Often, the advice given to first time entrepreneurs is to find a good mentor.
BC Krishna, a BITSian serial entrepreneur who is now on his third stint as the founder of a company understands the importance of mentors.
BC Krishna has a problem. He is bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. His latest venture, Mineral Tree is a secure payment gateway for SMEs. Throughout his career he has been driven to solve large scale problems using technology and he seems to be pretty good at it: 3 companies, all three back by influential VCs, one acquired and 1 running strong and the latest one being hailed as a disruptive payment gateway solution. But he also admits that one thing that entrepreneurs need is having someone to talk to, especially if that person has prior entrepreneurial experience. And that is the story that NYT focused on when they covered BC’s start-up recently, which we suggest you read.
BITSAA Chairman Raju Reddy, a self-made entrepreneur himself; reflecting on BC’s story says “Besides the obvious inspiration from a fellow BITSian on NYT, I think the key message is to get a mentor if you are doing a start-up and better still someone who ran a company before. In BC’s case he was lucky he had a VC with that CEO experience.”
The deeper point in this context 
was that given that the VC and the entrepreneur have similar goals, a VC with prior entrepreneurship experience can act as a more robust support system for the entrepreneur, because while both their goals are aligned in making the company a success, the mentor can empathise better with the entrepreneur and give him/her solid advice based on execution experience.
Even within the BITSian sphere, there have been numerous start-ups that have been started by BITSians who reached out to the entrepreneurs within the alumni networkand have got them on board as mentors. Of course, the alumni network of a long lasting institution is just one of the many pools from where young entrepreneurs can find mentors. Personal networks, networking events, friends of friends and so, all are good ways tofind mentors who can guide you through your entrepreneurial journey.
As a parting note, when we at BITSAA asked BC if there was anything else he wanted to share with the aspiring BITSIAN entrepreneurs, he candidly replied back saying “My GPA was 6.33. I failed a lot. And learned through failure”
We wish BC all the best in entrepreneurial endeavours and hope that he scales even greater heights.
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BC Krishna graduated from BITS Pilani in 1981 with a degree in Computer Science. His other alma mater is MIT, where he obtained an MS in Visual Studies in 1994.
His latest company Mineral Tree, has been getting a lot of media attention, below is a post from Techcrunch to find out more:
His Linkedin Bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krishnabc