneurship is not as cool thing as is thought from outside.

Who should attend this program?

Any person interested to consider entrepreneurship as a career option is most welcome. Those who are considering to start up or those who are in early stages of setting up their startups will benefit the most. However, there are a few takeaways on effectual decision making for the late stage entrepreneurs too.

The other key aspect that is unique in this program is about the heterogeneity of participants. There were college kids just completing their education and wanting to startup at one end, while at the other end, there were entrepreneurs who had done a series of startups, both successful and unsuccessful. A lot of participants were in between these two extremes.

Since many of the participants were at different phases of their entrepreneurship journey, the experiences with respect to problems, approaches, learning, solutions, etc. make us more informed about the new possibilities which awaits us with respect to limitations as well as possibilities.

What were the outcomes from this program?

Here is what some of the participants had to say as their key takeaways from the 10 week program:

  • Gave me a great understanding of the concept of affordable loss and also the courage to be an ASK person.
  • As kids asking came naturally but somewhere down the education and corporate job, we forget how to do that. Learning to ask and getting commitment which every entrepreneur needs to be able to do is now slowly happening.
  • Typically I used to manage multiple activity and keep trying in a very haphazard way. This program has taught me how to find the few relevant activity in a very analytical manner and then focus.
  • It has brought in more clarity on how to go about the entrepreneurial tasks, and how to interpret signals from others (potential customers, other stakeholders) and use them to your advantage in an effectual way.
  • I would say the ASK framework provided me with a profound understanding of what happened with me since the past year – and how I should be prepared going forward. This insight and preparedness to pursue entrepreneurship is what I think this program helped me with, which I would not have thought or would have learnt it the hard way otherwise.
  • Definitely helped to apply the effectual principles. Concepts like affordable loss and co-creation are very easy to read but discussing different contexts in which you apply in real life are making a big difference. I did not buy into the effectual principle before (probably due to an mba !) but hope to become a practitioner.

If you or any of your acquaintances you know can benefit from the above program, please suggest/refer them to the second batch that is about to begin shortly. Please sign up using the link:   http://goo.gl/forms/qK2qRl4kRG

Follow what the anchors of this program had to say about us at: https://pn.ispirt.in/kicking-off-the-second-edition-of-pre-entrepreneur-boot-camp-arthasiddhi/ and https://pn.ispirt.in/launching-ispirt-pre-entrepreneur-program/

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Kicking off the Second Edition of Pre-Entrepreneur boot camp #ArthaSiddhi

So for all the folks who were eagerly waiting for the second edition (there were few who sent us requests through email and twitter), your opportunity is here. (For new folks take a look at this blog post to get some context)

There is lot of media hype around entrepreneurship now.  It had been dramatized, sensationalist and devoid of some key facts. This can be quite confusing to folks and can mislead folks into making a wrong decision. This bootcamp is aimed at looking at the realities of entrepreneurship minus the drama and focus on what happens inside an Entrepreneur’s head. It focusses on getting the clarity and leads them away from the predictions, projections and the hype. Listen to one of the testimonials from Rohan who is amongst the first one to graduate

We (Prasanna, Rajan, and I) had great fun anchoring this program and designing models for scalability and co-creating the program with ten incredibly smart folks.  This program, started as an experiment after many IVC (Idli Vada Coffee) discussions with Sharad and Prof. Saras, has taken quite a good shape now.

Before you sign up though, please consider the following;

  • This is not a passive listening program. Participants are expected to complete tough tasks that push them out of comfort zones. In first batch the completion/graduation percentage is only 33%.
  • Please plan for in-person sync up sessions of 2-3hrs a week, over 10 weeks on Sundays/Saturdays.
  • The program is targeted at folks who are serious about a idea/domain that they would like to start-up. Ideal participant is a person who would start-up within a month or two of the completion of this program, or is running a serious business on the side.
  • The selection process depends on who you are and your motivation amongst other things (Acceptance last time has been around 25%), so take care of filling the form in detail.

The program starts mid August; Please signup using this link http://goo.gl/forms/qK2qRl4kRG

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Launching iSPIRT pre-entrepreneur Program

The clichéd but very apt picture provides the context for this program.

Pre-Entre-programThe media shrill is at peak right now about entrepreneurship and many are jumping headlong into it armed with in depth technology, product management and sales skills. While there is considerable information available on the tangible skills, one of the key skills is self-management and ability to deal with incredible amount of uncertainty, indecisiveness, FOMO, self doubt and various other critical but often ignored aspects. Most are also not exposed to this intensity in their normal corporate existence.

Few folks in iSPIRT have been dwelling on this and with a happy coincidence of many events have come up with a program to address this need. We’re piloting an iSPIRT pre-entrepreneurial program to sketch a path for builders/makers who want to startup, including resources, exercises, and activities that strengthens them for their entrepreneurial marathon. Bringing in the principles of effectuation, developed through observing 45 expert entrepreneurs who have at least 15 years of entrepreneurship. Effectuation puts the entrepreneur as the agent of change, owner of their destiny, and helps them create the future rather than predict it.

The program itself will be a journey through market and personal challenges that a founder must go through when they do a startup. Those going through this program will get tips from experienced entrepreneurs in the Indian ecosystem, frameworks to develop their own products/startups, and a support system through the entrepreneurial journey.

The program will include effectual entrepreneurship and skill-building. This will be a 10 weekend workshop, with 90 minutes per week. The workshop is tentatively scheduled for mid April.

If you know someone who

  1. wants to startup soon
  2. wants to learn the challenges and difficulties of doing a startup
  3. wants a peer group that can help them through the journey
  4. is open to learning about and changing themselves
  5. And wants to co-create this program with iSPIRT,

Please nominate yourselves (or them) here