Cactus Chords

After a long silence I am back. I was astonished by the number of text messages, mails and calls I received asking why I do not blog anymore. It is really encouraging to realize so many people not only follow but appreciate what you write. I wasn’t invisible because I ran out of topics, but because I was fixated on launching and touring to promote my dream project.

It is not a social networking site, not a way to get famous, not just some product I put together with my team. It is my dream. It is trying to solve a problem which I faced while studying and wanted to solve it ever since. Whether it is a success or a failure is something I will have to wait and see and I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass about. My priority was to launch this product and be happy if it helps in the smallest of ways and creates jobs and in turn help a few. If it bombs, what the hell, at least I won’t die asking myself the question, What would have happened if I had done it when I could?

What I want to share with my next few posts are the different phases I went through while developing this product, the traumas, the hurdles, what kept me going. In all, I was going through a mixture of emotions. So here goes…….

Staring aimlessly at my mail inbox, the stats read 0 unread e-mails out of 9436 e-mails. Every morning I wake up and login to see whether I have received a mail from someone unexpected regarding work. I have mails from family, friends, random groups I joined on a social networking site or the technical team. An average of 8 new e-mails every morning was the traffic in my inbox.

I then asked myself, the questions I was running away from all this while;

- Why would someone mail me?  I am no longer on any website, no one knows where I am, what I do. I am a no body. Even if they do, what service could I be to them?

- How can I make myself useful?

- How can I create a product and not just sell something someone else has created, which can make me useful to the society?

- Should I go ahead with my dream project?

- Can I take a risk at this time of my life?

- Am I up for the challenge?

The above mentioned trauma occurred post my resignation from my previous firm which I was a co-founder of. Not something my readers do not know of. For the ones who have just joined, don’t even get me started. The less said, the better.

When in a start-up, revenue inflow is not the only important aspect. The one and only thing that is important in a start-up is, PRODUCT. That is considering you have the other aspect covered ie: a trustworthy team. If you do not have a product, then stop! Do not jump in yet, because you will fall on your face. It isn’t quite a pretty sight after that.

This was the mental scenario I was in weeks before the launch of my product which I will elaborate on in my future posts. You know how nervous you feel before an exam you have prepared well for. Not that you are scared of flunking, but scared whether it will be worth all the hard work. That feeling just skims the surface of the trauma I was undergoing. It has been two whole months of work, day and night. No night outs, partying, long hours on phone, shopping, watching movies, meeting up with friends. All I did those two months was travel around and meet people, mail every Tom, Dick and Harry, do market research, stay up nights and weigh the pros and cons of my project. Create designs of what I want the website to look like, how I want it to function, process flow, prepare necessary documents for the project, read as much as possible and learn about what I am getting into. I wondered whether it would make a difference to the society. If so, then to what extent, my running costs, my revenues, future scalability.

I do not know if it is just me, but when I really sit down to write, my head gives me nothing but a ball of answers which has to be separated manually and matched with the respective questions which is another ball in a separate corner in my head. I presume I am just too confused a soul.

There are a lot of questions one must subject himself/herself to before they take the plunge into entrepreneurship.  There are two basic traits one must possess to succeed as an entrepreneur.

- HAVE A FOCUS

- BE A RISK TAKER, GO GETTER

When I mean focus, it isn’t necessary that you have a product in your mind. But you need to have a goal. In my case, I always wanted to give something back to the society, to be more specific, the educational society to start with. A lot of services I was working with could have achieved this, but I could not hone in on which one would fit it perfectly and how.

Be a risk taker, does not mean you jump from your cozy job to a start-up that has a sure-to-click idea and funding. I mean you should have the balls to be part of the team that is out there with nothing but an idea and believe in it blindly. Be ready to sacrifice a lot of luxuries in life.

If you lack even one of the above, trust me, you will not succeed unless you are one of those extremely lucky buggers. I envy those fuckers…but good for you.

To be continued………………….

image reference: http://cristinalaird.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/depression.jpg, http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u107/risky%20sign.jpg