Yamini is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vymo, the sales engagement platform of choice for financial institutions.
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My co-founder and I started our B2B SaaS company (the term SaaS came in much later) fueled by our resolve to build out of India and solve a problem in a way that wasn’t attempted before.
An acquaintance summarized the journey we were going to take: "It is going to be intense. The highs are going to be higher than anything that you have experienced before; the lows are going to hit you harder than anything you’ve felt before." While the highs and lows of an entrepreneurial journey can be exhilarating, they can also be a masterclass in resilience. Here is how a focus on areas like strategic decision-making and personal well-being can help you survive the journey.
Conviction
No one can truly prepare you for the ups and downs that define an entrepreneurial path. In my experience, the one thing that will anchor you through this experience is a fundamental conviction in what you are doing. And your work must reflect this conviction.
For example, in the initial days, I had to work toward creating awareness about a segment that did not exist. This meant long conversations, demos and walking a hundred extra miles for every prospect and client with whom I worked.
So if you are building a product, make sure to conduct tests and dry runs a thousand different ways. How many people are using it? What is the time they are spending on your product? Is it solving their pain point? Did it deliver a delightful experience to the user? You will need to go over this again and again to be able to deliver a strong positive experience to your customers.
Choosing Your Flock
Company culture is subconsciously built based on how we gather our initial core team together. What did you like or not like about the candidate? What was the X factor that led you to choose one candidate over the other? Work closely with this core team in the initial days to set the tone of your business. These experiences and learnings set the foundation of what becomes your company culture.
For example, the attributes I still look for in a candidate are commitment, coachability and the ability to assert oneself. I think a person who checks these boxes is a great fit, and it doesn't matter which college they are from.
If you can tether yourself to your beliefs and provide a conducive environment with unlimited opportunity, whether it is a hot or slow talent market, I believe you will be able to find the right candidates. For that matter, you don’t need to lure talent with fancy signing bonuses, off-the-chart pay packages or Peloton bikes.
Macro Is Real
The fact that macro situations are real and impact a business came as a revelation in my journey. Major events that impacted us in the last ten years included the market crash, pandemic and a recession. These types of events teach you to play within guardrails that help give control so you can better navigate challenges. It is about taking survivable bets while avoiding those bets that will weigh you down.
When Covid hit, our clients were struggling to cope with the shift; they had to continue engaging with customers but also prioritize the safety of their sales teams. We reached out to all of our clients and asked them to list the top three challenges they were facing. We used this information to make strategic enhancements to help solve their problem. We rallied to put this product out in just two weeks after the onset of the pandemic.
Make Growth Bets
From my experience, you will need to periodically initiate multiple S-curves to stay on your growth path. Initially, as a founder, you will have to drive this yourself, estimating the risks and making a call. As your organization grows, it becomes important to nurture your team and find owners for this. Give them the framework, coach them on how to assess these risks and, most importantly, build a culture where there is openness to failure and the room to bounce back if something doesn't work the way it is supposed to.
Staying Grounded
To sum up an entrepreneur’s journey in a sentence: "When everything is going well, it is strenuous; if it is not going well, it is stressful." Therefore, it becomes important to find downtime. Carve out time to do what you enjoy doing: Long walks with family, cooking, painting, etc.
When you completely switch off, your subconscious kicks in, and what seems like a challenge can become clear and easy to solve. So downtime can be a powerful tool to use.
A start-up’s journey matters as much as the destination. Realizing this not only helps you plan every day better, but it is another step to becoming resilient.
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