Five Qs entrepreneurs should ask themselves before starting up

He tells about five important questions every entrepreneur needs to ask him/her self before starting own business:

Reason

Always ask yourself why you want to do this. A lot of people make a mistake by asking themselves whom, what, where and when. It doesn’t matter who you are. Why is the important question!

Funding

Funding isn’t a way to startup. Funding begins if the startup succeeds. Entrepreneurs don’t chase capital. Capital chases entrepreneurs.

Revenue 

A lot of people think it is ‘sexy’ to just build businesses and scale, size and money will come eventually. You need to think of revenue from ‘Day 1’ of the company.

Explainer: Why are Indian Startups Stumbling?

Team

Getting a team. Lot of people are very smart but they need to get people smarter than themselves. It is very difficult to tell someone ‘You think you are smart?’ They could say yes. But ask them to find three more people smarter than themselves. They will say why? I advise that smarter people should be your team members. So according to me you need to be dumbest guy in your own startup.

Don’t Give Up

Having a startup is a 20 years game. People think that they will form a startup, next year they will get funding, three years later they will get scale, the fifth year they will have an IPO and in the eighth year, they will exit.

People need to understand that they will not even get started in the eighth year. You need a lot of patience, it’s like a marathon without an end and sometimes you don’t know where and what you are running in.

It’s Not Fashionable To Startup

Starting up is a culture. If you are willing to beat up yourself all day long, then you are a startup guy.   Your mind should accept that 98 percent of your business will fail and only 2 percent of it will succeed.

On Getting Funding

Kejriwal says that Venture capital funding doesn’t happen in the first meeting, it happens later.

“It’s a conversation, it’s not a handshake. A lot of investors want to see how you have acted upon your idea and whether there is a repeatable success coming from it,” he adds.

“Why do you need money? Many people don’t articulate why they need the money. They just say I want to get funding. Startups need to have clear idea and purpose of the funding.”

Spirituality and Meditation

"It’s a most beautiful combination that you can have. It gives you three big things: Peace and calm, so your agitation levels are very controlled.

It gives you lot of insights, inspiration, intuition. Meditation gives freedom to your mind.

Lifestyle

Once you start meditating you will leave smoking and alcohol. Yoga becomes part of your breathing. With this lifestyle, you can work 20 hours a day. You become an entrepreneur who can work tirelessly."

(As told to Moneycontrol's Sabahat Contractor)