What Makes You a Successful Entrepreneur?

When we talk about a successful entrepreneur, we usually look at the obvious things first. How much revenue has the company made, is it profitable, how big is the team, what is the valuation, and how much wealth has the founder created? All of these things matter. A business ultimately has to make money and survive. But over the last few years, I have started looking at entrepreneurial success a little differently.

For me, success is not only about how big a company you build. It is also about how you build it and how you treat the people who become part of that journey. When you start a company, it is your decision. You have a dream, you take the risk and you decide to build something. But once people start joining you, the company is no longer connected only to your life. Other people are now spending a large part of their day working on something that started with you.

One thing I have personally felt good about over the last four and a half years is that there has not been a single month when my team did not receive their salary on time. I don't really see that as an achievement because salary is something people have already worked for, so paying it on time should be normal. But there were definitely months when it was not easy. Business was slow, cash flow was uncomfortable and I had to manage things personally to make sure salaries went through.

Those months made me think more deeply about the responsibility that comes with entrepreneurship. If someone has worked throughout the month and done what was expected, why should their salary depend on whether my business had a good month or a bad one? Starting the business was my decision. Taking the risk was my decision. If things go very well, I will also get most of the upside. So when things don't go according to plan, I don't think the first impact should fall on the people working for me.

I think founders sometimes forget that every person working in the company has a completely separate life outside it. Imagine someone called Raj working in your company. He comes to work every day, does his job and spends a large part of his time contributing to what you are building. But your company is only one part of Raj's life.

Maybe Raj wants to buy a scooter for his father. Maybe he is saving for his sister's marriage. Maybe he wants to buy an XUV 700 someday. Or maybe he simply wants his family to live a little more comfortably than they do today. Most founders will never know all these things, and that is fine. Raj is also not expecting the founder to fulfil these dreams for him. He knows they are his responsibility.

So he works, tries to become better at what he does and hopes that over time his income and opportunities will improve. Maybe that happens through a salary increase, a bonus, a promotion or simply by becoming more valuable in the market. The work he does for the company is, in some way, helping him move towards whatever he wants in his own life.

This is where I feel founders can sometimes get carried away with their own ambition. When you are building something, it becomes such a big part of your life that you start expecting everyone around you to feel the same way about it. If your dream is to build a company worth hundreds of crores, you may unconsciously expect everyone in the team to also be excited about that dream.

But there is really no reason why they should have the same dream as you.

Raj may not want to build a hundred-crore company. Maybe he wants to buy a house for his parents. Someone else may want financial stability. Someone may want to build a good career and have enough time for their family. These are all perfectly valid ambitions. An employee does not need to share the founder's personal dream to be a good employee.

I actually think the relationship becomes much healthier when you accept this. The work Raj does can help me move towards what I want to build, and the opportunity the company gives Raj can help him move towards what he wants in his life. Both things can happen at the same time.

Of course, if everyone has different personal dreams, there still needs to be something common that brings people together when they come to work. That is where I think the purpose of the organisation becomes important.

You cannot give everyone the same personal ambition, and there is no need to. But people should understand why the company exists and what all of them are trying to achieve together. A developer, salesperson, finance person and founder may all have very different reasons for coming to work every day, but while they are there, they should understand the larger purpose behind what they are doing.

That common purpose is what connects people who otherwise have completely different lives and ambitions. Employees don't need to adopt the founder's dream, but they should be able to understand what the organisation is trying to do and where their own work fits into it.

There is another side to this conversation which I think is equally important. Being responsible towards your employees does not mean that you have to keep everyone irrespective of performance. A business cannot work like that. The company has responsibilities towards its people, but people also have responsibilities towards the company.

Employees should know clearly what is expected from them. If someone is doing good work, they should be recognised and rewarded. If someone is struggling, they should get proper feedback, support and a fair chance to improve. But if somebody continues to underperform even after enough clarity and support, then eventually the founder has to take a difficult call.

This becomes especially hard in a small company because relationships become personal very quickly. You know people beyond their job title. You know their families, some of their problems and sometimes even what they are going through personally. Because of this, founders can delay decisions they probably know they need to take.

But delaying that decision can also become unfair to the rest of the team. If one person is consistently not doing what is expected, the work usually ends up going to somebody else. Other people start carrying the load. At that point, trying to be considerate towards one person can slowly become unfair to everyone around them.

So for me, responsibility towards employees does not mean avoiding difficult decisions. It means being fair while making them.

The same thinking applies when the company goes through a difficult period. Every business can face bad months. Customers may delay payments, markets may change, deals may fall through and sometimes things happen that nobody could have predicted. I don't think any founder can guarantee that everything will always go smoothly.

But I also don't think delayed salaries should become a normal way of managing cash flow.

Before a problem reaches salaries, there are usually other things a founder can look at. There may be expenses that can be reduced, payments that can be postponed, personal withdrawals that can be cut or difficult business decisions that need to be taken earlier. Sometimes the mistake is not the bad month itself. It is that the founder saw the problem coming and kept postponing the decisions required to deal with it.

You also never really know what one month's salary means to someone. It may be an EMI, rent, school fees, money they send to their parents or simply what they need to run their house. As a founder, you don't need to know every detail. The person has already worked for that money, and that should be reason enough to treat it seriously.

There is also a lot of conversation today about AI and how companies may need fewer people in the future. I agree that many repetitive tasks will get automated and smaller teams may be able to do much more than before. But I don't think that means good people become less important.

Somebody still has to understand the customer, make decisions when the answer isn't obvious, decide what problems are worth solving and take responsibility for the final outcome. Technology can make people more productive, but you still need people who think well, take ownership and care about the quality of what they are doing.

And I think people are much more likely to give their best when they feel that the relationship with the company is fair. They should know what is expected from them, feel that good work is recognised and understand why their work matters. They should also trust that whenever the company goes through a difficult phase, the founder will first try to solve the problem rather than simply passing it down to them.

So when I think about what makes someone a successful entrepreneur today, I don't look only at revenue, valuation or personal wealth. Those things are important and I want to build a successful business like every entrepreneur does. But I also think about the responsibility that comes with having people spend an important part of their lives working on something that began as my idea.

The people working with you have their own dreams. They don't need to make your dream their own, but the company should give them an opportunity to move forward in their lives while they contribute to what you are building. At the same time, you should expect them to perform, hold them accountable and make difficult decisions when required.

For me, entrepreneurship is about holding both sides of that relationship together. You want good people to take responsibility for their work, and in return you have to take responsibility for the business you chose to build. That, more than anything else, has changed the way I think about what it means to be a successful entrepreneur.