From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
In India affordability and improving life are also key pillars of entrepreneurship- coming from the circumstances and context of the country; for example, India has 1,000 radiologists for a population of 1.4 billion.
Entrepreneurship means a constant willingness to keep learning. It's about maintaining that start-up spirit—where you're forever young, and forever in crisis. It's about always having your mind on the business: Lying in bed and constantly asking yourself, What should I do?
Especially at the beginning, it takes just the right amount of delusion to dedicate yourself to something ambitious. The reality is you're more likely to fail than succeed and so you need strong belief to commit your heart and soul to an idea.
There is no mundane. The word itself, I think, is a non-word. It should not be a word.
True grit is that rare strength and resilience to dust yourself off, look at what went wrong, refine your proposition and plough on. Always be prepared to adapt: an open mind is everything – but stay focused on your end game.
As founder(s) you cannot be scared of making tough decisions for the good of your business; the longer you let things lie, the tougher (and more expensive) it can be to resolve them.
Credentials don't always define who someone is, or who they're going to be. The only way to engineer virality and make a product work is to understand the consumer, and that changes from city to city, from country to country.
When you're starting out, your ambition shouldn't be defined by someone else's success criteria. That's something I struggled with, and still do.
It was not wealth or fame that these people wanted... These individuals had, in their own minds, observed a particular customer need that wasn't being met. They were wired in such a way, that this need seemed obvious to them.
Entrepreneurship means the unrelenting belief that there has to be a better way. There has to be a better way of doing things... If it was obvious that things were already being done in a great way that couldn't be improved? There wouldn't be any need for entrepreneurs to step-in and create new ways of doing things that don't rely on the baggage of the past.
Excellence is almost a tactile feeling – and it starts with a vision… sometimes a vision that shows you a path that's so good that it cannot not succeed.
Growth is like an elixir. It's exciting, it creates more and more growth, and it's a helluva lot of fun. Business is fun, it's a game. You're playing against others, and you want to win!