Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs

Sashi Reddi is the CEO of Applabs which he founded in the year 1998 and today Applabs is the world's largest independent software testing company. Click here to read more about Sashi Reddi.

Sashi Reddi spoke about the Spirit of Entrepreneurship - My Journey. Here are my notes from that session.

1. Being a part time entrepreneur does not work. If you want to be an entrepreneur then you must be full time into it.
   
2. There is no right time to start. The right time is when you are passionate about your idea.
   
3. Jump in and then refine your plan. Jump in and sort the problems. There is no perfect business plan and if you wait for the perfect business plan then your venture will never get off the ground.
   
4. Be an entrepreneur to make money. Do not start a venture where it is not clear how you will make money.
   
5. Take a shot in a fast growing big market. The reason is because it is easier to capture the market when there are more customers.
   
6. When starting think small on how to make money with few customers and then think big with Venture Capital funding.
   
7. Be rich, have rich friends or marry someone rich. It is very hard to raise money initially when you are starting off as an entrepreneur. The first funds are very difficult since professional investors won’t look at you.
   
8. Meeting and making your first customer happy is important.
   
9. Entrepreneur is not a team effort, at the end, the entrepreneur is to make it happen. He should provide the vision and direction.
   
10. As the CEO of a startup be ready to be the sales guy.
    
11. Don’t get caught up into what is sexy. Look at what will make money. Do not do something that sounds exciting or wonderful to do but has no way of making money. He gave the example of Applabs which was not into software development but was into testing which is the least sexiest thing to do in software services but someone had to do it and there was a lot of money out there to be made.