An entrepreneurship panel of 5 CEOs—Greg Hong from Reserve, Sonali Lamba from Brideside, Dima Elissa from VisMed-3D, Eddie Lou from Shiftgig, and Pek Pongpaet from Impekable—provides tips for starting, launching, and scaling a business. The panel offers skilled tips on how to become better entrepreneurs by chasing innovative ideas, practicing self-analysis, and being passionate about one’s own ideas.
Some of our key takeaways from the conversation:
- Harness Your Skillset:
Ask yourself if you are ready to face the risks and unforeseen challenges that come along while running a business. In addition to coming up with ‘the idea’, an entrepreneur needs to be creative and should know his way around sales and marketing too. - Embrace Failures and Pick the Right People:
It is critical to learn from your failures and to bring discipline into your life. An entrepreneur’s life is like living in a roller-coaster, and patience plays a critical role in dealing with the ups and downs. While recruiting, go for diverse people who will add value to the business’ journey. - Empower Your Employees:
Know the kind of people you hire and how to use their strengths to your advantage. As the founder of a business, an entrepreneur needs to positively impact the employees to keep them attached to the product. Have an HR in place to address the employees’ needs and for long-term scaling of the company.
Below are some of the key points and moments from the conversation:
- 0:50 – Greg Hong, Sonali Lamba, Dima Elissa, Eddie Lou, and Pek Pongpaet are introduced as the entrepreneurship panel to discuss the hows, whens, and whys of running a business
- 5:20 – Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Think outside the box to raise money and to get sales and marketing done
- 7:40 – Your employees look up to you to feel good about their jobs and an entrepreneur should be a cheerleader within the organization
- 8:30 – There are a lot of surprises that an entrepreneur comes across while launching a company
- 11:10 – The media glorifies startups but there is a lot of hard work and grit involved in achieving success
- 12:36 – Entrepreneurs need to pick the right people, understand their market, and empower their employees
- 25:49 – A founder’s role is to think strategically to grow the business and not to waste time in executing it
- 27:27 – The HR role and standardization of processes is important in scaling a company, in addition to recognizing the strengths of employees
- 34:00 – Recruit diverse people who will provide varied opinions that will help in dealing with multiple issues in an objective manner
- 41:44 – Don’t wait to start a business if you have an idea that you deeply believe in
