This is your life as an Average Joe Entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley of India
Inspired by Lizzie Chapman and Sunil Rajaraman — on the shoulders of giants we stand…
You wake up at 8:30 am with a splitting headache. The Old Monk that you had the previous night to celebrate your roomie’s birthday was clearly more than you could handle — you tell yourself that that being 35 years is not the same as being 18 years and you need to cut down on partaking.
You see your roommate sprawled on the floor of the 6 by 6 “studio apartment” that you have called home for the last four years. Clearly, he needs to cut down on partaking too. You think about waking him up but decide against it after hearing his sonorous snoring. With a dexterity belying your advancing age, you deftly leap over the pool of vomit next to your roomie and enter the 2 by 2 “compact bathroom unit” to get ready.
You think of ordering breakfast from the Darshini next door through Swiggy but wistfully realize that now that they have stopped all their offers and discounts, you can no longer afford a masala dosa. At the thought of masala dosa, your mind briefly wanders to thoughts of your mother’s cooking and your cosy bed at your home in Hubli but you quickly shake yourself off the reverie and decide to start your day by skipping breakfast. You are scheduled to meet your angel investor at Starbucks in any case.
You kick your fifteen-year old “vintage” scooter in frustration after your attempts to kickstart the darn machine end in failure. You notice that the fuel tank is still 1 degree east of empty and swear that this should have given you ten more kilometers of riding. You tilt the scooter until it is parallel to the ground and then try kickstarting it again. Vroom…the sound of the engine starting sounds sweet to your ears. You can trust your faithful steed to stand by you always.
You enter Starbucks to see your angel investor, Ravi, sitting on a chair that seems to be creaking in protest. You notice that he has already ordered an unnaturally large coffee, some kind of wrap and what looks like a cake you see on billboards during Christmas. Your stomach grumbles noisily but when the waiter asks you for your order, you say “Just water for me please”. The waiter asks if you would like a bottle of Perrier, you are not exactly sure why a water bottle has been named after a pen but are sure that you can’t afford it. The waiter doesn’t bother to cloak an audible snort when you say that you just want plain water.
You turn to talk to Ravi. You thank your lucky stars that a startup guru like Ravi agreed to be your angel investor two years back and had deigned to invest Rs. 2 lakhs for six percent of your startup. You tell yourself that it doesn’t matter that Rs. 1.7 lakhs of that is still pending even though you have issued the shares to him and it is only a matter of time before he wires the rest of the money across.
The purpose of today’s meeting is to get advice from Ravi on how to maximize your opportunities when you present at Techsparks later in the afternoon where Ravi is the keynote speaker. Ravi assures you that presenting at this event is the one thing that you need to catapult your startup to the rocketship orbit. You are tempted to remember the Nasscom event that you presented at last year for which you had spent Rs. 1.5 lakhs to attend but got nothing in return. You convince yourself that it was your mistake that you couldn’t capitalize on that event and are determined to make this one count.
You don’t quite understand what Ravi is saying as he is speaking between mouthfuls of cake but you catch the words “resist temptation” and “challenge yourself”. You think that this is suspiciously close to the advice he had given last time but tell yourself that you are probably mistaken.
You ask Ravi if he can introduce you to Sequoia Capital like he had offered to do two years back. Ravi says that he will try to connect you to them during the event.
The waiter brings the bill to your table and right then Ravi excuses himself to go to the washroom. You try to fiddle with your phone but the sharp glares from the waiter force you to accept the bill. You cannot believe that a single cup of coffee costs Rs. 180. You hand over your credit card to the waiter and hope that it is not yet blocked for repeated late payments.
While you wait for the card to be returned, you can’t help overhearing the belligerent young man with glossed hair and a sharp goatee pitching to someone who seems like a VC in the next table. You don’t understand much of what he is saying but register the words — IIT, IIM, AI and machine learning. You can’t help noticing the glassy look in the VC’s eyes and the drop of saliva that threatens to drop out of his mouth. You picture him pulling out his cheque book right then and there and fantasize about being in the place of the founder with the goatee.
Ravi returns and says a cursory goodbye as he leaves. The waiter returns your card and hovers around, probably expecting a tip, but you studiously ignore looking at him as you pick up your card and decamp.
You are on your faithful steed again and as you navigate through the log-jammed traffic weaving through the stalled cars, you feel tempted to let out a cry of triumph over the fat cats who can afford those shiny cars.
You enter the Techsparks event venue — a five star hotel that you have only heard of in folklore. You silently tick off a long-pending item in your bucket list. Awaiting you there is the rest of your team — the tech lead, the VP of sales and your intern/designer/growth hacker. You tell yourself that it is not grandiose that you call the one developer you have a “tech lead” and your “business” guy a VP of sales even though he hasn’t actually sold anything yet.
You still have one hour to go before it is your time to present and wonder if you can get to eat something. You walk up with uncertain steps to the buffet table and pick up a plate . A stern-looking man asks for your “gold” food coupon. When you tell him that you are one of the presenters, he says that only those with gold passes can have the food and the rest of the folks have to pay for it. Against your own better judgement, you ask him how much it costs and barely escape having a coronary when you hear the figure. Somehow you manage to keep the plate down and walk away with as much dignity as you can muster.
You are waiting on the sidelines for your name to be called when one of the organizers announces that of the thirty startups chosen, only ten will be allowed to present as they decided to fit in a standup comedy routine into the schedule at the last moment. Your heart skips a beat. As the organizer reads out the names of the ten selected startups, the tension is unbearable and gets increasingly worse after each name is called out. You feel numb when the last name is called out and it isn’t yours. You tell yourself that your startup’s name and contact details will still be published in the brochure handed out to all the invitees and that alone will be worth it.
You spy Ravi talking to a circle of people and walk up to his side hoping to catch his eye. Ravi doesn’t seem to notice you even after standing there for five minutes before he walks away to greet a familiar looking person. You realize that this person is the scion of a corporate behemoth whose own startup just raised a boatload of money to become India’s latest unicorn. You tick off another item in your bucket list and then try to get in front of him to introduce yourself. But you find yourself buffeted by a sea of other startup founders who evidently have the same idea as you. You watch in wonderment as the sea of the people moves away from you with the newly-minted unicorn founder at its epicenter. You wonder if it is too late to pivot your startup to a chat bot messenger.
When you turn around, you bump into the VC from Sequoia who walks into you as he types furiously on his Blackberry phone. He puts up one hand in what you interpret to be a conciliatory gesture as he continues to look at his phone with intense concentration. Something comes over you — adrenaline pumps through you and you overcome your introvert tendencies to start pitching to the VC. The VC finally looks up, half confused and half irritated — you are not sure if he is registering anything you are saying as he looks at you (or is it past you) with baleful eyes. When you hand over your business card to him, he finally talks back and points you to someone standing behind him — someone who seems to be all of twelve years of age.
The kid turns out to be an “associate”. He asks you what your “cohort analysis looks like” and what the “incline of the graph of your three-month moving average of traction is”. You have no idea what either of those terms mean but blurt out some thing. The cherub seems impressed by your answer and hands over his gilt-edged business card to you and asks you to schedule an appointment with his secretary.
You can barely contain your excitement now that funding is imminent. You ignore the acidic growls of your hungry stomach as you wonder if the plot in Kormangala next to the one that Binny Bansal bought is available for sale.
