Kanpur - A city of many resources but politically neglected

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Life of a Entrepreneur -- It happen daily.

Life of a Entrepreneur from his eyes and from world eyes.

From what world see:
"Oh my god, he is a owner of a company, f****ng awesome, he must be so rich". These are the lines which some time even i say and most of the people say. "He must be having a good life", "what he do, just sign some documents, make some plans, order some execution and he is making millions". This is what people think who don't have any idea of life of a businessman or entrepreneur.  

From What Employees think:
This is what some of the employees think who joined company after 2-3 years when it was founded - "bullshit, we keep on doing all work and he keep on making money, why should i work of my a**, i will work for 8 hours only(well this doesn't happen always)". 

This is what happen in reality:
Night 
Ok, Sales planning for North done, need to assign some more elaborated task to Mr.X, Oh, have to call Mr.Y tomorrow and talk to him regarding our sales agenda over there. Need to complete that code review(this is what happen with tech based start-up even though they had raised seed rounds), Oh have a meeting with marketing manager too. Need to finalize agenda for our next marketing campaign on facebook and linkedin. "phone rings and sound come from other side - when are you coming(Family call- wife on high tone), on my way- he says". And then one more things strikes in mind, have to talk  to CA too, need to clear some taxes. And then leaves for home.

In home after dinner
Wife say "i need to go to my home tomorrow for a function, you need to come with me" and you cannot say anything. Open laptop and start replying to mail's in your inbox and its not 4-5 mails, its like 20-30 mails and you cannot neglect(you already refined). And then come the code review and as all software engineers, it takes a hell lot of patience. And then when your code review is done, you need to do your part on technology side. And when this is done, you start lining up tasks for the next day and what is the time now - 4 a.m in the morning.

Next morning 
You wake up and the first thing you do is check your mail box on phone. Its already late and you start leaving for office and here come the PM of home, "what are you leaving for office, what about function" and you cannot say anything apart from "sorry" and some time it work and some time it not(although this is not always true, you partner need to understand you and when she does, you life become a bit more simpler). You reach office and here they are, ready for another meeting, every one, your sales manager, your marketing manager and in between you HR might also tell you that you have to take final round of interview. What?

Afternoon 
You need to look around the finance figures(cash flow i think is one of the important aspects from which no founder/co-founder can run away) and find out did we still have runway for 6-7 month. In the mean time, some thing strikes in your mind that you have to plan to meet a VC for next round of funding. 

Evening
And in the evening, you start working on your stuff that you love to do apart from many other things that you are required to do and again the same routine start, making strategy for the next day, building plans to increase the sales and cash flow in the company , looking after a dream to make your start-up successful and their to-do list never end.



Reality is for a entrepreneur, weekends, holidays means nothing, what means for him is his/her start-up growth. Absolutely, if he/she succeed, he/she get reward in terms of appreciation from every one in the industry, money in terms of salary and equity in the company and a personal satisfaction that he is able to build something from scrap but at the same time, if his/her start-up don't succeed, he/she is the one who has to suffer a great loss, but again, being a entrepreneur they learn a lesson from their failure and again start from the very beginning.

In total, everyday, every hour of entrepreneur is full of struggle , challenges, victories and failures and that is what make them worthy of getting the greatest price of success and learning(failure means learning for them).