We people in startup world has firmly believe doing startup is like putting yourself in baby cycle ::
Being pregnant (Ideation) → Deliver the baby (Build MVP) → Grow the baby till self sustainable stage (Enhance & build to product)
I had experience and day by day my pointers are increasing, Few of us can resemble with it 🙂
- This is not one day job
You can’t do all babysitting task and make baby in self sustainable stage at day one, it is long marathon and you have to increase your endurance so you can do same activities again and again on daily basis. Same in startup you can’t build startup in single day…. Both activities need: Patience, Endurance, Focus
- You can’t always rush to doctor/expert
Sometime you feel baby is not well and you start panic and rush for advice from doctor but most of time this not work because taking expert advice is expensive business and you can’t do for every small issue and some time it is not very useful. So we need to solve our own problems.
- We don’t have clue… what should i do now?
Sometime baby keeps crying and we don’t have any clue about the problem forgot about to deal with it. We should try to keep engaged with the baby, We should try to make her comfortable and once she is comfortable then we can able to think next step of action.
Same kind of problems come in startups.. things are not working as desired and we don’t know where is the GAP. i would suggest keep engaged with customer, prospect and employee and once we get small light in dark move to that direction.
- Keep talking, Keep talking
I started talking with my baby from day one like other parents but she never respond on initial days, how could i expect response from her in initial days but i keep talking and keep talking, finally that day came when she started giving response and i thrilled on that day. i started to get those thrilled days repeatedly like first smile, more response from her, first sound of her, first step of her and so on….
Same in startup you never get response from day one but keep working and keep talking and one day we will realise, we are getting response from customer, media, investors etc and each day are more thrilled… So keep working keep talking 🙂
- You never set your KRA’s:
Being father i never set my KRA, i am ready to do all stuff from feeding to cleaning her and this is the beauty of role… you don’t have any fixed job description, each time new challenge and you have to deal with it. Sometime i didn’t able perform best after given my best effort but my wife never questions on it and keep motivate me, She always appreciate for the effort.
Same in startup people never mind to take extra responsibilities and sometime you can’t get best output but people appreciate for the effort and extra miles which you travel.
I always believe “There is always space for improvement ”
- You are kind to other parents/founder
We are kind and supportive with other parents, we listen to them about their problems & we share solutions. We share our experience and journey so far like challenges or life hack. We also take their advice. we never mind if any parents break the queue due to his crying baby because we are able to feel the pain because We are sharing same boat.
We should also do this in startups world, we should kind and supportive with other startup founders irrespective of stage and scale of startups and experience of founder/co-founder. Share experience, challenges & life hack
- We are not superman
We realised sooner or later we & our spouse are not superman or wonder woman and we need helping hands to take care baby like relatives & friend or Babysitter ( Initial hire)
In startups we also need to do same because we don’t know all things so we should ask relevant people to help & join and build strong core team and align their aspiration with company’s goals
- We can’t compare our baby with Sharma ji’s baby
Sometimes people start comparing their baby with other babies but this is not the right thing. Each baby is different in every aspect like growth, smile, etc. you can’t compare with other babies and put yourself or her in the race.
Every startups is different and we can’t compare each other, if we do it then we always in unpleasant stage where we are trying our fish to climb the tree 🙂
Everyone has own experience as parents or founder and there are many points where you can agree or disagree with me but this is just an experience. i love to get your views even it criticism 🙂