Gurbaksh Chahal

RISK& REWARD FOR GURBAKSH CHAHAL ON STARTING UP AND TAKING OFF...

Everyone has dreams, but how often do we preface talk of these goals with "someday…"? As a high school student, Gurbaksh Chahal chose to strive for success instead of waiting. Now, at age 28, he has already had a hugely successful business career, if money is any measure. He's already sold two start-ups -- the first for $40 million when he was 18, and the second just last year for $300 million.

Gurbaksh isn't cagey about sharing his story and the steps he took toward entrepreneurial success. In fact, he wrote about it in The Dream, his new book, and hopes it will inspire others to pursue theirs too. "Nothing is handed to you," he says. Success can happen, but you have to reach for it.

Gurbaksh Chahal was born in the town of Tarn Taran, near Amritsar in Punjab, India to Avtar and Arjinder Chahal. In 1985, his parents received a visa for America through a lottery-based system in India, and the following year, when he was four, the family settled in San Jose, California. His parents later struggled at menial jobs in order to bring up their four children. For the Chahal family, as for many immigrants, education was paramount. However, when classmates were maneuvering the teenage social food chain, he was already making headway toward becoming a serial entrepreneur. At age 14, Gurbaksh was selling refurbished printers on eBay. The income helped his family and eventually supplied the few thousand dollars of capital needed to start his first business, Click Agents.

At that point, the dot-com boom was in full swing and Gurbaksh saw potential. "I wanted a piece of it," he says. And he didn't let his age daunt him. He surveyed the emerging digital landscape and decided Internet advertising would be the best entry point for him. Not having programming knowledge himself, he used some of the money he'd saved to pay a programmer a flat fee to write the software that would power Click Agents. It was one of the first Internet ad companies to charge advertisers per click, as opposed to traditional advertising that paid for ad space on websites.

 At the age of 16, Gurbaksh dropped out of high school to pursue a dream as an entrepreneur and started his first company, ClickAgents. It was one of the first ad networks focused around performance based advertising. In later years, the company was sold at 40 million dollars to valueclick.

In January 2004, Gurbaksh founded his second company, BlueLithium, this time with an insight into sophisticated new ways that data, optimization and analytics could help Web advertisers with behavioral targeting.

At 28, Gurbaksh is already leading his third start-up, RadiumOne. RadiumOne is the first Real Time Bidding (RTB) enabled display audience network with social and mobile capabilities.

For prospective young entrepreneurs, Gurbaksh offers some pointers.

"The first thing is research. Take baby steps and don't be afraid to change something." Start-ups are in a constant state of fluidity, he says. "If you're not prepared to change, you're so rigid and focused on that idea, you're probably going to fail."

He also says that companies don't necessarily need millions of dollars of start-up money to be successful. "The greatest ideas come with thousands of dollars and a whole lot of sweat equity," he says.

Aside from having the drive, the next step is to surround yourself with like-minded thinkers. This means that the first employees you hire are going to make it or break it for you. From there, any more hiring will likely be done by those first hires.

"From day one you understand you're not going to be able to do this all on your own," he says. "Hire the best first 20 employees that live, die and breathe the success of the company."

Gurbaksh has found that success comes from taking risks, and some of the best risk-takers are young. "The younger you are, the more guts you have," he says. With age come mounting responsibilities and obligations. It gets harder and more costly to take big risks. "A lot of people get dismantled by realizing they want to make money, so they get stuck in a situation where they're not happy… they end up living lives that are not rewarding to them day to day."

 “Find out early on what you're good at or what your passion is, figure out a plan for how to do it and don't worry about the economics right away. "Putting the money -- the agenda and economics -- at the end of the rainbow instead of the beginning is probably the best strategy," he says

In addition to writing The Dream, he also has several television projects in the works. Most are still under wraps, but the first is a FOX reality TV series called Secret Millionaire.

Because he thrives on the adrenaline rush of seeing things succeed, Gurbaksh says he doesn't see himself ever settling down and not pursuing new projects. Doing what he loves, and balancing material things with the immaterial is what it's all about.

sweet idea of being an entrepreneur at a young age...

Young entrepreneurs are going to rule the upcoming business industry. No offense to those who have turned successful in their forties, but it is the young entrepreneurs of 20 to 26 years of age who have captured the customers and created a huge market. A major factor being their high risk taking nature as they don’t have anything to lose, they aren’t required to hedge.

People are open to new ideas when the old ones are plainly malfunctioning. We're more likely than usual to question our bad habits and inherited assumptions when circumstances shake us out of our comfort zone. When the preordained social and education destinies our young people anticipated are denied them, it should be an opportunity to remember what we too often forget: under-21s are not just prospective employees or students, they are entrepreneurs too. But booming business cultures in emerging economies seem to be much better at celebrating and encouraging youthful energy and innovation than the establishment.

Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg: it goes without saying that all are unique and prodigiously clever, but the shared virtue of their youth had plenty to do with their successes too. Not long out of their teens, but before they're fully entangled in the obligations of adulthood, people challenge convention and raise questions about the received wisdom of the world. Without a vested interest in maintaining the status quo or anything to lose, more interest in finding their own way than being ruled by others' expectations, young people are freer and better informed than anybody to think about building a better future.

Being an entrepreneur at a young age has various drawbacks too. One has to work harder to prove oneself, they can’t ever be perfect, biggest hurdles are sometimes created by the parents and the close ones, their reactions lead to demoralization. On top of it anybody starting a business at an young age without much credibility needs to be very careful about choosing a business that has a secure funding, and doesn’t require a lot of capital. It is very difficult to gain access to finances especially with banks. And here a strong family support plays an important role to get you through all such complications; ironically this is what young entrepreneurs lack the most. Obviously, at a stage where you yourself are not sure about the results of your business, it is very difficult for others to trust and support you for the same.

Having a close connection with your peers is pivotal in growing. We need to learn to separate our entrepreneurial life with our social life from the beginning itself. Hiding oneself behind the emails and internet is a very easy task, but maintaining a good relationship with our peers face to face is very important. It has its own reimbursements. Although your friends can never completely understand your situation and what you are actually going through, they can build a strong support system in terms of boosting you up and keeping you motivated.

Path of an entrepreneur is never easy, and youth poses added difficulties. But as lucrative entrepreneur one should fail gracefully, learn from mistakes and address them with maturity. Confidence and unwavering humility, goes a long way...so rise above all the impediments, and you can be an even impressive entrepreneur for it.