Success in Internet: Mutually Exclusive?

“Not everyone can be successful at the same time, but everyone can be happy at the same time” – Osho A mutually exclusive event is the one, occurrence of which prevents the occurrence of the other event. For example, toss of a coin – occurrence of heads or tails are mutually exclusive. An independent event is the one, which does not affect the probability of happening of the other event. For example, if there is race, the event of “completing the race” is an independent event. Probability of “completion of race” for one person does not affect the probability of “completion of race” for another person. In the same example “winning the race” is a mutually exclusive event. That is, if one person wins the race – no one else can win the race. The occurrence of one person winning, prevents the occurrence of the other person winning the race. Therefore “winning the race” is a mutually exclusive event. On the morning of 11th August, after the announcement of Sundar Pichai as the new Google CEO, I got a call from a friend – an alumnus of IIT. He had called for some other reason, and later got on to this subject. He told me, “if I had got the luck on my side I would have also made it to a global CXO position in an internet/tech company”. Not that he had anything to do with Sundar Pichai, he was generally unhappy about his own career. It reminded me of some other quotes which I heard in last one year: “We should have started out, look how many people have got funded. They are sitting on multi-million dollar valuations – what have we achieved in job? We have really failed in life.” by a friend who has been talking to me about launching an internet start-up for over four years. “With some luck we could have been a yepme.com, look they have got SRK as brand ambassador and enjoy great valuation. Our investors had little patience and were not willing to invest – they kept talking about building a brand like Zara via a private label model! We kept telling them India is a discounting market. They never listened to us. Even Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong and Amazon are just showing numbers by discounting. It became a last man standing game in terms of who had more funding to take the bleed. I had to shut down in absence of second round of funding. Looking at all the funding which is being thrown around, I really feel unhappy. Everyone keeps asking me, what happened? We had a rock star introduction, when we raised money – now its all gone” by a friend who raised over $5 million for an apparel commerce start-up. “You guys are in the right industry, I am also thinking of shifting to Internet. I keep seeing these names in newspapers of CEOs and founders of Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. I don’t see our industry CEOs not getting even 10% of the coverage what Internet leaders are getting.” by a friend in a leading auto MNC at a unit head level. It set me thinking; even at a personal level I failed to raise funding for my start-up. I got all kinds of advice, from potential investors, friends and public at large in terms of what to do! When I was an entrepreneur – suddenly everyone became qualified to play god in my life. Most of advice I heard was just examples of other people who were successful at raising money. “Raising money” was considered the ultimate success and there were multiple examples being quoted of people who raised money and were rock stars of the industry. Some of these people are no longer rock stars. Some of these people continue to be rock stars. The poster boys of Indian Internet keep changing. For people, who are no longer rock stars – they were not able to raise subsequent rounds. In some situations they left companies under pressure of investors leading on from a period of non-performance in terms of targets. But does that make them less credible now? This reminds of one more quote, which I heard(from a third person) while discussing the topic of “some ones failure” to raise second round: “That funding was just a fluke as the environment was right. I always felt the product did not have the required value to succeed. By the way, I hear that he is at home looking for job for past three months – although he does not want to talk about it. He told me that he is planning his stealth start-up. To someone else he was saying that he was on a sabbatical looking for the right ideas to start up again. All gas, I know for sure he is looking for job” This kind of proves that in a highly dynamic world of digital start-ups, where one has to raise money every year to survive – success may be a very transitory thing. The real winners in this game may be the people who got the exit, be it Redbus, Myntra and Freecharge etc. Internet start-ups are hard and internet jobs can be equally hard. Since in a start-up at least you are the owner, but in an internet job you are doing the exact same thing without being the owner. Although in job, there are lot less pressures in terms of managing “everything” - right from investors to getting the new ACs installed in the office. Internet offices have high stress environment with work hours including travel time easily going up to 14 hours for 5 and even 6 days a week. Saturdays and Sundays are practically “work from home”. It is a very dynamic industry and pressure is always very high. In this environment living under pressure of success all the time can be really draining. There are multiple cases of burn out, and finally people take a few months break since it all became too over whelming. The question is that if you hear someone got funded or someone got an exit - does it mean that you are left behind? Or does it mean its great that internet ecosystem in India is getting the right impetus it needs? Does success of one entity prevents success of another entity? Is success in internet a mutually exclusive event or an independent event? The first answer may be that success is transitory in internet and more transitory than in other established industries. So be ready for a roller coaster ride if you work in the internet industry as a company executive or a start-up lead. The second answer may be that success is not a mutually exclusive event, it is an independent event. It may not be right to strongly judge success or failure of internet companies, as things happen fast and anything can happen in near future. Success is not “winning a race” event, that one success will prevent from other success to happen. Anyone getting funding may be looked at as an endorsement of the industry which will help everyone. Anyone shutting down a company may not be seen as a failure and chance to say “look I was right, It was all gas”. Its a tough world for all of us out there - its better to cut some slack for others and ourselves. I can quote an incident. In one of the conferences few years back - Mr. Deep Karla(MMT) was asked now that you had a successful IPO, how has your day to day life changed. He replied “Nothing has changed much, travel is a tough business, there are calls all day and the grind continues.” I think its the same for most internet companies, and for the better health of internet companies and internet executives, its best that we avoid strong judgments of “raising money” and “Shut down”. As success here is not transitory, not mutually exclusive(winning the race) - its an independent event.

"Not everyone can be successful at the same time, but everyone can be happy at the same time" – Osho