Why You Should Not Startup In Your 20s | Startup Founder Reality

Key Takeaways

[Music] [Music] e startup such a cool word and it's cool to be a Founder in your 20s right money Beyond Your Wildest imaginations Fame power influence over the world that's what everyone thinks it's all about in their 20s valuations billion dollar exits and freedom that's what it looks like from the outside that's what I used to think but I was wrong and I had to learn it the hard way I'm 25 now and I wish I was better prepared for all of this there's a lot of mistakes that I could have I would have avoided if only I knew back then what I know now and now Arian might be on his way to make the same mistakes as I [Music] made so I thought I should give you a full disclosure on what it's actually like to be a Founder in your 20s so what's this company you want to start it's a gaming studio it'll be India's first gaming studio that'll make AAA games like GTA Far Cry Wukong I'll call it Imperium Universalist I've even designed the logo okay but why start up all of a sudden you're doing great here as well yeah I am but I think it's time for me to be my own boss you don't like your current boss it's not like that that it's just it'll be finally great to have all the profits I mean you can create wealth off of a salary like you would agree M so I want to be known as the guy who created the gaming revolution in India it's a blue ocean and once I make my company I'll have the entire pie to myself that's crazy Arian yeah it's always been my dream [Music] every successful startup that you see today was once a dream a dream to solve a problem a dream to make it big in life a dream to be known for something be it flip cart zepto or oo Aran do you know rites Agarwal yes oo's founder he's one of my personal Idols he started oo back in 2011 when he was just 17 years old he must have been just like you today his company is valued at $2.5 billion yes 229 crores in net profit this year and it's the second biggest hotel chain in China do you know about stasa who stasa never heard of them stasa started way back in 2005 it was called inasa back then and oo was not even in the scene they were doing good posting good numbers in 2010 they realized the Homestay vertical was bringing them the most Revenue so they decided to shift Focus to only that vertical in 2012 oo was still called oravel stays when stasa raised seed funding of 2.5 crores with this money they went into hyperdrive adding property after property to their existing chain within a year they doubled the number of cities covered everything looked fine online booking space was growing rapidly more and more people were using the internet now plus stasa enjoyed decent margins in h stays and they were backed by investors they were in the blue ocean and they had the advantage of being there first but in 2017 stasa had to shut operations what happened too many things in an attempt to grow rapidly and eliminate competition they started giving massive discounts for every crow that they made they were burning 4 crores and it's a chain they could not retain users because discounts can bring people in but they can't make them stay they exhausted their runway in a last Stitch attempt to extend their Runway they cut down on marketing cut down employee cost they come down on rent but it was too late and as a final nail to the coffin the founder yogendra wasup was found in jail for defaulting on a payment of rupees 1.69 cror and I didn't even know about them that is survivorship bias in action we tend to remember only the startups that have succeeded media will cover them and they will become case studies the failed startups disappear quietly like a footnote even though they might have done the exact same things as the startups that succeeded you're making me nervous about my decision don't be Arian I'm not saying this to scare you but if you want to be a Founder you should know that anything can happen at any time you'll play All the Right Moves and maybe even after that you could lose wasup had support when he was down but not everyone will have that even Vijay shakar Sharma himself it didn't take us even a minute to start trolling him after PM's IPO so it is ruthless it is unforgiving and it is extremely demanding building your own startup can be very challenging as we have seen in the video so far but that won't stop a lot of people from starting their own online businesses and a big problem all of them will face is in creating an online store maybe due to lack of budget or technical knowledge they have not yet built an online store that is when udoo our sponsor for today comes in if you're somebody who's facing challenges with your online store then you need to check out udo's e Commerce Builder with this tool you don't need to worry about having any technical skills all you will have to do is follow four simple steps starting by mentioning the type of business you're in your color palette Choice the pages and features you need and lastly choosing from one of the three 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privilege expertise and most Founders won't say this but ideas by themselves are worth nothing execution is everything the Winkle was Brothers also had the idea for Facebook but they couldn't execute it like Zuckerberg it takes money skills and luck to mount a startup and you can't be found in a battlefield without this see entrepreneurship is not easy and it's even harder when you don't have the Privileges that others enjoy these could be Financial privileges you could be from a well-to-do family these could be Network privileges you you could have access to people with affluence or influence or it could be an educational privilege where you've studied in a university with best-in-class faculty having privileges unlock opportunities that most others won't have access to but not having privilege unlocks something even deadlier Spirit resolve hunger take Dr wumman for example today he holds a check of 4,500 crores in his hand but he's the same man who struggled for even 100 rupees to get a BC admission his family neither had the wealth nor the resources to send him to a good school or college fortunately born in a poor family as he himself says and his poverty became the fuel with which he ignited his journey that man is something else only I don't even know if I'm poor enough to be driven like him or Rich enough to have a cushion I do have my skills in place though I have some expertise in gaming enough to risk everything to build a startup I guess so I've played so many games that I know how they're I know how they're programmed I know how they're designed I've learned it all online that's good Arian that's really good but have you built a game yourself before yes I did a platformer and I even put it on the Play Store how many downloads did it get a couple hundred but that was just my first project just testing myself I can do much better now India is the biggest gaming Market in the world and it's only going to grow so I need to start now to Capt it it's going to be a long journey till I build competency what's the size of the gaming Market in India it's already 3.1 billion and it's going to grow to $8.2 billion in the next 5 years and you want to produce games like GTA right how big is that market M most of the $3.1 billion Market you talking about is mobile game and PC console is just 22% did you know this I did not do you know about gameon Studios or nikil malankar they've been trying to create an Indian GTA called Mumbai Gales for years now they're a small team but they still haven't been able to release the full game since so many years how have they been sustaining you should tell me they've been putting out small mobile games since 2013 they collected 177,000 in crowdfunding but that was all for so many years from 2021 to 2024 theyve ra was $1.52 million in funding but it took them 11 years to reach you and not to discourage you or anything but you've not even started they already had experience to begin with expertise in your field cannot be taken for granted the more time you spend in an industry the more you learn about its functioning and it's not even enough to know just about your own industry you have to have some sort of understanding for every related domain and how it's interconnected to your business and the market at large you don't want to be stuck in a d industry just because you don't know where and how to Pivot tell me do you want to be like Zuckerberg or jobs both you will have to choose you can't be both either you can be the tech guy who builds the product or the business guy who runs the revenue you will have to be one and choose a co-founder for the other do you have a co-founder no and what role does Luck play in all of this BYU rindra a teacher knowing the in and outs of the industry knowing the pain points of students starts an edtech platform reaches a valuation of $22 billion what could go wrong turns out a lot when you're in the startup Battlefield you're at the mercy of the market the same pandemic that boosted BYU to the crazy valuation when it ended it also started a downward spiral of layoffs losses in Revenue down to a valuation of less than a billion dollar ravindran who was was once prominently featured in Forbes with a net worth of 177,000 plus crores is now worth 0o rupees luck can make or break you and it's never in your control what if Dr Wan's Mentor had not given him that 100 rupees to change his education to BSC what if he wasn't rejected from 50 interviews in katur what if he'd never reached Mumbai for research and what if the thyroid industry didn't have that big an opportunity for disruption Dr wuman was just the right man knowing to take the right decisions at the right [Music] time so how did you decide to become a Founder I didn't decide to be honest I became a Founder by accident quite literally I co-founded iho when I was 20 that was the first business did some things right made some mistakes and 4 years later from those learnings co-founded the second business in the media and content space yes yes but first startup in your 20s what was that like it was well difficult so i' went with a Sor Road accident and I was put on N number of painkillers by the doctors but the pain was still unbearable long story short I was then introduced to hemp and C based oils which really helped ease my condition but when I finally came out of it stronger I had this strong urge in me to go and share my experience with others and this was the spark of a dream me and my co-founder Rohit who also happens to be the guy that I married we saw a potential we read so many success stories of hemp exploding in the US markets and we thought we could be next building India's first billion dollar hemp startup but that was our surviv ders ship bias in action we didn't know it then so we started extensive research on hemp anything and everything that we could get our hands on we went to the mountains spoke to him Farmers on ground tried to message different industry experts from doctors to lawyers to anybody who would agree to speak to 2 20 something kids and finally after all that we formulated our products but launching in India was far more challenging than we thought the market in India was very different from the US no one really knew what hemp was so instead of focusing on sales like any other founder would we had to spend majority of our time in just educating the market on what hemp was and there was no Playbook to follow there was no success story to copy we had to develop everything from scratch but you were also one of the first in the market isn't that a good thing it is I guess in the long run of course timing of the market plays a very important role but it's not always about who comes first or could came first but Facebook took over but anyways in the early days we faced a lot lot of unexpected challenges regulations policy we had to speak to the government to change laws it wasn't like building any other company it was literally like building an industry from scratch and neither me or Rohit come from a family business background my dad was in the Army and his parents are doctors so the two of us would sit and do a lot of jugar back then to figure everything out ourselves from figuring out what the law is to company registration to me sitting and designing the logo and packaging even though I knew zero about Photoshop back then to becoming the customer support Executives and making calls one by one to standing in stalls for 10 10 hours at length and doing one toone sales we did everything everything and in the beginning you have to anyways we spent 4 years growing iho into a profitable hemp business but starting iho taught me so many invaluable lessons that I'm now able to implement into Yas and grow Yas with much better decision making anyways we were talking about tough DEC decisions you know we had an acquisition offer to buy us out for several million at iho the money was tempting but we said no you turned down Millions but why sometimes it's not just about the valuation or the money Aran it's running a business is much more than that it's also about the value you create it's about getting into the right marriage with your co-founders and investors and every stakeholder that you'll be working with the people you'll be working with are the most important and you know if we took that money then I wouldn't have been able to run y today these are all irreversible decisions that have to be thought through really really really well that must have been a tough decision entrepreneurship is a lot about taking these tough decisions Aran your decisions will Ripple throughout the entire organization right now you can still afford to take decisions that only affect you I have to take decisions that will impact everyone including you so many team members clients different stakeholders everyone needs to be kept happy every single day like Yas is more than 100 members strong in just a few months and it's my responsibility to ensure we create a good ecosystem for everyone that's chosen to leave their homes and come and work with us here providing jobs to so many people is not just about their salary there's so many more layers to it and as a Founder you have to ensure the team is happy at the workplace the clients are happy with the work we're doing for them it all sounds easier than it's actually done and if you want to be a Founder you have to be ready to wake up every day and solve a 100 problems everyone else's problem becomes your problem there's never really any turning off no work life balance it's all work life integration all of this is too much sounds too heavy rules of the game Arian understand that there is a survivorship bios at play when you only hear about the success stories privilege it really counts for a lot when starting up expertise your expertise is what separates you from the CR not the idea alone you cannot discount luck even talented people can get unlucky you cannot be wrong with the timing businesses are built and destroyed on timing identify what kind of a Founder you want to be what would you be better at creating a product or handling the pnl and then go find a complimentary co-founder can you make quick and correct decisions almost all of the time and handle the stress that comes with it are you okay with risking your work life life balance or do you value Freedom more and can you pivot if the market demands it and if the business demands it if you can say a yes to at least seven of these I'd say all the best on your entrepreneurship Journey how many did you get two Arian one last thing I want you to take from this full disclosure it's not about not starting up in your 20s it's about starting up when you are ready if you want to be a successful founder your 20 should be spent on getting ready with all things so you can become a successful founder one day your 20s are a unique time you have energy creativity fewer responsibilities and little to lose use this time wisely build your skills expand your network gain industry experience and become the top 1% in whichever role you're in so when you finally do start your company you'll be much better equipped to handle all the challenges I get it it's not what I wanted to hear but I think it's what I needed to hear that's a mature respon San and remember this doesn't mean you can't work on your ideas start small fail fast learn faster and reiterate by the time you're ready to go all in you'll have a wealth of experience to draw from thanks Lavina this has been really insightful you're welcome Arian and who knows maybe one day you'll be the one giving the stock to an eager young employee you think so I'm sure and I look forward to that day now shall we get back to work we have a company to run after all