Trying to be an Entrepreneur !!!

The Oxford Dictionary defines an Entrepreneur as "A person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit." but for me the meaning of an Entrepreneur has changed with time. In the various stages of time the word Entrepreneur has meant a different thing for me.

Till my high school, an Entrepreneur was as simple as the meaning of it on the dictionary, a person who starts a business, creates employment opportunity and makes a huge profit by exploiting his or her employees.

When I joined university for my under graduate in computer engineering, i got exposed to the word "Entrepreneur" more often then I was used to till my high school. We were exposed to the real world entrepreneurs, some were successful and established while others were on their way of being successful. Regardless of which category they fell in, they all were highly motivated and felt like they had potential to be successful at whatever endeavor they take. I found that awesome and was attracted towards the world of entrepreneur. By that time, I also wanted to be an Entrepreneur, start my own business, give other people work, become rich and look cool.

At that time, the concept was simple, come up with some great ideas, build it, sell it, make money , become rich. There was no stopping me, I was going to be an entrepreneur and become rich. Luckily for me at that time, i had four other friends, great friends, with whom I was creating a mobile app for a mobile App Competition. The idea was great, we had great minds and had the technical capability to build the app. I was sure that we will win this app competition. Then came the moment of "expectations vs reality". Nothing happened as I had expected, the app though technically sound, had no real business value, had no customer group, lacked a sound revenue model and had other many flaws. The flaws were so simple and naive, that once they had been pointed out it made me think that how silly am I?. The first app that we developed was a failure, such a big failure that it didn't even make to the app store.

With the failure of our first endeavor, we were even more motivated. I had thought that, now with this failure, we had learned much and if we keep the factors that led to our failure in our minds, our second endeavor will be a sure success. In this time, I had heard of many other companies and people that had failed in the beginning and with the lesson learned from there previous failures had led them to success. "For angry bird to be so successful, there developers had to develop 51 apps prior", was what was constantly in my mind. I also suggested that we do things formally and the best way to be formal would be to open up a company. With much long discussion on various matters like name of the company and many other things, we finally decided to register our company and took help of a litigator and had our company registered. We were a company now, registered, and recognized by the government. The concept of owning a company felt even more great, we had to create audit reports using auditors, pay taxes, have board meetings. It felt like owning a company was a sure path to success and money.

By the time our company was registered, we were preparing for the next year of the same app competition that we had participated previous year and had given us much knowledge. This time, we came up with a game, this game made it up to the app store and we also reached the top six of the competition. The game was a hit in our university, everyone was playing it, but then "WE DIDN'T MAKE EVEN A SINGLE PENNY". That was a real buzzkill, though we had many downloads, was a good game, everyone loved it, we were not able to make any money. That made me realize, it's hard to make money out of something, you seriously need MARKETING and SALES expertise.

Luckily we had some outsourcing offer, we had to create mobile app and websites for a non profit organization. We worked on two of theirprojects, working technically was fun and we got to learn a lot from it, but the experience of working for someone other and creating something for other was not a sweet experience. The people had no clear idea of what they wanted, their requirements changed from time to time, and we also had a very few experience of interacting with our clients, with much difficulty, we completed both the projects before the deadline, both were released and are currently among some of the successful websites/ apps of Nepal.

This experience of out source working was great, we again got to learn many other things. We didn't know properly how to budget the project and had asked for much less than what was the real cost. We had directly jumped into the technical aspect of the work without making the requirements clear which was a serious problem. Nevertheless, we completed and the project was success.

By this time we had completed our undergrads, The PRESSURE was on us. The society didn't thought us as kids trying to have fun with computers and making some pocket money in the process, the society saw us as skilled manpower who should get job and work and earn and live a happy and simple life. There was not such pressure from family to take a job but I know they would be happy if I take one as it will give me STABILITY. There was a serious pressure on us, we had to make money now, serious money not just for our pocket money but even to live our life. The non profit organization came again to us asking for the upgrade in the previous projects. We gave them our quotations(money required), and this time the quotes were made based on what we had learned from our previous mistakes. We gave a fair and reasonable quote. It again became a point in life for me to learn, "PEOPLE IN OUR COUNTRY NEPAL STILL THINK COMPUTER SOFTWARE AS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE BUILT OVERNIGHT AND WON'T COST MUCH TO CREATE ". The back offer that they gave us was so less that, it won't have even covered our coffee expenses. We lost our first client.

With much less balance in our companies bank account, we are continuing further. We are paying the taxes, the registrations fees, the audit fees and many other fees. We are working in our products and plan to release them soon and are hopeful that this will workout. And at this point in time, Entrepreneur has been a different meaning for me. Entrepreneur is someone who losses his personal life to create a business and may or may not create money in the process. I have already lost more than half of my hair, the doctor says it's due to stress, but i am trying to be an Entrepreneur, I will have stress. So, Trying to be an Entrepreneur, I am loosing my hair, my sleep, my social life but I am trying to be an Entrepreneur and have to think all this losses as a process and hope that one day all this losses will pay back. Till I become an Entrepreneur, I must keep on TRYING TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR.