How Gang Life Helped One Man Become A Multimillionaire Entrepreneur

Ryan Blair's rag-to-riches story is no marketing shtick. He may have dubbed one of the chapters of his New York Times bestselling book, "my philosophies from the jail cell to the boardroom," but Blair's childhood isn't naturally packaged into slogans. And the things he learned on the streets of Los Angeles, and from two stints in juvenile detention, did help him build a series of successful startups, the latest of which took in $231 million in sales last year.

Growing up, Blair idolized gang culture, he told AOL Jobs. His older sister was a gang member, selling the weed his father grew. After his father abandoned the family when Blair was 13, and his mother started drinking, he needed money. Initiated into a gang with a brutal beating that left him with a mouthful of broken teeth, he started peddling stolen car stereos, and learned the first principle of business: "Buy low, sell high."

The Entrepreneurship Of Poverty

"The roots of my entrepreneurial mindset lie in seeing the entrepreneurial work of poverty," Blair says. "The working, hustling rich and the working, hustling poor are the same species, except one plays by society's rules. Or makes them, some would say."
Blair bulked up. He was 260 pounds at his peak, his body a patchwork of gang tattoos. The more intimidating he appeared, the less he would have to fight. "When you're 15 and you see someone get murdered," he says, "survival becomes your goal."
That idea, in a somewhat modified form, is true in the business world too. Success depends on the ability to adapt to your surroundings and provoke the reaction you want. "Every board member creates his signature, a signature of his insecurities overcome," he says. "A combination of old-fashioned DNA, anthropology, culture, ambition and aspiration."
Blair's "signature" is, of course, his past -- a past that he finally put behind him during his second stint in juvenile detention. His first came when he was 14, after he attempted to rob a restaurant but set off a silent alarm when he threw a rock through the window.
Gangsters, he now contends, are "entrepreneurs who steal from other entrepreneurs." The best thing small-business owners can do, he thinks, is to "educate the local hoodlums" in legitimate business skills -- "as a form of insurance." That's exactly what Blair now does with his foundation.

A Book, A Letter, A New Life

Blair was locked up for the second time at age 16, for a strong-arm robbery and battery. He says that he was beaten up on the first day, the last time around, so he decided to go on the offensive. As he puts it in his book, "If you let someone take your milk the first day, they'll start taking it every day." Blair incited a riot.
Over the next 30 days, most of it spent in solitary confinement, some thoughts gnawed at Blair. Mainly the fact that, at the judge's whim, he could be spending the next four years of his life behind bars.
He read his first, and only, work of fiction at this time, Stephen King's "Firestarter," sounding out the syllables phonetically and listening to them bounce off the walls. Today, Blair has read over 1,000 books and remembers most of what he reads, a remarkable feat for a dyslexic high school dropout. He says that it's because he doesn't read visually, but auditorily, thanks to that excruciating month he spent with nothing but his own voice.
Blair wrote a letter to the judge, with some spelling assistance, begging for leniency. "You should be writing in college," the judge replied, "not in prison."
When Blair was released, he found his mother's home ransacked -- his fellow gang members assumed that he'd become a "rat." Blair decided to begin the long, delicate and sometimes life-threatening process of leaving his gang. He got a job picking up the cans dropped off for recycling, meeting what he calls the "lowest form of life": the crackheads clutching at nickels for the next hit, the drunk who turns in his beer cans just to scrape together enough cash for the next 12-pack.
Nothing spurred Blair upward faster than staring into the eyes of the bottom. He worked almost every waking hour of the day, seven days a week, and still does. His mother started dating a new guy, a successful real estate entrepreneur, who moved them out of their crummy neighborhood, let Blair drive around in his Cadillac Allante, and hired him to do odd jobs. Blair suddenly appreciated the connection between wealth and hard work.
Soon he got a job at another company, answering phones, but impressed the higher-ups when he covered a shift at the data center. Computers had always been a passion of his. After all, he says, he'd "liberated a bunch."

Addicted To Business

Within three years, Blair became vice president. His starting salary had been $6 an hour. His new salary was $100,000 per annum. The next year, he founded his own 24-hour computer repair company, at age 21. Blair claims that this rapid rise came thanks to his ability to "hustle" and his "nothing-to-lose attitude," but no doubt his charisma helped too. Blair has the charm of a practiced motivational speaker -- which he is.

Blair claims that he "sees the world as a technologist." His current company may not seem so technical: ViSalus is a weight-loss and fitness program. But it's based on the idea of challenges; people set their goal, and get prizes for completing it. It "game-ifies" weight loss, like the many websites that keep people coming back through badges and give-aways, and anything that will tickle the brain's reward center. Blair approached his book similarly, making the chapters short enough to give his readers a regular jolt of accomplishment.
He's approached himself the same way too. "I've trained myself to be addicted to business," he says. And that's what drives him, not some misty sense of a legacy. He's requested that his foundation be wound down within 10 years of his death, along with the 90 percent of his assets that he's dedicated to it.

In 2004, Steven Levitt said that being in a gang is "perhaps the worst job in all of America." In 2012, Blair says, "it's one of the only jobs." Kids are increasingly turning to gang culture for money and meaning. Blair hopes to prove to them that they have the skills to get a lot more money and a lot more meaning, if they play by society's rules.

Source: jobs.aol.com

The amazing success story of K B Chandrasekhar

The story of K B Chandrasekhar, founder-CEO, Jamcracker Inc, is highly inspirational. Especially, for all the enterprising young Indian men who desire to be successful entrepreneurs. Chandra's journey started at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu where he was born, moving on to Trichy where he spent his early years, and then to Chennai where he did his school and college education, and finally to Silicon Valley in the United States.
It was at Silicon Valley that he struck gold. That too in a big way. It is the classic, modern-day story of a middle class young man-turned-multi-millionaire.
Chandra describes himself as "a serial entrepreneur and risk-taker who empowers others to accomplish their dream."


The Early Years

I come from a classic middle-class family: my grandfather, grandmother, father, mother... all living together in a joint family. Family values were strongly embedded into me as a result of this.
I was born in Kumbakonam, but was in Trichy till 1968. I did my schooling at Ramakrishna School in Chennai and then joined the Vivekananda College to do my BSc in physics because I couldn't get into engineering. In 1980, I got admission to the Madras Institute of Technology at Anna University.
I was not exposed to business of any sort, but my father, in those days, dabbled in shares. He encouraged me to have freewheeling discussions on various aspects of business. Those were the seventies, but I was given enough freedom to think freely. My parents were there all the time supporting me and encouraging me.
I didn't realise the value of it all then, but later on I understood the kind of impact those discussions had upon my thinking. More importantly, they encouraged me to take risks. In the eighties, when working in a public sector was considered safe, I was encouraged to go into a field that was uncharted, like computers.
I entered the world of computers very early, way back in 1983 when I joined Wipro. Wipro is an entrepreneurial company that gave me the opportunity to try out various things.

To the USA

In 1990, I moved to the US on a job assignment. Would I have the courage to start something on my own had I been in India  I think I would have done the same thing even if I was in India. Actually, I had packed my things to come back to India in 1992 because my wife and I decided we were going to do something on our own in Bangalore. It just happened that we got an opportunity to get started in the US itself.
What I mean is, the willingness to do something on my own has always been there. In 1983, I wrote a small business plan to create 'Casio calculator-based ticket punching machines' for bus conductors, and sent it to Casio. We even dabbled in starting companies by importing game kits from Korea and Taiwan for $1 a kit.
Somehow, those things did not click because of our middle-class background, not having the money, and also because of our inexperience.
I would have done business in India too, but probably not on the same scale. Indian companies had the benefit of time. If you look at some of the successful companies in India, you will see that it took them almost 20 years to reach the first $100 million. But when you are in the US, you don't have that luxury; you have to grow fast. The willingness to take risks was more there, and that I got because I was in the US.
I would not have had that courage if I was in India because I would have been more concerned about safety.

First venture: Fouress

When we had packed and were ready to come back to India, one of my friends at Sun Microsystems told me that he had a project. However, he wanted me to stay back and do it in the US. That was where my real entrepreneurial spirit came into play.
At that time, BFL and Mastech had just started. B V Jagadeesh, who had started BFL, was my colleague at Wipro. Jagadeesh and Sundar -- one of the founders of Mastech -- told me: 'Chandra, you do it. We will back you.'
I jumped at it with just $4,500 in my hand, and no capital. I leveraged on Jagadeesh and Sundar. We started Fouress, a software design company. I could do it because we had a great understanding, because we believed in each other and trusted each other.
We took the company from nothing to over a million dollars a year in the first two years.
I attribute my success mostly to my wife for her moral and physical support for standing by me and sacrificing everything. For several months, we used to live on basic food because we couldn't afford anything else. I need not have done it because I had an $80,000 job in my hand at that time. That means it was a self-inflicted pain, and that you cannot go through unless you are in it together.
Secondly, we were leading a nomadic life; we didn't have a car or a house. So, we were not stuck. I feel if I had gone to the US to study, I would not have done all this that quickly.

Starts Exodus Communications

By 1993-end, Jagadeesh joined me as a co-founder. We then started dreaming of building a bigger company, something that would be revolutionary. Internet had not started at that time but we started the Internet business in 1993 itself.
That means we were ahead of the times. Probably, we did not even realise the risk we were taking. By sheer chance, after we started, the Internet bloomed and we were in the right place at the right time.

Destiny and Kanwal Rekhi

I believe in destiny. Jagadeesh and I faced bankruptcy many a time; we borrowed money with no assets but we survived.
It was destiny which brought people like Kanwal Rekhi to us. He is one of the pioneer entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. He started his first company in 1982 which went public in 1987.
By chance, I happened to go to a TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs) meeting and saw Kanwal Rekhi there. There were very few people there, so after the meeting I told him, 'I want to send you a business plan.' He wrote his fax number and gave it to me. I still remember it was in May 1995.
The very next day, I sent him a five-page executive summary of my business plan. There was no news from him for three months. One day, we get a voice mail from him saying that he wanted to come and see us. That was the biggest day of our life; somebody was willing to listen to us.
He came to our office and on the first day, he ripped us apart. Yes, our naivety showed in our business plan. But he saw that we were passionate, hungry, and willing to take all kinds of risks to make our idea successful.
Over the next two months, I used to talk to him at his house till late at night about my dreams; we were like Krishna and Arjuna. I still remember how I told him on a rainy day why he needed to support me. And he did. He gave us a cheque of $250,000.
Exodus Communications went public in 1998 and became one of the most successful IPOs (initial public offerings) of that year.

Jamcracker Inc

Jamcracker Inc is a continuation of Exodus Communications. Exodus created a utility for the infrastructure, while Jamcracker's role was very simple; IT as a utility. With that simple dream, we (Chandra, along with two MBA graduates from Stanford, Herald Chen and Mark Terbeek) started Jamcracker Inc in 1999.
We struggled initially, but today Jamcracker has become a leader in on-demand IT as a utility.

For rural India

started doing something for rural India with n-Logue because I saw a big divide between urban and rural India. The question was 'how do we ensure that the masses are able to get the benefits of IT?' I was not doing it as charity because I don't believe in charity for charity's sake.
Our 1-year-old company Akshaya -- which is doubling every quarter -- was created as a combination of communication and people on the ground. The biggest satisfaction to me is that I have been able to establish some innovative methods in how we settle payments between transactions in rural set-ups, the way we are able to aggregate smaller volumes into larger volumes, how we do branding and create a larger distribution system. We are slowly telling the farmers, 'why don't you do it this way? We can do a lot more in productivity.' My role in this is that of a fulfiller.

Indians, crabs?

Indians were referred to as 'crabs' because we were not known for helping each other. People always said two Indians would never help each other. But today whatever I am, is because of an Indian. I have been helped globally also. My first $200,000 loan was given by a Pakistani.
I always tell budding entrepreneurs; 'Don't think if you don't have money, you cannot do anything. All you need is a big dream! And the willingness to give up everything in the pursuit of that dream. Others will take a risk with you only if you are totally committed to your dream.'

Indians, cautious?

In our upbringing, we are always told, 'be careful, be careful.' Rather than, 'go, try and let there be failure.' We are a savings-oriented economy, not a spending-oriented economy. We are always worried about tomorrow. That maybe because opportunities were limited for us.

Indians, innovators?

Absolutely. Innovations were pulled back because of the system that prevented us from taking the risk. That is why when Indians go to other places they are willing to take risks. It has nothing to do with our nature; it is the environment. But it is changing quite a bit now, especially in the past five years.
I set up the Anna University-K B Chandrasekhar Research Centre and also an incubator -- at the Chrompet-based Anna University campus which is not at all flashy -- just to prove that the best brains are available here, and we are capable of producing world-beaters. The name of the incubator translating technology to commercial products is svapas (www.svapas.com).
I want to prove that Indian innovation can be marketed globally. We have a great future. My motto is, 'you be the thinker of what the world needs and not do what others tell you to do.'

Why a research centre at Anna University?

I believe that India will become the knowledge capital of the world. If that has to happen, we need world-class research. India had research but it was done within the four walls of various institutes.
Another reason why I started the centre is because of my love for my alma mater. I want to set an example that your alma mater matters and educational institutions have a larger role beyond churning out students into becoming centres of excellence for future.
And I was willing to show that with my cheque book, my time, commitment and willingness to plough through it during tough times.
We are launching the first two start-ups in the next few weeks.

Marketing

I believe this country needs strong roots in marketing for it to become a global leader. That is why I have started -- along with Dr Bala V Balachandran -- the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai.
I am establishing a chair for marketing at the Institute and as the first step, we have Dr Philip Kotler, the guru of marketing, on a one week visit to India.
So, I am looking at everything as an ecosystem. Doing one thing and not having the follow-up will only destroy what you have done before. Everything -- education, research, marketing -- is interlinked.

Asia, a giant in IT

I believe Asia will soon be the giant in the field of IT, but at the same time we can't be complacent because you have got regions like Eastern Europe from where great innovations like Skype are coming. You will see that in the future, innovations will come not from the US alone but outside of the US also.
And, India will become a very important place for innovation.

China and India

Together, India and China will become major global players. China and India also will become competitive and also increasingly collaborative.
You will see three ecosystems developing in the future: the Asian Ecosystem, the European Ecosystem and the American Ecosystem (not North America alone, but South America too). These three ecosystems will compete and collaborate.

Source: rediff.com