Veer Mishra
Veer is the co-founder and CEO of SellMouse, a tool meant for Businesses to Market, Sell, Engage with people on Social media over the products and services they offer.
The moment when Mangalyaan, India’s Mars mission, entered the mars orbit after a 10-month Voyage from earth, it brought pride to us as Indians. It brought us glory by showing the world that, “it’s not about the scale of capital you have, it’s about the vision that we have.”
There are a lot of learnings that can be taken from this, but mostly “How Mangalyaan is a great example of Bootstrapping and startups can learn from this successful mission.”
Big Money is never needed to build a great tech
The 4.5bn rupee ($74m; £45m) mission, as Mr Radhakrishnan says, “the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken by the world”. This also gives us an idea that what United States (NASA) did with ~$671Million, we did it in almost 10% of the cost.”
So if you are building your startup, keep in mind this fact that money won’t bring you great product. But efforts, pain and hardship will. Stay lean, try to find solution with what is available, do weekly hackathons with friends to build tools that matters to your product. This is how you will reach to your end goal. Big money won’t promise you a great product, but the hardship by you and your team will.
It’s not about the competition
“We are really not racing with anyone, but with ourselves to reach the next level of excellence,” said Mr Radhakrishnan.
Focusing on your competition will only divert your vision. Keep an eye on them, but never divert your vision from your end goal. Your biggest competitor in your entire journey of starting up will be you and only you. So just keep pushing yourself to the next level of excellence and define your PPP (Peak Performance Protocols) so that you can only and only work at your best.
Its not done until it Ships
Nothing is done until it reaches to its end users. Do not focus on making it perfect. It’s all about timing. People will call you a fool; they may criticize you but pay no heed to them. Just focus on shipping, there are a lot of ways you can make it perfect after you ship it, so first ship it, see how it works, if it fails you will learn, but if it works then there is nothing like it.
Have Faith in your team
More than anything have faith in your team; keep your trust in them as they are the ones who will help you take your product forward. Mangalyaan is an amazing example for this, they had a dedicated focused team that had faith in their vision and the product, and they believed that:
What the world says is impossible is actually possible!
And in the end, its all about having that leader who believes in you and the projects mission and keeps the team motivated in the journey. This mission as many will say is a technological benchmark; it is also the beginning of a revolution.
Stay lean, stay focussed, build the product that matters & have faith.
