Lost touch with writing, yet again!

This happens a lot it seems. I am 36 years old now and it has been about 13 years from my first blog post in 2006. Also, in between I already blogged once about losing touch with writing. But hey, at least I am consistent. So a lot has happened, as they always do. The world moves around.

When I moved back from Germany to India in 2017, I thought I would be engaging in a great startup experience with Carrybo. We had a nice small team in Bangalore but somehow the partnership with my Irish co-founders (were they?) did not work out. In retrospect we were different types of mindset that are not compatible.

I belong somewhere close to the MVP style products and startups. Build something small, launch, gather users and feedback. Focus more on getting genuine users and learn from their use cases. My partners are more traditional business people and they saw me as a software engineer who was simply leading a team in India to get a website filled with bells and whistles.

They neither understood the concept of rapid iteration nor were they interested in getting broken products launched. I was also dating someone at that moment and we broke apart in fairly violent ways. I lost track of things around mid-2018 but somehow got around to start working on Travlyng.

In retrospect this was a big mistake. I had not healed at all. Even when I returned from Germany, I was still on my way to get my mind settled, having recently gone through 6 or 8 sessions of counseling. So knowing that I was still emotionally vulnerable, I should have focused on simply traveling. I was in Nepal but when I came home for a break, I started working full time. And then started building a team for Travlyng.

We could not find a revenue model and gradually I started feeling stressed. There was the financial pressure of the company and the emotional pressure of not having dealt with my past issues. So finally in September 2019, I caved in under pressure. I felt I had burned through whatever emotional energy I had gathered in the past year. The team was rather awesome, but I was in no shape or form to guide anyone. I was not even in shape to work. Quitting on my own startups is not new to me but this time I was prepared to accept that I am not doing well.

So I packed my bags and after a brief trip to Bangalore, I headed to Vietnam on 1 November 2019. The next few months were the most beautiful solo life I have ever lived. Initially I had a lot of anxiety (startup, deep past and recent break up) but gradually I started gaining some form of mental control. Some sort of peace.

I think the hardest part is to accept that I am not good at certain things. I accepted I have anger issues, that I am not good at juggling multiple things. I also accepted I am really bad with words, and I hurt people all the time. I went through a long enough period of digital detox, made some amazing travel buddies and bought a motorbike. By this time I had spent 3 months in Vietnam.

I started a 2 months long solo bike trip across Cambodia and Laos on a shitty motorbike (which was all my fault to trust the hostel owner). I will keep my motorbike diaries for another post, but going through all that healed me gradually. I found more calm inside of me and eventually, before the Covid-19 lockdown in Laos, I settled myself at a nice hostel. I started working full time and laid some groundwork for my product. Finally I am here now, somehow content, still nomadic but happy and starting to write again. What will come next? I don't know but I am ready.

Oh! So we have started up

Today is Friday, January 6, 2012 (Indian Time). Last week I was at MobStac at this time. That was my last day at MobStac. 2012 started with fun, food, a short drive to a nearby spot, drinks and everything in-between. But the fun is gradually getting over and the feeling has started to change. I have done this a couple times earlier. I have heard the rules of the game repeated so many times by others. I have seen successful entrepreneurs, and seen teams grow. I am not new to this world. But that guarantees nothing.

Me and my wife, Debleena have been planning to do this for the last 4-5 months. We have saved up enough to last for about 10 months. Plus we do have some small projects to help us earn some extra cash. This is bare survival and that is great. We have a couple of ideas that we want to experiment with. We did not get through YCombinator, and The Morpheus was not a suitable match, given that we (including our part time members) had a lot of experience in the stuff we would do. But that does not mean we are at a loss.

We have knowledge, experience and a shitload of spirit. We have Amit and Ipsita to help us part-time. And we have great mentors like Pallav, Sharad, Shubhodeep, Ravi and Sharat. And not to forgot our dear friends Ruhita, Arijit, Paro, Nitesh, Mohan and so many others I can not name here right now. Heck! what do we need to worry about?

I have seen this world of startups for last 6+ years. Worked to run meetups in Kolkata for a couple years. But overall I have never been successful by industry standards. And that is great. I have scope to better my last time's plan then. Its an open ground, we are all players. So yeah we are going to rock, no doubt. Good luck to ourselves!

Edit: I missed Paro. I am sure I missed a few other names.

To startup or not to startup

Just yesterday and day before a friend came up to me and said he was confused. He was building iPhone apps and was earning very well. But he was not sure if he wanted to start a company as such. He is young and can easily continue to be a one-man army and build applications and sell them. But he is not sure if he will feel good about building a team, managing it and so on. One thing he feels though is that he wishes to stay a product developer and not handle marketing or even team building.

This is a common situation many come across at least once in their lives. You do something you like doing, get some results, then what? Do you grow that, build a team, build a business? Or do you continue the direction you are on and be independent. Yes independence is an important term here. To start a team means responsibility. You may (and probably will) get partners along the way. These will be like your friends, the "gang" who combine their strengths to manage the company. These will be the group with transparent communication among themselves. And you will also build the team, the employees in traditional terms. You will also need help from your existing contacts, your family and so many other people. But it takes time.

Partners: Think of them as the closest people you know related to the business. You work together to keep the day bright and sunny, to make sure you have your work coming in, that the finances are right. But its more than just that, its about having a vision, a common vision together. You are the core of the family that you will create. If any of the non-partner team members have a doubt or a problem they should be able to approach any of you. Partners can be 2 or 3 or even as many as you need. But think about what are the core values of each of you. You want to have a team where each one brings in some quality which is required at the core of your business. This is although not how you always start out. Sometimes you just start out as a group of friends building a company. And that is fine. But then you will need to start thinking about who does what.

Team Members: At the heart of any successful company is the group of people who build it brick by brick each day. It takes time and effort. It takes a team. You need to build your product, choose the color that suits the best, select a tagline for it, contact the first possible client, market it, support your clients, and do hundreds of other things. Also you need someone to take care of your team. Someone has to make sure people are not working too much. But all this must have a reason. In my opinion the only thing that will make people come back each day and work on your business is the vision. It is the promise of a better tomorrow. Not all team members will get noticed, a tiny fraction will possibly get to come to the level of a partner. But they will all fight, with you, each day to make it a brighter tomorrow. But you are responsible for their well being, you will have to make sure they get what you promised them. This is what makes you different from other founders out there. Always remember it is the team that makes those big companies we read about.

So eventually it is one's decision to either fly alone, or build a team. Both have different modes of operation. They are very different in what you get as result. And one thing I have learned from my experiences is that building a team is toughest job you can take up. It takes a lot of time understanding the intricate details of humans. And its a slow process, taking each day and learning more, but progressing work at the same time.