1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship

The Secret To Building a Successful Business

Premise: Manish Singhal is a founding Partner of pi Ventures. He is a veteran of 24 years in building hardware and software IP-oriented product companies, early stage investing, valuations, deal structuring and strategy advisory across different sectors. He is also a keen mentor of startups and has conducted many workshops in different parts of India to guide entrepreneurs on how to raise funds. On July 19th, Manish took time to answer questions from YourStory readers in their weekly section, ‘Conversations at YourStory’. The Million dollar question: In response to the question: “As a mentor to many, what advice do you have for budding […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship

3 Kinds of Complexities That Every Entrepreneur Should Be Ready For And How to Deal with them

Premise: One of the things that is as predictable as the fact that Sun will rise tomorrow morning from the East and set in the West in the evening is the fact that once a business gains momentum, complexity will creep into the business, which will then slowly stifle the very growth that led to the complexity. So, what can we do about it: One of the things that entrepreneurs can do about complexity is to expect it and plan for it in advance. In a fast growing business, there could be three kinds of complexity: Process or systems Business […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Ideas

Importance of Silence and Reflection in the Life of an Entrepreneur

Premise: We are living in a world where there are just too many demands on our attention as entrepreneurs. There is the internal chatter about our people, products, processes, etc. Then there is the external chatter of marketing, networking, selling and to top it all off, there is social media and NEWS (fake or otherwise). Add to this there is a huge movement about increasing productivity. Every other blog (at times, this one included) tries to gives us hacks that can help us increase our productivity. So, in this environment, it is quite natural for us to try to use all […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship

Timing And Entrepreneurs

Premise: One of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs who failed in their first attempt at starting and running their enterprise attribute their failure to is – Timing. They complain that their timing was wrong. They were much ahead of time. The users or customers were not mature enough to adopt their product or service. Some wanna be entrepreneurs use timing as their crutch. They are waiting for the right time to launch thier business. This is not the right time, the economy is not doing very well, or is doing too well. The timing is not really great from […]

Marketing

What could Tiffany’s Do?

Premise: Last week the Wall St. Journal featured a story on Tiffany & Co’s “midlife crisis.” The piece highlighted the jewellery brand’s struggle to regain its “cool” and improve recently tepid sales and profits. A few days later they announced the hiring of a new CEO. Tiffany is hardly the only brand that is going through such a crisis. There is a lesson that all of us can learn from the experience of Tiffany and to a certain extent, even JC Penny. Steve Dennis on his blog talks about the customer trapeze. The customer trapeze is the idea of a brand hoping to […]