Why I Build
Mohit Sharma, Co-founder & CTO, Up⤴️ talks about why building grounds up is good for the ego.
I find it difficult to think of myself as a builder — it’s a loaded word, with which I don’t have a lot of great history.
Growing up, I definitely wasn’t someone who built things. I was someone who studied for exams and got above average grades. The people who built things were esoteric creatures — absent-minded, unaware of their surroundings, dreamy, and suddenly they came up with moments of sharp insight.
People like me would ask “Gee, why didn’t I think of that.” A pretty corrosive thought.
It gets you to dig within — you lay bare your thought processes, you ask teachers, quiz your friends, attempt to read complex texts, and pretend to listen to and understand new genres of music. You essentially try to copy all the mannerisms that you think ‘builders’ practice. While deep inside you know that you’re not the real thing.
Through school and college I had managed to copy nearly all these mannerisms and fake all kinds of new and elite interests, in trying to emulate the auteurs. Then I went to work for a Consulting company, and next into analytics. And the world kind of crashed. All the posing and all of the many, many fronts I had put up, with all their contradictions — ran into each other, and at 24 my world had crashed. Relationships ran aground, friendships ran their course, and I basically gave up all aspirations for any kind of career. At the prime age of 24, I took a sabbatical from work.
During my sabbatical, I met Kapil Shelke at Tork Motors. Our conversation ended with me saying “I don’t know how to build or do anything, but what you are doing is really cool. What’s something important you don’t know how to do? I’ll study, figure it out, and I’ll do it.” It was great. Kapil and Sumit welcomed me with zero expectations, and I loved the process of learning new things and bringing them to life. I’d go to sleep at night drawing circuits on paper (because I didn’t know how to draw them in anything other than Paint), and in the morning, batchmates from the other side of the world would send corrections.
I’d go work at an ITI during the day and get mocked for not knowing anything about basic engineering. I pretended to be a first-year student on the old college’s (IIT Bombay) electronics club group, and kids would help me with circuit diagrams, punctuated with smart insults about how stupid my original idea was. And in this place with no ego, I think I found myself.
So, why do I continue to build? It’s an ego-less place — I get to see what is broken, I get a reason to set my ego aside and ask questions, and I get to talk to the people involved and build relationships with them. From this place of unassuming appreciation of the world, I get to make my contribution. The whole process almost has a Marxist feeling to it — where work gives you so much more than just money.
The ‘physical world’ has no regard for your titles, any past achievements, or future potential. It is a great equalizer, and engaging with the physical world keeps you grounded. This anchoring is a new dimension — for the part of my life where I only engaged in conversation, and did not truly building, this layer had been unavailable. Your worth was decided by whatever the five people closest to you stated your worth to be. Your worth would be more on a Monday, less on a Friday, high on the day of a promotion, and low on the day of firing. But the physical world is a more objective reality. And to engage with it, I continue to build.
I don’t like the term “builder” — other people use it to describe a personality. And I’m afraid there are a lot of different kinds of personalities under this umbrella, and I don’t belong to any one of those. But, I find natural peace in building things — physical, digital, food, not-food. For in the insane velocity of the world of human titles, labels, and badges, the thorough grounding of the physical world is priceless.
If you are looking to find Zen in getting your hands dirty, or have found it already, build with Up⤴️. Drop us a line on careers@upliance.ai
