If you haven’t read the previous part: How to start a failure startup — The Second Mistake
How to start a failure startup — The Third Mistake
Preface: While composing this saga from memory, I realised that there’s a lot in the details and that one post about this would be too long to read and could make certain facts and lessons insignificant. For the ease of reading, I’ve broken it up into the number of mistake I’ve made. Hope this helps!
The fact that I was forced into doing something I didn’t deserve only strengthened my resolve to prove everybody wrong. Forcing me to write a supplementary exam instead of the main exams because of someone’s jealousy ticked me off. If things weren’t personal before, they definitely were now.
In the typical Indian society, unless your name is in the media and in the papers enough, you’re not respected. You may have patents to your name, you may have invented something world changing, and you may even be the world’s best hockey player while representing your country. Now, unless the media markets you fashionably, you’re not relevant. Those gold medals hanging on the wall figuratively seem to lose their shimmer and glint with every day that passes. In India — and probably most of the world — money commands respect. You may have 0 accomplishments with a ton of money, you’re respected. You may have 0 accomplishments with a ton of family money that you love to abuse, you’re respected even more.
I’d seen this growing up and I’d seen the worst side of it. I wanted no part of such respect and fame. Today things are looking up, for sure. But, back in 2013, it wasn’t. What respect would a distinction-class college graduate with a basic BCA degree and a “startup” to his name receive? It was 2013; there were plenty of startups around. So, what made us special? That’s what I needed to prove.
We needed to expand quickly. A bigger team meant more progress. More progress meant more visibility. More visibility meant increased brand value. Increasing brand value meant social recognition. We looked at ways that we could expand the team to get to that point. We didn’t have money and we didn’t have a steady revenue source. What we could offer was plenty of live experience. Ours was a live free platform. Anything you work on could go live if it was good enough.
An old batchmate of mine from pre-university reached out to me and said he’d love to be a part of the team. We had a few discussions and I figured he was good at marketing and sales, making connections and everything. He definitely loved to dress up. He had no monetary expectations and he wanted in on the fun of running a failing company.
For a year, we had been working with content writers to fill out content for our e-magazine service on the platform. We had hired interns to write and worked with a few paid writers. Similarly, I wanted to go full speed on the tech side of things. Colleges were starting out and final year students had the opportunity to intern in companies. A fairly popular college in the city organized an internship festival of sorts and we were invited. I figured, this was probably the best thing that could happen. We were open to paying the best performing interns at the end of 2 months — that was the duration the college allowed them to intern for.
We were fresh out of college ourselves and we definitely didn’t dress up like recruiters. I wore my usual pair of jeans, a shirt, and a pair of Converse. Topped it off with a buffed ugly jacket — I thought it was cool at the time to not look professional. I still am a firm believer that looks shouldn’t define one’s competence, but I learnt very quickly that the majority of the world doesn’t dig that. They expect people to be suited up for everything.
So, there we were, 3 of us sitting in the last row of the auditorium. It was packed with eager students. Each company was expected to go on stage for a few minutes and talk about why they wanted interns and what to look forward to. I requested that we go last. If I remember correctly, there were about 5 companies that had applied to recruit interns. The first 4 went on stage, pitched their stuff with fancy PPTs, and requested interested students to meet them for an interview at predesignated classrooms. Finally, it was our turn: “We request Binox to come up on stage.”
I had a thing for making a lasting impression — I’d do something that others wouldn’t do in a given scenario. I’d chosen to sit in the last row so people would turn their heads to get a good look at me while I walked down to the stage. The idea paid off and all eyes were on me. I didn’t get on stage like everyone else. I stood right in front of the stage at the same level as everyone else.
I said, “Good morning, everyone. My name is Anoop. I’m the CEO of Binox. I started this company for two reasons: One, I hate the way the entire internet is organized right now and I believe I can do it better. Better than the tech giants we have today. And two, people didn’t believe I could start my own company. They insulted me, they laughed at me, they put me down, my own friends have stabbed me in the back, and my own family doesn’t support my dreams. But, here I am, 2 and a half years later as the CEO of my own company; we’ve been featured in newspapers and magazines and we even have patents filed in India and in the US. Do you know where my ex-friends are today? I don’t. But, they know where I am and what I do today … and that’s what matters.
“If anyone here feels the same way, wants to have an impact in today’s society, and wants to prove it to themselves that they are worth more than just a regular college graduate, then please, let’s have a chat upstairs in classroom <insert-any-number>.
“We have internships open for frontend and backend development, marketing executives, and for electronics engineers. Yeah, we’re into a bunch of stuff. Those of you who are interested, we’re looking forward to seeing you. Thank you!”
I don’t know if all the shit in my life at the time had added up and I’d said it more aggressively than I’d intended to, but everyone was hooting and applauding me. An hour later, I felt slightly awful about how I’d said it: it sounded arrogant for sure. It definitely wasn’t something I’d want students to emulate. But, the attempt paid off. We were the only company to receive over 70 internship applications that day! It was supposed to be a 2 day event, but we didn’t bother to go back the next day. We interviewed more people than we imagined we would!
But, we were at the edge of out third mistake. I was — as usual — oblivious to it. We shortlisted 30 students from the 70 and less than 20 showed up on the first day of work. By the end of the first day, several students told me they couldn’t continue because our office was too far from where they stayed. It was understandable and we were reduced to 11 students. We split them up into teams and the office was bustling with activity.
I was thrilled about it. It felt like someone had blown air onto dying embers. We weren’t a raging fire yet, but I was positive we’d get there soon. At this rate, we would probably generate enough revenue to pay them, too!
Of course, that didn’t happen. In the startup world, never expect things to go according to plan. There it is: one of my most followed rules.
A week into the internship, the college called me up and told me that the students wouldn’t be able to continue for the next 25 days. Why, you ask? They said, “We’ve had to re-schedule their semester exams to a much earlier date. Which is one week from now, sorry about the last minute notice.”
Someone just walked in and peed all over our revived embers. I was pissed off, to say the least. But, I couldn’t say much about it and the students had to take a break from work to focus on their upcoming exams. We had them for a week: that was it. When the exams did finish, 9 returned from the original 11. Not bad, but I had to re-assign teams. Two days passed and this time, a few of the students told me, “Actually, our college has begun organizing a recruitment drive. We are being forced to attend it even though we’re bound to this internship. I think we have no choice but to discontinue the internship.” Obviously, they would. They were comparing working for free to an opportunity to work for money. After giving the college coordinator a piece of my mind about wasting everyone’s time, I realised that we were down to 2 interns. The miracle of the 2 interns was due to the fact that they wanted to study further by applying for post graduate courses in the US. They had plenty of time to kill and they were keen on work. The only catch: they were electronics students.
We desperately needed help with tech and marketing. The electronics venture was supposed to be a trial and error project. I was glad the 2 guys were interested, so we kept it going. But, I had zero help with technology, again.
As usual, the mistake was mine. The third mistake was: while working with interns can be resourceful, bringing on interns at an early stage can have a negative impact. I know of other startups who attempted this and failed: students either hated the work or startups ran into management issues with interns.
Our office was empty again. Our voices echoed and the excited embers of our startup was fading. I didn’t know whom to trust. We had no money and we had no way out. Just an idea that a few users used infrequently. I’m a stubborn person by nature and instances like these only enforced that trait in me. I trusted only myself to get the job done — a repeat of my 2nd mistake.
Over the next 2 years, we focused on marketing individual services of our platform as standalone apps/services. We pushed the idea of Binox as a brand away and began focusing on our other services: Skybox — a cloud storage and collaboration platform, and Binox Search — a beta search engine. I focused on building native apps for Android and iOS. We built a few projects for clients along the way and it helped us learn several new technologies along the way. Our marketing guy had to relocate to another country and we were back to a team of 2. However, building phone apps made me realise that we had never exercised portability with our services. I now knew how to build apps and we had our tech ready to port it onto an app.
I definitely didn’t want to begin our app journey with any of our existing ideas and services. Our brand value was falling rapidly and if we did something for Android, we would need to do it as a brand new app with no ties to Binox. Of course, we would use Binox as a backend service provider, but users wouldn’t know it. All I needed was an idea.
My phone buzzed with a notification from WhatsApp. I looked down and a good friend of mine — who’s my wife now — had sent me a picture of what she was eating for lunch. It was Chicken Biriyani — homemade — and I’m a sucker for it. She said, “Want some?” Of course, I’d want some. But, there’s no way I could meet her; she lived on the other side of the city. I said, “Yeah, I wish I could eat off of WhatsApp”. She laughed. I mean, it’s not like she could put some in a box and have it sent to me in an hour, right?
…
Wait a minute.
Read the next part: How to start a failure startup — The Fourth Mistake
