What I Learnt from my Failed Experiments with Entrepreneurship

 I am from a business family, most of my relatives are into business of some kind, and so a lot of our family conversations revolve around business. If you think the word "business" occurred too many times in the previous sentence, you can well imagine how much intertwined it has been with my life since my early childhood! Now you may think that someone from this kind of background would naturally be good at entrepreneurship, but thats not really the case. Talking about business and actually doing it are very different things. That was my first lesson back in 2005 when I started a coaching centre for IIT-JEE at my native place (Balasore, Odisha) after finishing my B.Tech. from IIT Madras. During my final year at IITM, I was considering two options : starting a JEE coaching centre at Balasore or going for a PhD. Although I was very passionate about science, I was not sure if I had the patience to pursue a PhD. When I began my undergrad, my sole aim was to learn software programming and earn money in the industry. But over the course of 4 years, I completely lost interest in this trajectory due to various reasons and was mesmerised by various concepts of physics. At IITM, I was also deeply involved with Vivekananda Study Circle as a volunteer, which had ingrained in me a deep desire to contribute to the society. The coaching centre idea was motivated by a mix of both these reasons, i.e. to stay in touch with physics and to help students from my native place in reaching the best institutions of higher education. So, as soon as my final semester exams got over, I packed my bags, came back home and rented a small room near our house to start my JEE classes!

Lesson 1 : What does the market want?

An IITian starting a JEE coaching centre at a place where bright students existed but good coaching was absent seemed like a perfect recipe for overnight success to me, my family members and my relatives. I did manage to get a few bright students, but I was not really enjoying the process. I could also clearly see that my teaching methods were not working well except for a couple of them. The biggest mistake I made was to assume that the way I like to learn is the way others like to learn too. I have always hated classroom teaching and have always been a fan of learning through self-study and discussions. And so I assumed students in general would love this too! The modus operandi of my coaching centre was that students would read things on their own, and then come to me when they had any questions or were unable to solve any problem. And when they did come to me, instead of providing them the answers directly, I would try to channelize their thinking in such a way that they can find the answers themselves. Now this may sound great, but on the ground it failed miserably. 

When this did not work, I made another mistake, which was to assume that the fault was with the students and not with me. So, I thought may be things will be better if I could go to a place like Delhi or Kota where the real bright students exist.  And so in 2006, I joined a reputed coaching centre in Kota with high hopes but met with the same experience. And then I made the third mistake, which was to assume that it's the coaching centres which have destroyed the inherent learning abilities of our students. Now that may be true to some extent, but its a very small part of the story.

I actually realised my mistakes many years later when as a faculty at IIT Delhi, I could see a similar disconnect between students and my teaching style. Although I had to teach in a classroom there as a part of my duties, but there was a strong element of self-learning in my teaching style. A close friend recommended that I read the fascinating book titled "Why don't students like school?" by Daniel Willingham and it was truly a life changing experience! I strongly recommend this book to all parents and educators. Among other things, what Daniel helped me understand very deeply was that human beings are naturally curious, but thinking is a cognitively hard process. So, we may want to know why the sky is blue and roses are red, but to actually find the answers on our own is very challenging. Now, of course, most coaching centres have taken this to the other extreme where they spoon feed their students through a factory assembly line process, and what I learnt was that good teaching is about finding a middle ground between these two extremes (the regular coaching approach and what I was trying to do). Good teaching is about taking the curiosity of our students and helping them in finding the answers through a good amount of hand holding (but avoiding spoon feeding). Its a hard balance to strike, and thats why good teaching is not a common commodity!

So the lesson I learnt from a more general perspective was that if you have a product which is not working, do not for a moment think that its the market which is at fault. The market is what it is. You have to design your product as per the needs of your market, and that requires a deep understanding of the psychology of your customers. A market survey consisting of statistics is useful but very superficial. What differentiates a good product form a bad or average one is that the designer of a good product understands something much deeper than what the numbers can ever hope to capture. It's like marriage in some sense. The resume of your prospective spouse may have lot of details about their educational background, family status, and other things, but the only way to figure out whether its a good match or not is to actually spend time with the person and trying to understand each other deeply through a honest conversation. Here, honesty is very important since any kind of pretence destroys the possibility of genuine understanding. And without genuine understanding, you can never achieve the required product-market fit. 

Lesson 2 : Can you provide the solution?

Now after more than 10 years of teaching experience and having experimented with various different teaching methods, I can say with confidence that I understand the teaching/coaching market well. But does it mean that I can now provide a solution and run a successful coaching centre or teaching institute? The answer is NO! Knowledge is one thing and implementation is quite another. There are many people who know what is right and what is wrong, but their actions are not always guided by this knowledge. If it were, the society we live in would be much more peaceful and harmonious. There is something much deeper than our conscious mind that guides our actions. We all have very strong inherent tendencies whose source we do not really know, and whether we succeed in an endeavour or not depends a lot on whether our personal inherent tendencies are aligned with the market needs. So although now I understand the coaching market quite well, my inherent tendencies are still more inclined towards the self-study mode. My teaching quality has surely improved a lot due to my deeper understanding acquired over the years, but it is something thats not very natural for me. 

This is a very important point and in my opinion, the biggest reason for the failure of most startups. Acquiring a good understanding of the market is a challenge, but can be done through discussions with the right set of people. What is more challenging and the true test of success is whether you can implement the solution as per market needs and sustain it in the long run. And thats why in the business world, execution is a lot more important than ideation. And thats why in most interviews, the questions are tuned around what you can do instead of how you can think. 

And here comes the issue of Core Competency, which I think is the most crucial for all of us to figure out. What is it that we are actually good at, as opposed to what we want to be good at? This is not an easy question to answer and may take many years to figure out properly. But it's a very important question that all of us need to at least make an honest attempt at answering. Most of the sorrow in this world is due to a mismatch between what exists and what we want to exist. Bridging that gap is the key to a successful and happy life, irrespective of our career choice.

Lesson 3 :Are investors always rational?

When I started the coaching centre in 2005, the plan was also to start a school few years down the line so that students can be groomed from an early age. I had started discussing this idea with several family friends and relatives, because starting a school would require lots of investments which I thought will take a long time to get. Also, I thought that through this process I will get to discuss various aspects of school education and slowly build a good plan which does justice to the educational needs of our children and is also practically sustainable. But one of my relatives and well wishers got very excited by the idea and proposed that we can start the school work immediately. He was willing to take full responsibility of getting the required funds and my job would just be to run the school! I guess he also got carried away by my IITian tag! That excitement rubbed on to me, and so we decided to start the school right away! We got a nice place on rent with a big playground, did the advertisements, hired teachers and the school started in early 2006 with a few students. And during this process, I also started preparing a detailed execution plan for the school for all its aspects ranging from academics to marketing. 

While preparing this plan, I also reached out to my connections who had an experience of running such educational organisations. And what slowly started emerging through these discussions was the bitter truth : you can either provide good education or make money. Trying to do both does not really work. I could also see this on the ground since meeting parents' expectations and providing good education in a sustainable way seemed to be opposing endeavours. I had only two options : find large hearted people willing to keep pouring in money to keep the school running or to create a false narrative about students' performance and extract money from gullible parents. I chose the third one, which was to get out of this whole scheme of things.

The point is that just because an investor with good business experience has faith in you and wants to invest his hard earned money in your startup does not mean that you should take the deal. Investors are  also human beings and do not always make rational decisions. If the startup fails, they end up loosing money, which perhaps does not mean much to them because they are used to such failures and take them into account in their larger calculations. But you may end up wasting precious years of your life chasing a false dream. There is of course a lot to learn from our mistakes and no entrepreneur should be scared of making them, but the mistakes that can be avoided must be avoided. 

The worth of your idea is not measured by how many people are willing to invest how much money. The worth of your idea is determined by the two lessons mentioned previously : What does the market want? Can you provide the solution? And this is something that you have to answer to yourself as honestly as you can.

Lesson 4 : Do those who don't quit always win?

There is a famous saying that winners are those who did not quit. Now thats true for sure, but what needs to be understood is what does not quitting mean. If you took a wrong decision at some point, and if you keep pursuing it dogmatically, it will only lead to heartburn and possible destruction. So when the famous folks ask you to keep pursuing your goal without quitting, they are not asking you to be stupid. What they  are saying is that you should not quit analysing your actions and your decisions. What most people quit doing is this analysis. If a person keeps dogmatically pursuing a wrong decision, that person is also a quitter because s/he has stopped thinking. Making mistakes and correcting them is undoubtedly the greatest learning experience, but only if you make newer mistakes. 

Now this advice can also be taken to the other extreme and some people quit things on meeting the slightest obstacles, because they over-analyse things. This is not going to help either, because no matter what you pursue with how much thinking behind it, you will always meet unforeseen obstacles simply because we live in an inherently uncertain reality. The challenge before all of us is to strike this fine balance between quitting to think and over-analysing things. How do we strike a balance? There is no particular recipe and you have to find your balance on your own. This is also what separates human beings from computers and machines. Computers and machines can only follow rules. They do not have a mind of their own. But human beings can think and can choose. Exercise your free will since thats what makes you human. Make your own rules and then break them to make newer ones.

So why am I sharing all this now? I joined for PhD at IIT Madras in January 2007 and have been doing academic research since then. In these 14+ years, I have published many excellent research papers in top international journals, taught many courses to highly intelligent students and developed very good relations with many students and faculty members. But unfortunately, in India, the academic world and industry form two separate universes with little interaction between them. Despite having some of the best teachers in the world, most of our premier academic institutions have unfortunately been reduced to just waiting lounges where students camp after their +2 and wait till graduation so that they can get a good job. Computer games are free, but they have to pay for the coffee! But my exposure to the field of Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence over the last few years has given me hope that education and industry in India can indeed come together. And now I have two options : either I can wait till someone brings them together, or I can myself contribute to the process. I choose the latter. I have tried doing this from within academia, but for good or bad reasons, there seems to be a glass ceiling which cannot be breached. So the other option is to go to the other side and try pushing hard in the hope that the glass breaks. And thats what I have decided to do. Lets see where life takes me!