Understanding Entrepreneurship
This article is written by Clinton James, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Mudassir Sheikha is the founder and CEO of Careem, the leading MENA-based reservation service in Dubai for cars and automobile, which operates from Morocco to Pakistan. Before venturing into Careem, Mudassir was a partner at McKinsey & amp, the company that advises clients about business strategy and developments. Prior to McKinsey, Mudassir spent a decade in the modification and understanding of technology in Silicon Valley, where he recently founded DeviceAnywhere, which was eventually was acquired by Keynote Systems. He has degrees in computer science and economics from Stanford and USC.
Entrepreneurship is the cognitive process of creating a business while building and scaling it to generate profitable net incomes. Just like all other professions, worldwide entrepreneurs experience challenges and benefits from their ventures, businesses or startups.
While at Mr. Burak’s world’s leading Startup Turkey’s event, Mudassir Sheikha shares the five main lessons that he learnt from his experience in entrepreneurship and Careem in general.
To begin with, entrepreneurs need to focus on solving their local problems within their regions. As an entrepreneur, problem solving should be constantly on your mind and one should love and enjoy solving them. Always take up positive avenue that the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. Every time there is a challenge, it sparks an opportunity to learn about the problem, find a solution to it and make the services or product better for satisfaction both to the user and to yourself.
Secondly, there is need to learn the concept of iteration by developing something quickly without spending months or years trying to design or develop it. Go into the market with it promptly and let it tell you what you should be doing, then keep on iterating. Let the market tell you what it needs through its important characteristic that it is very dynamic.
Hire awesome people especially for startups. It’s challenging for startups to hire good people because many of them want to work at big multinational corporations. However, there is no place that a talented person could have a huge impact than a startup. Look for partners as a startup and make them feel like a partner rather than an employee by offering them equity in the business. In looking for talent to hire, you could also acquire other smaller companies if resources allow.
Most importantly, do not give up on that hardworking and talented person that you feel will make an impact in the company. Find local allies and get people to come on board as advisors and investors. They can facilitate in local insights, networking, aiding, promotion and opening of doors that would otherwise not have been opened.
In addition, entrepreneurs need to discover their main purpose. It is tough being an entrepreneur, plus, if you don’t discover your purpose in time, then it will become very difficult to keep going. Discover what drives you to do what you are doing and this will act as guidance towards future successes.
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