4 Lessons From A Startup Founder Who Raised Funds From Y-Combinator

Entrepreneurship is a field that has always inspired me as a person and hailing from a business family, I can say that I always had a knack for it. But, my idea of entrepreneurship was quite different from my family and I didn’t want to inherit the family business that was in the cards for me. Rather, I always wanted to build something of my own, carve my niche in this world. That is how I stumbled across content creation as a field, it gave me a platform to voice my own opinion. But, soon after becoming a creator, I realized the challenges that an influencer in my chosen field had to face. One such major challenge is monetization. I’ve always had a knack for problem-solving, and that’s how I decided to find a solution to this problem that existed in the current creator and influencer ecosystem. I experimented with various ideas and it finally led to the inception of TagMango. For anybody who aims to be an entrepreneur, here are a few lessons you should keep in mind while entering this opportunistic domain: Find A Cofounder Who’s As Crazy As You Are Finding the right partner for your startup is probably the most pivotal task. While, from a creator’s perspective I had the network and the opportunity, but a tech muscle was what was lacking for our path-breaking product. Then, I brainstormed the idea with Hasan, my childhood friend, and a tech entrepreneur who is also from Calcutta. In his previous stint, Hasan had already successfully built his own app development company - Fleapo, and even scaled it to 3 countries as well. Together, we spent days brainstorming about our idea, understanding the need-gaps of the creators, and finally, cracked the idea to build the product to help influencers become micro-entrepreneurs. This partnership and the value we brought together was a big selling point for our investors. Adaptability Is Key You might have come across products that were initially shattering but later, as they failed to adapt and evolve, they turned out to be failures. This is the exact reason why an entrepreneur always needs to be on his toes and gauge the need and sustenance of a product time and again in this opportunistic and ever-evolving market. For instance, we started with the idea of building a product for micro and nano influencers to connect them to brands. But, as we moved ahead with it, we realized the operational and scalability challenges of the model and understood the gap between the product and the market fit, and swiftly adapted as per the needs of our consumers. Furthermore, as the pandemic hit the world, the content creation industry faced an abundance of challenges, such as lack of brand partnerships owing to the cut in marketing budgets of brands, that made us even more confident about the evolved model and how it would solve the pain points of the creators. Agility and offering what your end consumer needs will always make an investor bet on you. Ultimately, the product has to sell! Take Failures As Lessons In every startup journey, there are a plethora of challenges that every entrepreneur has to face. From finding the right team to raising funds, the challenges are never-ending. With challenges, there are some failures on the path as well, but to everyone who wishes to build their startup, I would suggest taking those failures as lessons and rise back resilient than ever before. For instance, when we couldn’t get through Y Combinator in our first experience we took our failure as a lesson and aced it the next time. Investors work with startups day in and out and understand the journey of a founder can never be easy but what they seek is a clear-cut vision and passion to make it happen. Build An Expansive And Diverse Network The importance of building an expansive and diverse network cannot be stressed enough. It is one habit that we all should build irrespective of our career paths. It allows us access to opportunities that we might not be able to find on our own. Our network has the potential to provide us with insights into different fields, information, and advice on how we can improve professionally. I, personally in my career have been able to garner some great opportunities due to my network. Remember network is net worth, and your investors will swear by this. Having the right mindset and a go-getter attitude is crucial to becoming a successful entrepreneur. While there will be a plethora of obstacles in the entrepreneurial journey, it is important to keep the focus on the end goal. Keep evolving and adapting to stay relevant to your consumer and never forget to have a resilient and collaborative attitude.

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