Beyond just Business, Entrepreneurship is their life-line

Build a startup into a unicorn from day one: 5 entrepreneurs share their unique journey

The journey isn’t easy, we all know that however for some self-determined entrepreneurs business is more like their lifeline as it all runs in their blood.

I see a lot of freshmen entering the world of business taking the league of entrepreneurship with no history or traces of it in their nearest and farthest families. But soon their enthusiasm turns into a disaster when they see their dreams crashing down due to various reasons like funding winter or not being able to manage the working capital leading to a financial crunch,over-expenditure on marketing or technology, etc.

Many mistakes made at the beginning of their journies led them to their collapse.

So what is the solution???

For obvious reasons as a budding entrepreneur, you have to start with an excellent project idea. But it’s not only the idea that makes one successful.?

These entrepreneurs have to undergo a complete paradigm shift of mindset to amend their cultural patterns to reach their success goals.

Hence I thought of penning such 12 cultural strategies that entrepreneurs need to adopt to fit themselves in the changing business environment.

But let me first introduce you to these 5 extraordinary entrepreneurs and their start-up ventures to bring you to the stage of deliberation to discuss what cultural considerations they adopted.

Surprisingly, all 5 entrepreneurs hail from China and have this uncanny knack and cultural adaptive peculiarity from Day 1 with their start-ups as Unicorns from DayOne.

At a conversational event held by Beyond Expo in an interview with TV anchor Richard Ren at the expo’s Founder Forum.

1. Justin Gong, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of XAG?

About XAG - dedicated to bringing drones, robots, AI and IOT into the world of agriculture.

A smart agriculture ecosystem leading us into the era of Agriculture 4.0 characterized by automation, precision, and efficiency.

XAG is one such innovative Agritech company that has blended technology to bring a wave of change in the way we look at Agriculture. XAG can be viewed here.

Justin says that their goal is to make agricultural production more efficient producing more with less. With the introduction of drones and autonomous technology for farmers they would not need to worry about hiring workforce amidst labour shortage.

With the growing economy of China, the Chinese have proved their mettle by producing world-class companies and start-ups.

Finding the right partner to understand your vision and dream big is a difficult task that may take years to zero down on. He found his equation with his partner after working with him for almost 10 years who is now his best friend and partner.?

1. David Lee, CEO and founder of NEX

????????About NEX- It uses advanced motion technology on smart devices with cameras to enable live sensor-free motion tracking. They have motion games and entertainment that make moving fun. So you can play games right inside your home without visiting a physical playground.

Their goal is to bring joy in every movement to every home across the globe.

A sneak peek is available here.

David says that sometimes we need to make tough choices, quit some things

making sacrifices to achieve your end goal.

Leaving a plush job at Apple to chase his dream of challenging himself and following his pursuit was a difficult choice.

He relates himself as an overly optimistic personality who believes he can change the world by solving significant problems. Having immense confidence in what he and his team can bring forth to the world. In seven years of NEX’s existence, they have weathered financial downturns, survived the pandemic and still going strong.

They have used funding to crystallize their vision to make simple hardware that is loved by their users. Delivering the best experience for the mass market, all the major retail stores want to carry the product. Investors are happy as users have adored the experience demonstrating a perfect market fit that helps get further investments easily.

A look into their virtual playground.

1. Carl Wu, Co-founder and CEO of New Frontier Group

About New Frontier Group - It’s a global, independent, woman-owned business enterprise established in 2002 with the vision to deliver worldwide solutions in healthcare that maximize savings, payment accuracy, and the best possible patient outcomes. Their services include full access to global cost management solutions wherever the member lives or travels, dealing with complicated health claims worldwide by having 24/7 worldwide claim processing, diagnosis/procedure code conversions outside the US, and many more to administer smooth claim processing without any hiccups or compromises.

Other services can be viewed through their website.

Carl Wu thinks that they are at the right place at the right time since China is aging quickly and this is the need of the hour. The cost of Home care has become one-tenth much aligned with the government’s vision to have 90% of China’s population age at home.

He said in his conversational talk that presently, they run one of the largest home health companies in China, offering everything from basic care and nursing care to managing diseases at home. From addressing a simple idea of meeting the needs of China’s aging population to building a home health service in a relatively short period has been a marvelous journey he ended.

4. Eric Cheng, CEO & Founder of Carsome

About Carsome- It provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used-car dealers from car inspection to ownership transfer to financing promising a service of trust and convenience. Their vision is to create the most trusted vehicle ownership ecosystem powered by technology and data.

Their Values for which they have stayed strong through ups&downs are -

Customers First?

Yesterday’s best is today’s baseline

Do more with less

Your problem is my problem

Think big, start small

Stay grounded

Be an Owner

For more insights visit here

Eric Cheng addresses that they have achieved a lot of success especially in creating transparency in the Southeast Asian region that comprises multiple countries like Indonesia with 600 million people, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, each with very different markets.?

When it comes to used car buying and selling the whole market is fragmented and inefficient majorly attributed to the trading process being offline. This is a real problem across the region and they first tried to understand customer points.

Carsome is a platform that can assess the car’s condition and match it to the best demand across the region. This helps consumers sell their cars quickly without hassles.

In 2015, they first set out to sell 30 cars in the 1st month. With now reaching a huge 15000 cars on an average a month.

He continued to say that, they attribute their success to their ability to understand original technology, to build digital tools in between the whole process of trading and layer on top of it which is never done before in many parts of the world.

5) Chi Xu, Founder and CEO of XREAL

About XREAL - An Augmented Reality company into software technology with hardware engineered to meet seamless integration of digital content with physical objects and even people.

Visit their website?

Chi Xu has a grounded approach to being an entrepreneur as he says that the tricks of the trade in case of Augmented reality cannot be known by anyone completely. If one wants to stand out, he/she needs to be disruptive, and that means all the technology isn’t there yet. That’s why having somebody who really knows the boundaries of different technologies is crucial since their product is a combination of optics, software algorithms, AI, and hardware in general.

Further, he added that as an AR company being an expert in most of these areas is definitely a plus because building hardware is challenging, especially knowing the boundaries.

According to him, no entrepreneur is trained from Day 1, one needs to learn from their experiences because an entrepreneur is always lonely. Even if there is a co-founder, there are certain barriers to expertise that each of the founders carries, all workload can never be the same. So one has to be vision-driven, have to be very dedicated, have to be very aggressive, and also have to have a very big heart, etc. He doesn't think one can ever be trained for it.?

Lessons to Learn from these Ongoing Success Stories -

Just like it is said that Rome was not built in a day, most of these passionate entrepreneurs have not tasted success in just a single day.

It‘s taken them days, months and even years of immersive passion and drive to excel in their work , building their teams from scratch upholding their vision as the Top gun so the inner drive can be distributed well amongst team members.

Moreover, they have adopted 12 cultural strategy steps in their work life to meet their success goals.

STEP 1

Implement Scheduled DayDreaming-

To boost one’s mental productivity and enhance reflection of ideas, thoughts and progressions , a time of “Scheduled solitude” can work wonders.

This approach helps lead to insights and solutions throughout day and night as the mind works on pressing issues subconsciously. Insights shared by Jessica Billingsly,Sona Capital

STEP 2

Consistently Follow-up-

You need to have a consistent infrastructure for how to follow up with your customers, partners, investors, employees and anyone else related to the success of your business. Creating specific plans and follow-up automations will help you avoid chaos and disorganization. Insights given by King Holder, PROCUSSION

STEP 3

Embrace Continuous Learning-

Every entrepreneur has to continuously learn throughout their entrepreneurial journey, seeking new knowledge and being open to innovation. Standing out after learning from his own mistakes adapting to changing trends.Recommended tip by Adam Rumanek,Founder AuxMode

STEP 4

Listen Actively

Deeply understanding the needs and aspirations of diverse communities in the culture space. This requires ability to listen beyond hearing. Engage actively, asking insightful questions,acting on insights to make a lasting impact in the industry. As shared by Red Rodriguez,GRAV

STEP 5

Believe In Yourself

This may be the hardest cause there are several times you may question your own decision especially when engaging with your network. Although you may be strong and have complete determination in sharing your ideas, self-doubting may lead you to losing credibility in convincing others.

When you feel like Quitting remember Why you Started - saying this out loud to yourself will help. Views expressed by Cynthia Johnson of Bell + Ivy?

STEP 6

Seek Feedback and Adapt

Embracing feedback fosters growth, enhances products or services and strengthens relationships. Being adaptable encourages you to navigate challenges, seize opportunities and stay relevant in an ever-evolving cultural landscape. Sonia Singh, Owner Centre of Inner Transformations.

STEP 7

Prioritize Marketing Early

Build a marketing plan earlier in the stage of your start-up rather than making it an after-thought.The truth is that you can build it, but people need time to learn about your products or services before buying them, especially in saturated markets. – Dan Serard, Cannabis Creative Group

STEP 8

Cultivate Relentless Curiosity

Stay updated across all content channels, even if they are unrelated to your business. Engaging in diverse conversations across platforms, such as marketing campaigns, social media, music festivals, and streaming, helps you understand where audiences are at any given time, what fuels them, and what you can learn from them. It keeps you relevant and ahead of the competition. – Michael Klein, cannabisMD

STEP 9

Connect with Others Face-to-Face

Start meeting in-person as physical presence fuels innovation and collaborations that help strengthen relationships building a rapport of trust and tenor as compared to Zoom or Google meets.– Andy Hale, Hale & Monico?

STEP 10

Be willing to Change your Mindset

One ability that entrepreneurs should be adaptive to is recognizing even a bad idea with a smile, not being apprehensive and judgemental towards new ideas.

– Michele Zanello, Over the Reality

STEP 11

Find your Joy

Cultivate a habit of being joyful although for entrepreneurs meeting different challenges and with fatigue around being joyful sounds like a distant dream. Nevertheless joyful people attract others and opportunities that others don’t see.

Entrepreneurs should intentionally seek it out. – Jed Brewer, Good Loud Media?

STEP 12

Refuse to Give up

As mentioned earlier think 10 times before deciding to Quit. "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step".

There are very few things we can control in this world.Yes we can control only a few things: our actions, our thoughts, our emotions (to some degree ) and how we react to the world around us. We all don’t know what we don’t know, so just don’t quit. – Chris Eggers, CC Security Solutions.

With Good Luck and Success to all my readers!

Bidding Adieu until my next article!