@Headstart 09 Bangalore – Ideas are easy, Execution is key! – Ashish Gupta, MD Helion Ventures
Possibly one of the best talks Ive heard on startups and entrepreneurship. Ashish Gupta illustrated points on how to execute and execute well. His focus was technology startups. A great start to headstart09 on day 2.
Ideas are easy but execution is key
Outside in vs inside out function
a) Pay attention to outbound functions – Sales, marketing.
b) Identify why the customer will NOT buy. Having an outside in view is key!
c) In customer meeting, listen more talk less.
i) Listen to the customer not to yourself
d) Simple stuff has a premium
e) Companies die more often because of bad sales and marketing than bad implementation
f) Marketing is more than advertising
Organization Structure
1) Comple Clarity on organization – one person can have multiple
2) Most people do not scale – remove people from wrong roles
3) Change org structure as needed – no correct answers
Metrics
1) Identify what to measure – very hard
2) Measure everything important be it engineering, sales etc
3) Process and discipline are key
Horizons
Awareness horizon – 2 x Planning horizon
Planning Horizon – 2 x Execution horizon
According to ashish gupta one horizon of awareness on his/her particular function and the surrounding evironment should be twice one’s horizon for planning andone’s horizon for execution should be twice that of planning.
Basically this means if one plans for 6 months then one should be aware of next 12 months of market, trends etc.
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According to ashish gupta one should spend more time getting aware on his/her particular function and the surrounding evironment. He stated that one should spend twice the time on awareness as one spends on planning and twice the time on planning as one spends on execution in order to set oneself up for scaling for the future.
- Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn’t this be applicable to role definers and recruiters (often founders/ceos) as much as it is upto the individual, i.e to let people settle in before expecting results from the high potential recruits…
The awareness, planning horizon and execution horizon point wsa slightly different. He was not suggesting that one spends twice the time on awareness as on planning but rather that the horizon of awareness should be twice as far as that of planning. So if one is planning for 6 months ahead, be aware of what may come 12 months out.
@Urmila: Thanks urmila for the correction. Will make the changes in the post.
Rajiv thanks for collecting and sharing the illuminating words of wisdom of Mr.Ashish Gupta. They hit a home run with me. I might make this post into a poster and hang it on the wall right next to me.
“Ideas are easy but execution is key” – got to remember that one always!
Cheers.