However, there are certain traits that a founder must ensure in each employee in his dream venture. While this does not guarantee success, the chances surely do improve with a good team. Moreover Startups are often competing with biggies of the industry when it comes to hiring the best talent. Operating with limited resources and optimizing the output drives the success of a startup.

Here are a few characteristics that every start-up employee (including the founder) is expected to have:

Passion
Every employee of a start-up must believe in its mission. This will ensure their loyalty in the most trying circumstances that the company may go through. So, look out for the ones who are passionate about the area your company is serving.

Non-materialistic
In early stages, start-ups can only spare as much to its employees. Make sure the person you are hiring knows this and can manage with comparatively low wages for some time. These are people who look for challenges, job satisfaction and vibrant culture than just salary package.

Multi-taskers
In a start-up, the same person is often expected to play multiple roles at once. Therefore, every person must be good at juggling additional responsibilities as and when the need arises.

Loyalty
It is very important for all your team members to be loyal to you and the company in the very competitive world of start-ups. It’s their loyalty would that drive the employees to help you get through the tough times, or outmaneuver your competitors.

Doers
There are many crucial situations in the journey of an early stage enterprise where employees need to be proactive and make some decisions without waiting for orders. Make sure you only hire such people whom you can trust your team members’ instincts if they do this.

Team player
Collaboration between team members if often required in start-ups. This means that there must be a certain amount of camaraderie and rapport among them. However, it can only be achieved when the people in question are so inclined.

Determined
Constant ups and downs are a regular part of an entrepreneurial journey. Therefore, every person inducted in a start-up must have a tough determination to make things work without giving up.

Adaptable
Start-ups need to change their strategies very often. Also, the do not have the kind of structure that the corporate bigwigs have. This makes it extremely important for the team members to be adaptable in every situation.

Quick learner
For the same reasons as above, a person who is a quick learner can be a great asset to any start-up. Because they may have to pick up some skills on the job in order to serve the company well in the face of constant and varied challenges. Talent with right attitude to learn than just being ready of teach-functional skill would be more useful for a startup on a long run.

Visionary
Any person who is a part of a start-up in its early stages should share the vision of the founders, or have his own, for the company. This will also ensure that the said employee is associated with the company on a long-term basis as it aligns with his own career trajectory as well.

While you may have lots of expectations from your prospective employees, remember that they have their share of expectations, too. After all, these professionals are choosing to be a part of your organization when they could have been employed by huge corporates in their areas of expertise.

— Deepak Menaria , Founder & Chief idea Farmer- LEMON

The post Ten Traits for the first team of your Startup! first appeared on Lemon Ideas.

At the end of the day, I made an awe-inspiring discovery – start-ups are just like KJo movies. Before laughing the thought off, read out a few of my reasonings .

Products of passion
There is a lot passion that goes into the making them. A cinematic masterpiece is not possible unless the makers believe in their product. The same is true for any start-up; its story begins with the founders’ passion for and belief in their cause.

1. Big value propositions

Big budget productions are the specialty of our man KJo. In the world of start-ups as well, every good idea backed by an efficient team has a huge value.

1. Grand planning and execution

Since these are both highly valued products even at the ideation stage, there is a need to justify the expectations from it through efficient execution of the strategies that go into their making. That calls for planning and execution to be at a grand scale as well.

1. Star value affects the product

However good the idea of a movie, the story and screenplay may be, it needs to rest on the shoulders of good actors and artistes to succeed. Similarly, the success of a start-up depends on a good team as well. The execution of a good idea is what counts and not just the Idea.

1. Global appeal

KJo movies have a huge fanbase among foreigners and NRIs. That’s because the topics he deals with are universal. That is exactly the secret of success for many of the successful start-ups as well. They can address and solve the same problem around the world, with the same model.

1. You can roll into the banks if successful

The blockbusters among the successful Karan Johar movies are really big grossers at the box office. So can be a successful start-up, which can generate billions of dollars for its founders and backers.

1. The successful ones become legendary

The dialogues, styles and songs in most KJo movies, especially the hit ones, gain a legendary status. A successful start-up is no less. It gains a cult status, with its story being retold several times over and encourage entrepreneurs all over the world.

1. They make our world a happier place

The feel-good, ending-on-a-happy-note movies made by the ace filmmaker gives us a bright outlook of the world around us. Start-ups also do the same, by solving our problems or giving us a service we need.

So, those are few similarities we find between the movies that are churned out of the Dharma Productions stable. Can you think of any more? Or do you disagree with any of the points? Let us know what you think of this comparison.

The post How Start-ups Are Like Karan Johar movies! first appeared on Lemon Ideas.

For every successful start-up, there are 9 others that have failed. There is a reason for this. There are some very common mistakes that cause a start-up to fail. Let’s discuss some of them.

No market for the product/service
Multiple surveys have shown that the most common reason for the failure of start-ups is that their product or service doesn’t really solve an existing problem. Often, founders are so confident about their ideas being revolutionary that they the all-important step of testing the market. Not including the most important component of success, consumer opinion, has led many a start-ups on a path of doom.

Missing Customer Empathy
One thing which matters significantly for entrepreneurs is the understanding of their customers along with the problem/Gap/need that is being addressed by the entrepreneur. A natural tendency among us to jump t solutions and execution makes a shortcut where customer empathy and problem validations takes back seat. This is where the belief becomes blind belief for many entrepreneurs.

Inability to manage funds well
Most entrepreneurs put a lot of stress on getting their idea funded. However, once they have access to the required capital, they don’t use this resource optimally. In most cases, the reason is the founders are specialised in fields like engineering, sales or marketing. Finance is not their strong suite. Despite this, they refuse to take hired help citing cost cutting.

Improper team selection
A company is as good as the people working for it. Many first-time entrepreneurs don’t put enough time and effort into ensuring the right people manning the right positions. It doesn’t just involve getting people who believe in your cause on board, but having people with the right expertise in the team.

Leadership problems
This also includes the founder’s own ability as a leader. The important thing is to delegate the responsibilities to people qualified for the job description. If you are more of an ideator and less of a people’s person, let someone else handle the employees. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself like you would on any other employee and come up with an honest assessment of yourself. Delegate the jobs you can’t handle to those who can do them well.

Better competitors come along
However revolutionary or disruptive an idea may be, once is in front of the world its very easy to copy. This best of start-ups will give rise to a bunch of copycats. Sometimes, these copied versions can solve the problem so well that the first-mover advantage no longer holds any water for the original company. This can be avoided by ensuring that the company doesn’t become complacent after the first taste of success. There must be continuous market research to know the feedback of the consumers and improvement in the product or service based on it.

Now that you know the common mistakes that lead start-ups to failure, we hope you can steer clear of them. We at Lemon firmly believe that #AnyoneCanStart and what matters is learning from past and others to move fast in a smart way. For any more help you can always depend on our expert mentors at Lemon School of Entrepreneurship.

The post Reasons for the failure of start-ups first appeared on Lemon Ideas.

One sector that has consistently been imbibing these qualities in youngsters is the defence sector. As a bonus, defence personnel are always attuned to thinking about the greater good and solving problems – another important attribute of a good entrepreneur.

More than 10,000 defence personnel seek to retire from their respective force every year. All of them are fit, with the physical and mental acumen that would allow them to take active part in social life. However, many of them find it very difficult to adjust to civilian life, especially in terms of what they do in the post-service years.

Due to the training they receive and qualities they develop over the years, former defence personnel can make excellent entrepreneurs. However, there is still a need for them to take up a few lessons, a kind of reorientation, to help them with the nitty gritties of the entrepreneurial life.

In US, which has one the largest militaries of all countries, more than 49% of veterans from World War II became entrepreneurs after leaving the service, according to a study by Syracuse University. The trend continues well into the present day, with ‘vetrepreneurs’ are working in every capacity in the start-up world, from running incubators to being venture capitalists themselves, even as the government and private parties work towards empowering the former military personnel.

Additionally upon retirement , Defence personnels gets good money as part of various benefits which could become seed money for their venture journey. Also they get regular pension and other life long benefits which certainly take care of their livelihood , hence the risk is not that as high as in other cases. They are most fit to start their journey as entrepreneurs.

Since during service tenure , Defence personnel spend time away from their hometown , it gives a good opportunity for them to identify right need/problem/gap in form of business/social opportunity in their hometown and become local entrepreneurs at grassroot. This also adds to the nation’s benefit of solving core problems of people as well as creating employment avenues for rural and remote places.

We believe that Indian defence personnel can also emulate this model, with a little help and training. It is this belief in our defence personnel that makes Lemon School of Entrepreneurship come up with a special training programme aimed at the ex-servicemen. A well structured and quick course, it aims to equip them with nuances of business and help them pick the right business idea and start their next big career leap.

The post Entrepreneurship, a great option for defence personnel in their second innings first appeared on Lemon Ideas.