Top 10 mistakes I made as an entrepreneur
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This presentation outlines my talk at Northeastern University regarding the top 10 mistakes I made as an entrepreneur. Hopefully you won't make these either!
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Top 10 mistakes I made as an entrepreneur
- 1. My top 10 failures as an entrepreneur Chirag Kulkarni CEO of C&M Group @cgkulks
- 2. 1. Hiring Partnering with the wrong people IVY, STR, Op , FS=Mi,
- 3. 2. Solving my own problems Buldcom, SLea
- 4. 3. Selling vs. Value SSS C, Iph, BMW, CM
- 5. 4. Slow Execution RH, CK W, C&M NU, WP
- 6. 5. Not getting feedback Bas, Pie, No C&M, DEY
- 7. 6. Fear of Failure BC
- 8. 7. Forgoing written documents STR, Shak, Ide
- 9. 8. Working Hard vs. Smart Wo, PSA, T, Da
- 10. 9. Not networking and building a brand C, ST, M = C, BD
- 11. 10. Fear of asking the stupid questions I, Ch,
- 12. +1 Talking without getting Started
- 13. Follow me online Have Questions? Contact me! Chirag Kulkarni (913) 485-8172 chirag@chiragkulkarni.com Chiragkulkarni.com
Editor's Notes
- I have had quite a long journey with hiring and firing individuals. The biggest problem is I was looking at the wrong things when hiring people. For example, one huge factor I would look at is whether they were Ivy league educated, whether they were “smart’ whatever that meant, or there overall coolness. Funny enough, the last thing I would consider is whether they would be diligent, aggressive, and persistent. Another thing you want to look for is people who are opposites. For example, when I started my first company STR, my cofounder was also a business guy. What good was that? Even though it wasn’t a highly technical company, we didn’t understand nor leveraged things such as social media, content marketing, or any form of web based advertising, mainly because we had no clue how it would work (keep in mind, we were also 15). Another issue – one of my teams I am advising is a team full of designers, and people that are technical, and unfortunately, they have no clue about the business side. Especially with a room full of people that are business people, learn to pick opposites. Make sure that the business partners you are working with are stable financially. One of my business partners had a kid, wanted to get married, and additionally, wanted to have another kid, all in the same year we were starting a business. With a room full of business people, try building skillsets that are the opposite of what you are strong at. For example, if you are a marketer, try focusing on learning to code so when someone says “hey, this is going to cost 6 figures, and is going to take 9 months to accomplish”. Be sure you know what's going on. More importantly, when you are cash strapped, you can do things internally, meaning you don’t need to pay people when you don’t have money/
- Life is way to short to build companies that are only solving a small market, or that too, don’t really have an affect on a large audience or people of quantity. For example, I went to go build this company called SoLead which was a software platform similar to a company called Radian6. I was so excited that I reached out to hundreds of venture capitalists, and was looking to build out this world class application, which essentially would give companies the opportunity for a company to find and acquire dissatisfied customers using social media tactics and metrics. The biggest thing I learned is that even though this is a problem that I experienced, it wasn’t something that was a universal problem, meaning, I essentially was wasting my time building a product for a company that wasn’t really necessary in the market at the time.
- How many people here are interested in sales? Funny enough, I consider myself to be more of a sales, marketing, and business development expert than anything else, for that matter, I was so used to selling, selling, and selling. Lets take an example. Lets say I want to sell you this iPhone. There are two ways we can go about selling the product. The first one is me directly telling you to buy, buy, and buy. Frankly speaking, that method is not the most effective method to sell, mainly because you as the customer are not looking to be sold to! But are looking for a relationship. Lets think back to the last time somebody went to go and buy a car. How many times did a carsalesmen ask you to provide value?! In fact, that never happens, usually they are trying to discover you, and immediately sell. I have a friend named Brad who is one of the best salesmen, and he told me that selling is not actually selling, but delivering the most value possible! So, instead of telling you BUY BUY BUY we try to kill you with kindness. At C&M, we do that by providing as much value as possible through our company’s blog, by using something called content marketing. Most of you know, I am a huge blogger, along with tweeter. We use our blogs as a way to reach to our almost 50,000 followers and family within C&M Group, and drive that traffic back to our website, where a percentage of customers of people become buyers of the product.
- Rolling out product too slow Time is NOT on your side Realize that whatever you role out will more than likely not be perfect, and you will more than likely change the overall design, features, and almost everything Many companies we work with are so concerned about “Having the right product launch” when I say you will never have the RIGHT product launch. Continue to iterate based on your customers needs. For example, Reid Hoffmann, who is the co-founder of company’s such as LinkedIn and PayPal and currently an investor says that “If you are not embarrased by your first product, you launched too late” Ex. - Chirag Kulkarni website Ex 2.- C&M Group website = using the Northeastern network to get people to see where they would click. Ex 3- Warby Parker, the eye glass company, used what I call PDF A/B testing to discover where people would click and what they would do.
- I was always stubborn. When I was younger, in detroit I used to play for a pretty rough and tough basketball team. I was the only Iindian, and funny enough, my dad would tell me that he hated watching me, mainly because I was not very good, at all. Every time I would come home, my dad would be like “Chirag, stop standing underneath the basket, you are never going to get the rebound” and I would always be like “Shutup dad, what do you know anyways”. Interestingly, I never got an rebounds, unless the ball would go into the hoop. This stubbornness is what will ultimately slow you down as an entrepreneur because you will never know what you could be doing better. This is the scariest part, mainly because you will never improve if you are not criticized. Ex. Pierre – asked me to help him with his co-op interviews so that he could be better at interviewing when it came time for co-op. When he first started out, he was absolutely horrendous. But that didn’t stop him. He kept asking himself “what can I do to become better”. That relentless attitude to strive for betterment wont just help you as an entrepreneur, but will help you as an entrepreneur. Similarly, if you here the word “No” always go through and understand why the person says no. Honestly, I would like to say we win every deal that we do, but in reality we do not. For this reason, and for the betterment of myself, I have to always keep asking “what could we do better next time?” When I pitched to venture capitalists they kept saying “we cannot fund it”. When you are put in a situation like that, you need to ask what can be done so we can turn that no into a yes. People love it, and it shows that you are willing to improve. Don’t expect a yes right after you ask for feedback, but I can guarantee that if you go back to the drawing board and tweak what you did wrong, and figure out what you can do better, you will be a closer to a yes.
- Everyone is afraid of failure. Some of the best entrepreneurs I have ever met are extremely fearless. One of my favorite stories to tell is of Barbara Conrcoran, who is a Shark on ABC”s Shark Tank. She talks about how she was called to be a shark by Mark Burnett, and she was extremely excited, but then Mark called back and told her that they decided to choose someone else instead. She typed out an email that mentioned all of her failures, and how she has overcome them. Some of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make can turn out to be the biggest successes. - A startups life is never constant, and realizing that you will always have ups and downs is important, because the goal is to make sure that the down moments eventually get turned into successes, such as Barbara’s instance.
- Written documents are a NECCESITY most startups forget completely about these, especially because they are so busy with life. Founders are doing everything under the moon, and it is important to make sure this is clear and set in stone. Ex. 1 STR story Shake law is a great app to write up documents, absolutely for Free On the flip side, don’t be too concerned with writing up NDA’s, especially if you are telling your idea. The reality is, ideas are a dime in dozen, and the execution of them is what counts the most.
- You need to work hard bottom line Doing work that is generating revenues, making your employees and customers happy, or marketing efforts. May include busy work, but make sure that you distinguish between necessary and unnecessary work. Ex. PSAT – If I am not as good as everyone or when I lack in talent, I am willing to work even harder than someone to beat them to the punch. Take this approach back to the classroom. Personally, I am not the best at the hard sciences, because of the extent of memorization. All of my friends could just memorize things, and regurgitate the info. I realized I needed to spend twice the time that everyone else had to, but at the end of the day, I am competitive enough that I will be as good. Everyone has their talents, but bottom line, you have to work extremely hard. For example, my parents, coming to the US was a big deal. My mom and Dad are both big academics, Dad more so, but one thing my dad used to do, especially for the PSAT was throw water on my face and I would take so many SAT exams because he told me I had the potential to come to a good university, just like all of you. I learned the importance of hard work through him.
- Don’t just sit and home and build a company. Building compaines can be a lonesome process. For example, I am apart of many groups focused on just entrepreneurs. Go to conferences and get out there and meet people that are doing it right and wrong. Learn to give back in the process. STR, no online presence, built the entire company, without doing any of the things I mentioned previously. Worked out well, but in the process, I lacked a lot of the network I could have had. Find mentors to propel you forward. They DON’T HAVE TO BE ENTREPRENEURS. One of my mentors is Charlie Bame-Aldred. That man continues to teach me so much about life. I’ll never forget when I ran up to his office and told him I wanted to incorporate in Nevada, because I can forgo taxes. He looks at me, and says, “why would you do that?” Another is Bob Lentz. Bob is a serial entrepreneur and has started so many companies in the past. Create strong biz dev relationships. A great ex of this is Rackspace a company out of Texas. Almost 40% of their revenues come from biz dev relationships. C&M Group is partners with them.
- -Don’t just talk about starting up, get started. Build your network, and get out there. There are many people there to support you but ultimately, learning and failing fast is what is going to propell you forward.