Remember the Turtles: When Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Not everyone has to fit the Zuckerberg mold to become a successful entrepreneur. Learn more about how Vikas used over a decade of corporate experience to help him start his own company.
Keyhubs is a software company that uses the principles of organizational/social network analysis to provide insight on internal talent and team dynamics so that companies can make more informed internal management decisions.
There is a calmness to Vikas I can’t quite place. It isn’t the zen-like calm of a monk who has made peace with the world, but that’s as close to the truth as I can describe. There is no gloss in his words or body language; no trace of an elevator pitch in his speech. He is wildly different from the other fast-paced entrepreneurs I’ve met, but it is a welcome change. Every now and then, there are pauses in our conversation, but even they seem more intentional than awkward. Curious to learn more about how a person so zen got into entrepreneurship, I ask him to tell me his story.
Before founding Keyhubs, Vikas spent over a decade working at a couple of Minneapolis-based startups in the medical software industry. Although he’d successfully risen through the ranks to a director level position at one of the companies, he felt frustrated and suffocated by the bureaucracy and money-driven management decisions made in the workplace. He later went to Duke University to pursue an MBA degree. While there, he encountered the concept of social network analysis, which he believed would be helpful in avoiding some of the pitfalls managers face when delegating tasks or promoting employees. With the support of his wife, Vikas then decided to quit his 9–5 job and set out to create the software company that would become Keyhubs.
If you could time travel back to day one of your startup and communicate any lesson you’ve acquired, what would you tell yourself?
I would say keep working on this, don’t give up. This is going to save your life. You know I feel like the universe was sending me those messages but I wasn’t sure if I was interpreting them correctly.
Let me tell you an interesting story: the day I launched the commercial version of Keyhubs I saw three turtles each for three days in a row, and I’ve never seen turtles for three days in a row in my life. To me that was a sign from the universe, that yes you’ve just launched a business, but it’s going to take time and steady pace wins the race. There have been times where it’s felt like things are really slow, all these other people are passing me by or I’m not growing fast enough. But I always think of those 3 turtles and remember that I have to be patient because this is about the long haul. So if I could go back and say something to myself I would say: remember the turtles.
What has been the lowest point in your career and how did you recover?
The lowest point in my career was around the time I was 32 or 33. I had been with the same company since I graduated college, it had been 11 years. I should have left that company 3 or 4 years earlier but I was scared. I had too much inertia, I was too much in my comfort zone, and I didn’t know if I could work anywhere else because this was all I knew. I was very complacent and I wasn’t taking charge of my life or career. I ended up getting a boss who I felt didn’t appreciate or valued what I had contributed and it got to a point of having very low self-esteem and feeling very trapped. I even had chest pain! I had to go to the doctor and he asked me, “Are you happy with your job? Because I see a lot of people come in who’ve been passed over for a promotion or who have a bad boss” and I thought, “shit this is affecting my health”. I hadn’t been totally upfront with my wife about the struggles I was having, but I remember coming home and telling her about it and she told me “you need to quit this job”. So I did, and I switched to a job with fewer responsibilities and better culture. So that was my low point, but after the switch I could feel myself climbing up again.
What is the strongest argument you’ve heard against something you deeply believed in?
I deeply believe in God. I do think there is an organized force that has given birth to everything here and that force is a personality that is very loving and parental in nature. And it’s easy for people to shoot that down and ask “well if there’s an all-loving parental figure, why is all this horrible shit happening to really good people?” That’s something that a person who deeply believes in God has to reflect on and reconcile. And some people have argued it better than others but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to prove scientifically that there is a God. You just have to know it and trust it.
What metric do you use to keep track of your progress? How do you know if you’ve had a good day?
Am I having fun? Am I loving what I’m doing?
If all of a sudden humans simultaneously lost the ability to sneeze, how long do you think it would take mankind as a collective to realize?
I’m not sure humanity would notice. What would make us notice? If there were a person who sneezed a lot that just stopped sneezing forever they would just say they’ve healed, but they would never know it stopped for everybody. So I could say I’m healed, but I’m not sure there’s enough connectivity for everyone to say “hey I’ve stopped sneezing too”.
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Check out Keyhubs’ website. If you want more stories featuring entrepreneurs and their quirky, fun and deeper sides, follow The Lemon Scope on Medium. We interview really cool people like Vikas and write about them for you all to see!
