Serial Entrepreneur: Manoj Saxena (Part 1)

Our Serial Entreprenuer series continues with a fascinating interview with Manoj Saxena. In this first segment we explore his background up to the point of his first venture.

SM: Where did you grow up?
MS: I grew up in India. A city called Hyderabad most of my life and then we were down in Bombay.

SM: What was the family like? Were you exposed early on to entrepreneurship?
MS: Not a whole lot. My father’s generation were the first generation that had to work for a living. They were mostly into professional careers. There were a couple of my uncles who had tried their hands at some manufacturing businesses that actually bombed. In general it was not something that was encouraged or seen as an exciting career. It was mostly encouraged to be an engineer or doctor. Most of my entrepreneur ambitions, I think, grew out of my time and experience in Pilani and then after I moved to the U.S.

SM: So, what was going on in Pilani at the time when you were there?
MS: Actually it’s kind of funny. My girl friend at that time, now my wife, and I went to school there together. Pilani is a campus about 100 miles away from any large city and I used to take her out for dates on dinner. She never used to allow me to pay for her food. She would say it’s your parents’ money, and my parents’ money, we are going Dutch, and that used to annoy the hell out of me. I figured I’ve got to make my own money. Staying on the campus which is a hundred miles away I took up the opportunity to sell pictures at a very heavy premium to freshmen who used to come every year into the campus.

SM: I see.
MS: I arranged for a photographer who was about 20 miles away and paid some guys, and so it was mostly driven by more of a need to a …

SM: Impress your girlfriend!
MS: Exactly, exactly.

SM: OK, and then after Pilani what, you came to the U.S.?
MS: I worked in India for a couple of years with a company called ITC. I went up to the management training program and spent a couple of years there. Came to the U.S. in 1988 to go to school at Michigan State in East Lansing and right after that was hired by 3M. That was 1990 and I joined 3M and stayed with them for eight years and was running a business unit for them in telecom. In 1998, this is before the boom time of the internet, a couple of things happened. I started seeing the whole internet potential. Then also my second daughter was born and I had a strong desire to build.

Professionally I was doing very well at 3M. In eight years, I had seven promotions, and stuff like that. So I couldn’t complain, but, what I wanted to do professionally was to build something that leaves a legacy behind. At one level I saw the children coming up and said that the 3M handcuffs were only going to get golden and the golden handcuffs would only get diamond studded. I said this is the time to quit. Then I took 13 credit cards with $200,000 of credit on it, quit 3M and started my first company.

SM: So what was that like psychologically, was it scary? Was it ok?
MS: It was downright scary. It took almost four to five times more courage than I thought it would take. There were times when you have peoples’ payroll on your shoulders and you’ve got this $200,000 in credit cards… you are paying everyone a check. In a strange way it’s also a kind of strong motivator. The first issue I had to get over was the psychological or social issue of people back home in India thinking I’m an idiot for having left a fast growing career in 3M to start something new. So it was the social part that was the first kind of pressure.

Then the other one after that was that I had 6 employees within three or four months. I formed some projects and it was the pressure of meeting payroll and making sure that these guys are taken care of. Those were the more difficult times. The next time around it was a lot easier.

SM: How did your wife react to your quitting 3M?

MS: Well I call my wife my first venture capitalist. One of the things I did was to create an Excel sheet analysis of if everything goes to hell with this $200,000 credit thing. I showed her that we would basically have to sell our house and move to a condo. In about 2 ½ years we could pay the debt off. The second answer was, I call it a get out of jail card. I told her when starting a new company for the next two years the honey do this list on the weekends I wouldn’t be able to do much about it and she shouldn’t get too upset about it. I asked for those two things and she completely backed me on that.

SM: Did she have a job or was there any other source of income?
MS: No, she had a job. She was working at IBM as an IT architect. She had gone part time as well because we want her to take care of our children. I didn’t want her to have to go back to work just because of my entrepreneur thing so we went from basically 200 units of income to 50 units of income. But, you know she supported me to the hilt and said go for it. That is why I call her my first VC.

[Part 7]
[Part 6]
[Part 5]
[Part 4]
[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 1 in the series : Serial Entrepreneur: Manoj Saxena
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