Rob Kalin founded Esty and served as its founder and CEO. As Etsy’s CEO, he developed many successful strategies to bring the company to new heights. Kalin was mid-way through his entrepreneurial journey, but it abruptly ended when he got fired by the management. He fell prey to disagreement with his board of directors. While they wanted to scale up the business, Kalin wanted to empower small businesses and rebalance capitalism. During a press interview, Kalin was vocal about his idea, and the rift between Kalin and the board of directors grew. As a result of the disagreement between Rob Kalin and the board of directors, Kalin was deemed incapable of scaling up a business. He got fired right away!
An entrepreneur who is neither new nor old in the system faces challenges that turn out to be a now or never situation. In addition, one of the biggest challenges these founders may encounter is failing to make a difference or differentiate themselves from the competition. That is when the entrepreneur often feels stuck. These problems are related to the firm and the approach used by entrepreneurs.
Moving ahead, we have showcased several issues that make entrepreneurship a different ballgame for millions of business owners:
Stagnant Growth and Waiting for the Right Opportunity
Let’s begin by understanding the issue. Businesses experience stagnation due to a lack of capital, ineffective business strategies, and a lack of opportunities within the system and outside. It leads to a period of zero economic expansion, and the business remains at breakeven. Moreover, the journey of an entrepreneur comes at stake because scale-ups aren’t visible to the management. Thus, the ability of an entrepreneur to make a company profitable gets questioned. Often, the solution to a stagnant business is not investment or advertising. However, dealing with a no-growth situation is no easy task.
It is possible to deal with such situations through ‘change.’ The change of ideas, opinions, systems, and methods encourages innovation. Here, an entrepreneur can even succeed with a strapped budget.
Let’s take the example of Zoom communications. Eric Yuan founded this video conferencing application in 2012. The application caters to both professionals and individuals. This application was used by many, but the company remained in a stagnant position for the past eight years, earning little profit. Suddenly, when C-19 spread across the globe, Zoom benefited from this situation with unexpected revenue. When people struggled to go out of their homes for meetings, Zoom became a synonym for video conferencing. That was simply a wonder by Eric Yuan as he made the user experience easy and emphasized the free model system in the application. Zoom also hired engineers and IT experts who initiated this process of simplification through innovative ideas. Soon, more and more people started using it, and Zoom went out of its stagnant position.
Disagreement with Management and Resolution
When experts work together, opinions clash. In the same way, entrepreneurs often have trouble making their management align with their decision. An entrepreneur with 10-15 years of experience is less likely to have their decisions questioned. However, for entrepreneurs who have just started their journey, their big decisions are closely scrutinized by the management team. This factor makes the entrepreneurial journey a challenge.
On a similar note, something like this happened with Quaker chairman William D. Smithburg. In 1994, Quaker Oats acquired Snapple by investing a whopping amount of 1.7 billion dollars. Followed by its previous acquisitions, Quaker was riding high on success and aimed to do it again with Snapple. When Smithburg decided to acquire, management didn’t support his decision at once. The investment was high, and William had less experience in acquisitions. Hence, its acquisition failed drastically, which led to a significant loss for Quakers.
It was a classic example where the rift between management and entrepreneurs ended up as a blunder. Well, this difference can be overcome by communication. When entrepreneurs put forward their opinions with proper reasons, management trusts. Another best conventional way is ruling with maximum. An entrepreneur here should focus on management to show their agreement through voting despite arguing. This simple process will result in fewer conflicts and verbal arguments. Management will begin to trust their owner and will feel valued. In the above case of Quaker oats, William and the company’s management decided to sell Snapple quickly only through communicating effectively.
Take a Closer Look with Attention and Adaptation
When a company reaches a mark, entrepreneurs often indulge in various activities. Their increased number of tasks takes over their entire calendar. Due to this, entrepreneurs often find it difficult to pay attention to critical business functions. One important thing which gets overlooked is understanding the ‘people’. An entrepreneur creates the management and turns over the responsibility of managing to them. Due to this, they remain unaware of the ‘behind the scenes’ of the firm. That is the time when many people enter the organization with different agendas and opinions.
Do you remember when Eberhard was fired from Tesla without any explanation? Eberhard founded Tesla in 2003 and was dismissed without any reasoning. Elon Musk later took over as CEO from being a chairperson. Hence, entrepreneurship isn’t an easy approach. Entrepreneurs need to know everything about their company, from hiring process to sales figures.
Another aspect is taking a closer look at skills and creativity. Entrepreneurs are successful because of the guts and skills they possess. But while we spoke of business getting stagnant, the creativity level of entrepreneurs often gets stagnant. This hampers their decision-making process and their ability to cope with the competition. Often, owners fail to upgrade themselves to adopt a change or skill. This can even throw one out of competition.
Blackberry faced this fallout. Newly appointed CEO and Entrepreneur John S. Chen faced a huge loss when the firm Blackberry failed to cope with the touchless digital era. Hence, Apple dominated the market and threw Blackberry out of the competition. This all happened because the entrepreneur limited their skill, potential and failed to analyze the trend. Therefore, to stay on top one needs to focus wisely on unleashing their skills by adapting to what can turn into an opportunity.
It’s About the ‘Balance’
These situations are powerful, capable of making or breaking a business. Entrepreneurs can quickly solve problems if they are aware of them. To come out of any crisis, one must put in an effort and think outside the box. Even our top leaders and entrepreneurs believe that analysis and problem-solving are the key factors that balance entrepreneurs. An individual who is capable of analyzing the critical aspects of a problem and solving it effectively is capable of addressing a complex situation.
Entrepreneurship is usually won through problem-solving and adaptability. While many give up this battle, let’s succeed!
Cloverbites By Rupesh Sanghavi 
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