l was listening to the Nikhil Kamath podcast. One of the founders narrated a story that began with we didn’t have it easy as children and ended with education in Switzerland and Paris.
As we have seen, lately, India has seen a lot of anger around privilege, where you come from and how you tell your story. With rising wealth inequality and 1% of people owning 50% of the wealth in the world’s most populous country, such anger will only rise.
it’s time successful founders got consultants to work on their personal stories as much as their brands. Because wealth is not the end goal for anyone. Even the richest and the most powerful wish to be respected and loved. And, that will be hard to achieve with stories that alienate and do so with so much indifference.
It is okay to say I came from wealth but building the business was difficult.
It is okay to say I inherited the business was retaining and scaling was difficult.
It is okay to say that we had no difficulties and go on to tell that story. This is exactly what fourth generation heir to a legendary brand told me when I interviewed them for a book.
During the last six months of building the base for different initiatives, I am carefully cataloguing the difficulties I face so that I can be granular about them.
Many people you worked with won’t answer your emails. Friends will see but not respond to messages. Even if everyone loves your ideas, seeing the money would seem impossible. There are enough stories of pain and embarassment. And, most of them come from raising money.
If you had money while you started, tell a different story. Don’t lie about it. Talk about other challenges.
While trying to build a long term cultural engagement platform (does that even make sense), we needed a small capital. A good team, a clear agenda, a clear timeline but no return. I think we have to talked to such a varied set of people that raising money will be my toughest origin story. If we do get started and have a story, at all.
But it is that difficult to build something that won’t get profits but will build legacy; won’t have a product but will have radical impact.
It makes sense to document, grow and prune your origin story as you go. Because, once you have grown, a lot of the pain won’t seem that relevant and you will miss nuggets that engage people.
