Entrepreneurship Discussions

I had a wonderful time on the 13th of June. The iLEADers(Batch 3) had an morning discussion with Mr Rahul Harkawat and Ms Ann Burgraff-Rowell, both seasoned business professionals who have experience in entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. Below are some interesting excepts:

Mr Rahul - A serious no-nonsense serial entrepreneur who started out with USD5 in his pocket when arriving in America. Very determined and persistent person.

1. Kept on stressing the 3 important criteria for being a successful entrepreneur - Persistence, Personal skills (network and social capital), and Credibility.

2. Persistence: Due to the nature of start-up companies, one will be facing hurdles and difficulties that has no precedent (i.e. little case study and benchmarks). You'll also be like David fighting the Goliath - you need to strongly believe in yourself when everything doesnt go your way.

3. Personal - He listed numerous examples whereby having personal connection saved him and his company from the many pitfalls he faced while being an entrepreneur.

4. Credibility - Once, even without a company or a business model, he just walked straight right into Disney and offered to service their graphical computers at a steep discount over their existing systems. He made sure that he kept to his promise and Disney became his first customer, allowing him to start-up his company.

Ms Ann Burgraff-Rowell - In contrast to Rahul, Ann was a very lively and attractive American was very willing to share her experiences through very vivid anecdotes. She held key positions in marketing for many different start-ups

1. She gave many examples of guerrilla marketing (using high school students) and gave some examples of how to bootstrap.

2. She told many stories on the culture of SV ( Google Massager earning millions through stock options, vocal and accepting attitude even towards interns etc...)

3. She managed to shed some light on how families and couple relationships intertwine with being an entreperneur.

We later went on to BuzzCity - one of the very old business in new media who focuses on mobile advertising platform. Managed to have a very frank talk with the boss who was very willing to share his business model and experience.