“The Hope” of a first generation entrepreneur

Two weeks back I meet few of my old colleagues/friends. Some of us are still in jobs and some have started their own business. It is almost a year we meet last and as expected this time also the discussion went very long.

As time is passing by each one of us is getting a chance to experience different aspect of personal and professional life. Whether it is business or job, when it comes to human factor, we all are sharing similar problems.

One of our friends who started his own business in IT was sharing his experience. He started as a Product Company and in parallel he started some software consulting business also.Later on due to recession and other factors it was getting difficult for him to survive just on product. Consulting side also he was not having much work and he was in need of some quick consulting business for his survival.

One of his friends, let’s call him Mr. “J”, who was in US, appeared as a savior and helped him getting some work outsourced to his company.  His friend really pulled him out of crisis. The deal was not so good but still it was good enough for our friend to survive.

Mr. “J”, who was working more as a middleman, started getting more projects for him and again like first project deals were not so good. Since product side also things were not so great our friend continued accepting deals.

Later on some projects got screwed up, the entire team left, the customer was not happy, project is scraped. Some projects stopped in between, our friend has hired people and he has to pay them salary for next two months. Later on he found that Mr. “J” is actually charging higher amount to customer and he is getting almost a 1/3 of that.  

In entire relationship the Mr. “J” was always pushy about his idea; he has always made enough money for each project and when it comes to failures, he always pushed our friend to face it.

Now Mr. “J” is back to India and asked our friend to provide space to run his own company within his premises!!! And our friend is again agreed to serve him J!

After listening whole story, we all were wondering, man! What kind of relationship is this! Why our friend is still entertaining this guy? When we asked him why? His answer was that, he thinks that this guy has helped him in bad times and because of that obligation, whenever this guy pushes, somehow he accepts it!, sometime he feels that he should help his friend and sometime he feels that whatever has happened it was his fault and Mr. “J” always played it smart.

We were not able to understand the reasoning, because he is running business and we did not accept something like this from him. After some more discussion we were able to figure out that actual reason is something else which he was not able express. He was having problem on product side and he was expecting his friend as “THE HOPE”!!!!!!!!!

Whenever we are going through some bad phase or crisis its natural for us to look for somebody to help or support. It is not necessary that person who is helping you is doing a charity; he might be having his own interest in helping you. This how nature has designed creations to help each other and continue evolving.

Creating a system just on brighter side of human nature is very optimistic and something not real. End of the day we are human and we are bound to behave naturally rather than behavior defined by very idealistic thinking. We do not have a fixed behavior, we act more like a state machine, depending on need we moved into one of the state and once our need is fulfilled we try to get into some other state.

If we look back our ancestor they were more society oriented and very ethical. They used to think more for family, society/community. With time people started realizing that society and community is getting controlled by only few people for their benefits and rest of the society/community is not getting any benefit out of it.  People started pretending to be social but in back of mind they are always working for their personal interest. This has given birth to capitalist ideology.  

On the other side still lot of people are having very social and ethical upbringing. In today’s world, People who are having this social kind of upbringing are finding themselves unfit for current system and they are in confused state of mind where they are not able to decide, what is right and what is wrong?

People who have spent enough time in capitalist world/communities are finding easy to exploit these confused people. One side they gives you a very social/ethical picture and other side they are ready to ditch and make their profit.

The irony is that because of this confused upbringing, People who are cheated, one side they think socially/ethically and complain about these people as cheaters. Other side they think like a capitalist and admire the cheater as a smart person J  

We are not product of what opportunities we have got few years back; internally we are product of our upbringing. This is very hard to overcome for People who are first generation entrepreneur. But it has to be done very consciously otherwise we will face the consequences.

Because of not having enough understanding of nature we keep on thinking of extracting everything from what we have.in case of our friend he started completely relying on Mr. “J” as “THE HOPE”. It’s easy to say but there are other options and he needed to be open for alternatives.   

We should not get into any of social or capitalist mode completely, just follow your drive; nature will help you getting support; take that help and move on. We do not need be a part of any social ideology to behave ethically; nature has already hardwired enough moral values within ourselves to behave ethically.

Is the intention of creating a system is always corrupt?

It is not necessary that always intention of creating a system is for the benefits of only few people. Do we really always want to create a system which will become so corrupt that it will become difficult to survive in it? In the beginning the intention might not be like that, it might be betterment of all but with time we are realizing that the system which we have invented as solution to problem, itself is becoming a problem!

We have invented so many socioeconomic system based on ideologies like communism, capitalism, democracy etc. and each one has its own merits. Communism focuses more on the growth of whole society. It is based on a common ownership, equality and fairness. Basically you cannot think just for your own. You always think and do about the whole society, which is a good thing. Capitalism focuses more on fast growth of individual. We are not dependent on others, we work hard and we realize the results very fast, so as an individual it looks very appealing. Democracy is based on the principle of equality and freedom. It focuses more on giving decision making power to majority; this is again a good perspective.

Many people have given thoughts and really put their hard work to bring these ideologies, but is there any system which is based on any of these ideologies and is really a perfect solution?

The problem is that all these ideologies are solutions to only a subset of requirements. These requirements are very much time specific and as system is evolving these requirements are also going to change.

Like In case of capitalism, we realize the immediate benefits in short term but in long term again we start realizing that we cannot go next step alone, We need others to come with us and since now everyone is living in same capitalist system, everyone wants to gain his benefits fast. Why someone will come with us? Even if someone pretends to come, he will always be thinking about his gains only!

In case of communism goals are very long term and with time we will start realizing that it will take years to really realize the benefits out of such system. Our progress is dependent on others and we are not free to do on our own.

Democracy is a belief that people have freedom and they will choose. With time, it is turning out as an illusion, people think that they are choosing, actually it is getting used more as an organized way of capitalism.

Once we start living in such system, we start building everything based on it without thinking that our current system is addressing only a subset of requirements and in coming time requirement are going to change. We start building laws, rules and regulations based on this system. Again we are denying the evolution by trying to hardcode the system.

We might think that with time we will adopt to new requirements but if our base itself is wrong, any new adoption will be just a reaction to address some issue. It’s more like first creating rigid design of software and later on putting hacks in code to handle new requirements.

Another problem is ignoring the human nature. Either ideologies are based on very bright side of human nature like honesty, brotherhood, growth of all etc. or they are based on the dark side of human nature like greed, selfishness, power etc. Again we are trying to understand human nature from a single perspective and hardcoding the system!

We don’t have a defined behavior; nature has designed us to act more like a state machine. We just move from one state to another state depending on our surrounding. we can find people who are very honest but might behave very selfish in certain situation.

For sure, we can create a system which is more adoptive and capable of providing solutions for most of the requirements, but for that we really need to understand the basics of nature and keep our system aligned with the basics.