Archive for April 30th, 2007
[Lessons From Mentor] Focus On The Coolest Execution!
Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, and Recent Graduates.
The common challenges for every young professional, who wants to be an entrepreneur at one fine day, are –
- How do I start while working for some other company?
- How long shall I wait for “the idea”?
- How do I get that “the idea”?
- Now I have an idea, but don’t have money. How do I implement it?
I assume that you are working full time with some big corporation for your primary day job. The biggest advantage that you have while working with these big companies is access to more time. And another biggest plus point is, you don’t have to worry too much about paying your bills.
Yes, any entrepreneur’s dream is to start something which is truly remarkable and innovative and which will change the world. But how long we should wait for that “the remarkable” and “the innovative” idea?
My mentor, Rajesh Setty advised me that -
It’s not the coolest idea that you should wait for, it is the coolest execution that you should focus on!
I strongly believe that we being young professionals, can stretch ourselves after our day time job. We should leverage these “more time and more energy” aspects to its fullest. We should get started with implementing some not-so-remarkable idea in our available part time and start getting our hands dirty. It can be a very common idea or a trivial problem or some small project.
If you have time, if someone is paying your bills, and if you have a passion to start, then I don’t understand what it is which is stopping you from getting started? Ideas are very easy to imagine and talk, but are equally challenging to implement and build. The crux is that we need to get started with something ASAP, if not in full time, but at least in part-time.
The most important part of work is the beginning. — Plato
The purpose behind this part-time activity is to learn the execution process, understand the team spirit and bonding with our co-founders and feel the heat of implementation challenges. The cool ideas will evolve along the execution phase once we are in the battle ground. Once we start working on some details, contact more customers, learn from advisors, and discuss with industry veterans, the ideas will evolve.
Part time activity is nothing but a reality check to understand that whether can we really implement something and make it working in the real world. Once we can develop this one product or project successfully, we can confidently count on us for solving that next big thing and critical problem.
Now you might still question that where do I get that common idea or a trivial problem. Or how do I even start in the part time. We can always do some free lancing work, or do some consulting work. Or we can develop some contacts with startup founders who generally have some small projects that they want someone to implement for them in low cost. So finding a problem may not be challenge, but implementing it, surely is. So let’s start executing it ASAP, coolly!
To read more lessons from my mentors, please visit Lessons from Mentor.
