THE BILLION-DOLLAR EIDOLON

Presidents, CEOs, and Directors are some of the portfolios dreamt of by every entrepreneur hustling day and night to build their own unicorn masterpieces.?Whenever we see a few of those top-notch ventures generating revenue of billions of dollars, we look up to those who founded them, the most common thing which is observed in these ventures is their unique approach of filling up the market vacuum.

New trends have brought with them a ton of new start-ups, engaging customers in every possible domain, this is because of the new governing policies and the interest of both domestic and foreign investors to invest in the Indian economy. But the success rate of these start-ups in India in the initial 5 years is less than 10%. The main reason is the lack of uniqueness and rigid frameworks for innovation.

It's obvious that a failed start-up idea is not the end of one’s hustle, but the major thing to consider here is the risk-to-profit ratio taking into consideration all of the factors. Experience is the key here, it’s impossible to learn to swim until you jump into the water. The amount of information you gain and familiarity with the market trends is of at most importance. There is a major paradigm shift in the Indian market, which is clearly visible now, seeing a few unicorns floating on Forbes and their evaluations skyrocketing, everyone wants to enter this domain, but…

"Your perception of the world is not necessarily the same as what is actually occurring."

- Peter Ralston.

It was about 2-3 months before that I got an idea of having a platform that would serve as a base for community or public learning, where one could share ideas, and promote content but in a short form, built with such an environment having features to cut off distractions, tracking productive time used, planned thoroughly to achieve your desired goal. I thought it to be a billion-dollar idea, as it would help one to count each and every second of productive time and engage users across all possible fields. Standing at a bus stop, stuck in traffic, u can just scroll down the feed and get to learn about any possible domain on the app, the main idea here was to make work an incentive-based chore that?would pump up the dopamine level. I started by talking to people aligned with the same field started to learn how things work for a start-up, penned down the timetable, and created a model. Put in a decent amount of capital, and started to execute whatever I thought off…

But there was a series of mistakes that crumbled my plot completely…

There are many misconceptions that I had, I’ll try to plot them and portray another side of this entrepreneurial obsession

Let’s first look into the general paradigm and then move on to a more case-specific analysis,

It would be appreciated if you yourself interpret these beliefs and have a stand on each of these points

1] Staying in the market for a longer timespan will increase your chances: -

I just mentioned some figures about the success rates of ventures after spending a significant amount of time in the market,

There is a difference between surviving and living, these stats just show us the ultimate timestamps, incurring heavy losses on wallets, and trying to survive is not desirable, few ventures having solid wallets may give it a shot but for individuals like me, it’s impossible. Maybe Angel investors can solve this for individuals but pitching to them would be really competitive in this arena.

Even having solid wallets might not help every time, just take the case of OLA, with more than a decade of market presence, it is still struggling to make profits, contrary to this on the positive side we have reliance jio, using wallet strength to create market space, and erasing their competitors from the game.

2]Business is better than a job: -

This was, and still is one of my principal exploring nodes, weighing them side by side is of course not anyone’s cup of tea. Both have their respective profits and demerits, but my recent experience gave me an interesting parameter, “Experience(age)”. According to my perspective?about this comparison, for any individual craving to ace this domain, gaining experience is of prime importance, there might be a few exceptions where a great model would overcome the experience parameter, but this is rare. Industrialists back in the 1990s focused on the ethic “Serve first lead later” which I denied before, but now have a contrary perspective, to be on the shop floor, working relentlessly, grabbing experience will help one to anticipate what market will be in the upcoming years, having knowledge of the roots of any company will set the right stage.

3]Valuation: -

This is the primary attraction spot for a major chunk of the population. It’s obvious that each one of us has financial goals, but masterpieces are not delivered upon spending cash, it’s the result of those 3 Ds,

Determination, Dedication, and Discipline, which no currency can buy.

Money is the by-product of all these components blended in and brewed into a bowl of success.

The only thing to ponder upon is “Focus on value creation not valuation”

4]Quick money-making Game: -

Recently I went through a series of articles and advertisements which weigh upon the idea that what you earn as an employee is hardly a fraction of what you can, being an employer. Then flashing up some random mathematics and convincing mass to purchase their magical products.

Obviously, this is not the case, if money is the only incentive and the only motive to enter the business domain, you are not in the good books, it’s true that ventures do earn huge lump sums but it’s the result of their continuous and proactive approach towards developing their products and reaching out consumers relentlessly.

The day one realizes this and puts capital as the secondary priority, is the day when one starts evolving…

5]Altering the Pre-existing rigid Frameworks: -

Indian market is one of the toughest markets to predict, but one thing which stays constant is the belief system of people, In India people, are very resistive to change, in order to excel as a brand, it is advisable not to challenge the beliefs, traditions and the frameworks, it will lead to?consequences. The best examples are Ed-tech ventures which we will discuss a bit later..

Let us now investigate my plot and analyze it more precisely: -

I always try to stick to the concept of “THE ONE OR THE ONLY ONE”,

But the main thing which I missed out on was analyzing the competition I had, and the things market needed. I hired a few freelancers to create a dev environment and started to execute my idea which came to halt within a week. (A measure portion of my principal capital was invested here.)

Any idea of such a kind needs to be first thoroughly examined before executing it. The first thing I realized here was that even if this type of platform is rare in the market, other social media platforms serve this purpose to a great extent, (thus nullifying the “ONLY ONE” aspect), and people are very much into community learning, showcasing their challenges and improving each day, so changing this pre-existing rigid framework would require a decent time span

The second thing was the amount of principal capital needed, which I totally messed upon. As a venture, creating a brand name is rather of more importance than just focusing on the product development, in some cases, it may be that these things go hand in hand, but there are examples where conventional products under a well-established brand name are gaining huge profits and the better once with the comparatively lower brand value being isolated throughout the domain. So, investing heavily in building market presence is also of great significance.

Even if one is successful in building a product design, if it does not gain the required attention from the consumers, it is considered a failure in business terms.

Third and the most important thing,

WHAT MARKET ACTUALLY NEEDS?

It is not necessary that what you think is suitable for the market, customers think the same way!! after all, productivity cannot be forcefully imposed, though using the app may once or twice help to complete a certain task, achieving the goal will always require internal motivation, not an external force.

One thing to note in this scenario was that some brands also focus more on consumer’s insecurities and appeal to their subconscious, at first it’s easy to sell products to them but in the end, it becomes a short span profit, thus I avoided portraying this product as a basic need of an individual and instead focused on development.

In my case it was a domino effect, I never aimed for a principal component, which most of these brands do, having a principal thought, a mission statement, and sticking to it till the end. Further introspection also led me to a thought to which I started considering this entire project to be baseless, it is true that products can never be perfect, but to ship a product with no market interest will always lead to disasters.

I have halted my idea as of now, to gain more experience, and more principal capital as well, maybe entering the corporate world might help one to know more about how these things go around, this kind of experience also can reduce the energy bar for an individual towards his work, all we have to do is to stay calm and enjoy the journey, it is possible that even if one doesn’t perceive business after all this, it is sure that these learnings would help one as an employee an excel in some other venture.

Ugly Market patterns: -

There is an important trend that I have recently observed in the Indian market that a major chunk of start-ups in India is marketing oriented, be it through Google advertisements, Facebook, or tons of others. There are few that truly focus on product design and technological advancement, but there is a certain chance in the near future that saturation in these marketing agencies (mainly digital in nature) might lead to the deprived value of revenue for recently launched platforms. It’s obvious that being a new field, investors would be pouring support to these companies, but it may reach saturation in the next 5 years, as many other domains would arrive, even it is anticipated that a certain?start-up working on digital marketing may have a focus shift to upcoming technologies, but India being a developing country, more focus should be on importing capital. Using foreign platforms to earn money, simultaneously helps other countries to gain profit which is undesirable for a country in the world race, rather focusing on developing completely new tech and shipping it will help the country to grow.

These types of overflooding domains also lead to degradation of the workforce, which we can presently see in the primary sector of our economy, which may step up to even service sectors. It’s very important to analyze at least the upcoming decade before executing your plan. There are tons of examples which we can support this statement with, the trendiest being the Ed-tech sector in India, they have faced huge losses post lockdown period and are laying off employees to survive this which was contrary to what everyone expected.

The only thing one can do to excel in this domain, is to keep exploring and experimenting ideas.