My Startup Story — Where did I really go wrong?

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How amazing it sounds to sit in an Air conditioned office with 20+ developers, reaching all the desired targets and raising millions of dollars!

Well, I dreamt something similar before stepping my foot into becoming an Entrepreneur.

I had 3 Startups till date. Every journey had something to learn from. It was wonderful leading and working on those amazing ideas!

I’ll be walking you through my journey of startups and the naive mistakes I did. This might be helpful for people who are looking to start something of their own!

When I was 15, I founded a Social Networking Site for Kids named IT-VizKids which worked pretty well and we managed to raise Rs. 25,000 (~$350) wayback in 2013.

Things were going amazing for us. Great fame, great audience and a lovely team of 3 amazing people!
We were even interviewed by Times of India — https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech-news/ninth-class-student-from-nagpur-designs-a-unique-social-networking-site/articleshow/30955937.cms

But running the startup alongside my studies was becoming chaotic. We were facing system downtime and lot of other issues and being young, we never knew the way to tackle it the right way!

We couldn’t sustain for more than a year and we decided to call it off and get our asses back to completing our 10th grade.

Mistakes from 1st Startup:

1. Could have a build an experienced team(contributors, volunteers) to handle it meanwhile I could have completed my 10th grade exams.
2. Didn’t manage the finances. Well, what can someone expect from a 15 year old.
3. Technical Scalability. We used WordPress to create the Social Networking website and chose Shared web hosting to host it. Sounds weird, right?

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These primarily made us think about the work we were doing and unfortunately we had to shut it down. It was hard but we had no choice.

Learning from the mistakes, fast forward to 2016. I was looking for some freelancing projects on Facebook groups. I was contacted by a friend of mine who wanted to do a startup in the E-Laundry space. He was 25 and I was 18.

We met, he offered me equity and a good salary. What else does a 18 year old kid needs in his life?

We started working on it. I was handling technology with 2 interns. (At the age of becoming an Intern, I had a chance to handle a few :p)

We built the product. Got initial traction and we were on cloud nine. Everything was going smoothly until the operations guy backstabbed us.
We trusted him blindly and he went on to form a firm of his own with the same idea. My Co-Founder broke apart and went to explore ways to get funds. We were under heavy debt. Things again went wrong and he decided to close it down.

We ran our startup for 1.5 years and this was a great experience running it.

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Mistakes from 2nd Startup:

1. Create proper reporting structure before you hire people to handle your company’s operations.
2. Keep a loop with your vendors/partners/customers to understand their experience with your product/services
3. Trust people but not to an extend that ruin your company/relationships

This was a great experience for me. I was just 18 and this taught how to fight when people ditch you and gave a strength to stay strong and come back strong.

After shutting it down, I decided to take a break and focus on my graduation.

Well, the entrepreneur inside me couldn’t resist anymore and I decided to start another firm.

I was working with a NGO based in Nagpur. Couple of great folks joined in.
We randomly over a coffee discussed to start making websites and app and build AI (Artificial Intelligence) Solutions.

I was a part of this amazing startup for 3 years and these years were amazing. We built great products. Delivered amazing services to a wide range of clients.

But gradually, thinks went bad. We were losing our team and their salaries were due for a long time. We saw a lots of ups and Downs.

The entire situation took my mental and physical health for a toss! I was broke. I had no energy in me and eventually things didn’t go well.

My Co-founder was very supportive to me but I couldn’t cope up and manage the situation. My academics, personal and professional life was very much disturbed.

I kept on arguing and losing people. When I was finally recovering back, I thought of building a product based on AI over Blockchain. (Sounds fancy, right?).
I build a team of 5 amazing developers who believed in the dream that I saw.
Things were going good and there was a conflict of interest between me and my co-founder. Things went bad again and the product eventually failed.

This was a nightmare for me. 6 months of investment of time and money, all went in vain.

I gave 3.5 years to my startup and didn’t manage to earn. But this taught me a lot. Gave me a good fame and made a more strong person!

I gave up on my entrepreneurial journey right at that moment and decided to take an endless break from my entrepreneurial journey.

Mistakes from 3rd Startup:

1. Ego can take down any person.
2. For an Entrepreneur, work-life balance is very much important.
3. No planning = unstructured and failed product
4. Over commitments and under delivery can be really scary!
5. Managing team and paying them well needs a hell lot of planning and commitments.
6. Do not hire people for fun and never play with their aspirations and dream.
7. Toxic environment can be really harmful to your mental health.

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In Jan 2021, I resigned from my last company. I wanted to start things again!

I reworked on anger issues. I managed to clear off my exams ( I am yet to be a graduate) and even rebuild my tech career all over again.

So, your question would be — What am I doing now?

Well, Currently I work at Caterpillar India (An Indian subsidiary to Caterpillar Inc. — A fortune 100 company).

I consult companies on building great communities. I have built a tech community from ground up during my last startup. Managed to built a community base of 5000+ people!

I am the Lead Organizer to GDG Nagpur (Google Developer’s Group). I had the privilege to be a part of the GDG India DevFest organising team in 2020.

I am also working with a friend of mine to build a tech product for providing education to the underprivileged children.

I am doing my research on Blockchain extensively these days and lastly, working on a stealth startup that can help you protect your privacy!

This is my startup journey. The Journey hasn’t finished yet. I am still sailing the boat. Hoping to reach the island of building a successful startup soon!

Thanks for reading this out! Cheers!