An Entrepreneur’s Quarterly Performance Evaluation – Corporate Style

By Vikram Parekh on July 2, 2013 29 Comments / 1882 views

Awarded the

“Rodinstar” Post

of the week!!

After having spent close to 12 years in corporate life, working across multiple industries, domains and countries, I finally gathered some courage to give it all up and follow my dream – Be an entrepreneur!!

Just three months into my new venture, I still find myself going back to my corporate days and imagining what life would have been if I was still in a job? And this morning when I asked that question again, I realized that it was July 1st week, just about the time when employee quarterly / bi-annual performance evaluations are due. So I decided to do one myself for the last 3 months.

Since I don’t have a boss that could help me with it, I’ve put myself into two roles:

Employee (My ever optimistic heart, always looking at the bright side, thinks it’s difficult to improve perfection, nothing can go wrong, I’m the best!!)

Manager (My always grounded brain, with an extremely balanced approach, can call a spade a spade, keeps me on track)

And here’s how the conversation went (kinda talking to myself here):

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Employee’s self-evaluation:
The last 3 months have been one of the best times of my life. I have been able to embark on a journey that will hopefully help me achieve my dreams and lead the life that I’ve always wanted.

Here’s how I have performed against the goals that I set in the beginning of the year:

Networking: Registered myself across various forums and am a regular at events (e.g. TiE, Startup Saturdays, TechSparks, Meetups etc)

Create an online brand: Took a DIY approach, made a website, top search result for anyone searching “Gamification India” on Google, now active on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn. Video interview posted on YouTube. Got media coverage on two leading online newspapers.

Company formation: All formalities done.

Team building: Not surprisingly is the most challenging. Still dating a few potential co-founders.

Get Gyaan: I consume-share-post comments on relevant stuff. Follow-track-get inspired by stalwarts in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Give Gyaan: Continue to assist anyone who needs career and professional guidance, especially now since I’ve taken this big plunge.

Get funded: Currently bootstrapped. Tested the waters in the investor community, know who’s who, where and how much they typically invest, what ticks and what does not, made some connections that I can reach out to when required.

Lean startup: Working on a couple of product ideas, while simultaneously building the services business, seeking potential customer feedback and ploughing that back into product/service development.

Manager’s feedback (typical sandwich approach – starts with good, sandwich the not-so-good, end on a high note):
Vikram, it’s a pleasure to see you get immersed into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Given your corporate background, you add tremendous value to your startup.

However, one thing that I’m surprised to see is that you might be focusing on the wrong goals in the beginning of your entrepreneurial career, or at least seem to have your priorities a little haywire. While everything that you’ve mentioned in your self-evaluation is important, here are a few things that I was expecting you to focus on first:

Product or Services Model: I know you’ve been working on a few ideas, even ended up filing for a patent for one of them…however, the sooner you can focus on what you want to pursue, the better it’ll be. Are you a product company or a services company? You too seem to be a victim of a common fallacy that “my services revenue will help me sustain my product development efforts”. Trust me, it doesn’t work, it’s not sustainable and you’ll be all over the place.

Customer / USP / Competition / Market Analysis / Revenue Model / Funding etc: You seem to have a great understanding for each one of these critical components and can write heaps of documents on how they apply to either your product or service offerings. But again, you can only get deeper into these AFTER you’ve zeroed in what you want to do. FOCUS!!

Overall the last 3 months seem to have gone well, but it’s too early to judge and I’ll not be able to assign a performance rating for you. You seem to be going in the right direction, and I hope that you can stay focused in your approach. Good luck!!

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So whether you’re still in your job, thinking of leaving, or have already left and taken the plunge… do share your thoughts on how the journey has been, and how do you keep yourself in check and focused on doing the right things? Would love to hear your comments.

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Another interesting read from this author: From Merc pickups to auto rick drops…

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Comments

Vikram Parekh

29 Comments

asha chaudhry July 2, 2013, 12:55 pm

WOW.

for a debut post on trhs, vikram… you’ve just set the bar very very high!!

i loved every word of this post. what an amazing way to evaluate yourself. i reckon every member will be able to take back something from this for sure.

Points #1 & 2 are poking me!!!

perfect ‘call for action’ reminder. thank you vikram. pls keep writing and sharing…
Vikram Parekh July 2, 2013, 2:24 pm

Thanks Asha. Looking forward to being an integral part of this vibrant community.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal July 3, 2013, 8:30 am

WOW! WOW! WOW!

Never looked at it this way! awesome!
Saraswathi Pulluru July 3, 2013, 9:19 am

Wow, this post is just “Awesome”!!!

Being a part time entrepreneur, i think i assess myself too many times in short span of time. That would be my first learning.. to give sufficient time to things I’m doing and plan to do..
Nithya Prabu July 3, 2013, 9:47 am

Excellent post, Vikram. Loved every bit of it. Please write more. Good luck to you!
Nitish Mehta July 3, 2013, 10:07 am

Hello Vikarm Sir , Nice to see you in TRDH .!!! and i was just thinking this morning to ping you .!
Prashant Dang July 3, 2013, 10:09 am

Wow !! Awesome post Vikram.. and good pointers to follow on and evaluate from entrepreneurial Employee and Manager perspective…
Aalok Pandey July 3, 2013, 11:08 am

Hi Vikram,

insightful post!

would add some points to Manager’s credit:

1) 3 months is a long time to understand, is there Investor/customer/co-founder etc interest, in whatever product/service/other model, that you are working on. Vikram, focus is one thing, getting grounded is another. I would have recommended you, stick-to-cor-po-rate, eat the product/service out, digest & throw it to the investor/customer. But again, that’s how ‘we’ do. Anyways, its time to get grounded!!!

2) Otherwise Vikram, my management thinks, that in the next quarterly upheaval, if you don’t get funds, we would not be available for review. 🙂 All the best vikram, & yeah we are catching up for coffee, Barista , yups.

🙂

Too much introspection, would deviate the speedy tangent.

my 0.002c
Gunjan Kejriwal July 3, 2013, 11:18 am
Hi ! this was a brilliant post.

However , can someone shed more light into this “
1. Product or Services Model: I know you’ve been working on a few ideas, even ended up filing for a patent for one of them…however, the sooner you can focus on what you want to pursue, the better it’ll be. Are you a product company or a services company? You too seem to be a victim of a common fallacy that “my services revenue will help me sustain my product development efforts”. Trust me, it doesn’t work, it’s not sustainable and you’ll be all over the place.”
asha chaudhry July 3, 2013, 11:24 am

hi gunjan… have you gone through alok’s ppt services vs products?

perhaps it will help you a bit?!

https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/services-vs-products-what-to-do
Gunjan Kejriwal July 3, 2013, 11:27 am

thank u Asha ! 🙂
Vikram Parekh July 3, 2013, 11:54 am

🙂 Thanks. We’ll take it one quarter at a time.
Vikram Parekh July 3, 2013, 11:59 am

Thanks all for the feedback and I’m glad to you liked it.

@asha, can you consider implementing the “You might also like…” feature on TRHS. Gunjan’s question here would be a great use case for it. Had it not been for you, I would not have discovered the post by Alok on product vs. services.

You can leverage the tags that the author puts in the post, and maybe (if technically possible), put an algorithm to auto tag the post. E.g. convert all bullet headings into tags.

Being new to this forum, I’m just thinking of how can I discover content which was posted a couple of years a ago, but still relevant to what I’m doing today.
Naveen Sasidharan July 3, 2013, 4:24 pm

A very good article. Enjoyed reading it. I have never done a self appraisal for my self in my 10 yrs of entrepreneur life. An eye opener for me. Keep up the good work and I can see a winner here.
Vikram Parekh July 4, 2013, 4:36 pm

Thanks Naveen. Looking forward to pick your brains and leverage from your decade experience of being an entrepreneur.
asha chaudhry July 5, 2013, 6:13 am

hi vikram,

thanks for all the suggestions! will try to figure out what all is possible.

i’ve recently started adding “you might also like” on certain articles that have similar contexts. and always try to share relevant links on as many posts as i can. i have a long way to go at the speed at which we are growing 🙂

btw, all of alok’s posts can be found here – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=3b9tok18sbp28&sort=discussionsStarted

p.s: pls check the top of your post

🙂
Vikram Parekh July 5, 2013, 6:17 am

🙂 Thanks Asha. I’m humbled with the response and feedback received. I guess the more you contribute, the more you learn.

Thanks.
Praveen Kumar July 5, 2013, 10:13 am

wow! Employee Vs Manager perspective? a nice angle to view 🙂
Sunaina Shenoy July 5, 2013, 3:09 pm

Hi Vikram,

no one could have explained this “entrepreneur self evaluation” concept in a simpler and easier way. Thank you.

This is truly awesome and thought provoking!
Sagar Yadav July 6, 2013, 2:05 pm

I am still confused about this critical question that everyone says they have to answer first – are you a product company or a service company. Can one give me more details on this – with examples. Also, is Walmart a product company or a service company and what about Bharti Airtel ?
Vikram Parekh July 8, 2013, 5:08 am

Sagar, It’s interesting that you picked both FMCG and Telecom. Both to me are primarily a service business.

Do read through the history/business model/customers etc of both Walmart and Airtel, and you’ll realize that they are in the business of managing customer relationships. Both work on a highly outsourced model, where everything which is non-core to managing customer relationships is outsourced (Tech, Product, Towers, Real Estate etc.). What they usually keep in-house is customer servicing groups.

Regards, Vikram
Sagar Yadav July 8, 2013, 11:53 am

Thanks Vikram,

I also took out some time and read a few chapters of a book over the same topic.

I am happy that you cleared out my doubts further 🙂
Krishna Vyas July 9, 2013, 5:34 am

Very well written. Very inspirational.
Jitendra Gursingh August 29, 2013, 12:16 pm

Great post and definitely worthy of a RodinStar! Instantly share-able & do-able content! With the no. of distractions nowadays, it takes a lot to Focus and build on the “next-big-thing”

PS: The Dilbert Strips are HOWLARIOUS 😀
Vikram Parekh August 30, 2013, 5:52 am

Thanks Jitendra. Glad you liked it. Hopefully, we can build that next big thing…if not today, someday for sure!! 🙂
Jitendra Gursingh August 30, 2013, 6:34 am

Cheers for that :))
Amol Ghemud August 30, 2013, 12:50 pm

Vikram sir…i came across at right time when i was thinking about quitting job or not….and this helps me a lot….
Vikram Parekh August 30, 2013, 3:07 pm

Thanks Amol for your comments and reaching out on LinkedIn. Happy to connect.
Ishan Jha May 5, 2014, 5:21 pm

For the past 7 months of Uberhealth, I felt that failing fast is the key and whatever may come, things should move ahead ….