The treasure hunt analogy
Imagine you’re staring at a huge field of barren land and there’s treasure buried somewhere. There are two crews with shovels, both of them are looking for the same treasure.
Now one crew decides on a strategy where they look under a rock, dig a little, and if they don’t think they’re going to find anything move on to the next rock. After all there’s a lot of ground to be covered, and very limited time and resources. Lara Croft is on her way and they’d rather get adopted by than compete with her. The other crew tries a different strategy. They look for clues on the surface, pick a spot, and decide to keep digging and digging till there’s absolutely no doubt that there’s something (or nothing) there.
The emotional ride of both these crews is different. Digging a fresh spot every time is a new dose of excitement, and not digging too deep makes it easier to move on. For the other crew, the deeper they go, the more anxious they get because they’re nearing the end, and they still haven’t found something. Sure, it doesn’t have to be all work no play for these guys. They all have a few drinks, share tales of their adventures at night, maybe have a Mexican stand-off or two to make things interesting. Regardless, the second crew will have a harder time giving up and moving on to a new spot. “We’ve dug so deep, might as well go a little more before starting over.”
Ok, I think you see where I’m headed, but I’ll finish this analogy anyway. To you, looking at this field from a distance, the first crew definitely looks like it has more ground covered. You can’t even see the other crew, buried deep in one of their holes, maybe their first one. No prizes for guessing which crew has a higher likelihood of getting featured on TreasureCrunch.
However, there’s no way to tell if one crew is going to win. Maybe the treasure wasn’t very deep, maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t all at one place. Maybe there is no treasure, the clues were wrong, and both crews have to go home empty handed. Who knows. One thing is clear though, if one crew finds it, their strategy will be hailed in the leading Treasure Hunt media as THE strategy to follow. Books will be written, workshops will be held. It is always simple to explain why someone succeeded or failed in hindsight.
As a crew leader, picking one strategy over the other is really hard. But what is even harder is to avoid second-guessing the strategy after you’ve dug for a while. It is important to enjoy the adventure, make merry when you can, and believe that nobody knows how it is going to play out, until after it happens. It doesn’t matter what the books, blogs and past treasure winners say; if they agree with your strategy you will feel good about the validation, if they don’t then denial is your best friend.
At least that’s what I’ve come to believe.
P.S. “If you’re looking for treasure, you can either look under every rock or find a spot and dig deep”. That’s what one of my best friends said a year ago during a night of heavy drinking and philosophizing. This is a sober expansion of that.
CC Photo from nitraglicerina on Flickr
I talk to these founders with these big ideas, and they jump from the problem they’re solving to who they’re going to be or what they’re going to get. I hear ‘It’s going to be a billion dollar company’ and I have this switch in my head that slowly shuts off. Because they’re jumping to the effect. You have to be the cause…If you want to be Mark Zuckerberg the best you’re going to be is second place. Because Mark Zuckerberg will always be a better Mark Zuckerberg than you.
IITians can play with start-ups & get jobs too
The article says (emphasis mine):
The Indian Institute of Technology at Powai has hit upon an idea to boost the spirit of entrepreneurship among its students. Its placement cell is weighing the option of helping students, whose start-ups have not taken off, to be placed in jobs after two years of experimenting with their ideas.
As part of the scheme, students keen on their own start-ups will be assigned mentors after graduating. These experts-either people who have successfully floated their own companies or those with enough exposure to new businesses-will evaluate their ideas to see if there’s any potential.
Once the ideas are approved, students can float their own companies. After two years, if a start-up fails to take off, the student-entrepreneur can participate in the regular placement process and get a job.
Now normally I don’t believe anything reported in TOI, but for the sake of discussion let’s assume this one draws from interviews with officials in IIT Mumbai.
This is the sort of material that basically drives me to a rant, but in this case I’ll mellow down and just list all the assumptions they seem to make:
- IIT graduates need the help of placement cells to find jobs even two years after graduating (corollary: if you’re a student entrepreneur you have zero learning and zero network at the end of two years of trying to build a company).
- The assurance of access to the campus placement process would boost the spirit of entrepreneurship among these students (corollary: promising students jobs on a platter with zero effort would give them the necessary risk taking ability to launch startups).
- Companies don’t want to hire students if they’ve spent a couple of years working on their own ideas.
- Student startups are hardly serious (notice the use of “play”, “experiment”, “float” and such terms in the article, though it could be more a TOI thing than IIT).
- Startup ideas need evaluation by and approval of college-assigned mentors before a student can start a company.
Finally, a professor in-charge of placement says:
“Very few start-up ideas on the campus turn out to be successful ventures.Often, many good ideas are not commercially viable. So, students are apprehensive about floating their ideas.”
The reason why college incubators don’t churn out winners is not because the ideas are bad. Some actual reasons are explored in this old Business World article, which include academia-industry disconnect and excessive hand-holding among others.
To students who find this relevant - please talk to people outside your campus to get a real perspective.
P.S. From the comments it seems this model is being copied from IIMs. Really? I had no idea.
P.P.S: Discuss on HSI.
Some days entrepreneurship seems like a lifestyle. Some days it feels like the result of a carefully crafted process. But what you also need to change the world no one can teach you: brains, ambition, computer science and the occasional middle finger.
There are two kinds of people in the world
Whether you take the original French meaning of the term (“one who undertakes”) or the German version (unternehmergeist - fiery soul or spirit) or a more mainstream contemporary interpretation, someone who places a bet in a game mixed with skill and chance is not an entrepreneur. No matter how big they win. They’re probably somewhere between a lucky schmuck and a professional gambler. Not an entrepreneur.
Some strong comments on this post. In any case, you should read it if you haven’t.
The state of our college incubators
This post is based on my interviews with Smita of Business World magazine for this article: Entrepreneurship LIMITED.
Entrepreneurship Development Cells (EDC) and incubators in certain colleges in India are part of the many programmes of our government which have a good intent but bad execution.
I was asked why I didn’t consider incubating Radbox at the IIT Roorkee (I’m an alumnus) incubation center. That’s like asking me why I didn’t do an MBA. The right question should be why consider incubation (or why do an MBA).
Here’s what I think of the state of EDC or E-cells as they’re popularly known.
Isolation
My friend Pinaki has been quoted in the article saying the same thing - startups need to be where there is market, talent, and entrepreneurial activity (not necessarily in that order). College campuses are quite insulated pockets, more so in a small town like Roorkee. This is exactly why many startups die once they’re out of incubators.
Lack of guidance
I believe that the right guidance to any startup can come only from individuals who have closely been involved in a startup (mostly founders). Faculty and staff at EDCs are not simply not qualified for the job (the article regrettably misquotes me as saying they are not committed, which has a different meaning altogether). The best guidance can come from senior startup folks in the same incubation center, where they can pass some of their learnings and network to the new entrepreneurs.
Moreover, students involved in the entrepreneurship cells rarely have the true picture of what a startup involves, and at best they can call speakers and hold workshops to spread some awareness about it.
Cultural mismatch
The whole educational system (regardless of whether it is IIT/IIM or tier-two colleges) understands and promotes the pattern where a student attends all classes, does his/her homework assignments, gets good grades in exams and gets placed in one of the well-known firms visiting campus. Any student who chooses to go against this pattern, trying to build something of his own which could be later commercialized, will have to face all sorts of hurdles. It would start with an official letter of short-attendance sent out to parents, and even end with an F grade. (I could go on forever, but you get the picture).
There are some advantages of incubators - cheap real estate (for those who need it) and branding (if you can take advantage of it).
The comparison to Stanford and MIT incubators is like comparing apples to oranges. The values that drive our education system are quite different, even contradictory, to that of these colleges. In India there’s hardly any industry connect, there’s a lot of bogus and useless research and campus placements are the ultimate objective for most of our students (I believe there are no campus placements in the MITs of the west, at least not in the way they are here).
The only hope for rise of startup culture in colleges is that groups of students take it upon themselves to solve tough technical problems, and strive to convert their solutions into startups rather than publications/grades/resume enhancers. Till that happens, incubators can do nothing.
If you are or want to incubate a startup in such cells, my advice is to talk to as many entrepreneurs, competitors and potential consumers of your product/service you can. And leverage your alumni network as much as you can. It really helps. (My seniors rock, seriously).
Image courtesy: Frodrig on Flickr.
P.S. I am all praise for Smita/BW because I know she/they spent weeks, if not months, doing a very thorough research for this article. Given the current state of our media, this is laudable.
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Standford.
