The new role models

It is not standard corporate practice for the founder and CEO of a company to accuse one of his key investors, especially someone who has helped put in millions of dollars into his company, of actually trying to wreck the very enterprise they have invested in. It is, again, not standard corporate practice for a CEO to accuse his board of directors, comprising mainly key investors in his firm, of not being “intellectually capable” of holding sensible discussions, and adding that spending the rest of his worklife in their company would be a waste of his time! It is very unusual to do this, but to do it in public, to the gleeful delight of millions on social media networks, is somewhat bizarre. But then, nothing about realty portal Housing.com’s dizzying rise from a startup brewed in IIT-Bombay to one of India’s most highly valued dot com ventures, or its brilliant but clearly emotionally mercurial 26-year-old founder-CEO Rahul Yadav’s roller-coaster feuds and patch-ups with his investors, fits into what can be conceivably described as standard corporate practice. Entrepreneurs used to build businesses brick by brick, taking years, sometimes generations, to reach the kind of valuations which technology startups are achieving in a matter of months. This is not to argue that bricks are better than clicks, or that valuations earned over time are somehow worth more than overnight riches. On the contrary, using technology, innovation and passion to unlock the value of ideas is the new normal for the digital age we live in.

Indeed, today’s digital billionaires have created something far more valuable than their enterprises. They have unleashed a spirit of enterprise across the nation, firing the imaginations of thousands of youngsters. Young hyper achievers like Binny and Sachin Bansal of Flipkart, Snapdeal’s Rohit Bansal and even Yadav himself, are role models for thousands of wannabe entrepreneurs. Their ability to create riches for themselves and others has in turn inspired angel and venture fund investors to stoke the embers of innovation into a fire of enterprise. But the trouble with being a role model is that those inspired by them tend to find it difficult to view their idols in isolation. A rock star’s music and songs can inspire millions — but his or her self-destructive behaviour such as alcohol or drug abuse also tends to get imitated by many.

Yadav’s angry outbursts, therefore, should not be dismissed as mere eccentricities of a brilliant mind, as Housing.com’s board has sought to do, since it raises some searching questions such as whether being a role model imposes a higher standard for personal behaviour. It also poses an ethical dilemma for boards and other stakeholders in startup enterprises — how far should they indulge brilliance at the cost of bad behaviour? The former drives value, but the latter may destroy it.

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