india undervalues talent, overvalues hard work

India is not producing great entrepreneurs because we overvalue hard work and undervalue talent.

We have turned entrepreneurship (whatever it means) into a competitive exam where everyone "has a place" in the end if they work hard enough.

Every year, 10s of thousands of people aspire to be entrepreneurs. They work hard at other startups to develop relevant "skills" (total BS) with a goal to start a company someday.

After they become entrepreneurs, they talk to senior entrepreneurs for mentorship - just like the networks from universities. These seniors help you with "play books," "exchange notes," "outbound / inbound tactics," or some other garbage.

It's the same mindset that drives our educated economic class. Most people work hard for IITs, CAT or NEET simply because they will end up in some place. They don't do engineering or medicine because they are talented - they just adapt to the environment and call it passion after they get there.

Our cultural hero archetypes: the "hardworking middle-class boy," not the eccentric genius, might be the reason for cheap labour.

But thank god, we still recognize raw talent in domains where success is extremely skewed, like movies and cricket - I couldn't sit through a crappy movie for 2 hours just because the actor "worked hard" and no one seriously believes you can replicate Ranbir's charm.

P.S. Most VCs are like coaching centers enabling people to become "entrepreneurs."

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