Engineers don’t know how to create wealth
Lately, after having built startups (2) - 1 failed & 1 ongoing, I have realised that engineers who are not baniyas, don’t really know how to create wealth.
They can’t think business, but only features, solving backlog problems in education, enablement if it’s SaaS and so on.
VCs who have been engineers, but non baniyas, are the same. Taking wrong bets all the time.
I am an engineer who is a non baniya. Not generalising for everyone, but I have seen other people like me struggle to create startup that generates wealth. We all create something that solves a problem but paying propensity is a hard nut to crack.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
You mean baniya in the way of thinking right? Because Elon Musk and Bill Gates aren't baniyas as well.
I feel there is a lot of money to be made while not being extremely money minded, enough examples out there. But if you're money minded, you're more likely to make money.
That's how I see it. And then it's how you choose to approach your life and what you consider important.
Not really. But since you mentioned Elon Musk and Bill Gates, they were born in money. And Jeff Bezos as well. Dude’s mom gave him quarter of a million in 90s.
Whereas if we look at Zuckerberg, the guy’s a Jew. And Jewish community have an amazing business sense.
I am not being casteist, racist whatever you call, but the fact of the matter is India is a young country and most of the businesses have been historically done by Sindhis, Gujjus, Baniyas, south may have Shettys, Rais and so on.
When all you have heard about is business and how to make money, your inherent understanding is better than everyone else.
And yes. Being money minded will make you more money than not being that. But then isn’t business about making money unless it’s a lifestyle business which is just to pay bills. As a skilled employee, you might be best placed to do just a corporate or government job.
But then as engineer I’d like to ask that is money making a learnable skill? Without being baniya, what’s the best way to build a business for your average engineer?
It’s a learnable skill. And takes about the same time and effort as it takes to code proficiently
I’m guessing its a learnable but not a teachable skill. We as an engineer have to get into the mud…try building a business….fail…learn and repeat. That’s the only way I see here
I think non baniya families waste too much money. For marrige they go out of their capacity and show off money. Even buy expensive cars, do down payment in their full capacity and they keep paying rest in emi ( thinking emi will be paid by someone else ) , I have seen some of my relatives who are non baniya spend too much money on phones too. What's point of buying iphone in 70k, if they runs it for 5years it's 14k/per year subscription for a phone. I'm out family we never buy any phone more than 20k, we have to run it for atleast 4 years. Again repairing our phone is so affordable.
My take on it is,
Maybe non-baniya founders waste too much money on unnecessary things for his office in name of long time investment( in reality it's not ). Or they want everything to be perfect while growing, so whatever money they earn they spent it there, so that everything becomes perfect .
That’s so true. I think the way baniya founders spend money even when they have surplus is what changes the game drastically for them.
This is true for Sindhi too, they are too kanjoos. Will think 4 times before buying anything, even if it is in budget.
- Not all baniyas create startups
- There are different values in different religion (as far ive seen) (many feel uprbringing thier community is better than creating wealth)
- World needs all kind of people to work otherwise everyone will build startups and no one will build functionality
- Many baniyas also fail to create wealth from any way possible
1, 2, 3, 4 -> you're just distracted by word "Baniya", simply it's not about caste it's mindset!! It's skill mastery of wealth creation, management, and preserving. Especially want to highlight 4 that Many fail, but not all😉
Sounds right, most of the successful startups are from baniya guys
Interesting observation, I actually resonate a lot with this. Coz if you look around at devs, its about building something cool but might not necessarily make a sustainable level of money. Not talking about startups that raise capital, just any general idea.
I do think the challenge is blinders and the historical focus on being only technically sound, but today as the roles and businesses evolve having someone who understands the business use case for a feature or an entire new product can take you way ahead.
Your observation is correct, the reason is unity among all these baniyas whether it's parsi or gujju in North and shetty reddy in south, jews in other countries etc They help each other in business for example if they start some business they try to buy the goods needed from their community only. Rarely they go outside the community, and they also give useful connections of anyone starting a new business. But for non baniyas like us we have to make everything ourselves hardly our people help each other unless we are close blood relatives.
Exactly! Community people support you in every sense and help you grow unlike others who get jealous and find ways to bring you down.
Btw, your views are quite progressive. The fact you were to realise this states you are pushing your perspectives to see things differently.
The day you will self-realise that only by mastering control of using different perspectives at once you can attain great clarity to build meaningful things capable of monetization, it will become easy.