I read an article in HT today.
Students who opt out of placements can opt in for two years after they graduate. This may encourage more students to chase their dreams. There is also an option at IIM-A to get a lot of course credits by doing a course of independent study in the second year. A student who wants to be an entrepreneur thus has a lot of support.
The institute feels that the ability to opt in to placements will ease societal pressures on students from parents to get a dream job right away.
Kudos to IIM-A for taking the lead and I hope other engineering and management institutes follow.
A suggestion to students is to form your team carefully. Just because you are friends it does not mean you are the right team. Students should be open to forming teams with the right people wherever they may be and also considering joining startups. Not everyone can be a lead entrepreneur or cofounder. You can make it big by being an early employee as well.
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Krish,
I hear you but quite a few young people do not have a clue about what their real talent or passion is and they experiment and stumble into it. I think the safety valve makes it easier for people to try which is why it is good.
Roshan,
I think IIM-A extends this to all who opt out of placement when they graduate. It would be very tough for them to monitor who opted out for what reason. I hope there is no bureaucratic process to opt out and opt in.
Since most young companies cannot participate in IIM-A placement process students have to opt out to join them. One student opted out and joined a startup I was involved in even before this change.
I agree with you 100% that entrepreneurship is a team effort and that talented people who join startups with high potential could create wealth even if they have say 2% or even much less of a company.
I also think that there are very few startup entrepreneurs who have good ESOP plans and can articulate a vision that excites talent to join. Normally it is very easy to recruit top drawer talent early and it becomes tougher as the startup matures.
This is a really commendable initiative by IIM-A. I wonder why IITB has not followed suit. C’mon guys.
I want to add another suggestion: I feel we tend to glamorize the ‘entrepreneur’. If we as a nation have to move ahead, we need to encourage people to take pride in ‘team play’. There is pride in being the founder but I think large companies will only be created when lots of talented people join a team and work with single minded focus towards a common goal. This is something that happens very rarely in India. People tend to be comfortable being the founder of a company and owning 50% of a small company and not so comfortable joining a more broadly owned company where they would own 2%. As a result, we seem to have gotten into this rut where start-ups in India tend to not compensate heavily in stock and talented people are really making career decisions based on pay scales. I would love to see IIM-A and other colleges extend this privilege to not just founders of companies but also students who want to join younger companies.
Sanjay,
By entrepreneur, I was referring to a self-starter(s) with his gut, heart and head behind a well researched idea and its flip side of risks. The Inherently intelligent and truly enterprising types. They make allowances for failure by hedging their risks within the framework of enterprise itself ( tearing the down the original plan and rebuilding it if needed ) and for such people `bailing out’ is not an option at all. It dilutes their life objective. The Romantics have been kept clearly out of our realm.
And this type certainly views its idea thro a matter-of-fact prism ( and that includes a realistic assessment of their ability to see it thro ) and will not hesitate to rip off and rebuild it if that’s what it takes to win as they are not emotionally attached to it. Yes, they could be attached in a way that they love the freedom offered by the element of creativity in startups. They go from one idea to another idea and not a job – the stuff that serial entrepreneurs are made of.
aall teh comments above miss the problem of information symmetry that an entrepreneur faces while seeding his business. most new businesses fail and an entrepreneur will start will start one maybe two ventures in his lifetime. in the us if you didn’t go to stanford then work experience at apple and microsoft is a plus. if you didn’t work a google, working a moderately successful start-up is a plus. point is this, i as an entrpreneur have to see something special in a future employee. without anything else in india people have to revert to academic credentials, even if they don’t want to. this problem will resolve itself with time.
Krish,
I think the notion of entrepreneurs burning their boats is romantic hype. Most entrepreneurs are very calculated risk takers. Heads I win tails I do not lose much.
Some people think they can do a startup or work in startups but then they realize that they cannot cut the mustard.
The safety valve may encourage a few more to try.
A corporate career or being a bureaucrat, CA,Doctor, Lawyer etc. are much safer careers than say being an entrepreneur, singer or sportsperson.
I do agree that for angel investors the risk that an IIT or IIM person may bail when the going gets tough is a risk which they have to assess and manage. They normally do that by having the ability to repurchase part or all the founders stock at issue price if and when the founders bail. Sometimes the investors may fire the founder if the founder is not performing.