Poverty in India, something worth working on

This is a lovely video I came across.
Made me feel how fortunate I am and how distant I am from my fellow countrymen. Would like to live the life of the financially underprivileged sometime.

Don’t you quit.

The past couple of weeks have been a phenomenal experience for me. For the first time in my life I confronted the question “What if I fail?”. For anyone other than me, it would be a very vague question. But for me its pretty straight forward – “Not being able to fulfill on the goals that I have listed down in my dream list”. I am a dreamer. I think big. I BELIEVE that we are here to shine, to experience everything that the world has to offer. I don’t want to live a life of wants. I want to be a creator, a creator of something from nothing, a creator of my destiny.

These 2 weeks, I have come to understand why my loved ones are so concerned about what I am doing. [Quit my job, tried my hand at many things for a while, working on a startup from which I am evidently not making any money]. Seriously, I have gotten their concern.
Until now, I was so damn sure of myself that I never even once considered “Not being able to accomplish my dreams”. I have been courageous enough to actually unabashedly share them with whoever I click with.
But these past few days, I have confronted a lot of stuff. I won’t go overboard by calling them “harsh realities”, but they definitely made me feel so miserable that I didn’t feel like eating food for days and escaping from everything that I am doing. All my responsibilities (most of them). And sleeping it out to avoid facing the truth.

Well there is no real truth, only perspectives. But the perspective that I was choosing to push under the carpet was:-

Its been 11 months since I have quit my job and I have only earned some 40K Rs so far. I have borrowed money and asked my dad to help out on multiple occasions. And even right now, I have no assured form of income.

In my perspective, I was doing great.

I got multiple job offers (one of them payed me more than 2times my previous salary), 3 people approached me to start a startup with them, I got ownership of a startup even though I didn’t have the capital to invest on the same, I almost certainly got business contracts worth a couple of crores etc etc.

You know there are times when you work hard for something with only 1 fuel, “belief”. When these kinda things fail, then you feel real low. You question yourself and your abilities. It becomes all the more tough when there are people waiting to catch hold of you and tell you how foolish you have been for not taking their advice earlier. Its this kind of a feeling that I went through and seriously considered QUITING as an entrepreneur. Taking up a job – probably one that would earn me some respect in the eyes of those who measure your success by your “Compensation Package”, probably do an MBA from an IIM and earn big bucks, clear myself of my financial liabilities and then become an entrepreneur again. This would take a few years at least.

But no baby no, I ain’t quiting. I went through the dumps. I understood how people feel when they say “Whats wrong with you”. (Its just their way of expressing, I love you, I am concerned about you) And I appreciate the fact that I realized all this.

Entrepreneurship is a game of creating wealth doing something that you are passionate about. And I am here to play this game and win it. I swear, in 5 years time, I am gonna have the skills to be able to create wealth and freedom anywhere, anytime.

Here is a video that I absolutely loved. It invoked in me the spirit to do whatever it takes to accomplish what I want. To give it the best of what I have got!

Rise Up – By Yves larock

Life is Fun

Off late I have been really low.

A majority of my initiatives didn’t work out. And I started living inside this conversation called – “I am a failure”. But in reality, I guess its just that I am not on track with my targets.

Life is fun. I saw this wonderful video on YouTube! It really cheered me up.

More often than not, people are not able to comprehend why I am doing what I am doing. I don’t want to explain anything to them either. I want my actions to do the talking, but off late, my actions have not spoken much and I have had to give a lot of explanations to people for my supposed “inability to make money”. This video really pepped me up. And even though I am a little spaced out right now, I am all set to kick some solid ass in the days to come.

The Big Idea

There was a very interesting question posed by a gentleman in a mailing list. The question was,

“Should you just start up and figure out your big idea, or should you wait for the big idea before you startup?”

Its such a brilliant question. I asked myself the same so many times. So I thought I’ll put this small piece in my blog too.

To this question I replied,

I couldn’t agree more with xxxxx

My very short entrepreneurial journey so far has revealed exactly the things pointed out by xxxxx.

I noted down ideas that came to my mind for nearly 2 years in an “Idea Book” before I quit my job to finally start up on my own. I had treaded the same path many times when I felt that my idea was the next big thing, only to do some research and find out about many more who are doing the same goddamn thing or something better! I also had a few unique ones, but I gave myself excuse after excuse for not quiting my job to start up on my own. Those were the wannabe entrepreneur days! Then I quit my job and tried 2 of the ideas that I had kept in my idea book! I chose to do something that I would really love doing even if its not big enough to fit into my dream company’s paradigm. Usually your idea doesn’t seem so cool after discussing it with 10 people, right. But the real learning comes after you start executing it. Both the plans failed. I built a simple prototype for the first one, I got booed by the early adopters and I quit. The second one didn’t require anyone outside of me to boo it down and stop!! Of course there were a lot of “logical” reasons to stop as well, but I think the biggest learning for me was to realize how much my own and somebody else’s communication affected my actions. How much significance I attach to “failure”.
I am sharing all this because, in retrospect I feel that there are a lot of things that we need to learn before we become the self that can fulfill our vision.

Right now I am running a software services + training company. Its not exactly in congruence with my vision for my life and the world. But I am giving it my best here. I am also working side by side towards making it a fully functional entity which can run independently of my partner and me by March 2009. I am learning and growing. My partner and I consistently put around 10 hours (often more) every week researching our “probably big” ideas. I am meeting people, my future team mates/ co-founders/ evangelists! And I think I am doing the right thing.

I won’t say that I have grown over my limitations yet, but am definitely learning and learning fast. Starting up on my own, has brought me much closer to being the metaphor “entrepreneur” than my job could ever have.

Conclusion: Don’t wait for the big idea. Start up with your average ones. Get your hands dirty. Taste success/failure. Learn from them. You will be ready for the big one when it comes.

Coming straight for the heart!
Amit Singh