Lessons from the mountains

Earlier in October this year, my partner and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa. For me, every act of living is a breathing metaphor for entrepreneurs. This climbing expedition was no exception. So here are some of the parallels that every entrepreneur can draw for his business.

1.Choice of key partner: We decided sometime towards early May, 2025 that we wanted to climb Kilimanjaro to celebrate my 65th birthday. Because every year, for my birthday, for my partner’s birthday and New Year’s Eve, we climb. By end May, we had done due diligence on all the on-site companies that would provide mountain crew and logistical support for the expedition. And we chose that one company that was ranked Number 1 on Google. This by far was the most expensive proposal that we had received but since we wanted it curated just for the two of us, given our ages and the terrain, altitude and climate thrown into the mix, it was a no-brainer that we would pay nothing less than top dollar, even if it meant beg, borrow, or steal.

Entrepreneurs, especially in the early stages, when they are investing their own money, are prone to be frugal. But unfortunately frugality translates as shortcuts in designing and delivering customer experience. A restaurateur launches a new recipe and it suddenly becomes the talk of the town. In his hubris, he takes the customer for granted. He increases the price and reduces the quantity without making a single change to the original product. He loses not only his customers  but the ill-reputation rubs off on his restaurant brand as well and eventually is forced to shut it down.

It’s the same compromise when it comes to hiring teams. Somehow ‘affordable’ becomes synonymous with the ‘best’ talent. Tardiness in documentation becomes the norm because ‘oh, we are a start-up, we can’t afford professionals to draw up contracts, so we only go by word-of-mouth’ becomes the band-aid until sores fester and the limb has to be cut off. How many times have we seen one co-founder ‘firing’ the other because there was no shareholder agreement?

2.Preparation: My partner and I take our health and fitness very seriously. Our work-out is very intense, Pilates, yoga, TRX, strength training, kick-boxing, skipping, resistance training, and a variety of cardio exercises using equipment like stepper, bench, ankle weights etc. But we knew that the Kilimanjaro climb entailed a distance of 70+ kms over 7 days, which means an average of 10 kms per day. So we knew we had to build endurance and as early as June, we started running 10 kms on the trot, combining it with agility drills and stair-climbing with neck and ankle weights. The ethos of our preparation was simple. Everything about the mountain is an unknown quantity and hence a challenge. So the only thing we can do is PREPARE TO THE BEST OF OUR ABILITY. The rest is left to the mountain.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses with scant preparation. They have an idea for their product sketchily, but that’s it. There is no ‘business’ preparation in the sense, who is the likely customer who will take his wallet out for buying this product and how can this product seduce him to keep buying? What kind of an organization needs to be built  to make this happen? What kind of organization culture can foster rapacious hunger in both customers and employees? In the absence of preparation, every act, every market gesture is knee-jerk, on the fly and individual. Customer orientation has not been institutionalized. So even with the most innovative idea, the product and therefore the company will fall by the wayside. I had a mentee who was in a big rush to launch his product. He had no patience with my ‘business’ prepping him; he was convinced I was wasting his precious time. At some point, we agreed to disagree and parted ways. A month later I saw his motley team outside Lalbagh main gate trying to sell his product.  And I haven’t heard of the company since. Business prepping is in your hands. The rest is left to the market.

3.Accept that not everything is in your control: Notwithstanding all our preparation, I got hit by AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) on the climb and had to be evacuated. I had not realized the extent of my debilitation. I kept thinking that I was exhausted and therefore if we could rest for a day and push the summit to a day later, I would be fine. But our guide, who leads three expeditions a month during the season was savant enough to know exactly what it was and within minutes, a helicopter had been arranged and I was shipped to a hospital. That alacrity in decision-making saved my life. And I remember before we started the climb we had told him that we would do exactly as he asked us without ever questioning it or breaching it. That blind faith stopped AMS from escalating into something life-threatening.

Most entrepreneurs believe that when it comes to their products and their businesses, they know best. Justifiable as long as it doesn’t hinder the progress of the company. If you look at the cemetery of buried unicorns in the last five years, you will see that on the one hand the  leadership team have run their company in a manner of fiefdom. The investors either turned a blind eye because it suited them or they were not powerful enough in their confrontations. So a strong Board that can guide, counsel, question, override, threaten if necessary the leadership team is de rigeur in today’s volatile context.

Mountains are mighty. There is nothing soft or gentle about them. They are brutal and they demand a very tensile strength from their climbers. But most important, they demand humility. And cockiness is treated with a whiplash.

Markets are mighty. There is nothing soft or gentle about them. They are brutal and they demand an extraordinary level of endurance from their entrepreneurs.  But most important, they demand humility. And hubris is treated with a whiplash