Lessons from a rookie entrepreneur

Entrepreneurial journeys are like space missions. They combine bold vision and fearlessness with the drudgery of operation. Add to that millions of tiny pieces of execution that must work in tandem and exactly as prescribed for a spaceship to land successfully. Factors that define a space mission are both external and internal, and sometimes too unpredictable to plan for. 

But then, a failed space mission can be successful too. Like Apollo 13, which NASA described as “a successful failure.”

Our journey in launching and building FactorDaily since May 13, 2016, has been more of an Apollo 13 mission, at least in terms of the symbolic outcome. When we started, the mission was to make sense of technology and its impact in India, become a voice of disruption in this part of the world. And while we kept fulfilling the mission one story at a time, the battles of business model disruptions proved lethal. 

As storytellers, we have been humbled and privileged to tell the stories we told at FactorDaily. 

The idea of writing this blog is to thank you personally for being part of the journey and sharing the lessons. And perhaps leave our own little footprints on the ever-shifting sands of time.

All these lessons aren’t just in hindsight. Some of these were realised during our three-year journey, and we quickly applied the lessons. 

Update: FactorDaily, Again!

Lesson#1

Don’t underrate business model and potential revenue streams; they are the lifeblood for any venture no matter how early or late

While we did start making money from the first year, we continued investing more time and energy on the journalism side and revenues took a backseat. Over three years since we launched, we kept learning from failures and applying those lessons on the journalism product side. We didn’t apply the same playbook of failing and applying lessons on the revenue side. We under-invested on the revenue side. 

Lesson#2

Great products that matter must create habit and become profitable in 3 years

This might sound a sweeping statement to make, but I ruthlessly believed in it from the start. I was absolutely determined that we would continue our journey only if we covered all our costs from revenues (and not venture funding) in 3 years, or at least get tantalizingly close to it. Neither happened, and we called quits. From what many folks in the industry told me, even though the product was habit-forming, it wasn’t sufficiently revenue-forming!

Lesson#3

Stay doggedly lean

At the start, we were actually a lean team, especially because the resources were limited and uncertainties were many. Sometime during the second year, we suddenly hit “a steroid patch” briefly, lasting for six months or so. During that period we grew from a team of six members to 23 employees. We started chasing scale and wanted to become big, at least in terms of volume, and create impact fast. Of course, there were signals that showed us the potential growth, but we didn’t think through the future clear enough. 

Lesson#4

Stay honest

While we had a brief entrepreneurial journey compared to many other startups that cross “the valley of death” and survive, we have all been bluntly honest about everything. We ensured that our investors always knew about all the twists and turns on the journey, and the team members were clear about what was really happening around us most of the time. We even published a post and data about all the editorial mistakes we made every year. Now practising this level of honesty also meant upsetting some team members or even potential customers as and when required. 

Lesson#5

Code of conduct

Setting the code of conduct wasn’t as difficult as practising it without any exceptions. We had to ask a founding team member to leave after the person breached the code. We even walked out of a potentially large business deal after the customer executive committed what we considered a breach. Both the instances meant pain in their own special ways. But it helped us live with a clear mind and get a good night's sleep, which are absolutely priceless.

 Our strict adherence to our business code of conduct did not help make the case for FactorBranded in a market where it is not uncommon to see advertising disguised as editorial.

Lesson#6

Hire your own boss

As a founder, I almost got the feeling of being a superhuman while starting up. That feeling stayed with me for at least the first six months. Then, reality checked in. As an entrepreneur you always want to be part of every cool, potentially big project no matter what function, no matter whether you’re capable enough. It took me a while to realise that I shouldn’t be doing a bunch of things.

Running the newsroom and ensuring a great quality journalism product was one such thing. Hiring my long-time mentor who is among the best business editors in the country, Josey John, to be the editor of FactorDaily ensured great story outcomes. 

Lesson#7

Put tech in the driver’s seat, but don’t get blinded by it

We were perhaps the first media company from Asia to build and ship a news bot, which was primarily an audience conversation tool on the Facebook messenger platform. We tried a bunch of ambitious things with tech at the core. Our biggest learning from tech was that it’s an enabler, and doesn’t make the core product. There are some amazing opportunities to become more efficient and deepen audience engagement using new tools, but the core product is the story. 

Lesson#8

Every story is a product 

This is perhaps the biggest media lesson I learned from the FactorDaily experience. We realized that every story needed to speak to a particular audience, in the language and format that best served the subject and the audience profile. And more importantly, every story then needed to get distributed on a relevant social channel accordingly. 

Lesson#9

Stories are byproducts of conversations 

This might sound too generic or an oxymoron, but it’s been an important learning for me. Until a few years ago, I used to chase stories that were time-bound. Conversations with the people I used to interview for such stories often died down after the stories were over. I now chase conversations -- and the stories emerge just as the byproducts. 

Lesson#9

Don’t become a prisoner of the formats or platforms 

Publishers, both old and new, cannot afford to tie their future with the platforms. It was Facebook video, Instant Articles a few years ago. Now it’s WhatsApp and TikTok. It’s best to treat them as channels of distribution. 

Lesson#10 

When to quit, or not

To be honest, I faced both the questions almost every week for three years, sometimes on a daily basis. In our case, I was absolutely clear from the start that if we don’t cover all our costs in 3 years, or get close to it, we shouldn’t keep at it anymore. It helps to be bluntly honest about the readings from the signals. And it’s equally important to define those signals right at the start. By signals, I don’t mean the praise or criticism that comes our way.

While feedback is good to have, it’s important to identify what really matters. And the source of such feedback too. Most of the times, close friends and families aren’t the right place to read the signals. They can be diehard fans, well wishers. They can be biased that way. 

Lesson#11

Treat readers as consumers, customers 

If journalism has to find its way out of the ongoing business model disruption and the age of platforms, it must own the audience communities. Just the way a car maker looks at potential drivers, the roads they have to navigate, regulatory mandates and so on. At FactorDaily, we started doing reader meetups, and it was amazing to listen to them, watch their engagement (or lack of it) in person. 

Lesson#12

It’s dangerous to use wrong examples 

Most of the times we’re using examples from across the world to illustrate our points or make effective arguments. I have made this mistake of using examples in the media space from other markets of the U.S. and elsewhere, and realised later that they do not mean anything. While building anything new or reimagining an existing product, the context matters the most. In the startup ecosystem, we have all witnessed different waves of new startup descriptors such as “Uber of x” or “Netflix of y” and so on. Most of them struggle to build a culture that lasts, a product that they are proud of. 

Lesson#13

Scars from the journey

Scars from the journey can make you bitter. Trophies on the path can turn you haughty. Stay mindful of both and stay honest. One of the things I have watched closely over the past three years is the danger of becoming bitter. When we put too much of hard work and passion into building something, doing something, there’s always a lot at stake. If it works, the outcome intoxicates us. If it doesn’t work or deliver a desired outcome, the experience can turn us feeling victimised and bitter, insidiously. I am happy to share that I have come out of the entrepreneurial journey feeling blessed and humbled. 

Lesson#14

“Company is a person.”

A few weeks before my cofounder Jayadevan and I quit The Economic Times to build FactorDaily, we met Deepak Kaushik and Asma Bibi, the founders of Finaks, a new age finance and accounting firm. The duo, former Wipro finance executives, have played an important role in keeping us intact operationally, and also ensuring that we follow financial prudence and regulatory compliance to the book. 

While registering the company and filling out the forms, I was surprised with statements referring to the company almost as if addressing an individual. It looked like the company was a person who was putting the trust in its promoters for fulfilling the duties. 

“You must consider SourceCode Media Pvt. Ltd. as an individual sitting on a chair next to you and looking right into your eyes while making every decision. You must put the company’s interest ahead of everything else,” I remember Deepak telling me this. 

Lesson#15

Survival isn’t the mission 

A lot of startup gurus keep preaching how it’s essential to survive by all means. They almost make it existential for a startup and its founders to try everything to survive, keep afloat. As a rookie founder, I’ve come to realize that the notion of startup survival at any cost makes no sense. Absolutely nothing is as existential as life itself. It’s important to live a quality life, and keep your values and integrity intact for a good night's sleep. 

Lesson#16

Respect and value everyone’s time

While starting up, it’s natural to work with cofounders and early team members who already trust you and like working with you. It’s a leap of faith for everyone. In the later stages of the startup, it becomes absolutely important to hire talent who will join because of the bold vision, or some early demonstration of the quality of work and learning. No matter who they are, it’s really important to respect their time and take a decision to part ways if it’s not working out. Letting go of the first person we hired was the toughest experience of my entrepreneurial journey. But since then, I vowed to stay bluntly honest with everyone. It helped keep my conscience clear. 

Lesson#17

“Don’t talk to corp dev”

We didn’t just talk. We did a lot more. 

“Here’s the offer. This is how it will look like for you and your team.” 

We had been approached by strategic partners from the first year of launch itself. And while I always engaged with them, sometime towards the end of our journey, a couple of such conversations intensified. And they looked like a done deal. Well, almost. Thankfully, none of them materialised. I say thankfully because clearly, the product we had wasn’t promising any returns to the investors. All that was left was an “acqui-hire” kind of an arrangement. 

It’s really important to understand what such conversations say, and what do they mean actually. Also, perhaps best to get an expert talking to the corp dev team instead of the founders. Until of course, it appears to be valuable in terms of future prospects. Every legacy company is looking to learn from the new playbooks, and that’s perhaps the only reason why such conversations start. 

And who better than Paul Graham to articulate this the best. 

“If they were going to send you an offer immediately by email, sure, you might as well open it. But that is not how conversations with corp dev work. If you get an offer at all, it will be at the end of a long and unbelievably distracting process. And if the offer is surprising, it will be surprisingly low.”

The biggest danger of engaging in such conversations is that your mind starts wandering, thinking about the future, and before you know, everything starts reflecting in the day to day decisions. Most importantly, it sucks a lot of time that could be invested in far more important things, like figuring out a revenue stream or meeting potential clients. 

Lesson#18

Find a cosy office, hang in there

The first office we rented is the most memorable one. It was this small terrace office with canopies of green all around. Starting from the incubator space where we first worked from, we moved offices four times in three years. Remember the time I mentioned when we went on steroids for around six months? That’s when we moved into a larger space. And then even a bigger one. Within a year, we learned all the lessons and shrunk back to about a dozen people from the peak of 23 employees. 

There’s something about smaller, cosy offices that limits scaling up in terms of space, but keeps you dreaming big. 

Lesson#19

Learn the money

The first thing to learn as an entrepreneur is to understand how money works, and how to make the most of it. I’m not sure how many entrepreneurs of today come from finance backgrounds, or have some basic understanding of managing money. But it was a baptism by fire for me at least, and it wasn’t easy. I am not a numbers guy. I always hated Math. And while I did manage to learn the ropes a bit, I don’t think I learned it enough. As a founder, if you are not good at it, it’s best to work with someone who can help you understand the finances on an ongoing basis.  

Lesson#20

DIY or outsource

As a small founding team, there’s always this hunger to build new things, all in-house. So you assess it hard and then decide to ship some work outside, to the specialists. As a founder you sense members of the team not liking “cool projects” getting outsourced. So you give them all, and wait and watch. If the skills required for a particular time bound project are something core to the startup’s future and present, then it’s best to do it in-house. 

After trying both the options several times, you realise none of them guarantee success. We did try both options actually--in-house and outsourcing--for our product design. We failed miserably on both counts. But every time we outsourced smaller, well defined chunks of work that were tightly aligned with bigger projects inside, it kind of worked better. 

Lesson#21

Stay sane

“You should take time off, spend it with family.”

“You seem to be home early, everything all right at work and the startup?”

Two of the most important stakeholders of your time as a founder will always be at conflict in their own special ways. When you are neither at work, nor with the family, everything will look hazy. It took me a year to realise that this tug of war is like background music playing all the time. And there’s nothing “startup-ish” about it. It’s the story of our lives, isn’t it?

But if you add a few more stakeholders to this list, including investors and the industry at large, your potential and past employers, it’s no more just the two-way street most of the working professionals are used to. It starts looking as Bengaluru’s Silk Board junction, notorious for its traffic jams. Or the peak hour traffic snarl at any of the Indian cities. Chaotic, crazy and almost impossible to walk away from. 

All this can be messy for your mind, the sanity. 

Lesson#22

Team huddles 

Our first few team huddles were overwhelming, both in terms of the responsibility we had on our shoulders to build something impactful and in being surrounded with team members looking for ideas to shape the future. As a first-time entrepreneur, it did feel scary. We actually ended up over-engineering and overthinking those huddles. From extensive planning around the venue to individual assessments to learning sessions and so on. A good antidote then was to shrink the entire exercise and keep it simple. Gradually, that meant doing a huddle in the office over chai and meals. Both types of huddles met or missed the goals like with any team meeting. It didn’t matter how extensive or frugal the huddles were. 

My biggest learnings from team huddles are:

1. 1. Keep it conversational
2. 2. Build a one-on-one environment of trust before bringing the group together
3. 3. Focus ruthlessly on follow ups, ensure promises from the last huddle are sacrosanct and accountabilities ensured
4. It pays to give everyone an honest assessment of where things stand and what lies ahead. 
5. Do mini huddles every week. Do even smaller, casual huddles almost daily. Listen more. 

Lesson#23

Pay your taxes, ensure compliance

The one thing I was absolutely ruthless about was paying all our taxes, vendor dues, and salaries on time. Also, the regulatory filings. We put together a “POSH” committee within the first few months of registering our company. I don’t think we ever missed on any of those. 

Lesson#24

Journalism of balance is not trendy

Since we started FactorDaily, we stayed away from any “right” or “left” leanings. Not just politically, but we also kept away from being seen as “a cheerleader” or “a slayer” in the ecosystem. We’ve always believed in the journalism of balance. That means being an equal opportunity offender as and when a story deserves to be told. For a media startup born in the middle of the platform and business model disruptions, being unbiased is unfortunately a dangerous positioning to have. 

Please do read this post we put out on FactorDaily while announcing the pivot to audio and podcasts that didn’t work out. 

Lesson#25

Don’t go to the last penny

Startups running out of cash, failing to pay salaries and taxes, are among common failure narratives. From the start, we were absolutely resolved to never go to the last penny. Every time we pivoted, we ensured we had sufficient funds for the next chapter. And we made sure we kept every team member informed of the runway we had all the time. We also kept our investors posted on the same (and we’re actually grateful to them for keeping the faith). When we made the final pivot towards audio and podcasts, we did so ensuring we had the cash we needed to pay (at least 3 months salaries) to every team member who moved out. And we ensured we paid every vendor, every contributor and taxes in time. 

It’s quite a journey to be an entrepreneur, build a startup. It’s quite an adventure actually that brings joy and sweet pain like nothing else. But it’s equally important to realize that these journeys are funded by real monies and real people who take the leap of faith and invest their careers. 

Lesson#26

Don’t be a jerk

Being too nice and not being able to push team members to achieve the goals is a big leadership failure. Personally, I do feel I failed in being firm and communicating clearly enough about the goals, spending all the time they deserved. It’s a work in progress for me. 

I was perhaps excessively cautious to not become a nasty leader. 

Among startups and younger teams it’s kind of become fashionable to use foul language, call people nasty names. This also plays out on social media and elsewhere. 

I’m not saying I would rather fail as a leader than be a jerk. Leadership is also about empathy, something truly demonstrated by Satya Nadella who has scripted perhaps the biggest corporate turnaround of the century at Microsoft. 

Lesson#27

Walk, run, do your thing

I walk a lot. I’ve walked across the country while traveling for stories and meetings, from Leh to Dhanbad and Coimbatore to Udupi. I now know some of the best places to walk while traveling. In Madhubani, Bihar, for instance, I discovered that the railway station offered the best walking strip. I should perhaps write a separate blog on the best places to walk in India. 

This isn’t just an entrepreneurial lesson, but I learned it on the journey. 

Lesson#28

Buy adequate insurance for everyone 

After registering our company and launching FactorDaily, Jayadevan and I met Manish Sharma of Printo one evening. 

“Do you have medical insurance?” We thought he was just being too nice and casually checking if we’re covered. 

But he refused to meet in future until I sent him screenshots of the insurance premium paid. 

After quitting our full time jobs, neither of us had any medical insurance. Among the first things we bought after raising money was to buy adequate insurance for everyone. And not just to ensure that Manish meets us again, but we realized how important it’s to stay covered on that front. 

Lesson#29

Steal the moments 

“When will you get back? Even the tooth fairy has come and gone,” my five year old daughter would often say. I travel a lot. And I travel on trains mostly. And while I did miss almost all the tooth fairy visits at home, I still managed to spend a lot of time with my family and close friends during the entrepreneurial journey. Not in the first year though. The first year of entrepreneurship was a massive struggle.

My school batchmates on the WhatsApp group called “Purani Jeans” would share their frustration for all their missed calls. My family though stayed a silent observer, offering timely hugs and send-offs as and when I needed, and even otherwise. Much later, while recording this podcast with “Santhanalakshmi Arvind on what it takes to be the family of a startup founder”, I realized how the family stands by and what it takes for them. 

Lesson#30

Don’t seek permanence 

Becoming an entrepreneur and going through the journey has been quite a humbling experience for me personally. It’s almost like being an embedded journalist in the battlefield and then coming out of it with minor bruises and some scars. Now I also have the empathy for how difficult it is to build something that users love and is profitable. Kudos to everyone out there building something meaningful. 

Finally, it’s really important to stay sane and be judicious about where we spend our time and with whom. This story I wrote about what happens when the founder of a fast growing startup dies, underscores the mortality of it all. 

So folks, work hard, play hard, stay sane and don’t seek permanence from these joys and pains of life.