The Roundtrip
The God's favourite child
Ask me how it feels to be God's favourite child. I can answer. I have been one. Probably I have been the one. 5 AM, Friday 12th June, I am travelling back home from Bangalore - and guess what - I get another window seat randomly without paying. How many times does it happen? There are 6 seats and 2 windows. 1:3 chances. I am surely doing better. This is the 4th consecutive window seat.
I had decided to be in Bangalore in Jan. Came for Shubhankar's wedding, did a round trip of Rajasthan, Delhi, and settled in Aryan Sarva's room. We have been colleagues since the housewares days. He was interning, and we shared a room for 30 days in a co-living place. I have stayed in his flat multiple times since then. Mostly when I am in Bangalore, and he is out in his hometown, Jaipur. Almost everyone from the Houseware team left LaunchDarkly; Sarva left to prepare for his CA exams. I left to start up or kick myself on my back, to get uncomfortable & explode into the next phase. Sarva left for Jaipur, and I lent his room. Good deal, win-win. Sidhant Gupta, another colleague, also lives in the house, which is a 3BHK. 2 people. Sidhant, make sure to take care of actually running the house. I didn't have to think about anything. They hosted me, hosted me well. I am really grateful.
I am grateful for the Houseware episode as well, how many times in onces career, a colleague turns friend, only a few times right. On the other hand, it won't be wrong to say that I am good at connecting with people on a personal level. Maybe I was always decent. Maybe I wasn't. At least, at the workplace, I wasn't. 2019, Radicali days, I remember Karthiki's last day, she mentioned that she was scared of me. I was all about work back then, so intense. Worked with Shubhankar to ease in. I had a counter for a few months on no of times people disagreed with me. That was a proxy for how easy/comfortable people were in front of me. That helped a bit. Opening up, failing in public, talking about life, having interests, and curiosity helped even more. Curiosity helps everywhere. So much so that I have been letting it lead me. It has been leading me well so far.
Driven by curiosity
I had my last day at LaunchDarkly in April. I wanted to start up. I still want to. Maybe I shall reframe. I want to build a lot of value & impact in a short time. I want to iterate fast & be optimising for winning. There will be many short term losses, but eventually there should be a great net positive. I have spent exactly 2 months, making no progress towards that goal. Maybe the goal needs to be redefined, needs to be made more actionable, needs to be more measurable. Not like I haven't done anything in the last 2 months. I have run 2 cofounder trials - one very short one with Priyanshu - lasted just a few days. One with Reshma (sutros.care). Both didn't workout. I have done a lot of building. Been somewhat consistent in the gym. Been in Bangalore mostly. Attended a few events, met a few people. Did some problem discoveries - talked to ~25 PMs for discovery. Did a small Poc for matrum - could have done better, but got pulled into too many things to be consistent. Travelled home in between. I am doing a retro because it's a time to do a wrap-up. Starting a completely new cycle. Heading back to home, feels like a roundtrip, again.
The Roundtrip
I came to Bangalore to startup. I have't, I still want to. But I am heading back home. Doesn't make a lot of sense, ask me on any random day I won't lie. Bangalore is the best place in India to build anything in tech. Why am I going back? Honestly, not giving me the best chances. But. but, I have a plan. I always had a plan. It was the first plan. I deviated from the plan in the past 2 months. I am back on it again.
Here is my current status - I am building a self learning website loop for kite.ai. I got connected to them through Divyansh. I have hailed him many times, he is just awesome. Kite is a new product by Appsmith. They are a big team, series B,100+ people in engineering. Fact that I am going to be building this with CTO in this big of a team, a product that I have been interested in always, gives me chills. I have to deliver. Yes, I have a little bit of fear, fear of failure, maybe for good. It is going to be the most complex engineering build I have done so far. I am excited too. It is going to last close to 2 months. 45 working days. Decent money, have gotten Nipun onboard, if required will get more people. I want to deliver, I don't care about money at this point. Each penny is bonus. I am planning to give around 6 hours a day on this. And spend 4 hours daily on my startup playbook.
Here is how my startup playbook would look - I want to build a lab. An apps/product lab. I have to sell something on internet - something that can be scaled with more capital. Most of these product/apps are going to be consumer, but don't be surprised if I build something B2B. I am going to open source a few things. I had just started to package my builds before my sutros trial run. I am going to go back to the same approach. Will take it even farther. Will be doing releases. I have some wild ideas, let's see how it goes. Going to be fun ✊