The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday

After spending almost 4 years on 2 failed startups, and now on to the third one with www.ay-na.com , there are so many mistakes which comes to my mind (I have actually a paper log of that now) and of that the first one I am sharing and I have been compelled to do that by seeing so many other persons doing the same.

May be it does not hits you, until you are hit… With everyone…

Even though, I will try…

So you have quit your job/further study and want to do a Startup, mostly it happens because your desire for independence and have something which you can call  your own (even if it fails) is the greater call.

More often than not, your first “Trick” would be (I don’t call it “Idea” any more, its been so fucked up) something which only YOU think is the greatest problem on planet earth and rest no one.

And you would think that you are the re-incarnation of Steve Jobs and everyone around you telling “It’s a stupid trick” is a dick.

You would also hallucinate that people have already figured it out that this trick of yours is going to be massive success and these dicks have already started feeling jealous of yours impending massive success and hence saying “Do not invade Russia”.

There is no problem in believing that you are re-incarnation of Steve Jobs if you have something from your past which suggests that, may be like building some different kind of “Blue Box” and selling them.

Hubris is good, very good, for lack of a better word but it should have some kind of basis.

More often than not, hubris is based on nothing, astonishingly. You do not have anything to show from your past which can even give a slight hint that you are onto building the next Apple Computers. But still, people have that.

History has proved that more men have fallen for hubris rather than women.

In other cases, hubris is based on education or some success in the past jobs that you have done. In this case, it is better than the previous case, but ask yourself can that be equated on an infinitely toned down scale to what Napoleon Bonaparte had accomplished before he set out to conquer Russia?

When I started, I also used to feel that all these people are dick, and they are timid souls who know no victory or defeat, and let the naysayers say what they want to, If Russia has not been conquered so far, that does not mean that it cannot be…

First time, you would not be seeking advice from the people who have been out there in the trenches for years and have been shot repeatedly and still survived, 99% of them retreated and 1% managed to move forward.

At first, you would be listening to actually those timid souls, who really do not know, either victory or defeat, or for that matter, even what either of it takes. And you would be listening to them because they would say that this trick of yours is fucking great, simply because they do not have any fucking idea and they just want to sound like the great fucking “Know-It-All, Been there and fucked that” Baba !!!

And it is imperative that you would do that because it makes you happy, it makes you feel vindictive, your heart is happy. Never ever listen to that bitch!!!

Hubris is that bastard of child of that bitch, called heart!

I have been into similar circumstances, though I never listened to “KIABTFT” Babas but I did not either listened to the guys who have seen blood-bath out there.

So brothers and their sisters, if you seek advice to go ahead and if someone who has seen the blood-bath tells you “Do Not Invade Russia”, at least give it a very deep thought.

More often than not the right people who would be telling you this, are telling you not because they are afraid of your impending massive success but because they do not want you too to get slaughtered.

I have not met a soldier yet, who would tell you to go ahead and get shot, because he is gonna enjoy the show.

A soldier never does that, he loves fighting for victory, but he does not enjoy his fellow soldier getting shot in front of his eyes and he would always suggest that instead of getting slaughtered en-route to Russia, it is better not to go for invasion!

{image} - Courtesy www.history.com | Napoleon retreating from Russia.

If you are even remotely interested in Startup, off-late you’d be seeing a lot of posts on Startup related sites/forums about “failure”.

It seems to be in vogue now-a-days, kind of a competition, that who writes more about the “failures “or rather breaks (as it is called) more “failures”.

And the reasons is simple enough, it brings more eye-balls.

Have you ever wondered, why the best running soap operas of the world are always full of a sobbing story till the end, it is because, humans as per the tendency, are sadistic people. Well, of more than 6 billion people inhabiting this planet, there are bound to be exceptions, but more or less it is true.

The highest viewership shows are always the ones where people are bitching and back-stabbing each other (the so called reality shows), even though people know that they are staged, then why people still watch it and make it part of their lives?

It is because, a lot of gratification is obtained on learning that someone else’s life is more screwed marginally than theirs, even though it is a fictitious reality show.

So imagine the kind of gratification people will get when they know that someone screwed up big time in real life actually, and their miserable life is slightly better than the FUBARed guy.

And if you are a Startup related blog/site, what is more sobbing than writing about someone who fell flat…

That’s what basically happens with all the “Celebrating Failure” posts. It brings eye-balls to the blogs/sites and it brings some gratification to the miserable souls.

People who run such “Celebrate Failure” shows, would like to counter this by arguing that such posts are for the learning purpose of others, so that the same mistake is not repeated again by others, venturing on the startup path.

I’d like to question them one thing, how many lessons of such “un-sung” “celebrated failure” guys you even remember after a week? I am pretty sure, the editors themselves would not remember the names of such persons, forget their lessons.

Reason why?

Because, we have started celebrating failure by taking up wrong examples, like that of Steve Jobs failing at Next or for that matter, Inmobi starting out as a mobile SMS search engine.

The thing is that, their failure stories came up big time only after they became massive success or were on their path to become massive success.

Do you think anyone would have remembered even Steve Jobs, if he would have failed with Macintosh and then would have turned into obscurity, after writing posts and giving up lessons on “Why he failed”?

No one would have remembered him…

People remember him and his failures and his lessons from those failures and his wisdom because he turned around himself and his companies from doom.

People tend to listen to the wisdom or buy them from a validated source…

May be from someone who has failed once, then turned himself into a success and then broke his failure stories with lessons from his failures. And that’s why people remember their name, and their companies for time immemorial.

Now what happens, when a onetime failure who has not managed to turn into a success gets his post on “Celebrate failure” success…

i)                   People flock to read that blog to not gain some insights but to seek some gratification that this guy is more screwed than me.  They are not going to buy his wisdom because he has not validated his lessons, by working on them and then turning himself in to a success, in the next round.

ii)                 The blog gets all the eye-balls.

iii)               People out of tendency and courtesy and after feeling real sorry about him/her start commenting like  “ Hard luck”, “Try better next time”, “I am so much inspired by you, I would definitely do a startup”, “I am sure you are going to succeed next time”.

iv)               The poor guy since now he has nothing else better to do, again out of sheer courtesy, keeps on replying to each and every comment on his post, like  “Thank you so much” , “Thank you for your kind words” etc

v)                 The guy feels good till the moment the comments keep on coming, once the comments have stopped, he is back to his miserable self.

vi)               Next day is worst for him, the entire world knows that this dick has been such a miserable failure and apart from some sorry comments nothing else has come out of the entire exercise.

vii)             As for people, they are eagerly waiting for the next sorry story.

 

That’s what all these “Celebrate failure” posts do for the poor guy, make his life more miserable, nothing good comes out of it either for the people who have read the post (they would never at the hindsight take his lessons, as it has not been vindicated), or the guy about whom the post has been written (he receives nothing more than pitiful comments), all that comes out of it is some pretty decent rise in traffic for the blog/site.

So please stop such fallacy. Stop “Celebrate “failure “posts!

ps: image courtesy - quoteswave.com

I quit my job to do a Startup on 5th of July 2010.

That same month later Economic Times - Power of Ideas contest for the year 2010 started.

I guess, I applied on the last day or so of the deadline of submission.

I had not even an executive summary prepared then, and the questions of the applications were more or like the portions of an executive summary.

We knew what we wanted to do 2 years back but it was still very sketchy and my going into depression after quitting the job, did not help either, as all of a sudden I was very very alone.

It was one of those times…

I still had not recovered then from the depression and I filled up what was then called the “Business Summary” ,I guess.

I tried now searching for the document which I submitted 2 years back but could not find out. Then, I somewhere knew that I would not make it and that there would be myriad iterations on the product and the idea about what we want to do.

Of course, we did not qualify even for the next round in 2010.

I remember checking the list so optimistically the day first cut-off was announced, there was one glimmer of hope somewhere, against all the rationals that we would qualify.

It was not to be.

That was the first biggest disappointment for me on this journey. I was real sad.

It was specifically sad as someone I knew had qualified for the first round, who could not put up till end.

I guess I put in that form something close to the first executive summary I prepared for the product somtieme later, and now when I read that almost 2 year old ES, I myself could not comprehend what I had written.

After that, I told myself, that by the time the contest opens up next year, we would be having a full product with revenues flowing in, so its not the end of the world.

I thought that we might not even, need to apply for it as we might as well would have been funded by then.

Next year in 2011, it came a bit early and even after one whole year we did not have a functional product or what they call in our world MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and we decided not to apply. After all, we were now absolutely sure that we would not qualify.

Again, one whole year passed and the contest again opened up this year in 2012, the last year had been slightly better for us, compared to the first one of our journey.

We tested the first iteration in the market, worked on the second iteration based on the feedback, launched it, registered our very own company (My childhood dream since class 6th of having a company registered in Bombay), and now generating small revenue with above expectation acceptability for the product in the market.

Somehow, this time too everything was left for the last day, as we deliberated that whether we want to do it or not. This time for the opposite reasons, as we were now almost on the track, though very slow.

But then, this is a very prestigious competition, in fact the most prestigious in our sphere of things , with the possibility of providing us an amazing visibility and connections.

In 2010, it was for money. This year, its not about money but connections and getting mentors.

So I just finished the application form and we reviewed it, made changes and submitted it. About 2 hours before the cut-off deadline.

This time, I am not worried about getting through or selected , as now we are “seasoned” like my partner told me, just now :-)

We have seen so many failures and disappointments that now we don’t really care about it.

What we care about is the belief about what we are doing is right and what we are building is going to change the world.

Thats what has kept us going in last 2 years, against all odds and hardships of every kind you can possibly imagine.

But then, it would be a sweetener, even if we make the first cut-off this year in ET-POI contest.

The circle of life has repeated after two years…

About next year…

We dont give a damn…

Whatever happens, in some corner of this world, we would be quitely working on our dream…

Last when I posted was when the development of the version 2.0 was going to start. I am myself surprised that after writing so much over here, about struggles to get the product ready,as a non-technical guy,when it was completed, I did not even posted it here.

So, we have the version2.0 of www.vikreyta.com alpha online on 12th of February 2012. Its been more than a month and I dint had the time to even post about it.

Till my previous post, I had this premonition that this would be the greatest achievement of my life, getting a decent working product shipped, which I can call my own. And once that moment arrived, the euphoria lasted not even a second, as suddenly you realise that, now there are tons of other stuffs to do, and they have to be acted upon immediately.

For something which we toiled for more than 19 months and spent all our moments,working towards, we have still not celebrated that accomplishment.

Pretty surprising, but then I recalled this famous quote - “The journey is the destination…”.

I dont think it holds true anywhere else than a StartUp.

What earlier you think could be a big accomplishment or milestone, just gets reduced to a mere blip in the long journey, after they are accomplished; they come and go, and most of the time, the euphoria lasts for nothing more than a second, as these are mere flashes in a very very long journey. There is no time to waste.

Just after the launch, we got busy in launching the it in the market, getting feedback from our customers,reviewing the server logs, doing the optimisation and gathering initial feedback from users, getting incorporated, hunting for office space, recruitment, paying the bills, getting some marketing collaterals developed and these are just mere bullet points.Any Startup guy would understand that…

So the journey goes on and so does our chase for dreams…

I dont know when we would be able to celebrate our this small accomplishment, but next time I make a point that I would at least record any small blip of achievement faster on this blog.

The 6th attempt to build the product with an out-sourced development team has started.

As earlier documented some-point, out of earlier 5 attempts, 4 have been failures. With one attempt, we were able to build something which was working.

We built a very shitty and crappy thing, which just managed to work, as we wanted to validate the product and concept in the market ASAP.

We validated the product successfully in the market, I myself went out in the market and sold it.

Base on the feedback and the recent development, we decided to do some iteration and then again got stuck, as often in last 18 months, how to do the development.

As mentioned earlier, I have been learning programming and in that endeavour in fact I joined a PHP-Sql development course also.

These guys, are themselves a kind of Startup, with 8-9 years of experience in top IT companies of India. I had the opportunity to judge their skill-set and depth of knowledge, and understanding of domain, while I was taking the tutions from them.

I always used to co-relate the classroom teaching of theirs with the online stuff and the couple of books I had bought.

I used to toss to them a lot of questions, and they were very patient and accomodating with all the questions.

Finally I approached them with task of mine to develop the version 2.0 of the MVP and they agreed.

So far they have been the most professional guys we have worked. Much more professional than some of the very large companies we have worked {they are just 2 people set-up}.

The development has started on a good note, and progressing well so far.

We are again getting it developed on PHP-CakePhp {I can tinker with the code also when required, as I know a bit of Php now}.

May be its like 18 months and 6th time lucky…

{The 5th guy I guess I have not mentioned here. This Python guy, after agreeing to the cost and time-frame to get the old code on server, up and running; just dilly-dillayed giving the excuse of festivals and all and then stopped replying all-together of our emails}

Things which I do - On the cover of my Laptop.

My new Cafe Coffee Day Notebook. Thats what I am gonna achieve this year…

There needs to be someone who is just the keeper and reiterator of the vision. Because there is just a ton of work to do. And sometimes, when you have to walk a thousand miles, when you walk the first step, it looks like a long way. And it really helps if there is someone there to say ‘we are one step closer,’ that the goal definitely exists, that its not just a mirage. So that in a thousand and one little and sometimes larger ways, the vision needs to be reiterated. I do that a lot.

- Steve Jobs

 

One of my largest wishes is that we build NeXT from the heart. And the people that are thinking about coming to work for us, or buying our products, or want to sell us stuff feel that. That we’re doing this because we have a passion about it. We’re doing this because we really care, not because we want to make a buck.

— Steve Jobs

We’re building tools that amplify a human ability.

— Steve Jobs

Hello Ilya,

I was very shocked and saddened by your news and for quite a long time, could not comprehend why you did that.

You were 13 years younger to me and had just started, so even if something was not going right, there was so much time left for you to wipe it all and start afresh again.

4 years back when I had my first shot at entrepreneuship after quitting the well established career for the first time, I failed after a few months. And obviously, I was older to you at that time.

I took a job again, did well there, managed to save some money, and then quit again last year in July to give it a shot at it again.

I always used to wonder, that if I could do that at the age of 33 after one failure, why did you give up at such a young age of 21.

I was baffled…

May be now I can understand…

And the reason for this understanding is that, off-late as the year closed in to an end, I started having similar thoughts, to give up.

It has been a tumultous year and a half, and nothing to show almost.

And at these times the scrutiny is like by default, by everyone, oneself included.

You see the people around you, start making a mental note of what they have done in a year and what you have lost infact, in the same period.

Its sane as long as this scrutiny is limited to oneself but then slowly you find that people are scrtunising you every where.

The questions just dont stop coming and then you start dreading those questions, but there is no escape. Only you know, how hard it has been for you and how desperately you are trying, but for people, its like one of my very close friends commented “getting nowhere”.

Last few days have been specially tough for me, with my family. Its been like everyone ganged up and started hounding me and making a complete failure out of me.

One does not shy from fighting the toughest of battle, all you need is a little bit of encouragement from friend/family member. Its enough to see you through.

But, I have never felt so lonely ever in my life. Its been like I am on the edge of the cliff.

Now I understand those circumstances…

But then I guess, somewhere I got inspiration from you, and may be thats why I am still being able to write this at this time…

Somewhere, I wanted to avenge too for you, apart from succeeding in what I am trying…

By keep on fighting…

I changed my Twitter DP to yours photograph, so that I remember it very often, my goal.

Wherever you are, be happy…

It’s all about money, honey!!!

I am convinced that this is the favourite phrase of Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter.

In a surprising move Twitter agreed to take a $300 million investment from the Saudi Prince.

In one stroke the Saudi Prince has ensured that the Saudi Kingdom will live long for many more centuries to come, unlike what has happened to some of his neighbours.

TIME has named “The Protester” as the person of the year for 2011 and its been possible largely due to Twitter and Facebook, moreso the former.

While the landscape of Arab world has changed post the uprising of this year, Saudi Arabia was not totally un-touched with it and there were signs of protests beginning to rise there too.

I am sure thats when the Saudi rulers would have thought to nip it in the bud, and what better way to do it than the old proverbial rule, with a mouth-ful of cash.

If Dick Costolo would try to make us believe that Twitter would be as impartial and free as earlier, than he is certainly a Dick…

And Jack, what’s wrong with you?

In last 17.5 months I have faced a lot of hardship technically, though being an engineer, I opted for Sales voluntarily.

Like Charlie Sheen tells in the movie “Platoon” - “I volunteered. I dropped out of college, told ‘em I wanted the infantry, combat, Vietnam.”

And the reason for that was very simple, Sales allowed me to live the life of a combat soldier, minus the bullets.

And I have been always proud of this decision of mine and I thorughly enjoyed every single minute of my more than 10 year long career. Never a dull moment.

But if I would have known that 10 years further I would launch a web based company, and would be severly technically handicapped, I would have also most probably followed almost 90% of my fellow batch-mates who are software engineers now (Not Prgrammers).

Its ok, shit happens sometimes.

In all those furstrating moments of last 18 months or so, I made myself a promise that I would help in any way possible to every entrepreneur/Startup guy, who is handicapped in my domain, ie Sales&Operations.

I know how badly it sucks, but then we all are fellow soldiers, fighting a common battle, battle for our dreams, against all odds.

And like comrade in arms, its not good to leave anybody behind in battle, you would liek to help as much as possible.

I had this first opportunity yesterday when I learnt that,one of the entreprenurial bunch of engineering graduates who have their own hosting and web development company, whom I know, as they did some work for me, were struggling with the first sales guy they hired 2 months back.

I mean they were struggling as bad with sales as I am technically.

Immediately, I told them that I would help in whatever manner possible, including formulating for that new sales rep a sales process and if required meeting him in person and even remote-leading him.

Just finished mailing them the first document of sales process.

Giving back is not difficult, but we shy of giving back as we have never been in the other guy’s shoes.

If you have been in the other guy’s shoes, who is suffering, I am sure that all of us would be willingly give back, in whatever-way possible, as we know how bad it feels, to be in that shoe…

I am still not sure what would happen of my StartUp, but giving back is something, which I would keep on doing…

This follows one of my earlier post that I have written on Facebook here.

If you read that post, may be you would be able to relate to this post better, but you can ignore it as well…

I have been on Twitter since Jan 18, 2008. So soon, it would be 4 years.

Not quite sure since how long I have been on Quora, but I have been its early adopter {When you need not use to have an invite to be a user there}.

I firmly believe that Twitter and Quora would be one day much better than Facebook, which today epitomizes, everything we call social.

 And I have a very valid point to say that, which I have personally experienced over last 17 months as a StartUp founder and which in no way related to my state of affairs but would hold valid for you too, as all of us are different individuals.

What is the point of being open and connected, when you can’t “Connect” 

On Facebook, you meet old friends from school and college, may be even ex-colleagues. And the problem with people is that they change over a period of time.

So you accept someone’s friend request presuming that he/she would be the same guy/gal which you were close to years earlier, and then I bet that after initial exuberance dies down, you realise that a lot of water has flown down the bridge, since you two last interacted.

 Your views, tastes, opinions have all changed. You both are connected on this platform called Facebook, are open about each others life, beliefs, tastes and everything else , but you both have changed so much over the course of time that you can’t seem to “CONNECT” now.

While on Twitter and Quora, you are open and connected, you “CONNECT” as well with people.

They are not from your past, they are from your present.

You are not open and connected with them for what they were, but you “CONNECT” with them because of what they are , now.

You are not open and connected with people on Twitter and Quora, because of any past legacy. You “CONNECT” with them, for what they are. Period.

Thats why these two companies would out-shine Facebook.

Today afternoon I was laughing my ass out or {LMFAO} depending your co-ordinates after reading this article through Hacker News http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/03/a-list-of-startups-goldman-sachs-thinks-will-most-likely-ipo/ .

I might be wrong in the eyes of 99%  of the people, but I was kind of so surprised by reading the names of StartUps which presented at that conference.

So many of them, I have respected for long and still tend to do…

Why you are going and presenting at a Goldman Sachs conference?

Do you need to pimp yourself?

And if you need to pimp yourself, then that too to Goldman Sachs…

C’mon…

And whats wrong with TechCrunch, may be the new editor…

I am not an American, but I still know the worth of Goldman Sachs off-late, and their ability to “Predict” OR as the article says ” Goldman Sachs think will most likely IPO”.

C’mon give me a break…

A company which could not predict its own future { With a strong legacy, being founded in 1869} is suited to predict your future, you must be crazy to admit that…

Do you know on whose money its organising that conference?

That proves, In America what it all matters is money and nothing else… And thats why America is swimming in dog-shit.

“Greed is good”, Right!!!

Early today morning at around 0130 hrs I deleted my Facebook account of more than 3 years .

It was once hijacked by some rogue element and deleted in 2009 and then I had to re-build it from scratch, adding one friend at a time painfully.

On last count I had 379 friends on my time-line and another 10 odd or so whom I had blocked, so in all I guess you can say about 390 friends.

And many of those friends were there on my time-line after a long and hard search by me over a period of time.

They were my school friends (I am 34 years old), college friends, my ex-colleagues etc whom I used to miss a lot, once after getting dis-connected [ In the Facebook lingo] .

So what happened after-all?

I have been trying to get my StartUp up and running since last 17 months and I guess what happened yesterday is the culmination of the realisation of these 17 months-:

1. At one point of time when you are all alone and fighting a hard battle, just being “CONNECTED” physically on a platform becomes meaningless. You want to get “CONNECTED” to people who share your thoughts, actions, vision blah-blah. Since none of my friends over there were StartUp founders, I started developing a “CONNECTION” crisis with them.

I just could not just seem to be “CONNECTED” with them.

2. Over the past 17 months both myself and my friends have been very “OPEN” about what we have been doing in our lives.

So I would post about my battle to learn programming, testing the MVP in the market successfully, comments on some of the latest happenings in the tech/startup scene around the world.

And in response to being mine being “OPEN” about my life, they would post about their trip to the movie theatre, trip to the 5-Star restaurant to have dinner with friends, attending rock concerts, travelling abroad, celebrating their kids birthdays, buying new cars and etc etc.

I just came to realise that ,over a period of time we have just lost interest about how “OPEN” we are about our lives.

For me what they were doing was “Bull-Shit” and for them what I was doing was probably even worse, “Chicken-Shit”.

The mutual “OPEN-NESS” of our lives did not matter to either of us…

We just could not identify with each other’s “OPEN-NESS”.

3. Being the founder of a web StartUp, I was connected to internet all my “OPEN-EYES” hours, which were quite long everyday.

My “SOCIAL” interaction got limited to “LIKING” some hilarious status-updates, cute pics of my friends kids, and wondering how can someone watch such stupid videos and “LIKE” them.

Specially those videos forced me to think a lot about certain people, how they have changed over a period of time and what the heck is wrong with them [And I presume very “OPENLY” that thats what they thought about me too], I just became “SOCIAL-LESS” with them [And they became “SOCIAL-LESS” with me too].

Since I was being more and more “SOCIAL” on Facebook, my Life sucked as I dont have any friends in this city [apart from those related to my work] I moved six months back to save money.

In this presumption that I am already “CONNECTED” and “OPEN” to so many people, I never even tried making new friends in this new city.

4. There are certain people with whom I really wanted to be “OPEN” and “CONNECTED” and I am sure its the same with them but, sadly they were not so active on Facebook.

 I never bothered to call them or even write an email to them , though I was online always.

I was getting “CLOSED” and “DIS-CONNECTED” with the people with whom I really wanted to be “OPEN” and “CONNECTED”.

5. And last, all these “OPEN” and “CONNECTED” people were of no help to what I was trying to do.

They have different ideas about how the life should run and I had other and inspite of being so “OPEN” and “CONNECTED” to each other, our thoughts never matched and crosses each other’s path.

I posted more than a couple of times seeking introductions to technical people for my StartUp but of no avail. During several of my “SOCIAL” interactions/ “CHATS” with so many people, I mentioned this hinderance, but of no avail.

I could not simply “CONNECT”, even after being so “OPEN”.

And off-late I have been getting so much psyched with this question from people who were trying to be “OPEN” with me- “How’s your business doing dude?”

I mean WTF…

Time to get “OPEN” and “CONNECTED” again…