How high can you bounce?
There is a little known feature in iPhone that has some distinct memories for me. It’s called ‘Remind me at a specific location’ and I remember it as I used it extensively just a few years back when I was going through a terribly tough phase of life.
I named the reminder as ‘Smile — you are entering the office!’ and set it up to remind me as soon as I enter my office. I was under tremendous stress but I didn’t want that to reflect and impact my team at the startup that I was running at that time. I realized that in a small team, the mood is viral — so I got to go with a smile in the office.
I was leading a startup, Halosys, that seemed to be doing good and on it’s way. Then something totally unplanned happened. A personal emergency and an accident took me out of the office for a few months. Initially it seemed like a small setback and with not too much impact for the company. However, we soon started seeing the cracks and before I could realize it seemed like there were problems coming in all form of shapes and sizes.
Team was off balance, Top paying customers started to report issues and the funding discussions that were going before my accident got totally derailed. We would be out of money very soon to even pay the salaries. I told myself that I need to be back, for this small 15 people team that was almost like family. They had put their heart and soul to build this company and we just can’t fail.
I got back — in crutches, physically weak but with great mental strength. The slide was uncontrollable and the next 6–8 months tested not only my grit but also the tightness of our bond as a team had built amongst us. I felt so privileged that the team believed in me and almost everyone stayed back.
Within 12 months, we not only pulled through, we put ourselves back in a growth mode and started to make a mark in the industry with our Mobile First API platform. Along with the customers, a few large companies had also taken a note of our technology and we started getting enquiries if we are open to selling.
On Aug 5, 2015, we sold our company to a publicly listed company. It’s hard to imagine where we were just a few years back and what we could achieve in just a couple years.
The lessons learnt from founding, growing, bouncing back and selling a company has forever changed my perspective for business and for life.
Along with the speed of execution, planning for the unplanned, I believe the Power of your grit and the strength of your relationships will determine how high can you bounce back — when you have a setback.
