Invited Talk – Entrepreneurship by Mr. Vishal Dhawan, CTO, Verifone, USA

Mr. Vishal Dhawan is a seasoned entrepreneur based in the United States of America since 20 years. He has created many successful projects from scratch and holds 9 patents in his name. He is currently the Chief Technical Officer at Verifone, USA. He also runs Curb Taxi in the US. He has recently launched a product called “Plug Chat” in the international market.

Of the several useful inputs, he shared with NUtons, he said that focussing on the why is the most important thing when you are looking at being an entrepreneur. Just the idea of launching a startup is not enough. The problem with engineers is that they are preoccupied with the how and do not give enough importance to the why. He said that it is important to be crystal clear about the problem that you are trying to solve. Also, he said that when you are planning to join a startup, they give you an opportunity to ask questions and you should be asking them the question why.

Some key nuggets of advice to take away from his interesting and highly-charged talk:

“Building a product is easy, making money out of it isn’t”

“Focus on the ‘why’”

“Be the voice of the user”

“A ‘who’ after the ‘why’. Focus on the users of your product.”