It's funny, ain't it?

I was tossing through the E-Factor archives; in silent wonder at the way CEL in general, and close friends in particular, seem to have grown. From the crazy days when I proclaimed "Where there's Muck, there's Gold!" to the more self-reflective moments over which Abhishek pondered whether it's right to startup at college, this blog seems to have captured diverse times like a Bob Dylan song.

In the meanwhile, the BITS mindset also seems to have changed,: there's a third choice to "what after BITS?"-- entrepreneurship is alive and thriving.

As a entrepreneurship cell, I thought we should know what motivates people to startup. And so I asked people.

Believe it or not: the reasons are as numerous as the startups themselves: "Freedom from bosses"... "Get rich!"... "Well, I won a business plan competition, so..."... "My cousin did. If he can, so can I!"..."I want to change the world".

I'm convinced now, that as an e-cell, we don't need to give people their reason to startup. (We never did this anyway, thinking such presentations are somewhat silly and miss the point, but it's good to see we seem to have done the right thing!)

All we need to do is to let people rediscover their reason, and then support them when they're ready (e.g. incubation at TBI, mentoring though Epsilon and more)

So far, it's working well...

More about that in a subsequent post by Nakul.

Oh, and in case you're wondering (play along if you weren't) what would persuade me to startup; this quote by Isaac Asimov sums it up nicely:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny..."

(Replace science with business, and discoveries with success!)