This weekly quiz from YourStory tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see last week’s quiz here). In this seventeenth edition of the quiz, we present five issues tackled by real-life entrepreneurs in their startup journeys.
What would you do if you were in their shoes? At the end of the quiz, you will find out what the entrepreneurs themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?
Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 320 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.
Q1: Getting past ‘no’
Much has been said about the resilient and perseverant entrepreneurs who ignore naysayers and plough on in their startup journey. But this involves much more than having a thick skin and ignoring criticism. How do successful entrepreneurs deal with a ‘no’?
Q2: Startup ecosystem
Many countries now want to ride the entrepreneurship boom by supporting local startups. This includes support for incubators, faculty grants for entrepreneurship development cells, government tenders that can include startups, and favourable financial policies for investors and founders. What’s another national-level initiative that can help startups?
Q3: Health and performance
Physical and mental health help improve people’s performance. Nutritious food, regular exercise, meditation to deal with stress, fulfilling hobbies, and even good mattresses are recommended solutions here. What else can help you with health and sleep?
Q4: The data advantage
Digitalisation helps a company improve its processes and leverage realtime data for business needs. Digital-enabled platforms should ensure quality and accuracy of data, and have tools to extract valuable insights from them. What’s another prerequisite to harness the data advantage?
Q5: Stemming attrition
Inspirational talks, pay hikes, and perks are techniques often used by business leaders to boost morale and decrease attrition rates. But there is much more to enhancing employee experience and engagement, particularly in the post-pandemic era. What would you do here?
Answers!
Congratulations on having come this far! But there’s more to come – answers to these five questions (below), as well as links to articles with more details on the entrepreneurs’ solutions. Happy reading, happy learning – and happy creating!
A1: Getting past ‘no’
“The gold is buried in the ‘Nos,’” affirms LinkedIn co-founder and successful investor Reid Hoffman in his latest book, Masters of Scale: Surprising truths from the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
A “lazy no” gives no additional information, but an “affirmative no” is an indicator that the founder’s theory must be improved. The “squirmy no” could indicate that there is a potential for greatness in the idea. “You can’t let rejection rule you. Instead, let it fuel you,” the author explains. Read more on how to ride the bumpy startup journey here.
A2: Startup ecosystem
Stock exchanges play an important role in accelerating the startup pipeline, creating wealth, and boosting the economy. BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) in India is on a mission to get more startups and SMEs listed on its dedicated platform, spurred by the IPOs of Nykaa, PolicyBazaar and Paytm.
“We have kept the eligibility criteria very simple,” explains Ajay Thakur, Head of BSE SME & Startups platform. The criteria address paid-up capital, duration since launch, positive networth, and tangible assets. Read more on BSE’s initiatives here.
A3: Health and performance
A wrong selection of pillows is one of the primary reasons people do not have quality sleep and hence cannot get proper body rest, observes Punit Jindal, founder of Sleepsia. The Delhi-based D2C brand offers varieties of innovative pillows at affordable prices.
“Our products come with an ergonomic design that targets pain points precisely, relieves pressure on these points, and enhances overall comfort,” he adds. Its offerings include gel memory foam pillows, cervical pillows, contour-shaped pillows, lumbar support pillows, and orthopaedic pillows. Read more of the sleep opportunity here.
A4: The data advantage
“For a business, traditional or not, what matters the most is how data is presented to them. It needs to be correct but also presented in a manner that is easy to grasp and enables faster decision-making,” explains Nitin Sharma, who heads the UpScale vertical at fintech startup CredAble.
The startup presents data in a way that supports informed financial decisions for growth, and makes it easier for small firms to raise capital. The platform helps them anticipate potential cash crunches and monitor credit scores via AI-enabled tools. Read more on how smoother operational process can help get credit faster here.
A5: Stemming attrition
“Know-Feel-Do is a simple framework that can help you get a better sense of a user and their environment,” explains Reshma Budhia, Director at TOSS the COIN, and a certified design thinking specialist. This framework can help in giving employees a sense of purpose, humanising the workplace, and creating autonomy at work.
For example, building shared ‘Vision Boards’ helps get the conversation started on the sense of purpose of employees and organisations. Finding ways to share real stories with employees improves authenticity. Read more on employee communication and experience here.
YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).
