Venture Into Your Dreams -Session With Mahesh Murthy
November 11, 2006

“The hardest part of life is the ability to say no to the peer pressure and then doing what you think you are made for” said Mahesh Murthy, a venture capitalist par excellence. He was speaking during a session organized by Entrecom on the question of how to start your own venture.

Event started with a small quiz session lasting 10 minutes with all the participants enthusiastically answering the questions and being rewarded with chocolates.

A simple man in a simple attire, Mahesh for next one and half hour ruled the stage with his deep insights, incisive remarks and indomitable wit. He introduced himself as a college dropout and expressed concerns about the prospective managers he was facing. According to him too much of formal education ruins your creativity and makes you risk averse. He said that somehow it prepares a man more to be an employee rather than a employer. With this mentality man always asks for instruction instead of leading the way. So the way to entrepreneurship is difficult for MBA's and some drastic steps are required to reverse the trend.

He said that a company which comes for campus recruitment is actually buying out your dreams. One more important aspect of being an entrepreneur is that how much are you able to put up on table. Before searching for the venture capitalist one should try to look for money from our own and with conviction you will be able to get it.

Mahesh also advised about venturing into uncharted ideas and establish a value proposition there. In any case top three companies share 80 percent of the market so being an also ran will amount to fighting for pennies. Many interesting concepts like “selling of outer space real estate” also came up during the discussion.

It was an engrossing session where the constraints of a closed mindset was identified as the major impediment for being an entrepreneur. So according to Mahesh come out right now of your comfort zones and choose your fate with your own hands. Don't fool yourself by assurances of future dates.

Session ended with a tasty round of snacks but the discussions continued.