ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL...Entrepreneurs Must Celebrate Failure

Entrepreneurs Must Celebrate Failure 

Serial entrepreneur Kamran Elahian says he treasures his “first and biggest” failure the most

Serial entrepreneur Kamran Elahian has co-founded 10 companies, of which six were successes. But it is his “first and biggest” failure that he treasures the most. So much so that the numberplate of his red Ferrari reads Momenta—the name of a company he co-founded in 1989, but later failed spectacularly.
“It changed my life’s philosophy,” says Elahian, who had launched Momenta—a kind of a precursor to the modern tablet that could send and receive faxes—when there was no internet and no colour screens. He also launched it without field trials. “I was very arrogant, I thought I can’t do anything wrong.”
Born in Iran, Elahian, 58, migrated to the US when he was 18. After getting his Masters in Engineeringcomputer graphics from the University of Utah, he worked at Hewlett Packard for some time but quit to set up CAE Systems in 1981. Three years later, CAE was sold to Tektronix for $75 million (about 400 crore now) in 1984. His second venture Cirrus Logic, whose chips are used in Apple’s iPhone 5, went public at a $150 million valuation.
While at Cirrus, Elahian once had a dream in which he was reading news and watching videos on a tablet-like device. He was convinced that it was sign from God and all he had to do was make the product and it would be a stupendous success.
After numerous trips to Japan and working with some of the top talent in the industry he hired from bigger rivals, he launched Momenta. Also, Elahian’s two previous successes had given him celebrity status among investors and he had few issues raising about $40 million for the venture.
Though everyone was initially impressed with Momenta, it was a huge failure. “The problem was if the computer is not connected, where does the fax (sent from Momenta) go? So, we set up data centre at a small scale that received and forwarded the fax—all these crazy things were way ahead of the time, when the infrastructure was not there.”
One day when Elahian reached office, he saw investors holding a board meeting. “I said ‘hey I am the CEO, president, chairman, I did not call a board meeting’. They said, ‘we did and we have decided to fire you’.” This came as a big shock for Elahian, who refused to accept that he had failed. “Next day, I got up and started to go to work. My wife said, ‘where are you going? You were just fired’.”
After a few days of denial and anger, Elahian began to accept the reality. But he still was not sure of what to do with his life. He decided to do a walkabout like the Aboriginals of Australia.
“If they are confused and don’t know what to do, they go for a walkabout and don’t come back home till they have reached peace. My walkabout was for about 13 months.” He traveled to numerous countries and learnt new languages, before realising what he needed to do.
Elahian, who counts Mahatma Gandhi as one of his heroes, decided to always focus on technologies that bring people together; to take companies global; and, lastly, not to be greedy.
He later co-founded seven more companies, two of which were failures—Entopia, an internet service for knowledge management, and Cahoots, which allowed people to collaborate and interact over the Internet. Both were founded in 1999. His biggest success was his sixth company, Centillium Communications, which went public at a $700-million valuation in 2000 and achieved a market cap of over $4 billion. But he states it is from his first failure that he gained the most.
    “Celebrate failure. It can temper your character and pave the way for great achievements.”
Elahian, who now is busy with India-based iEinstein, an e-learning venture for the poor, says his goal is to invest in ventures and technologies that empower the youth and women. “That is the quickest way to reduce poverty.”

PEERZADA ABRAR ET121116