First the great piece of news: Elements Akademia got included in Gen Next India’s Hottest Start-ups (just 16 companies!):
Click here to read Elements’ story
…and here is the article (strong words but very thought-provoking): How I Judge Investors.
Presented some slides on building teams to a room-full of very keen and enthusiastic audience at the TiE Institute session last week at London Business School on “Leading High Performance Teams“..
I tremendously enjoyed Adam’s slides and his exercises…Will share my own slides on this post later…
Christian Chabot has a timely – and sobering reminder on IPO Dashboards re. how long it takes for a start-up to achieve meaningful revenues at scale (Hat Tip: Guy Kawasaki).
As he says:
…growth conversations between VCs and management teams often cause angst. One of the reasons is that people from both groups tend to have unsubstantiated beliefs about how long it takes to build an important company.
Maybe these conversations would be easier if we simply knew how long it takes to build a successful company?
Fellow blogger Swaroop recently wrote a post on a dosa seller in Bengaluru that had me thinking.
Swaroop’s dosa-seller is someone whom I would call a micro-entrepreneur. A micro-entrepreneur is usually involved in an activity that manages to support his/her family’s basic needs.
A good micro-enterprise will generate profits that would be larger than most average jobs.
Needless to say, these profits are more “riskier” than a regular monthly income (salary) – especially if your regular monthly income comes from the government.
So who exactly is a micro-entrepreneur and what qualifies as a micro-enterprise?
Before I attempt an answer to this question, an important caveat: I am talking about India, not USA.
Another caveat…Not everyone who we think is a “micro-entrepreneur” may be so out of choice…Some of them may be forced entrepreneurs – forced to eke out a living doing what they are doing, either because they could not find a job they liked OR because what they are doing seemed to be the most natural thing to do (e.g. managing your parents’ micro-enterprise).
Note that micro-enterprises typically lack scalability (that elusive trait which VCs seek) and may not be particularly “innovative”. Having said that, their contribution cannot be dismissed. At the very least they provide an alternative to unemployment (and the consequent frustration and disillusionment that accompanies it); At best, they have the capacity to transform a family’s fortunes (think of all the famous “halwais” who started small…)
Back to the main point: who exactly is a micro-entrepreneur and what qualifies as a micro-enterprise?
Here is my (proposed) definition:
A micro-entrepreneur is anyone who manages a micro-enterprise.
A micro-enterprise is any business that:
…and has uneven cash-flow, problems in employee retention and suffers from bureaucratic burdens (but these are hardly unique to micro-enterprises!)
What do you think? Comments/ thoughts very welcome.
Next post in the series: Why this sudden interest in micro-entrepreneurs?
Related Post: A nation of shopkeepers?…or entrepreneurs?
Some notes from the “Emerging Markets” seminar on opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs (part of the IED Best Practice encounters series) at which I shared a panel with Prof. Gerry Geirge and Prof. Chris Toumazou:
I shared a couple of slides (see below) as a preface to my observations:
Earlier this week, I chaired a panel discussion in London at Digital Business India.
Some key points that emerged from the various discussions were:
I hope to add more flavour to these notes later on…
* India added about 15million new mobile subscribers in Jan ‘09.
