How I Made It : Divya Narendra

When I was in school social networking sites were fairly popular. It dawned on me that it made to sense to build a platform exclusively for the Harvard student community. Here we could ensure the quality of the user by checking the university email addresses. I am a fairly social person and so it made sense to me that people would want to connect online if they had similar interests. This did not seem like the thing that will take too much capital to build. For me it was exciting that I could come up with an idea, finance it and build it on my own.

I have learnt a lot about the law and people. To face problems and lead, whether it's a growth initiative or a law suite. It is a challenge when you face unexpected changes in your plan. You might have a plan but at times it changes.

You might hit a road bump and you have to completely switch how you are thinking about something. In our case, we never thought Mark Zuckerberg could launch a competing website. Being able to think maturely and react quickly is a key lesson. You don't want to be wedded to your initial vision and sometimes it's better to think quickly and react.

After graduating from college, I worked for two years in finance for an investment bank. Then I worked for a hedge fund. While I was at the fund I came up with this idea, the inspiration for this was Wikipedia. I planned an investment database that covered every company in the world.

To be able to find an intelligent report on a company, written by a side analyst. We could find a way to shed light on the industry and sharing information, sounded exciting to me. That was the initial spark, to bring together a historically secretive community.

I see an enormous array of opportunities for Internet-related start-ups in India. A lot of Indian companies are replicating the West. For me, personally, the most exciting Internet start-ups are the ones that have big market potential.

On the Internet, information does spread quickly and you don't have to market it to each person individually. You should find a large market and find a way to penetrate it quickly, using innovation and technology to your advantage.

There are many pitfalls along the way but first and foremost focus on building ideas that fundamentally improves people's lives. Doing something that is differentiated is key as you have to face a lot of competition and you don't want to start a business that can be replicated the next day. Come up with something different and everything else is just execution. Work hard and focus. If you have an idea, then as you start executing, create a buried entry that other potential competitors will have difficulty copying.

I have been in school for three years now and my current programme is a joint law and business degree. I enjoy learning and find both subjects interesting. I was stuck in a lawsuit and I felt like I did not understand what my lawyers were saying.

I would be on conference calls and hear about some judgments and then wonder what it meant. I did not understand the basic lingo so I felt law school was particularly important for me.

The general mindset is different in law school than in business school. In business school, students tend to be more forward looking and they think of the growth, look at the upside. In law school, it's more about understanding risks.

What happens when we are following a particular path, something on the outside that is out of our control goes wrong and what we should do to handle such a situation. Law school has a more downside protection risk mindset.