Miriyala Kanth - P.M. to 9 A.M.: Launching a Profitable Start-Up without Quitting Your Job

Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2013
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Copyright Kanth Miriyala and Reethika Sunder 2013

eISBN: 9788129133335

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

This edition is for sale in the Indian subcontinent only.

Typeset by Jojy Philip, New Delhi.

Printed at Parksons Graphics Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

I dedicate this book to my parents, Sunanda and Murthy, my wife, Shaku, my kids, Avani and Akash, my sister, Lakshmi, and to the many mentors and entrepreneurs, past, current and future, that I have had the good fortune of being associated with.

Kanth Miriyala

I dedicate this book to my parents, Shashikala and M. R. Sunder, my mentor and guide, Kanth Miriyala, and to everyone who has touched my life in some way or the other and made it so special.

Reethika Sunder

Contents

Preface

Welcome to the Journey!

This is a guidebook for the first-time entrepreneur. Its also useful for next-time entrepreneurs, in case you have started a business before and want to do better with the next one. And if you are wondering whether you have what it takes, I can address that right away.

A big part of what it takes is simply the desire to create a successful business of your own. That desire is your ticket to the whole entrepreneurs journey. As long as you have it, there is no limit to how far you can go. Just remember its a journey that will take you away from normal, everyday life. Most people, including a lot of very bright people, never seriously think of being an entrepreneur. They are happy to find a place within some system where they can exercise their talents and earn a living.

Entrepreneur 5 p.m. to 9a.m. tells you how you can become an entrepreneur even if you have a full-time job and are risk-averse. You can test different business ideas till you find the one that has good potential, start developing it and when it becomes big enough, you can quit your job and work on the start-up full-time. A job pays you for what the role/designation does rather than for what you can do, which is why the compensation it pays doesnt justify your capabilities. Owning a business sets you free to use the full potential of all your abilities and interests. Having said that, the kind of examples used in this book are not all based on part-time entrepreneurship, but I strongly believe these concepts can be used by a part-time entrepreneur. My own journey as an entrepreneur started part-time and the concepts that have been talked about here are what I have learnt by being a part-time entrepreneur before I finally had the financial freedom to quit my job.

We entrepreneurs seem to have a different DNA. Filling a niche in the status quo is not for us; we would rather seek our fortune by carving out a new niche. We are the kind of people who believe, like Steve Jobs, that We are here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?

But of course a trip of this sort requires more than desire. You have to choose a suitable destinationa good business to start withand figure out the best way to get there. Youll want to learn how to travel light and travel smart, so you dont break down or run out of gas at a dead end.

Which is where this book comes in handy. Its a streamlined version, as simple as I can make it, of all the things I wish somebody had sat down and taught me when I first became an entrepreneur, years ago. I made a lot of mistakes and had multiple failures. Surely you can learn from them!

Ive also had a few successes and you can learn from them as well. Along with lessons from my own experience, Ive shared stories about start-ups I have witnessed, and insights I have gained from other authors. I will urge you to read their books too, after starting with this one, for an all-around guide that may help you reduce your risks and raise your chances of success.

Some of the advice you find here will seem paradoxical. This book encourages you to fail and fail oftenbut keep the cost of each failure low, so that you can keep going until you succeed. That is the fundamental nature of success: its hidden among failures.

In my career as a founder, investor and mentor to start-ups, some notable failures were companies that:

• Tried to provide services for patenting out of India, about a decade ago.
• Built resorts in forests! (After building a couple, the management team lost their enthusiasm and we investors barely got our original investment back.)
• Tried online marketing of various kinds of goods and services until the founders exhausted their savings and had to go back to their jobs.

My successes include:

• Mercadence, a software services firm that was profitable and remained profitable in spite of the Internet melt-down in 2000-2001.
• Quintant, a BPO (business process outsourcing) company based in Bangalore, India, which I co-founded with a few friends; sold to iGATE in 2003.
• Qik, a mobile video streaming company in which I was an angel investor, sold to Skype in January 2011.

And I am currently involved in a few start-ups whose (success) stories I hope to tell you in the future.

Right now, though, this is about your future. Your entrepreneurial journey is needed. The world needs it.

Entrepreneurs are people who pursue their dreams and in the process, build businesses that provide jobs and useful goods for many other people. If this book can help you create a start-up that not only fulfils your wishes but makes a difference in the worldwhich you just might doit will be a successful journey for everyone.

Kanth Miriyala

The steps and principles you are about to learn can be applied to start-ups in many different fields. Together, these steps and principles make up a roadmap for finding the optimum path from point A to point Bfrom the very beginning of the startup process to a sustainable launch.

And since we are going from point A to point B, lets start by taking on the simplest and most basic question imaginable. What, exactly, is point A?

Some people may tell you that every new business begins with an idea, but I beg to differ. It begins with a decision. The start-up journey, like every journey, begins with the decision to begin.

Once you have decided, for whatever reasons, that you want to start your own business, you are at point Aa stage that is potentially life-changing. (I say potentially because a big challenge, for many of us, is just to go further than point A. Time and again in these pages well see how to move beyond the things that can stop us!)