3 learnings from Lets Build a Company

We just invested in Vibhore's new company OneBanc (sorry this is coming out prior to the official press release) and through the process as I got to know him and his earlier co-founder Harpreet, I was tempted to read their book – Lets build a company, the story of building CoCubes. I am a sucker for entrepreneurship stories and my favorite quality is authenticity – the book is full of both, so I greatly enjoyed it.

Every entrepreneurship story is different and it’s unfair to compare my experiences to theirs. The business contexts were totally different, it’s like comparing 2 different batsmen playing against different attacks on completely different type of pitches. However, what may be common is some tidbits of experiences, which may be relevant to folks reading the book - hence the article.

Here are my top 3 learnings where I found common ground with my own experiences of business building.?

-???????Market is a huge factor in outcome. However good you are, the market is bigger. It’s important to determine the market opportunity sooner than later and appropriately pivot. Pivoting is always hard and best time to do it when you have funds. This is ironic since you raise money based on a premise and why pivot when something is working? But that is exactly the right time.

-???????The startup journey is arduous, full of ups and downs, hiring, firing and so on. One can raise any amount of money, but spending money wisely is crucial. One example I see in the book is spend on a shiny office. I have seen this as a big temptation for many entrepreneurs and many get ahead of themselves. I did too! Large, fixed, recurring expenses that are hard to get out of need to be thought through very carefully.

-???????Personal health and life suffers greatly. It’s easy to gain weight while building, and it’s easy to ignore your family. You may be lucky to gain both back, but I now also know many entrepreneurs who lost one or both permanently. Business building is a marathon, and one has to setup to keep running for long.

There are many other nuggets of deep wisdom in the book around culture building, founder dynamics, hiring, and sometimes forcing the issue by taking a flight which may not seem rational!

A shout out also to Sameer – who is now a part of OneBanc team with Vibhore. I enjoyed reading about him and interacting with him in the OneBanc context. A rare breed!

If you have not read the book, read it and tell me what you related with. If you have read it, what spoke to you the most?