lines from a talk by Subroto Bagchi

Subroto Bagchi is a co-founder of Mindtree and an author of 3 very successful books. I had the chance to attend his talk on 'Entrepreneurship'.This is an excerpt from the talk he gave for students at the London Business School on 9^th Nov 2009.

Coming back from it, I think the talk and particularly the Q & A session that followed were very insightful and laced with good practical examples. Mr Bagchi is a lively speaker and I would recommend that you hear him. He makes his point in a very simple and light way.

I loved the session and some lines have made me think, I have tried to jot them down.

P.S. This is my interpretation of what Mr. Subroto said. These may not be his exact words.

1. Entrepreneurs love to make money. This is a basic – they dream big, take risks to change things because they want to gain big, make big money.

2. You can only give money, once you have money. Wealth is regenerative.

3. Don’t jump into entrepreneurship, make yourself safe and then try to make wealth for others. but then again don't wait too long to take the risk and start on your own.

4. choose the right VC, choose the right colour of money. It is a VC's job to pester you, drive you to get cashflow, make profits asap and it is your job to push back and make sure that you are doing the right things, in a sustainable way and have a long term vision. Ultimately, you are the owner, negotiate ifg you have to. But, yes taking VC funding does change the company in many ways.

5. The biggest satisfaction is that ' people find our enterprise safe’. In MindTree employees feel safe - they are getting married having babies :)

6. It will take nearly the same amount of work to be a CXO v.s. opening your own enterprise ( and making it successful). For those who stay in corporate careers and rise the ladder – the underlying trait of all successful corporate executives is – that they run the company you work for in the same manner they would if they owned it. Make your employees have a sense of ownership towards the company.

7. Entrepreneurship is very akin to a sexual act. Mostly, you can’t start a company when you are 60 and going to get your prostrate checked J You need passion for starting and nurturing an enterprise. You have this passion when you are young. So make sure you don’t wait too much start > start early.

8. We have to make entrepreneurship cool. It is OK to taking risks and fail. When you are young you have nothing to lose. You can always go back into a job. If you love making money, entrepreneurship is the way. Big gains come with big risks.

Now thing to do: I am going to get the book he wrote on Entrepreneurs,

http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Entrepreneur-Golden-Success/dp/0670999180

Subroto also recommended reading ‘The Fifth Discipline’

http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385260954

Just realized it is 3:00 am now. Have to sleep.

Thanks for visiting.

cheers

Vinay