After almost 20 years as an entrepreneur, what are the lessons and mistakes that you can share?

Oh, a lot.  I probably have made most of the mistakes on the book, but luckily these were mistakes that we could afford.  Which goes  that in general, you can still be ahead as long as your mistakes are not fatal.  One of the biggest mistake an entrepreneur can do is really to bet too big on one customer or one technology or event.  They could be very great if they do it, but what about if they don’t make it?

Or borrow too much.

So we are a conservative company that tries to make sure that we are somewhat diversified in our solutions that we carry, as well as have a good broad customer base, in which no one customer is responsible for more than 10 percent of the business.

Don’t wager on something you cannot afford to lose.  for every entrepreneur who made it big because he bet his last penny of it, you can imagine that there are scores others that did not make it to even tell their story.

One of the things in hindsight is that a lot of problems came on when you hire the wrong people.  But in general, we have had good batting average, and most of our people came out well.  But many of our setbacks was when we tried to expand too aggressively, and hire in anticipation of future projects ( which is not unusual).

Technology people are hard to find, and as a result, there is a tendency to hire in advance so that when opportunity knocks you are ready. However, people come to you also in anticipation that they will do meaningful projects, and in the absence of projects while waiting for customers, many people would feel lost, and most often would quit if the project does not pull through.  So hiring people and training them, in anticipation is a relatively big investment which can be an expensive mistake.

In general, maybe it is the conservatism of myself ( other people may manage differently), but I have found more often than not, that customers were willing to give you a chance to work things out and find the right people if you have the right foundation to show on the project. The other of course, is that you don’t add to ten new people to an existing group of ten, unless the first ten is already well trained and qualified.  A group of ten who is still lost will not become productive by your adding ten new people.

where does it usually happen?  Let us say that you need a marketing or sales person, and the normal expectation is that he/she will do x.  After a few months, he/she could not do the thing adequately, and you are made to believe it is because he/she is overworked, and therefore in order to do x, you will have to add one or two more people.  If you hire another not so competent person, then you end up with two people or three and still cannot do the job. 

In short, I am more convinced at the moment that the way a small company would grow is to hire only when the business has come in, not before. And ocassionally, it is better to understand that in technology, it is seldom a game of numbers - meaning one good person will oftentimes be better than two or three averaged persons ( whether this is in programming, or sales, or testing, or documentation).