Stay Hungry Stay Foolish is a must read for all young Indians with astonishing ideas that they wish to bring to existence.
This book follows the success of 25 IIM graduates who are as normal as other students but have a hunger to become something. It is a beautiful documentation of successful tales of 25 people who believed in their ability, their idea and maneuverered their ship with grit through the rough weather.
The readers follow the stumbles these people have had on their way, the challenges they faced and the market-falls they saw. Today all of them hold multi-crore empires. Of course, they also had to decide one choice among their family or business.
The author, Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and youth expert. Rashmi is co-founder and editor of JAM (Just Another Magazine), one of the leading youth magazine in print and online. She writes extensively on youth, careers and entrepreneurship and hosts the popular blog: Youthcurry. Out of the plethora of books, magazine and articles written by Rashmi, I made a choice to start with ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’ thinking that the book must be interesting as the title itself is taken from the famous speech by Sir Steve Jobs addressing students of Stanford University.
The book expounds the story of 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who chose the rough itinerary of entrepreneurship. They are believers & opportunists with alternate vision. Reading each and every success story made me feel inspired. The world thought ‘How can one quit a job which offers a phenomenal salary and incentives? How can one leave everything for one idea or just because one thinks it’s going to work? What if you fail? What if your idea doesn’t work?’
Answering these questions many were left with dreams and regret, while some golden nuggets have overcome every stereotype zeitgeist, trepidations, peer pressure, tosh and pillory from our near and dear ones, struggled & strived for years before finally achieving a gargantuan win. Irony is that, these are the same people who the world said to be fools who turned out to be polymath of business world.
The book is written with a very indigenous accent and has a smooth flow of language; every story is followed by apposite quotation and a piece of advice given by the esteemed founder of that organisation. Every story is unique and interesting in its own way and leaves us with different business lessons out of which the story of Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukari.com), Vinayak Chatterjee (Feedback Ventures), Narendra Murkumbi (Shree Renuka Sugars), Vikram Talwar (EXL Service) and k Raghavendra Rao (Orchid Pharma) became my favourite ones. I recalled a quote:
“Sometimes it’s all about that one dream, that one belief,
Which you can see but others can’t…”
Some of the business lessons learned are:
Ø You are a leader, you have the idea then you need to believe in it. You will face hiccups, you will have abysmal days but these are part of business, have patience, maintain trust with your employees and sooner or later time will change.
Ø Identify Achilles heel of the company and make decisions accordingly (tough decision are inevitable) also maintain USP in every product you sell or manufacture, also be willing to change DNA of your company as per market requirements; after all putting all eggs in one basket will not serve purpose every time.
Ø Get smart people to work for you and sell your idea to them, they will create their own space, take good care of the folks and be fair with them because they are the actual one to bring value to the company. There’s no point in merely saying we are all a family. We have to believe it; we have to show it, we have to leave our egotism aside, we have to talk personally with them and they will do the stuff that probably you can’t do.
Ø If you are a small company, you have to be extremely transparent and honest. So you establish a reputation of being reliable, of high integrity.
Ø Be very careful with cash flow and over heads of the company and raise money when you don’t need it, when you take funding by VC’s or angel investor for wherewithal than be prepared of some external control.
Ø Use your contacts to expand your business; it’s very necessary to have folks who are ready to put trust on you. Better have MBA degree from IIM. With IIM degree on hand you can always start your own thing if it worked its ‘Hurrah! Time’ and if it didn’t don’t worry someone will give a job.
Ø Things don’t always go as per your plan life has its own itinerary, ability and determination matters but ultimately so does destiny and luck.
Just to mention few….
The book is answer to all our What if’s?
Aren’t the only limits those which we set for ourselves?
While it’s also important to be at right place at right time and to have little luck factor also. There are no shortcuts! Any good entrepreneur has good people working for him or her and would have stuck at a low size. You have to build a core team, delegate and empower your people. Entrepreneurship is a tough game, not a game of money but of consistent actions, perseverance, belief & hope with proper execution of knowledge and ideas. Attitude is what you make of things that happen to you – that’s what it’s ultimately all about. Finally “it’s all about the journey, not the destination.”
At the end of book, author has also mentioned email address of all entrepreneurs so if you have a start up idea and facing some trouble with it, you can contact them for their golden piece of advice. A must read book for passionate folks who are still stuck up with What Ifs… of their life and have ability and vision to be at apogee.
Read more of “Stay hungry, Stay foolish” here!
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