Success mantra for a thriving startup: Empower your people

My mind told me that I should share a couple of cents which might leave an

Image source: Alexander Kjerulf's post on 8 random tips for making your startup company happy and successful

impression on your life as a start-up owner ! These opinions have emerged from  experiential traits of observing, listening, watching, engaging and at times even reading during all these months..

Which success metrics have you defined for your start-up baby? Break-even the costs by next year? May be achieve next round of funding inside three months? Or even double the number of clients in six months?

You wish you could do it all yourself ! May be you could, if you were a superhero but even then 24 hours in a day were not going be enough. How do you achieve all that and much more? Wait a minute

Do not expect me  to talk about that one-in-million magical solution as it never existed. Yeah, I am not talking about out of the world rocket science here. All you need are ‘PEOPLE’ who can make-it-happen! People who have cool heads and are a bundle of energy. May be you could hire them from outside, if you’re a cash-rich start-up.

But in tough times of recession, you’re expected to cut your operating costs. You are expected not to hire people and even fire the ones who are working with you!

Coming down to ground reality, most start-ups cannot afford to loose people as it is difficult to find a single replacement for any guy who quits. Each person thinks multi-dimensionally and is engaged in cross-functional work.

So how do you make them happy? Throw more money at them? May be it will work in some-cases but for the rest?

To begin with, Never promise anything to them that you cannot deliver. For e.g. you make a promise to your senior guy that he is a key member of the strategy group but sideline him

Second- the key to make people a part of your growth is by involving them in the so called decision making process. Provide them the right opportunities at right time/stage. For e.g. If you are caught in a web of problems, feel free to consult them for help. No, it is not a help in-terms of bugfix but instead help at a mental level. That is where you will be able to judge their mindset and take a call about things which you never expected them to do.

Third, never fall into a fixed mindset trap as that is the easiest thing you can do at this stage. for e.g. a marketer can only pitch or a developer can only code. These are all mind-games that you tend to play with yourself. Because of your one-dimensional thoughts, you are sometimes unable to visualize the potential of people in your team.

Fourth – Trust your people. Trust them for their thought, for what they have done, continue to do and what they can do. Make people feel counted as a part of the group.  Listen to them, ask them what they feel/think. Never try to be their boss and impose your decisions on them.

Fifth - Drop your ego. It is a 360 degree cycle of feedback. The so called ego rules which apply to your employees are also valid for you :)

Remember, it takes more than a sweat to build a quality team. If you can do that success comes naturally to you and your start-up! On the flip-side it takes not more than a blink of an eye-lid to get back to the same mode of hiring replacements for the people who have left you. So what do you want do to – take one step forward or two steps backward?

When will Indian businesses use twitter?

Yesterday, I was reading a thought-provoking piece by C.G. Lynch on ‘How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter’. The article highlights the companies that have enjoyed successful use of twitter. It instigates several questions in your mind. Which businesses are using twitter? What are they doing on twitter? Has twitter been successful for them? Have they added to twitter’s success?

If you dig a little deeper, I’m sure you will come across many industry verticals where businesses have been using twitter for a variety of purposes. The glitch is the news is coming in from the ‘outside world’ at the moment.

Out here in India, we are still compiling/questioning the names of businesses & business representatives who are using twitter. Not that we do not have successful case studies of organizations using twitter, but the bottom-line is that such instances are very few.

Indian startups need more Community Managers

Image via Wikipedia

A Google search for ‘Community Manager India’ and ‘Community Management Jobs India’ does not throw many surprises. What it means is that either Google isn’t tracking the developments about Community Managers or there isn’t too much happening in this space.

While attending these un-conferences & meet-ups, I bounce into many start-up founders who are passionately pitching their ‘brands’ to the community folks. In other words, they also double-up as community managers for their companies.

Sometimes I find it quite strange that majority of the Indian companies have been very slow to realize the potential of Community Managers. It could be possible for a variety of reasons: either the concept has been untested or Indian companies do not see much value in it. The traditional mindset always says that it is all about selling at the end-of-the day and everything else adds on to the costs.

YoMacha: India’s Hot or Not ?

A few days back I had received a ‘profiling’ request from Vandana Makharia from YoMacha. A brief look at YoMacha tells you that it isn’t exactly a run-of-the mill social networking portal with typical Web2.0 features. What’s really encouraging to see is that it is an internet startup from a non-metro. Operating from Jaipur, YoMacha is an inspiration for wannabe entrepreneurs from other towns and districts.

“What is YoMacha ?

Yo Macha! is an internet startup from Jaipur and has been launched with a concept of rating pictures of people or users themselves. YoMacha users can also create their own RATING WAR where one can create a popularity/non-popularity poll between any two given topics that can be thought off.”