Most startups die and join the deadpool before they could see the daylights. Most startup entrepreneurs end up failing at some point of time in our lives and even the successful ones have come closer to death before bouncing back.

A startup that survives long enough is the one that has a high chance of success. While ideas can fail, pivoting can appear and directions can change, we cannot let our startup to die.

While the survival issue is true for any startup, it is really acute for an Indian startup. Unlike Silicon valley our VC/angel ecosystem is in its infancy and some of our angels are not really angels – and don’t have much startup exposure. There are no equivalents of YCombinator and our government is mostly a pain and not much of help unlike SBA in the US. Indian customers are conservative and most of our population is poor, unbanked and disconnected from the Internet.

All said, we can still make billion dollar enterprises here – but we need to think about survival lot more seriously than a startup elsewhere.

So how do we improve the survival of our startup?

1. Dream the dreams, but put out the expectations – By definition we startup guys are dreamers. Otherwise, why would we leave our great paying jobs to burn the midnight oil and live a crummy life? But the problem with having too much expectations is that there could be sudden disappointment when the dreams don’t come true. Expect the startup life to be hard, very hard in the first 5 years and expected to get kicked by 1000 people. In 3 years, if you have made some money know that you have bettered your expectations and pat yourself.
2. Be humble - Most of us techie startups dream of Google and Bill Gates. There is nothing wrong with that. But, the problem occurs when we get that idea to our head. Let us wait for the markets, time and world to determine if we are the next Google. And even if Larry Page or Bill Gates call themselves the masters of the world, the world would smack them. Arrogance has no place even with great people.
3. Grow a thick skin and dont get easily offended - No body is abused as much as a guy who running a startup. We receive dozens of rejections from VCs, media, customers and get indifferent attitude from people who could help us. During a recent conversation with an angel, I was asked why he should believe that I would not take his money and run off to the US. That is after he liked the product and had couple of meetings. He even said most people seeking money from Angels in India are con-artists. Now, you could either smack him in his head or just move on. Our emotions & time are too precious too be wasted.
4. Be really, really passionate – If we keep ourselves obsessed with our startup in our shower, sleep and other times, it is easy to forget the harsh realities. And that is good! Passion is a great painkiller for us entrepreneurs.
5. Be scrappy and efficient in spending – this is obvious. Let us spend as little, keep our company as lean and don’t invest in stuff we don’t need in the next 2 years. By being very efficient in money and doing focused investment, we increase our runway and exponentially increase our survivability.
6. Respect even the smallest customer – If we are coming out of our corporate jobs, we would be shocked to see how much people are expecting us to do for even Rs. 1000 and it is easy to ignore those customers. But that would be suicidal. Greatest of paintings are made by the meekest of brush strokes. And sometimes we get nasty calls and unreasonable demands. We don’t need to take all of them seriously, but we need to respect every one of our customer – however small they might be. When that becomes our culture, someday things would open up.
7. Learn when to close your ears – As a startup guy we receive plenty of advice but plenty of it is junk (is this a circular reference?) We will hear why this idea won’t work, why we are not the right people etc. But, if we keep listening to all these, then we will never build a good startup. If our ideas are so obviously good then somebody would have already made it work well. So, assume that you will get plenty of bad advice and tune them out.