On Priorities, Success, and Managing Stress as an Entrepreneur
By Yogesh Pandit
I’ve been an entrepreneur for years, and in my journey, I’ve always looked at success as two sides of the same coin. The first is financial success, where you put numbers to the company and measure your progress against the number of years it takes to reach that goal. At HEXANIKA, we have dreams of becoming a $100 million revenue company, and I know we’ll get there. But that’s not the only way to measure the success of your business. The other way is to consider if every employee is happy and if you are enjoying the journey. Focusing on this and not only the financial successes are what drives our efforts at HEXANIKA.
Enjoying the journey is what gave me the idea for HEXANIKA in the first place. I first had the idea when I was working with large financial institutions and had to experience the challenge of providing consistent, complete, accurate, and auditable data either for customer analytics or for compliance. I realized banks are having a tough time dealing with the costs and resources required for regulatory reporting. I brainstormed ways to streamline the process with Mak, our CTO, and a few other founders. So, in January of 2014, we formally laid the groundwork for developing the HEXANIKA solution.
The Government Accounting Office recently did a survey assessing compliance and data and found that the compliance cost across the industry has gone up between 30 – 100 percent, causing the operational costs to rise by 18 percent. During the same time, the deposits rates, especially for regional banks and community banks, have decreased by 33 percent. Additionally, the loans below $1Milliion have dropped more than 16 percent. Small and medium banks have significantly been affected.
At HEXANIKA, our mission and vision are to enable advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Big Data for institutions that can’t afford to adopt and maintain these technologies. HEXANIKA makes saving money and making money simple, smart & efficient, which helps community banks grow and increase profitability. Our data platform uses artificial intelligence to automate the whole data management process right from a bank’s core systems, lending platform, or originating platform, making it simple, smart, and efficient.
The current advancement of fintechs is due to recent developments in big data technologies, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The type of regulatory compliance automation tools developed by HEXANIKA would not have been possible a few years ago. But thankfully, fintechs have been able to successfully build on top of technologies developed outside of the financial sector.
Building HEXANIKA and solving this problem for community banks has been an inspiring journey, especially in coordination with ICBA. I often think about other banking entrepreneurs I respect and how they might approach different situations. As entrepreneurs persevere through challenging times, there are various forms of stress relief, and the biggest for me is meditation and yoga. With yoga, you can take a moment to look inside and be still.
Another way to manage stress is by being part of a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. If something negative happens, you can call a mentor and find out how they handled a similar situation. You have to cultivate entrepreneurs as friends, too, because sharing stories and experiences gives you the tools you need to stay positive.
When you’re maintaining a positive mindset, you’re able to focus on your priorities wholly. There are only two priorities I have in my life, and as a single father, my number one priority is my children. Number two is my business. Now within these two things, I combine things I enjoy. I love swimming, so when I’m with my kids, I take them swimming and teach them windsurfing. Now, we all love water! And I love entrepreneurship and meeting innovative people. Traveling and exploring new people and places is part of the entrepreneurial journey. My business also allows me to be with my children whenever I need to be. It has been a great mix. So, I enjoy my work and my children so much that I don’t feel I need anything extra to have more fun.