Book Review on STAY hungry STAY foolish.

I was curious about this book when I came across this somewhat unconventional title "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish". So I decided to pick up a copy and flip through its pages. After going through the first few pages, I knew that this is the book I am going to keep with me for life. It's not because of any sentimental value but because it is so inspiring to read about the young men who took risk in career and got ahead of others. Its a book written by Rashmi Bansal an IIM-A (Indian Institute Of Management) Alumni, Published by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE)of IIM. The Tag line of the book Stay Hungry Stay Foolish is derived from Steve Jobs speach , the founder of Apple computers and in fact A COLLEGE DROPOUT HIMSELF. The book talks about 25 IIM-A graduates who, at different point of their life, decided to take a plunge into the challenging world of entrepreneurship. They risked their career and turned down high paying job offers to start something of their own. The ups and downs faced by them in their endeavors to do something different makes one think how big dreams are achieved. Her choice of entrepreneurs is excellent. The people profiled in this book are diverse in age, in outlook and the industries they made a mark in. In this book you will find someone who is the CEO of an online company or someone who is the Chairman of a pharmaceutical company. You may even find a person who has opened up his own clinical research institute. The diversity offered in this book is its forte. But they all have one thing in common- they all believed in the power of their dreams. The book seeks to inspire young graduates to think beyond placements and salaries and to believe in their dreams. This book is a trendsetter. The book is divided into 3 sections * The Believers: IIM-A graduates who took the plunge straight out of IIM-A * The Opportunists: Who saw an opportunity and capitalized on it * The Alternate Vision: Social Entrepreneurs who cared about things beyond money. About Author Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and youth expert

She is the author of two bestselling books on entrepreneurship Stay Hungry Stay Foolish Connect the Dots I Have a Dream, on social entrepreneurs, is releasing in She is co-founder and editor of JAM (Just Another Magazine)

Her Writing Style The book is well written in short, simple and crisp English. It doesn't require one to be a Management guru to understand the context. There are a few jargons here and there. But overall, the book is quite interesting and inspiring to read. Highly recommended, especially to all those who are starting out on their career path. As Rashmi Bansal is an entrepreneur herself, she delves deep down into the personas of the entrepreneurs. The book is written in a conversational format with the author thinking aloud before having a conversation with an entrepreneur followed by the conversation and a page of advice from the entrepreneur. Some inspiring stories about these mavericks ! Make my trip: Deep Kalra: He realized internet was going to change lives and he wanted to do his own thing. Day was spent working at GE and night for starting his own venture. The first Venture capital funding came from Neeraj Bhargava, the managing partner of e-ventures. He inadvertently gave away 70% of his company for funding. However he bought back the company during distress sale by e Ventures and thats when he really became an entrepreneur. Edelweiss : Rashesh Shah: established the home grown investment bank in a decade. The idea was that post liberalisation the economy would grow and therefore Rashesh Shah plunged in. However 1995-2002 was a hard time for the Indian economy and there wasnt any business for Edelweiss. The partners paid themselves very little salary for almost 5 years and managed to stay afloat through some advisory assignments. Naukri.com: Sanjeev Bikhchandani. The reason for starting his company was independence. You are your own boss. He ran a tiny business from the servants quarter and then success gave in and befriended him.

The story of Sunil Handa of the Ekalavya Educational Foundation in particular, left an indelible impact on me. An IIMA graduate of the 1979 batch, Sunil made it big in the pharma industry by launching a partnership firm with his brother called Core Parenterals. And he was shattered when the same firm became the cause of his separation with his brother. For ten months, I kept a bottle of potassium cyanide in my cupboard and I would tell myself, Tomorrow! Some started small, some started big, yet almost all faced downslide. But they never gave up! Every story is an inspiration for life. Some of the points in favor of reading this book are that the book being more or less a collection of interviews, each mutually exclusive of the other. This means that you can read the book at your own pace and skip back and forth and still not miss anything. Also the language used is simple and light, the absence of big statistical numbers (except for the occasional net worth and stock price) makes it even better. If you are looking for the nitty-gritty details of entrepreneurship, this book is not for you. The book does have enough material to encourage one on in the road to entrepreneurship, but fails by not emphasizing much out the potholes in that road. More elaborations on the hardships faced by the entrepreneurs would have been welcome. After reading halfway this book you feel like you are reading the same thing over and over again. The sheer breadth of advice from entrepreneurs proves one big point; there is no consistent formula for success. There are examples and counter-examples of every strategy in the same book. * There is no other way but to learn from one's own mistakes * It pays to ride a wave in an upturn but then belief in one's ideas is as important to see through the trying times * Bootstrap is good but sometimes there is no other way to scale up without a high leverage investments backed by a VC/PE fund * Jumping straight into the rough is good but so is gaining some experience and building a nice nest egg before taking the plunge * Its good to have equal partnerships with your co-founders but sometimes there needs to be a first amongst equals for smooth functioning * You can plan really well and execute it with mathematical precision but sometimes the best of plans can be bested on first contact with the market

* Maintaining independence of your venture ('my baby') for long through the rough road is good but knowing when to let go even when the going is good is needed many times * Government can be a very conservative regulator and prone to knee-jerk policy actions based on emerging events which can kill entrepreneurial ventures but sometimes they are the only ones who are willing to try out something new providing the much needed lifeline to ventures thinking ahead of their times. * Small is beautiful but without scale the actual vision cannot be realised * In all cases IIM-A alumni network helped a lot