Team, execution primary drivers for startup success: Puneet Pushkarna

If I were to say the one single success factor behind something that would help me determine whether a startup would succeed or not, then that one marker is the team, according to Puneet Pushkarna, General Partner at Solmark and the Chairman of TiE, Singapore. Puneet believes there are some very talented players in the local Singapore ecosystem currently. Puneet is a senior executive with deep experience in Technology and outsourcing services. He brings a very consultative approach to the business and has been responsible for establishing many collaborative partner programs and strategic partnerships. He has worked as a trusted advisor for clients across the globe. He worked with clients across the U.S., Europe and the Asia Pacific region. In his interview with Winning Ways, Puneet said that in a corporate strategy you spend perhaps five or ten percent of your time in developing a strategy, 90-95% is actually spent in execution. So execution is something that is very important. If you don’t have a very good idea to start with, you cannot get started but having gotten a good idea you cannot succeed unless the execution is very strong, he said.

Punnet said that at the very early stages of a start up the idea could be important and hence the team needs to take it forward and put it into an executable form. However, once the startup is established and starts to grow, then the execution capability really differentiates what is a successful start and what is not. “So in the end my bias is towards execution, he said.

Puneet was a co-founder of TechSpan that later merged with Headstrong. He was also part of the initial team that helped grow HCL America into what is now HCL Technologies. Prior to TechSpan he was the head of sales and business development at InfoGain, a business solutions consulting organization focused on e-business value chain management.

Puneet has a degree in Engineering from India and an MBA from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Watch the complete interview on WinningWays