The untold version of starting up young.
The heading might scare you away, cliche stuff. Usual startup story, stuff you see everyday. Nope !!
This one is not about the success after a series of failures. It’s just how I screwed up, starting up young or I thought so.
Just like everyone else, my college days were just about getting drunk and bunking classes, till the girl I had a crush said “hey dear, I just don’t think this would work out”. Maybe you’ll get better things to do. Oops !!
Yes, that’s where it all started. Sleepless nights and breakup movies. Bit awkward, you’ll know for sure if you had a situation like that. But I was not really ready to give up my first love. My dumb mind thought this happened because I didn’t had something special.
Cool with that, but I won’t give up. Until my last breath(still it’s like that). I never thought of starting a company, or even making a software till I read about the creation of Facebook after that. That’s right, as of many others Facebook was one of my first inspirations. And by this point you might’ve got it, it all started as a side-job on impressing my crush.
Not sure about how or where I should start, a second year college grad knowing HTML and C++ want to make Facebook(read something like Facebook).
Here comes the major part.
What happens in college
This part of my story is pretty simple to understand. You’ll simply become famous. Just make a Facebook page with a catchy name for your company. I’ll be damned if no-one cares. You get lot of attention, from juniors, seniors, alumni, faculties, the list goes on.
This is where you call your closest friends to join and make some impact. You publicise the company, boast about making money, a lot(even if it’s not true).
Though we never had a real intention on what to do, the steering direction changed here, when one of our seniors who referred us to an incubator. We were more than happy to take the next step. Rest is simple. We make apps, we deploy and we try to impress. A startup guy reading this could simply understand the problem. We never thought about market, or never knew there was something like this.
This goes on, till the end of college.
Takeaway: Never startup for fame.
What happens after college
Some of them, who were called co-founders were ready to quit. I won’t blame them, personal reasons. Two of us determined to start up officially from home. Simply didn’t work out. You’ll understand it from this post.
We determined to move out and start up in a better place, got one of our relatives home, tried to make apps(Yes again!!). But we realised something this time though. It won’t work out unless you get traction. Not just traction, your traction should lead you to investors and next step of scaling. Though now I’m able to say this firmly, at that time we were dumb about what this meant. Lost in the sea, we never knew where to go.
What I found out didn’t work out for us is a list.
- We never had a team-avengers or just half avengers. Usually the first thing investors ask is the team, and they ask it for a reason.
- We never knew much about starting up a company. The company(go for wiki definition) is something complex and works in a specific way.
- Never knew much about making a quality product.
Okay, I get it. These are dumb excuses, I’m not saying this now so that the failure happened just because of these all. Nope, above all these, we never had much motivation. That makes sense. Even if we don’t have all the above, motivation is a must. We read a lot of stuff about the glamour life and millions made in his/her twenties. We never think about the 95% or above group that fails and go back to job.
Takeaway: You’ll never see a perfect day, until your mind says so.
This simple story till the day of my life, since I started up two companies, tried partnering with one and failed all three, ends here. But I’m sure this is one in a billion. I’d never quit, dare to startup again, when the time comes.
At this point, I’m experiencing what life is about, experimenting to find out what I really love. And yes, I do have much more for the world.
Thanks for taking time to read this, if you liked it I’d appreciate recommending.
Till next time.
