A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR 'ALWAYS' STARTS WITH A GREAT 'FIRST' IDEA – THAT’S HOGWASH!

Failures test an entrepreneur’s character. So do poor ideas. Interestingly, some of the best visionary corporations that continue to thrive today, actually began with a big dash of poor ideas. This is a lesson for those willing to ride the entrepreneurial bandwagon – you don’t really need an E=MC2 formula every time to start a venture that bears the potential to become a world-beating business corporation. To begin the dream is most necessary; albeit with an ordinary idea, but with a vision. History is proof. Ideas which have seemed almost foolhardy at first blush, have often marked the beginning of entrepreneurial expeditions, which have led to ecosystems that prevail – and ready for primetime – decades after the founder CEOs have stepped aside.

In September 1945, a 37 year-old engineer named Masaru Ibuka rented a 110 square feet windowless, third-floor space in a World War II-bombed-out Shirokiya Department Store. All he had was a precious $1,600 in savings and seven people who trusted that he would put his engineering experience to take a blockbuster of an idea to market. The company was christened Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Totsuken). For weeks, the employees, along with Ibuka, discussed on what business the company should enter. Clearly, Ibuka had a company, but was short of any great idea to begin with. Three months later, the company’s first product – the electric rice cooker (which mostly prepared undercooked or overcooked rice) had become a failure. This is what the company’s website has to say about the idea: “It was a memorable first failure for Ibuka and his staff.” His second idea too – the wire recorder – was a failure. Today, Totsuken is called the $86.65 billion-a-year topline-earning Sony Corporation.

Many instances of notable entrepreneurial bets that began with a whimper of a failed idea, exist. In the summer of 1972, Paul and William  got together to launch their maiden business venture. They wanted to create a product that measured traffic patterns by measuring the count of car wheels that were supposed to run over pressure-counting tubes. Two continuous years of hard work followed. Using Intel's eight-bit microprocessor, and with some help from an electrical-engineering undergraduate, they got the first prototype of the machine ready for $1,860 (which overshot their budget of $1,500). Twelve months later, with efforts to sell the product to various customers and counties in both North and South America, guess how many orders they had received. Zero. There were some rare orders and three years post-release, William's and Paul's first entrepreneurial idea had resulted in losses amounting to net losses of $3,494. "Traf-O-Data was a flawed business model. It hadn’t occurred to us to do any market research. We closed shop shortly thereafter. Traf-O-Data remains my favorite mistake because it confirmed to me that every failure contains the seeds of your next success," confesses Paul. The very year Traf-O-Data was unofficially shut, these two first-time failed entrepreneurs, started work on another project (the name of which was kept as a portmanteau of microcomputer and software). It is today called the $70 billion-a-year topline earning giant Microsoft. 

When Dave and Bill got together in August 1937 to start a company, they had no idea about what they would be selling. This is how the company's website quotes Bill: “When I talk to business schools occasionally, the professor of management is devastated when I say we didn't have any plans when we started. We were just opportunistic." All of their first five ideas became classic business failures for the company, but thanks to their vision, the company today, has become the largest IT company in the world, having sold $358.95 billion worth of products and services in the past 3 years. We call it HP. There are more names: He was fired by Editor of Kansas City Star newspaper because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas," and his first cartoon series idea was an outright failure. We call him Walt Disney. When William, a 25 year-old American, offered to sell his first idea called the Bluebill to the US Navy, he got rejected. The Bluebill was killed. Today, William's then-startup is known as Boeing Co. Even Henry Ford’s first company called Detroit Automobile Company. It was shut down in 1901.    

Umpteen entrepreneurial success stories also come to mind when we imagine people who became entrepreneurs with ordinary ideas. Paul Calvin’s first business idea made his start-up (Galvin Manuf. Corp.), a struggling repair service provider of service battery eliminators for Sears. Today, his company is called Motorola. Even Sam Walton began his venture as small retail outlet. Ordinary ideas, but the vision was intact. 

So what is expected to make entrepreneurs successful? The solution – David McClelland’s Theory of Needs, which states that those with a high need for achievement, tend to avoid both high-risk and low-risk situations. Don’t be confused. The very entrepreneurs whose names we called, were/are those with a moderate appetite for risk, but a high appetite for determination and toil. These were/are visionaries who realised in time that the "first" idea an entrepreneur has, is seldom the best. And that's their first true secret of success. 

DISCOVER THE DIAMOND IN YOU!

I  have often wondered about that one secret potion that can turn any human into a success icon, perhaps a leader who gets counted as motivational & successful real-life tale that generations continue to talk about. Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri, our Group Editor-in-Chief, in his best-seller ‘Discover the diamond in you’, puts it as the 9Ps of success (Passion, Positive Energy, Performance, Perseverance, Personality, People Skills, Perspective, Principles & Patriotism). Lee Iacocca, The father of the Ford Mustang, on the other hand, through his book titled ‘Where Have All the Leaders Gone?’, lays out his cards in the form of the 9Cs (Curiosity, Creative, Communicate, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competent & Commonsense). But what if I were to choose one of them all? We could play with permutations and combinations, but let  us keep it simple. Add up the 4th P (Perseverance) and the 4th C (Character – described by Iacocca as the fire in your belly and the real want to get something done) and you end up with two words – Hard Work. This is ‘the’ ultimate secret to discovering the diamond in you.

Even passionate people fail – whether entrepreneurs or hired managers. But those who continue working hard – sans fear of making new mistakes – are those who become motivational parables. This is what makes a true CEO. A successful leader leads by example – by working harder than the pack. Why? They know that with hard work, everything can be worked upon. Your personality, your people skills, your emotions and even the energy inside you – everything can change. 

Steve Jobs is a CEO whose name-calling we relish while describing a success icon. His return to Apple in late-1997 made possible innovations that continue to inspire billions around the world. Since his second term began at Apple as its CEO, the company has added $361.45 billion to its shareholder wealth – a massive increase of 11,659.7% as of date. Many call his power to innovate in quick-time his strength. It wasn’t (and isn't still; forget about innovating, how easy is it to carry around a cancer-stricken pancreas and even think clearly?) It had to be incremental yet magical. And that meant toil. Here is what Steve Jobs once said when questioned about how he managed innovation at Apple – “You'd be surprised how hard people work around here. They work nights and weekends, sometimes not seeing their families for a while. Sometimes people work through Christmas to make sure the tooling is just right.” Obviously, even today, this 16-hours-a-day working CEO, despite being on his third medical leave, expects sweat and excellence from his folks at Apple. While talking about Jobs’ work habits, Terry Hou (Chairman and founder of the $37.64 billion-worth companies Hon Hai and Foxconn) said in a June 2011 shareholders' meeting in Taipei, "I have often asked myself if I would have worked as hard if I was as ill as Steve Jobs…I would have stayed home. But I am not Steve Jobs." Even Jobs’ old employees have sued him for making them work too hard. One instance being that of David Walsh who worked as a senior network engineer at Apple for 12 years until 2007. A year after he quit, Walsh filed a complaint in a district court in Southern California alleging that Jobs adds the “senior” tag to the titles of employees only to make them work harder. For that it does not pay overtime or give real promotions. Walsh claimed that he was made to work more than 8 hours a day and once every 6 weeks, for 7 continuous days, he would have to be on compulsory on-call duty 24x7. He demanded a class action lawsuit. The court dismissed his application [proving Jobs right in the process]. 

How did Alan Mulally turn around the worst affected automaker in Detroit into a $9.28 billion profit-maker (in 2009 & 2010)?  How did Jack Welch turn GE into the world’s most valuable company with a market value of $477.41 billion (when he left in 2001)? How did a poor-Chinese-boy-turned-billionaire-gentleman Li Ka-shing build the Hutchinson Whampoa & Cheung Kong empires out of a small plastic-making factory? Many examples, one answer – hard work. For Mulally, Welch and Ka-shing, from the day they began their careers or entrepreneurial venture, a “normal” day at work meant anywhere between 15-16 hours. It still does. And that is the secret which helped them discover and become the diamond they are today. And for those CEOs who desire to lead the best team in the world, all they require to do is lead by example and work harder than ever before. And others will follow. For this is how the parable of a "real diamond" reads.