Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you look at the journey, first and foremost, it’s fascinating and congratulations for staying with it. I would say the main determining factor between success and failure is staying power. You described two points where you stood there looking in the mirror. That was a very critical point where if you chose to go work for Microsoft and took the easy way out, today would have been a very different day. You did stay with it and you did keep the team.

My takeaway from your story as well as from a lot of stories I’ve heard is staying power and the commitment to stay is one of the determining factors of success in a lot of entrepreneurs’ journeys.

Sunny Singh: I don’t think I’m any smarter than the next guy. Actually, I’m not. The fact is it’s about the choices you make. I’ve friends who made choices and they are where they are today. I made my choices and I am where I am today. That’s what I tell my kids but not formally so. I want them to decide what they want to do. I don’t want to tell my kids what they should be. I don’t want to tell my colleagues what they should be. I think people should make choices and decisions and live with them. It’s their own decision. Face the consequences. Everybody should listen to themselves and make the choices that they want to make. This whole idea of should have, could have, would have – you have the option and you could dive into it.

Again, it’s the risk that you have to take. It’s the choices that you make in life that shift your life more than anything else. The choices that you make is in your DNA. Can you persevere? Do you have the guts for it? Competency is important. There’s a lot of competency in this world. There are a lot of smart people in this world.

Sramana Mitra: Smart is necessary but not sufficient. As a matter of fact, in entrepreneurship, persistence and work ethic are bigger determining factors.

Sunny Singh: Like democracy, entrepreneurship is dirty. It’s not nice.

Sramana Mitra: It’s ugly, dirty, and messy.

Sunny Singh: Right. It takes a lot of guts. There’s nothing more beautiful when you come out the other end and look at what you’ve done. It’s a really beautiful experience.

Sramana Mitra: It is a beautiful experience. It’s also a hard experience. It’s a character-building experience.

Sunny Singh: It seasons you.

Sramana Mitra: Where do you want to go from here? What are your aspirations? Are you trying to build a public company? Do you want to keep your company private? How do you view the next 5 to 10 years?

Sunny Singh: I turned 50 last year. I’ve done Edifecs for 20 years. Edifecs is a solid company and is addressing the most pressing problems in healthcare. It’s transforming right under our eyes. The world is just going to follow on that. How do you pay providers for the service they provide – pay for value versus volume? Consumerism, modernization of systems. Coronary care where published health management is being done by doctors. There are transformative things happening in healthcare partly because of the pressures on healthcare, but these forces are reshaping the healthcare industry. In a decade from now, the healthcare industry will look very different from the way it looks today.

Whether you are on one side or the other, nobody can deny that Obamacare has fundamentally destructed the industry where people are scrambling and saying, “Will we survive or not?” That’s a beautiful thing because it’s causing innovation. It’s causing a lot of vibrant, innovative ecosystem where people are rethinking and new companies coming out with all kinds of models.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh
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