Friday, December 31, 2004
MM Hypothesis - Be peer-pressured or be peerless
Second in class! So X came first again? What's wrong with you - aren't you good enough?" Perhaps you've grown up hearing lines like this through childhood. I did.
Comparisons like this can be the most noxious things to happen. It took me a long while to dig myself out from the mess of others' expectations. But emerge I did - with a clear belief that not just will I steer clear of such benchmarking in my adult life, I will never submit my kid to such psychological warfare.
The horrible habit doesn't end at school. I've seen college students wrenching their guts over some classmate who got the best-paying job at placement time, someone else who got the university gold, some other applicant who got the full overseas tuition waiver. And in all my talks at colleges, I spend more time on this than on any other fundamental of business.
It's hard to tell people that comparisons are a waste of time - so deeply-ingrained in our psyche is this peer-pressure nonsense. But two things clear up the clouds. One is a statement (and I have no hard statistics, only overwhelming anecdotal evidence) that most of these toppers, gold medal winners, - the envied ones - typically end up nowhere, compared to where you are or where you can be.
And even if they've, it's not where you want to be. Sure, your roommate at Powai ended up earning $150K at Goldman Sachs writing research reports on stocks he knows nothing about, living on a lifestyle conveyor belt he can't get off. But is that why you went to IIT to do your B. Tech? Careful what you envy. You might actually get it, and regret it for the rest of your life.
The second is a more basic belief: that all human beings are unique. Nothing too earth-shattering, except when you apply it to your career. Think about it. You're different from every one of your batchmates, aren't you? Your combination of talent, personality, likes and dislikes is what sets you apart from everybody else. You haven't met anybody like you - and you're as individual as your fingerprint, to sound like bad advertising copy. You'll agree that your perfect career is one that will 'fit' your talent and personality to a T. And by the same logic, your perfect career won't suit anyone else - just as anyone else's perfect career won't suit you.
But if all this were true, as you're nodding in agreement, why the heck did you apply and fight for the same jobs and write the same exams? Why are you benchmarking yourself against that colleague from MBA class who is a VP while you're still an assistant vice-president? Why should you bother that X has a better car, that Y was given a bigger company flat, and that Z married into a richer family than you did? Would being in X, Y or Z's place really make your life suddenly more meaningful?
It's a hard one to get your head around. But that doesn't make it any less true: envy is a pointless emotion when it comes to your career. Or even life. At the root of envy is your insecurity about yourself - and your true worth. And insecurity is a great mirage that the system (including us marketing types) have a vested interest in seeing continue.
If you really believed (like many of us do) that people should judge you for your brains and not your looks, you'd put Lakme and L'Oreal out of business. Advertisers, parents, the establishment - all know their job is to make you feel insecure - so you're conned into thinking that only if you use the right shampoo will you find the right guy, or use the right cologne to find the right girl, or top your class to find the right career. Balderdash.
What sets successes apart from also-rans is not the right fairness cream or education or marksheet - but the strength to reject the notion that there's anything wrong with you, or that you need to be like anyone else.
Read up about biographies of people you admire. You won't find wardrobes or accents or family pressure in common, but a common belief that they didn't give a damn about wanting to be like their peers.
Comparisons like this can be the most noxious things to happen. It took me a long while to dig myself out from the mess of others' expectations. But emerge I did - with a clear belief that not just will I steer clear of such benchmarking in my adult life, I will never submit my kid to such psychological warfare.
The horrible habit doesn't end at school. I've seen college students wrenching their guts over some classmate who got the best-paying job at placement time, someone else who got the university gold, some other applicant who got the full overseas tuition waiver. And in all my talks at colleges, I spend more time on this than on any other fundamental of business.
It's hard to tell people that comparisons are a waste of time - so deeply-ingrained in our psyche is this peer-pressure nonsense. But two things clear up the clouds. One is a statement (and I have no hard statistics, only overwhelming anecdotal evidence) that most of these toppers, gold medal winners, - the envied ones - typically end up nowhere, compared to where you are or where you can be.
And even if they've, it's not where you want to be. Sure, your roommate at Powai ended up earning $150K at Goldman Sachs writing research reports on stocks he knows nothing about, living on a lifestyle conveyor belt he can't get off. But is that why you went to IIT to do your B. Tech? Careful what you envy. You might actually get it, and regret it for the rest of your life.
The second is a more basic belief: that all human beings are unique. Nothing too earth-shattering, except when you apply it to your career. Think about it. You're different from every one of your batchmates, aren't you? Your combination of talent, personality, likes and dislikes is what sets you apart from everybody else. You haven't met anybody like you - and you're as individual as your fingerprint, to sound like bad advertising copy. You'll agree that your perfect career is one that will 'fit' your talent and personality to a T. And by the same logic, your perfect career won't suit anyone else - just as anyone else's perfect career won't suit you.
But if all this were true, as you're nodding in agreement, why the heck did you apply and fight for the same jobs and write the same exams? Why are you benchmarking yourself against that colleague from MBA class who is a VP while you're still an assistant vice-president? Why should you bother that X has a better car, that Y was given a bigger company flat, and that Z married into a richer family than you did? Would being in X, Y or Z's place really make your life suddenly more meaningful?
It's a hard one to get your head around. But that doesn't make it any less true: envy is a pointless emotion when it comes to your career. Or even life. At the root of envy is your insecurity about yourself - and your true worth. And insecurity is a great mirage that the system (including us marketing types) have a vested interest in seeing continue.
If you really believed (like many of us do) that people should judge you for your brains and not your looks, you'd put Lakme and L'Oreal out of business. Advertisers, parents, the establishment - all know their job is to make you feel insecure - so you're conned into thinking that only if you use the right shampoo will you find the right guy, or use the right cologne to find the right girl, or top your class to find the right career. Balderdash.
What sets successes apart from also-rans is not the right fairness cream or education or marksheet - but the strength to reject the notion that there's anything wrong with you, or that you need to be like anyone else.
Read up about biographies of people you admire. You won't find wardrobes or accents or family pressure in common, but a common belief that they didn't give a damn about wanting to be like their peers.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Love and Marriage
From Herbert Simon's autobiography "Model of my life"
Love has played not a small part in my life. By the broadest, Stendhalian or Proustian, definition of love, I have never been in love with a girl or woman who was not beautiful, nor wholly out of love with one who was. The criterion of beauty is not necessarily classical: A face must be interesting, not just flawless. And beauty has difficulty showing itself unless the face and eyes are lit by intelligence. I have always felt that, since faces have greater variety than do bodies, beauty resides somewhat more in the former than in the latter. When I encounter a woman who matches my idea of beauty, I am immediately stirred. But the attraction can wear off in minutes if there is no intelligence.
Love is as important in marriage as in the maneuvers leading up to it. But my admission of susceptibility to beauty might raise questions about I how well I have adapted to monogamy.
There are two mind/body problems. The classical one asks how a physical 'I system can have thoughts. It has been answered definitively by the appearance of electronic computers that think. The second mind/body problem, quite different, is that of sacred and profane love. The solution is not so clear as to the first, and attempts to solve it make up a large part of what we call literature. As a young man I had to try to shape my personal answer.
For some years, I thought that body could be detached from mind for some purposes-that sexual attraction might be a precondition for love, but was certainly not synonymous with it (I still believe that), and that sexual acts with a loved one or with another had no implications for one's love (I no longer believe that). I think I arrived at these conclusions in response to my body's wants and not as a result of reading tracts on free love.
With what I now regard as great good fortune, I never fully acted on these earlier principles, and have always held strictly to the law, if not exactly to the spirit, of monogamy. Drunk, and occasionally sober, I have sometimes made advances to other women, but two things have prevented matters from progressing far. The first is my sense of vanity. To be attracted to a woman and find that I was not attractive to her would prick my pride. One sure safeguard is never to make the test, to move with great tentativeness and wait for a response. That is not a very powerful strategy in either love or war. But, in love, it does protect vanity and promote monogamy.
My second defense against profligacy I like to think of as a form of honesty. I have never been able to tell a woman I loved her when I felt only sexual attraction. Don Juan instructs us that most women are not very vulnerable to attacks that do not promise love, and preferably exclusive love. For more than fifty years I have been deeply in love with my wife, and I have been unwilling to say that I was not. None of the standard gambits for philandering were open to me. I could not say that I needed a woman because my wife misunderstood me. Sometimes Dorothea did misunderstand me, and I her, but crying on another shoulder did not seem a way to solve that problem while love remained.
A good logician, examining the sophistry of the preceding paragraphs, will see that I am not yet out of danger. I have not denied (and cannot deny) the possibility of being genuinely in love with two women at once, and this has occasionally happened to me.
About six or seven years after my marriage, a young woman enrolled in one of my classes; I'll call her Karen. She was a couple of years younger than I and possessed of a remarkable, poised, aristocratic beauty. Bright and imaginative, she was educated in the arts and humanities but not in the sciences. She had most of the attitudes that go with such an education, including a slight distrust of technology and some mild tendencies to mysticism. It was a delight to watch her beautiful and intelligent face during class sessions. We became friends, but on such proper terms that I was never able to decide whether she was sexually attracted to me. I soon learned that she was married and that her husband was away in the army. There were suggestions that the marriage was not successful.
Our conversations were on such topics as city planning and the arts, not on love. After the school year ended, I saw her only infrequently, and never under circumstances that could have led to intimacy. A few times she came to my office at ICMA. She was often late for appointments, sometimes very late, which put me into a tizzy of expectation. I had no doubt that I was in love with her, and no doubt that I was at least as much in love with Dorothea. I resolved to do nothing about the situation, a resolution that was easy to keep, as Karen, though a warm person, never hinted that she wanted more than friendship. Nor did I.
On one occasion, perhaps more, she came to our home (with a suitor in tow). Dorothea liked her and, I think, was not jealous-at least there was no sign of jealousy except one afternoon when I arrived home quite late because of a meeting with Karen. I did not think of her often when I was with Dorothea, but on my travels, especially during the summer of 1948 that I spent in Washington, helping to organize the Economic Cooperation Administration, I sometimes dreamed of each of them (never both together). My contacts with Karen became infrequent, and were mostly exchanges of brief notes. I was aware of a divorce, a new marriage, and a second divorce. I usually knew her whereabouts. And I did not forget her.
In the summer of 1958, I was riding an emotional crest. Our initial forays into artificial intelligence had succeeded and were beginning to be recognized. The RAND summer seminar that Al and I had organized had just concluded triumphantly. The last evening, before departing for the Los Angeles Airport, I took a walk along the Santa Monica beach and was swept up in a tide of people who were moving in a dense mass toward the newly restored amusement pier that was just opening that day. I was carried along with them as far as the pier. Then, having to turn back and move against the tide, I was oppressed by a great depth of loneliness and emptiness in my isolation from that mass of happy, chattering humanity. But by the time I boarded the plane, my euphoria had returned.
A few weeks later, l was off to lecture to executive groups in two cities, an activity that keeps my adrenaline flowing. I drove from the first to the second meeting on a beautiful sunny summer afternoon, singing aloud much of the way, not something I often do. My second lecture was scheduled for the following day. I had a pleasant dinner and a good night's sleep. After the next morning's meeting, a participant introduced himself and said he had been asked to convey greetings to me-from Karen! She would be arriving that afternoon and hoped to see me.
Once at Rockmarsh (see chapter 2), I had grasped the wire of the electric fence while standing in the stream. The jolt I had just received, amplified by the euphoria I had been feeling for some weeks, hit me as hard. With difficulty, I fixed my attention on the business of the day.
Karen arrived toward the end of the afternoon (on time), and the three of us drove back to New York together, she driving the car and I trying to convey my feelings while being discreet in the presence of our companion, a task I found very hard. The same evening, I flew home to Pittsburgh, having plunged over the brink of an emotional precipice.
Having told Karen of my love for her, during the next few months I tried desperately to find a way to meet her on more than just a friendly basis, without denying my commitment to Dorothea. Karen acknowledged that she found me attractive (thus assuaging my vanity), but would not enter into an affair with a married man (divorce was never discussed).
Soon, my feelings of guilt at carrying on this negotiation were depressing me so seriously that I had to level with my wife. The friendly but Platonic conversations with Karen were no longer supportable for me. Both women observed that I was asking for the moon, which I was, and Karen opined that I was probably in love with an imaginary woman, which I may have been, though I did not think so. The two even got together once without me, and psychoanalyzed my problem to their satisfaction.
I did the obvious thing (obvious if you are not in love): I stopped seeing Karen, with just a couple of lapses, each of which was followed by such painful depression that it strengthened my resolve. The salt slowly dissolved from the wound. Today I can recount this tale in bittersweet terms, a sentimental old man retrieving his lost youth.
If I did not acknowledge the importance of this episode, I would be falsifying my life. Moreover, the experience added an important corollary to my theory of love: You can love two or more women at once-denying that would be denying my own emotions - but you cannot be loyal to more than one. The dichotomy of profane and sacred love is not enough. Unless accompanied by loyalty and commitment, love, even love that goes far beyond sexual attraction, provides an insubstantial base for marriage or for a satisfying continuing association.
The budget of time from which we never escape imposes priorities on us, priorities of values and priorities of people. Commitment in marriage means that the needs of one other person must hold a special priority in our life. That person must be able to count on us as we count on him or her, and the needs of two persons cannot share the same urgency. It is this combination of love and commitment that has made my fifty-three years with Dorothea so central to the meaning of my life and, I hope, of hers. It took the experience I have recounted to make me understand that. I am embarrassed to be such a slow learner; I am not sorry to have had the experience.
There is a sermon hidden somewhere here, with a moral about the new concept of "relationship" that developed and spread in our society in the 1960s and 1970s. But I guess I will simply leave it to the new generations to work out their own definitions of loyalty. Perhaps they will discover something that I missed.
Love has played not a small part in my life. By the broadest, Stendhalian or Proustian, definition of love, I have never been in love with a girl or woman who was not beautiful, nor wholly out of love with one who was. The criterion of beauty is not necessarily classical: A face must be interesting, not just flawless. And beauty has difficulty showing itself unless the face and eyes are lit by intelligence. I have always felt that, since faces have greater variety than do bodies, beauty resides somewhat more in the former than in the latter. When I encounter a woman who matches my idea of beauty, I am immediately stirred. But the attraction can wear off in minutes if there is no intelligence.
Love is as important in marriage as in the maneuvers leading up to it. But my admission of susceptibility to beauty might raise questions about I how well I have adapted to monogamy.
There are two mind/body problems. The classical one asks how a physical 'I system can have thoughts. It has been answered definitively by the appearance of electronic computers that think. The second mind/body problem, quite different, is that of sacred and profane love. The solution is not so clear as to the first, and attempts to solve it make up a large part of what we call literature. As a young man I had to try to shape my personal answer.
For some years, I thought that body could be detached from mind for some purposes-that sexual attraction might be a precondition for love, but was certainly not synonymous with it (I still believe that), and that sexual acts with a loved one or with another had no implications for one's love (I no longer believe that). I think I arrived at these conclusions in response to my body's wants and not as a result of reading tracts on free love.
With what I now regard as great good fortune, I never fully acted on these earlier principles, and have always held strictly to the law, if not exactly to the spirit, of monogamy. Drunk, and occasionally sober, I have sometimes made advances to other women, but two things have prevented matters from progressing far. The first is my sense of vanity. To be attracted to a woman and find that I was not attractive to her would prick my pride. One sure safeguard is never to make the test, to move with great tentativeness and wait for a response. That is not a very powerful strategy in either love or war. But, in love, it does protect vanity and promote monogamy.
My second defense against profligacy I like to think of as a form of honesty. I have never been able to tell a woman I loved her when I felt only sexual attraction. Don Juan instructs us that most women are not very vulnerable to attacks that do not promise love, and preferably exclusive love. For more than fifty years I have been deeply in love with my wife, and I have been unwilling to say that I was not. None of the standard gambits for philandering were open to me. I could not say that I needed a woman because my wife misunderstood me. Sometimes Dorothea did misunderstand me, and I her, but crying on another shoulder did not seem a way to solve that problem while love remained.
A good logician, examining the sophistry of the preceding paragraphs, will see that I am not yet out of danger. I have not denied (and cannot deny) the possibility of being genuinely in love with two women at once, and this has occasionally happened to me.
About six or seven years after my marriage, a young woman enrolled in one of my classes; I'll call her Karen. She was a couple of years younger than I and possessed of a remarkable, poised, aristocratic beauty. Bright and imaginative, she was educated in the arts and humanities but not in the sciences. She had most of the attitudes that go with such an education, including a slight distrust of technology and some mild tendencies to mysticism. It was a delight to watch her beautiful and intelligent face during class sessions. We became friends, but on such proper terms that I was never able to decide whether she was sexually attracted to me. I soon learned that she was married and that her husband was away in the army. There were suggestions that the marriage was not successful.
Our conversations were on such topics as city planning and the arts, not on love. After the school year ended, I saw her only infrequently, and never under circumstances that could have led to intimacy. A few times she came to my office at ICMA. She was often late for appointments, sometimes very late, which put me into a tizzy of expectation. I had no doubt that I was in love with her, and no doubt that I was at least as much in love with Dorothea. I resolved to do nothing about the situation, a resolution that was easy to keep, as Karen, though a warm person, never hinted that she wanted more than friendship. Nor did I.
On one occasion, perhaps more, she came to our home (with a suitor in tow). Dorothea liked her and, I think, was not jealous-at least there was no sign of jealousy except one afternoon when I arrived home quite late because of a meeting with Karen. I did not think of her often when I was with Dorothea, but on my travels, especially during the summer of 1948 that I spent in Washington, helping to organize the Economic Cooperation Administration, I sometimes dreamed of each of them (never both together). My contacts with Karen became infrequent, and were mostly exchanges of brief notes. I was aware of a divorce, a new marriage, and a second divorce. I usually knew her whereabouts. And I did not forget her.
In the summer of 1958, I was riding an emotional crest. Our initial forays into artificial intelligence had succeeded and were beginning to be recognized. The RAND summer seminar that Al and I had organized had just concluded triumphantly. The last evening, before departing for the Los Angeles Airport, I took a walk along the Santa Monica beach and was swept up in a tide of people who were moving in a dense mass toward the newly restored amusement pier that was just opening that day. I was carried along with them as far as the pier. Then, having to turn back and move against the tide, I was oppressed by a great depth of loneliness and emptiness in my isolation from that mass of happy, chattering humanity. But by the time I boarded the plane, my euphoria had returned.
A few weeks later, l was off to lecture to executive groups in two cities, an activity that keeps my adrenaline flowing. I drove from the first to the second meeting on a beautiful sunny summer afternoon, singing aloud much of the way, not something I often do. My second lecture was scheduled for the following day. I had a pleasant dinner and a good night's sleep. After the next morning's meeting, a participant introduced himself and said he had been asked to convey greetings to me-from Karen! She would be arriving that afternoon and hoped to see me.
Once at Rockmarsh (see chapter 2), I had grasped the wire of the electric fence while standing in the stream. The jolt I had just received, amplified by the euphoria I had been feeling for some weeks, hit me as hard. With difficulty, I fixed my attention on the business of the day.
Karen arrived toward the end of the afternoon (on time), and the three of us drove back to New York together, she driving the car and I trying to convey my feelings while being discreet in the presence of our companion, a task I found very hard. The same evening, I flew home to Pittsburgh, having plunged over the brink of an emotional precipice.
Having told Karen of my love for her, during the next few months I tried desperately to find a way to meet her on more than just a friendly basis, without denying my commitment to Dorothea. Karen acknowledged that she found me attractive (thus assuaging my vanity), but would not enter into an affair with a married man (divorce was never discussed).
Soon, my feelings of guilt at carrying on this negotiation were depressing me so seriously that I had to level with my wife. The friendly but Platonic conversations with Karen were no longer supportable for me. Both women observed that I was asking for the moon, which I was, and Karen opined that I was probably in love with an imaginary woman, which I may have been, though I did not think so. The two even got together once without me, and psychoanalyzed my problem to their satisfaction.
I did the obvious thing (obvious if you are not in love): I stopped seeing Karen, with just a couple of lapses, each of which was followed by such painful depression that it strengthened my resolve. The salt slowly dissolved from the wound. Today I can recount this tale in bittersweet terms, a sentimental old man retrieving his lost youth.
If I did not acknowledge the importance of this episode, I would be falsifying my life. Moreover, the experience added an important corollary to my theory of love: You can love two or more women at once-denying that would be denying my own emotions - but you cannot be loyal to more than one. The dichotomy of profane and sacred love is not enough. Unless accompanied by loyalty and commitment, love, even love that goes far beyond sexual attraction, provides an insubstantial base for marriage or for a satisfying continuing association.
The budget of time from which we never escape imposes priorities on us, priorities of values and priorities of people. Commitment in marriage means that the needs of one other person must hold a special priority in our life. That person must be able to count on us as we count on him or her, and the needs of two persons cannot share the same urgency. It is this combination of love and commitment that has made my fifty-three years with Dorothea so central to the meaning of my life and, I hope, of hers. It took the experience I have recounted to make me understand that. I am embarrassed to be such a slow learner; I am not sorry to have had the experience.
There is a sermon hidden somewhere here, with a moral about the new concept of "relationship" that developed and spread in our society in the 1960s and 1970s. But I guess I will simply leave it to the new generations to work out their own definitions of loyalty. Perhaps they will discover something that I missed.
Never take life seriously
Never take life seriously.
If you never take it seriously,
then you never get hurt.
If you never get hurt,
then you always have fun.
If you never take it seriously,
then you never get hurt.
If you never get hurt,
then you always have fun.
Friday, December 10, 2004
MM Hypothesis - The time to break free
It's a common refrain in the email you send me. "Mahesh, I'd like to start my own business. Currently I'm studying / working / thinking of studying / thinking of working. I did an MBA / want to do an MBA / am doing my MBA and then want to start my own thing, but the market doesn't seem good right now. What do you think?"
I have a few ideas on this, but I've seen so many varied success stories that it's hard to generalise. To start with, a quiz question: what's common to the times that Microsoft and GE started? These are companies with some of the best-run operations in the world - and no, they didn't start in the same year.
From what I can see, they started during a depression - when the markets were down. Conventional wisdom says that's the worst time to start a business - but I differ. The 'worst time' is the best time to start a business.
And not just because there's less competition, and costs are lower and people are easier to find. But because, if you know how to operate a business profitably when times are tough, you're much likelier to rake it in when the markets turn back up, like they always do.
Think of the contrary - starting a business when times are good means that you are spoilt rotten with comfort and probably have no idea how to survive when the markets turn turtle on you, as they always will. Look at today's limping invalids that were so hugely funded in 1999-2000 - Indya, Baazee, eGurucool and the like - and you'll see what I mean.
In fact, if the markets are creeping back up, like they seem to be doing now, it's a warning sign. Like a savvy investor who stays in cash when the market goes up and starts investing when it goes down, I'd be doubly careful about stepping out in an overheated climate, particularly before committing any big spends.
That's about the market. What about you and the 'right' stage in your career to step out on your own? I believe there's something to learn from the oft-quoted statement that half of the world's most-successful entrepreneurs aren't even graduates, let alone post-grads.
Education seems to make no difference whatsoever to your likelihood of success as an entrepreneur. As an employee maybe, but not as a business owner. (A personal observation: I never bothered getting a degree, and I don't think it's hurt me very much so far.)
The bigger point, though, is what will make the business you intend to start successful. Again, I really believe the key to succeeding is to understand the market you will be operating in. See what the buyers need and what current sellers offer - and figure out if there's a gap where you can offer something better, and in a way that others can't match soon enough.
This is what it takes. To do this requires no particular education - and no set years of experience. If there are so many successful Internet entrepreneurs around the world barely out of their teens, it's because they had the relevant experience of being online early in life - and they figured out the problems and a solution for their markets better than anybody else twice their age. They may be young - but they had the relevant experience.
That's why you rarely see teenaged chemical industry successes, or 20-year-old biotech billionaires. You need the 'right' experience and insights from it - not just years of work at some unconnected place.
That hopefully answers the other question many of you put to me - "Mahesh, I'm joining a bank and want to work for a few years, and then start an organic vegetable operation". Sorry, bossman, no can do. That is not relevant to your intended line of business. You're better off going to the mandi now.
There is no 'right' age to become an entrepreneur. It took me 14 years of being an employee before I got to do something on my own. Many others start in their teens; some in their 40s or even 60s. But one thing's true. It's a fun journey - and you're always better off starting it than never doing so.
I have a few ideas on this, but I've seen so many varied success stories that it's hard to generalise. To start with, a quiz question: what's common to the times that Microsoft and GE started? These are companies with some of the best-run operations in the world - and no, they didn't start in the same year.
From what I can see, they started during a depression - when the markets were down. Conventional wisdom says that's the worst time to start a business - but I differ. The 'worst time' is the best time to start a business.
And not just because there's less competition, and costs are lower and people are easier to find. But because, if you know how to operate a business profitably when times are tough, you're much likelier to rake it in when the markets turn back up, like they always do.
Think of the contrary - starting a business when times are good means that you are spoilt rotten with comfort and probably have no idea how to survive when the markets turn turtle on you, as they always will. Look at today's limping invalids that were so hugely funded in 1999-2000 - Indya, Baazee, eGurucool and the like - and you'll see what I mean.
In fact, if the markets are creeping back up, like they seem to be doing now, it's a warning sign. Like a savvy investor who stays in cash when the market goes up and starts investing when it goes down, I'd be doubly careful about stepping out in an overheated climate, particularly before committing any big spends.
That's about the market. What about you and the 'right' stage in your career to step out on your own? I believe there's something to learn from the oft-quoted statement that half of the world's most-successful entrepreneurs aren't even graduates, let alone post-grads.
Education seems to make no difference whatsoever to your likelihood of success as an entrepreneur. As an employee maybe, but not as a business owner. (A personal observation: I never bothered getting a degree, and I don't think it's hurt me very much so far.)
The bigger point, though, is what will make the business you intend to start successful. Again, I really believe the key to succeeding is to understand the market you will be operating in. See what the buyers need and what current sellers offer - and figure out if there's a gap where you can offer something better, and in a way that others can't match soon enough.
This is what it takes. To do this requires no particular education - and no set years of experience. If there are so many successful Internet entrepreneurs around the world barely out of their teens, it's because they had the relevant experience of being online early in life - and they figured out the problems and a solution for their markets better than anybody else twice their age. They may be young - but they had the relevant experience.
That's why you rarely see teenaged chemical industry successes, or 20-year-old biotech billionaires. You need the 'right' experience and insights from it - not just years of work at some unconnected place.
That hopefully answers the other question many of you put to me - "Mahesh, I'm joining a bank and want to work for a few years, and then start an organic vegetable operation". Sorry, bossman, no can do. That is not relevant to your intended line of business. You're better off going to the mandi now.
There is no 'right' age to become an entrepreneur. It took me 14 years of being an employee before I got to do something on my own. Many others start in their teens; some in their 40s or even 60s. But one thing's true. It's a fun journey - and you're always better off starting it than never doing so.
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