Ankur Warikoo Reveals the Traits of a Founder's Mindset During the Tech and Innovation Summit 2025 organized by Entrepreneur India, Ankur shared three traits of a founder's mindset.
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Serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, online educator, youth icon, and internet sensation Ankur Warikoo wears many hats. Between 2009-10, he built his first venture called SecondShaadi.com along with several other websites across automobile, education, and finance. Of them, Gaadi.com became popular which eventually got acquired by goibibo.com in 2010.
Post SecondShaadi.com and Gaadi.com, in 2011, Ankur started Groupon's India business as the founding CEO and led the business for 4 years until 2015 when he did something quite audacious. Along with the core management team of Groupon India, he bought the Groupon India business from Groupon and made it into an independent entity. Thus started nearbuy, which was funded by Sequoia. He acted as the CEO of nearbuy until 2019 when he stepped down along with two other founders.
That's when Ankur's content creation journey really kickstarted. Today he has millions of followers across social media platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and Instagram. However, a major part of his time goes into building WebVeda.com, an edtech platform to teach students life skills at an affordable cost.
During the Tech and Innovation Summit 2025 organized by Entrepreneur India, Ankur shared three traits of a founder's mindset.
Spending Time With a Variety of People
Ankur stresses on the importance of spending people who are nothing like yourself. "It broadens your horizon and gives new perspective," he says. He tells entrepreneurs to follow the path less travelled. "The founder's mindset is to truly understand that everyone is unique. The worst thing to do is to hang out with people who are similar to us. Spend time with people who are nothing like you."
Intellectual Cushioning
Ankur talks about the importance to pushing one's boundaries and keep learning new things. When someone tells me, he has five years of experience, I ask him if it's really five years of experience or one year of experience done five times. The founder's mindset is constantly asking what is the thing I can do that can intellectually push me to the extent that I am scared I will lose and yet I will play those odds because if I win, it will change my life forever," he says. "You can't expect to invest in an FD and want the returns of a stock market."
Not Letting the World Influence You
The world's job is to constantly judge us and form an opinion, Ankur says. "I see so many people who get affected by the world. Live your life, not a life defined by them," he says.
Ankur says that the true founder does not care what the world thinks. "They are unpopular for the longest time till the time they are popular. And the mindset has nothing to do with what you do. You could very well be an employee all your life and have a founder's mindset or you could be a startup founder and yet not have the founder's mindset."
