On September 14, 2013, as the chapter director of Startup Grind Bangalore, I had the pleasure of hosting Gautam Sinha. Gautam Sinha is an angel investor who co-founded My First Cheque. Before this Gautam failed two companies before successfully exiting his third venture.
This interactive session went great that comprised an hour long fireside chat session and a Q & A round. Gautam’s candor and humility came across very naturally as he shared his own success and failure stories. The entire session’s video is accessible here.
Here are some highlights from the session.
Fireside chat: Gautam narrated his journey from his early days. Right from the start, he was thirsty for success. His passion to become “rich” was relentless and motivated him to quit his job at the age of 25. He then took the “big plunge” into starting up his first venture.
Gautam tried his hand at a lot of small things to provide him his bread and butter, but he was never content with these small wins as real success. After failing his first company, he went “ALL IN” into his second business. In this venture, they built a platform (a free website) for “every kid to have a room on internet, where walls could be of chocolate and beds could be like racing cars” - kids could create and customize their own dream rooms online and perform different activities online. They failed big time on this one (to know the reasons watch the video here)!
Gautam’s second failure cost him a lot of money (in debt). This was his second consecutive and a really big failure. He knew there was no way for him to move forward in his life with a baggage of debt on him. Gautam used a strategy to recover him from his debt. He set aside a deadline for himself. He gave himself two years to clear his debt and did everything that he could to make money.
It was during this time that he stumbled on his next venture. He proved third time lucky. This time around, Gautam succeeded and made profits. Eventually though, he sold his company to an American firm for a really nice price.
Gautam’s charisma came across very clearly through his humility! He mentioned how his success and fast money “got to his head” and how he learned from the various mistakes he made (more in video here).
Gautam also continually highlighted that he strictly represented his own views and not that of the investor community, in general. His mantras to make it “big” as a startup entrepreneur:
- “Cash Flow” is highly underrated in the startup ecosystem. Gautam thinks it is one of the most important factors of business and should not be neglected.
- A non tech guy, doing a tech business without a tech cofounder is not a good idea.
- Having a co-founder is MUST. He thinks it is an absolute necessity for startups to have at least two or three co-founders. He accepts that there are exceptions for single founder successful companies, but strongly emphasizes on teams as beginners.
- On funding he has very clear thoughts: “You should not need funding to sustain, you should need funding to grow”.
- From first business, to the one that works, KEEP BUILDING YOUR NETWORK.
- Try to have someone (like a mentor) who can keep you in check
I have covered some of the highlights, but you can always watch the full video below.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhOH1u-Zu2k]