As today M & M Innovators becomes 1 month old, I, the CEO of the company has shared the story of how a dream turned into reality.
On one fine day me and my best friend were working on our PhD thesis and talking about how we used to talk about opening our own company when we were doing our MSc over a cup of coffee. It was that day that we decided why don't we give it a try, what could be the worst that could happen? We fail? So what? At least we would follow our dream. Since that day we never looked back.
So, the first role of a CEO is that she/he should be a Dreamer, it is only when you think big you can actually do something. We looked at what were the things that fascinated us. I love games, she loves education, a mix of both made us brainstorms on ideas on how can we make education fun. She also likes boring ERP system blah! Which I run away from. We are still negotiating on which clients work we are going to accept!
Once you have identified what you want to work on, you need to start Recruiting. You need to find the right mix of people that specialise in what you want to work on and that are passionate about the field because trust me in our team meetings my team has more ideas than me as they love what they do. So it is very important to hire people who love the project because if they love the work they are doing, you will not have to call them up and ask if the work is done, they will show it to you themselves.
For me I will say the above two things were the easy part and that I as a CEO was ready for them but what I was not ready for was the role of a Property Dealer. I searched and searched for apartments for my office, some were too big, some too small, some too costly, some at bad locations. It took me around 2months to actually find an office that fit our requirements. We signed the deal on 25 Feb 2014 and I was so excited, that I called my carpenter to look at the office in order to design furniture for it only to find out that when we went there we found out that the person with whom we signed the deal with hadn't himself finished paying off the original owners!!!!! Yes that did make me lose my mind and we were confused and in a panic as the original plan was to open the doors of the our startup by 1st March 2014.
After a heated discussion with the person who rented us the office, he gave us another office in the same area for which he had paid off all installments. All this went back and forth we got the new office location by 10th March 2014. I thought the worst part was over but I was wrong.
The next role was Designing the office, we went and looked at office furniture in many shops but nothing seemed to match my vision of how I wanted my office to look like. So I sat down and searched on net for different office designs, made modification on it and handed it over my idea to the carpenter and said if he could make it. He was more than happy to make it. He told me don't worry I will finish it in 2 days. When I went to see it after two days I wasn't that pleased but I guess he did the best he could. With a bit of modifications the workspace was ready by 14th March 2014.
Now comes the role of Electrician, once all the rent and furniture issues were resolved, while checking out the lighting of the office on 14th March 2014 evening, the electric meter tripped. Oh damn! Now what? It turned out that there was some problem in the wiring of the meter which made it trip. Got all that fixed by 14th March 2014.
In my mind the office doors were to open on 15th March 2014 and on the night of 14th March 2014 I felt that something was missing. OMG how could I forget! I hadn't bought any chairs and I had told my team to show up on 15th March 2014 at 9 a.m. So I rushed out at night around 10-11 p.m to go buy chairs. Only two furniture shops were open thank God! We bought the chairs, placed them in the office a 12 a.m.
The morning of 15th March 2014, was the most amazing day for me as officially our company's doors were open and our 2 weeks training program started. It’s been a month since that day and I am still learning a lot.
Being a CEO of a tech company is more than just being good in technology it requires a lot more than that. It requires passion and the motivation, to not give up. As it is not easy to start a startup but it is a road worth trying. We are working on our product and also have got few clients. We have faced many challenges but we as a team refuse to give up. So my advice to anyone who wants to setup a startup and to all the Startups CEOs is that stay focused and do not give up.
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