Vishal Gondal shares his 10 commandments that start ups should heed to

2. Vishal Gondal
Indian entrepreneur & Angel Investor
Founder & CEO of India Games
He was the Managing Director, DisneyUTV Digital
Rediff called him "India's King of Gaming"
Among the top 25 powerful people in the Indian Digital Business
He has received no formal education in computers & is a
B.Com dropout

3. Path to the Promised Land

4. I
Thou shall have balls & not
business plans
Ideas are dime a dozen. To be an entrepreneur
you don’t need business plans but the courage
and conviction to break through the initial
challenges and bring your ideas to life.

5. II
Thou shall develop relationships
& not transactions
Entrepreneurs should go out, meet people and
invest in building long term relationships.
Those who can’t help you today may prove to
be valuable tomorrow. Don’t be transactional
about it, make lifelong friends!

6. III
Thou shall focus on real pain
points
India is the land of opportunity because it has
tons of problems for entrepreneurs to solve.
Instead of aping solutions from the West, we
should look at solving local problems – something
not many entrepreneurs are doing today.

7. IV
Thou shall be among the top 2
It’s imperative that you be No. 1 or No. 2 nationally
or internationally in your defined sector to ensure
you create a larger market for yourself. There is no
point in becoming the nth player in an already
competitive marketplace which has established
leaders.

8. V
Thou shall focus on 20%
As an entrepreneur, you must focus on the 20%
that gives you 80% impact. Entrepreneurs tend
to waste their time and effort in a number of
non-productive activities just to be everywhere.
This should be avoided at all costs.

9. VI
Thou shall avoid MBA’s &
spreadsheet makers
The education system is designed to train students to fill
up competencies required to work in large organizations.
Start-ups are meant to disrupt and are run by talking to
people and constantly taking feedback from the ground.
The mindset required to excel at a startup is very
different from one that is required in a large company
where there is time to invest in building
year by year projections.

10. VII
Thou shall celebrate failures &
enjoy your journey
As an entrepreneur you will have many
moments of failure. Organizations where failing
is not okay tend to become bureaucratic. As a
startup you should build a culture which
celebrates failure and people have the
independence to experiment and execute new
ideas without worrying too much about failure.

11. VIII
Thou shall not want to sell
Don’t build your company with the intention to sell.
You can’t build a great startup by dreaming about
selling it someday. As an entrepreneur, your startup
becomes the core of your life and you have to
nurture it like your own baby.

12. IX
Thou shall be fit
As an entrepreneur, one tends to put their health on
the backseat but there is no point in building a billion
dollar company and having boiled vegetables with
an IV attached to you. If you aren’t fit both in mind
and body, you cannot operate a company.

13. X
Thou shall win with... Passion
As a startup you will have a small set of people who
won’t always have the best skills or resources at their
disposal. In this case, the only thing you can motivate
them with, is PASSION. As an entrepreneur you need to
make your team believe that this is their chance to do
something remarkable with their career!

14. Trust & obey

15. Presentation By:
///10000startups
///nasscomstartups
Sponsors:
///nasscomforstartups
///nasscomstartups
Microsoft Ventures
This presentation is based on a talk that Vishal
gave at Unpluggd, watch it HERE.
Thank you