Straight talk > Don't blame lack of funds!

If there is money available it does not mean, automatically you will be successful.

We started Infinity Ventures during a brief period when lots of funding was available. You came up with pigscanfly.com and you would get funding.

And actually there is a lesson there. The lesson is that to be a successful entrepreneur, money is one of the ingredients, but it will not automatically guarantee success. At that time there were businesses that had tonnes and tonnes of money, but they don't exist today.

But I know a lot of people come with ideas that can never work. So funding is not the issue -- the idea itself may not develop into anything.

Having said that, a lot of people have good ideas, but to take to them to next level - the eco system that comes with some funds are not there. Funding is an important element, but I am not saying fund itself is enough.

What if you do have a good idea - and there are no funds available?

I don't think any good idea has ever been stopped because of lack of funds. There is always someone you should be able to convince.

When I started Dataquest it was the first B2B publication in India, and there were so many detractors who would say: in India sports magazine have not worked, children's magazines have not worked, and you are talking about a computer magazine! That was the sort of message that I was getting.

And if I couldn't convince my own Guru then where would I be? I did manage to convince him. He saw that this guy is making sense, and therefore he was willing to invest. Money was available.

So I think if you have the passion, you have the idea, if you believe in it, you should be able to convince the people who have that faith in you. And you bootstrap, you start downscale and keep on building up.

Other than investors, what are sources of cash for an entrepreneur?

And if you think you need to grow and want to raise money from outside, you should consider it carefully. The moment you take external money, there are a lot of compromises that you have to make. You have to mould your company, starting on the first day, to someone else.