Abhilash — 2019 Year In Review
This is actually my first time writing a year-in-review. 2019 was an absolute pleasure. It’s the first time I was actually able to enjoy myself the whole year round, as opposed to the entrepreneurial suffering I faced in 2018. A few things defined 2019 for me:
Fitness
I was quite sedentary in 2018, gained a lot of weight, and started 2019 at 82kg with a whopping 32% body fat. I met some chubby friends at a hackathon and we created the “Weight Loss Crew” group on Whatsapp, where each of us would pose a weight loss goal for 2019. My goal was to hit 72kg by April. I joined F45 Rochor — a high-tech team-based HIIT class in January 2019, and it was the best decision I made for my health. A couple close friends joined F45 soon after, and we did the workouts 4–5 times a week, and prepped our own meals for a good part of the year. Fair to say, I smashed my goal at 120% by hitting 70kg in April 2019. I went even lower to 67kg in June 2019, but that’s when I decided to bulk up. I’m now starting 2020 at a comfortable 71kg with 18% body fat. I had what I thought looked like a fuzzy 6-pack, but it disappeared last night after too much celebrating during the holiday period.
Music
This year was uber fun for me as a drummer. In March 2019, I frequented jamming with my classic rock band Garak. We jammed biweekly to covers of Gary Numan and Alice Cooper, and would always leave the studio with happy music vibes. In May 2019, a good friend of mine invited me to drum for his band MUSEtafa for their Muse-Tribute gig. I had the opportunity to play with professional musicians and learn much about styles, studios, and equipment. I even bought a Soundbrenner for our jam sessions. MUSEtafa’s hour-long set during the live gig in September 2019 at SLED x Decline was phenomenally enjoyable. In October 2019, I played at another live gig with Garak at Blu Jaz which was super fun as well. Close to December 2019, we revived #mantap — my band from TradeGecko — and jammed to Foo Fighters and Two Door Cinema Club a couple times. For a drummer, 2019 was totally upbeat. Ba Dum Tss.
Travel
I went to Bhutan in January 2019 with my parents and learnt about happiness and inner peace. I travelled to India in April 2019 to participate in my cousin sister’s wedding, where I walked around the fire with the newlyweds. My parents and I visited Dubai in October 2019 where my friends who live there invited me for a wonderful surprise coffee over an Instagram Story. In Abu Dhabi a few days later, the world’s fastest roller coaster terrified my father.
Work
My cofounder and I shifted our business model from a chatbot development agency under Bus Uncle, to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product called BotDistrikt. We created a web portal where you can make chatbots yourself without any coding. A Wix for chatbots if you will. BotDistrikt was in closed-beta in February 2019 for our clients, and was made publicly available in June 2019. Building the product was a lot of work — I’m glad I hired a superhuman intern to vastly improve its quality in July 2019 — but building the brand and customers around it has been 10X harder. Luckily, in April 2019 I was invited to be a mentor for IMDA PIXEL, focused on Digital Storytelling. IMDA helped us with BotDistrikt throughout the year, by giving us booth spaces at their multi-day conferences: Innovfest Unbound, IBEW, Rolls Royce Digital Expo, and Smart Nation & U. We gained traction through these events and the IMDA community.
Talks
I participated in presentations and panels about designing and optimizing chatbots this year. Raising the Future by British Council in March 2019, WeWork x Tabula Rasa in May 2019, IMDA PIXEL Launch (where I introduced BotDistrikt to Minister Heng Swee Keat, the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore), and e2i Training where we presented our work to real life bus captains in June 2019, Dear FUTURE by Singapore Art Museum in July 2019, IBEW and Big Data and AI Leaders Summit in September 2019, and Chatbots and the Human Connection at Singapore Writers Festival, the Slack & Stripe Chatbot Meetup, the Pecha Kucha Night for Singapore Fintech Festival, and the Future is Voice Activated by Changi Airport Group in November 2019. I even appeared on ChannelNewsAsia 3 times this year on the shows Singapore Reimagined, Work is a 4-Letter Word, and the Innovfest Unbound Broadcast. The most memorable event however was when I was getting my usual teh si kosong at the Killiney Kopitiam near my office. The cashier stopped and told me that she saw me on TV and screamed “My customer! My customer!”. My teh has been tastier ever since.
Crime
For the first time in 9 years in Singapore, I became the victim of a crime. When searching for a room to rent in June 2019, An agent called Andrew showed me this decent-looking condo room in Farrer Park. I confirmed and paid a month’s deposit and rental without much questioning. When I moved in, the house was filthy with mould, had no hot water, had a blackout on the fourth day, and its wifi shut down a week later. Andrew was apathetic to these issues, so I decided to move out just 20 days later to a nicer apartment in Boon Keng. When I asked him to return my deposit, Andrew ignored all my messages and calls. I sued for deposit scam and filed my first lawsuit against him in September 2019, which he avoided. In December 2019, Andrew’s other residents shared that their deposits were not returned either, so we filed a police case together. I came to terms with losing my deposit, but this year I learnt how low crime doesn’t mean no crime in Singapore.
Gaming
Early this year, I was drawn to Facebook Pages like Playstation Memories and Crash Bandicoot World. My feed was filled with videos from console games that took up a lot of my time in my childhood back home. After much reminiscing, I decided to revive my inner child by purchasing a PS4 during 11.11 in November 2019. I completed God of War (Oh what a beautiful game! Highly recommended) and Crash Team Racing in November 2019 , and GTA 5 and Spiderman in December 2019. My flatmates sometimes wonder how I run a business wasting hours away gaming in the living room.
Failures
I’ve shared what happened in the spotlight of 2019, but it goes without saying that I suffered many failures, rejections, and fuckups this year as well. My cofounder and I were rejected by 3 local and 2 international startup accelerators in January, March, June, and November 2019. A major client switched to our competitor after a year-long contract with us in July 2019. We lost two 6-figure leads over quarter-long negotiations each. We had some clients and partners call us cheats, which made us question our own integrity several times this year. I hired the wrong people in January 2019 costing us a fortune in the company bank account. A few coding errors and my ignorance on our cloud platform spend made us lose several thousands of dollars which could have been easily avoided. I lost the trust of a couple of clients after some careless scheduling errors. I also lost a really close friendship for ignoring my social life. The list goes on, but I learnt from each mistake and hope to never repeat them again in the years to come.
While I spent 2018 worrying about the typical problems of a startup owner like cashflow, finding teammates, sales, branding, and eventually losing my sense of self, I decided to breathe in 2019. I attribute a lot of the successes of this year to my cofounder for making intelligent decisions and being an unbreakable pillar of grit and integrity. I would not be half as happy as I am if it wasn’t for her contribution and support. I can’t say the progress of the business is where I wanted it to be by this time — but I can say I personally enjoyed 2019 thoroughly, ascribed to trusting myself and having close friendships, squads with shared goals, and supportive communities. Here’s a diagram for the visual ones:
Image A. What made 2019 amazing
