BENGALURU : The life of an entrepreneur is never smooth sailing, especially during the initial years of setting up and expanding the business. Like most entrepreneurs, one of my biggest regrets was the inability to maintain a work-life balance. I couldn’t make enough time for my family due to numerous unexpected hurdles that emerged during the outset of a cybersecurity start-up known for its state-of-the-art security solutions.
However, I was fortunate enough to gradually overcome this impediment in my later years of entrepreneurship. I have accepted the fact that it’s absolutely okay to mess up sometimes; after all, learning is the only constant as well as the driver that catapults you to overwhelming heights.Another regret is failing to prevent organisations from growing cybercrimes and the adverse impact they create on the overall operations. I feel that we should have started earlier in coming up with the right set of security solutions to strengthen the cybersecurity infrastructure of enterprises. We could have saved them billions of dollars that they eventually spent on dealing with the aftermath of a cyber-attack.
Although there is no end to these phishing websites and the threat actors behind them, it is our responsibility to ensure that they are powerless and prevent them from igniting chaos in the current business ecosystem. With an average of 1.5 million phishing sites being created every month, we could have stopped the prevalence of counterfeit websites through our current suite of state-of-the-art security solutions. However, now that we have realised this, we are putting our best efforts to protect organisations and keep them threat-free.- Pavan Kushwaha, CEO & co-founder, Kratikal
Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely journey. You often feel you are on your own, up against a wall, with no finish line in sight. While an entrepreneur needs to be an eternal optimist and make lemonade when life gives us lemons, there are a few things I regret doing or not doing. What I regret not doing: As an entrepreneur of a platform that enables in-person networking for professionals, we sometimes underestimate the value of seeking correct mentors and their experience. They are not just a sounding board, but a guide who can help reason out things and avoid obvious mistakes. Every minute spent on strategically mapping and finding a mentor can be invaluable.
What I regret doing: In the early days, while we were growing as a business, we believed that raising funding was the ultimate sign of growth and validation. We had an investor who gave us a term-sheet, but the whole process took too much time and diverted our attention from company metrics to the nitty-gritties of the fund-raising process. When the deal did not go through, we were left with a botched up monthly burn and not enough revenue to make one month’s payroll on time. Since then, it’s been four years and we have always disbursed salaries on time. We consider this sacrosanct in building a company people can trust and rely on.- Atul Todi, CEO and co-founder, 10Times
Being an entrepreneur is not easy but the ride is certainly worth it. In the span of last three years of our entrepreneurial journey, we have been exposed to a number of opportunities; while we made the most of the cards we were dealt with, undeniably, there have been certainly missed as well. But if you have to ask if there’s anything that I regret the most, it would be some of those moments when I did not follow my gut feeling when I should have.
As an entrepreneur of an e-commerce platform that buys and sells anything around you in 30 seconds, you’re always stuck between data, trends, charts, targets, investor reports, and more. However, some of the most challenging of things can be solved with just simple empathy and following your gut. In the last few months, I have been working towards following my intuition more often and that has resulted in positive outcomes.
The only regret that remains is that I should have done this sooner instead of taking a more traditional and perhaps ‘safer’ approach for decision-making. It’s rightly said when you want to take over the world – Be bold!- Jasmeet Thind, co-founder, Coutloot
Iwas 19 and had just started college when my entrepreneurial journey began. I always had the zeal and urge to do something of my own and in pursuit of making it big, I came to Delhi from my hometown, Agra. While I’m grateful that my venture turned out to be successful, I regret not being able to live some of the best days of my youth -- the fun and carefree days of college life.
As an entrepreneur, providing a managed workspace, I’m always operating in a dynamic environment which keeps me on my toes at all times. Currently, our business is in its growth phase wherein we are moving towards rapid expansion. The constant work commitments and hectic travel plans keep me busy around the clock due to which I am not able to devote as much time to my family and personal goals as I wish to. -Ankit Jain, founder and JMD, Skootr