Given the economically charged environment in India - lots of people are planning to start new ventures or planning to get involved with startups - and everyone from your uncle to your cousin's friend's elder brother has an idea! And with orkut/facebook/ linkedIn - it is so much more easy to link to other people who have similar ideas and hatch business plans.

However, while the story might start there, it doesn't quite end, so many 'in-progress' ventures never make it to fruition and of those which do, few survive. Why? My personal answer is - we are all too fixated with making money and too less with making a difference.

Daman [fictional] works for a bank as a financial consultant, he interacts with clients day in day out and sees how he is solving their problems using a bit of Google and a bit of Bloomberg. And the next thing he realises is that, he doesn't need his company - why not join hands with his Jijaji who runs a software company, get the software which his company uses made in-house and start his own consulting business.

Or Prashant [again fictional] who works as a Project Manager with Some-Soft IT Services Ltd [fictional again!] has this incredible relationship with the manager at the client's place. So he figures out that he could take away a pie of his company's business if only he could set up a team of 5 professionals to handle 'x' process.

Accepted, that these are and have been the ways in which so many companies have started. Accepted that not every company is a Microsoft or Apple to keep churning life-changing products every 5 years. But my point - what is the difference between you working for a 'MNC-or-Top-IT-Firm', earning a fat paycheck and doing some work against you becoming a boss and doing the same work earning probably one half times that money as dividend from your company?

Is it just about being your own boss, earning ESOPS instead of paychecks? Or was entrepreneurship all about changing the way business is done! Some Rant and some answers in the next post!

Update:
I found a very pertinent quote from - Raman Roy, Considered Father of Indian BPO, Founder Spectramind (now Wipro BPO) and Quatrro.

"I’m not trying to say we weren’t trying to make money—that was a driver as well. But that was not the main driver. It was the idea of creating something new in India, and the ability to say that we contributed to its creation. That is why partnering with Wipro was a movement in the right direction. There were some things we could do as a start-up – but this business requires deep pockets."