Startup Founder(Giri)

Q. Do you regret being a startup founder?

A. Yes and No! I tried my hand at a self-funded startup between 2004–2006 full time.

Background

At the time I had worked in the US for 4 years from 1996–97 before moving back in 2001. I found a job in India. The pay was much lower than what I used to make in USA. There was also extreme boredom in the job, though I used to still travel to the US on the job (short term). I thought I should do something in Data Mining (cutting edge technology at the time) and started out bravely quitting my job while trying to build a Software Product in the Telecom (fraud) space.

Mistakes

1. Talent: While I had 7–8 years of IT experience, I took plenty of missteps in the nascent product development space and learnt from each of them. The first was relying on Fresh Graduates to do the high end technical work. Though very few did make the grade, most fared poorly and stuff was often behind schedule or needed my intervention/coding to complete . Clearly the promise of easy money riding the IT bandwagon fuelled by reservation had created fresh grads who cared little about technology and wanted to get out of college quick and “Make hay while the sun shines”. A large change had taken place in the quality of education since 1995. It has gotten even worse since!
2. Funding: I did have a couple of unreasonable funding offers and decided that I would rather do without such vulture capitalists. I burned my own cash for the two years.
3. Management Team: I had none. Partnerships usually are doomed, so this was not a mistake, but often times I wished I had 48 hours in the day or could context switch more often.
4. Choice of Product + Client: Telecom fraud was a complex problem at the time and even though I did manage to get the National Carrier interested in using Data Mining for Fraud Detection, we ended up doing piecemeal work for them instead and lost focus quickly. They tended to constantly have other pressing problems before them. Also there were no more than 4–5 companies in this space, so there was no other option but to hang on to our late paying, non-decision making, tender floating client. A good, well-paying first client is a MUST for any startup to succeed financially and otherwise.

Regrets:

1. Not pursuing a Masters Degree/PhD at the time.
2. Wasted time. Left me unhappy as I was not aligned with what I had to do day in and day out.
3. Not being able to do much hands on techie work, instead getting drawn into BD/Admin etc work, hence sacrificing my own technical career to some extent.

Take Aways:

1. Left with survival skills which were extremely useful in the real world, but most employers considered useless as “experience”
2. Most important: Discovered what I really wanted to do (learn and create) and not do (entrepreneurship, chasing money+power) in life.
3. Check marked “Running a startup” from my bucket list of things to do before I die