The flywheel effect

The Ultimate Startup Guide

The Ultimate Startup Guide is an e-book that provides answers to all your questions related to starting and growing a business in India. Everything you wanted to know about entrepreneurship in India from ideation to registration to marketing to hiring. The book contains a large number of practical examples, anecdotes, interviews, and motivational material to help you get started, and to grow rapidly in a booming Indian economy. If you've got the idea, this book will help you through with the execution and realize your dreams. Here are some of the key questions you will find answered in this book:

When starting a business, what are the legal issues involved?
What form of incorporation is better suited to which type of business?
What tax issues are involved?
How do I start a business and what are the pitfalls?
How do I market my business in the absence of significant funding?
How do I get funded?
What are the basic accounting concepts I should be aware of?
What is a business plan and how should I build one?

The brief table of contents of the book is as follows:

Getting started
Ideation
Forms of Enterprises
Funding
Basic Accounting and Taxation
Import and Export Licensing
Trademark and Patenting
Rules for NRIs and Foreigners
Building a Business Plan
Marketing on a Shoestring
Website and Branding
Women Entrepreneurs
Templates

To order the Ultimate Startup Guide - email me at kkmookhey@gmail.com.

Details of the book are:
Title: The Ultimate Startup Guide
Author: Kanwal Mookhey
Pages: 150
Additional: Companion CD contains numerous templates for building your business plan, calculating cashflow, preparing profit and loss, and balance sheets, preparing invoices, your resume and profile, marketing material, websites, contracts, and many other useful and motivational material.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

The flywheel effect

I read about the Flywheel Effect in Jim Collins' book "Good to Great" some time ago, and could really identify it, although at a more personal level than the way he was indicating. It talks about a giant flywheel, which you keep pushing against, and it just refuses to budge. Then it moves just a wee bit, then a little bit more. As you keep pushing and straining against it, it completes the first full circle, and then moves more easily. Until its simply flying along and all you have to do is keep tipping it with your finger. The outside world sits up and notices when its flying at full speed, but easily forgets to ask about the days, months, and years spent straining and pushing against it, when it would simply not budge.

I remember the times when I had to take a bus to the railway station, because I couldn't afford a taxi or a rickshaw. Or the times, when we had to keep the AC shut during summers, because we couldn't afford to pay the electricity bills. Or the one and only time, a check bounced because we had insufficient funds. That incidentally was in Oct 2002, and was an inflection point for the business. Since that day, we've never been short of funds - well not critically short. It seemed like such an unending struggle back then. It's been such a long, eventful and wonderful journey these past 5 years - to arrive at a stage where we're looking at 6 figure deals, and hopefully our first 7 figure deal in the next quarter.

So if you're having one of those days when nothing seems to be going right, and all your leads are turning into dust - hang in there. Keep the faith, and it'll see you through to the other side.