(REPOST from University of Maryland - Alumni Profiles)
As the founder of three companies, Anindya Datta, MS ’89, PhD ’93, follows a straightforward formula to entrepreneurship—make something you think is cool.
Datta, founder and CEO of Mobilewalla, which leverages innovative data solutions to help companies build more precise AI models to deliver business results, launched the company in 2010, initially as a third-party search engine for app marketplaces.
Coming off the heels of selling his company, Chutney Technologies, to Cisco Systems, Datta’s vision for Mobilewalla stemmed from an ‘a-ha moment’ after observing his young daughter and her friends repeatedly playing the same iOS game. Curious about their devotion to that specific game, Datta learned that the overwhelming number of games on the app store, and not really knowing anything about them, deterred them from branching out.
That pushed him to build Mobilewalla, something he thought was ‘very cool.’ Not long after its creation, it became one of the most used app search engines. Since then, Datta has steered the company through multiple iterations before ultimately landing on its mission of helping companies apply big data and artificial intelligence to drive business growth.
The pivot, he says, followed an industry truism stating that “how you start and what you eventually end up doing are entirely different things.” People make decisions with available information and must adjust as their knowledge evolves.
“Entrepreneurs can’t get too hung up on their ideas,” says Datta. “Keep your mind and thoughts open, learn more about the realities you face every day and be ready to move in the direction that the markets dictate you move.”
Datta acknowledges that leading a company through a successful transformation—even more so a couple of them—takes a little luck. However, certain leadership qualities are also required to succeed, among which is self-awareness.
“My leadership style is very involved. At my heart, I'm still a techie, but I also understand the business world,” says Datta. “Traversing the continuum from the abstracted top view to a more detailed low-level view has been a key part of starting and running my companies.”
Read original and full article from University of Maryland - RH Smith School of Business
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