The drop out after-effect
After countless advice from numerous people (known and unknown), it finally boiled down to the three of us (mom,dad and I).
Semester 5 begins the next day and my highly disappointed parents decide to use their last weapon (the infamous guilty conscience) and told me "It's your decision. It's your life. Don't waste it."
I was pretty sure that I wanted to drop out but after hearing this, I felt guilty and confused. Deciding to go along with my startup, I went back to my room, adjusted my timeline and started coding.
I woke up the next day around 9 AM and now reality starts creeping towards you like a tidal wave. I'm no longer a student and what will I tell my clients/customers when they ask about my educational background? In the end every interaction regarding that went on better than I expected, they were more confident in me and my abilities. My product was a location based e-commerce platform connecting local stores. I decided to use all my savings on this and got into LIBA's startup incubator.
The biggest challenge was in my daily schedule, I started going to bed after 1 AM and slept till 9 AM, started keeping a daily work journal and got to learn something new everyday be it programming or out in the real world meeting managers and MD's. Then we moved from beta to production on 1st September along with our Android app launch.
Now the real struggle began, competing with other multi-million dollar brands and thriving startups. In order to compete, I started to hire interns using a very popular internship platform in India. The android app was created by a 3rd year computer science undergrad and all the graphic design was done by interns as well, things started to move along and the product improved technically. I started advertising through word of mouth, friends and family. Orders started to come in and I handled the delivery. I started to read a lot of business and marketing books trying to learn and implement strategies along the way.
It's been over seven months since our product launch and our growth rate is not impressive. In order to grow I had to start looking for investments and that wasn't easy. I started attending startup events in Chennai and participated in events online. Most of the angel investors were looking for two or more founders in startups or wanted higher equity stake in the company. These things are pretty common in the startup ecosystem but the one thing that surprised me was the number of people who were/are interested to help me out technically. I utilized some and regret missing out on the rest.
The "drop-out CEO" is not as glamorous as it sounds and it involves many sleepless nights and depressing moments. But, the only thing that keeps you going is the treasure at the end of the tunnel and that's something I hope to attain soon.
- Philip Moses
Semester 5 begins the next day and my highly disappointed parents decide to use their last weapon (the infamous guilty conscience) and told me "It's your decision. It's your life. Don't waste it."
I was pretty sure that I wanted to drop out but after hearing this, I felt guilty and confused. Deciding to go along with my startup, I went back to my room, adjusted my timeline and started coding.
I woke up the next day around 9 AM and now reality starts creeping towards you like a tidal wave. I'm no longer a student and what will I tell my clients/customers when they ask about my educational background? In the end every interaction regarding that went on better than I expected, they were more confident in me and my abilities. My product was a location based e-commerce platform connecting local stores. I decided to use all my savings on this and got into LIBA's startup incubator.
The biggest challenge was in my daily schedule, I started going to bed after 1 AM and slept till 9 AM, started keeping a daily work journal and got to learn something new everyday be it programming or out in the real world meeting managers and MD's. Then we moved from beta to production on 1st September along with our Android app launch.
Now the real struggle began, competing with other multi-million dollar brands and thriving startups. In order to compete, I started to hire interns using a very popular internship platform in India. The android app was created by a 3rd year computer science undergrad and all the graphic design was done by interns as well, things started to move along and the product improved technically. I started advertising through word of mouth, friends and family. Orders started to come in and I handled the delivery. I started to read a lot of business and marketing books trying to learn and implement strategies along the way.
It's been over seven months since our product launch and our growth rate is not impressive. In order to grow I had to start looking for investments and that wasn't easy. I started attending startup events in Chennai and participated in events online. Most of the angel investors were looking for two or more founders in startups or wanted higher equity stake in the company. These things are pretty common in the startup ecosystem but the one thing that surprised me was the number of people who were/are interested to help me out technically. I utilized some and regret missing out on the rest.
The "drop-out CEO" is not as glamorous as it sounds and it involves many sleepless nights and depressing moments. But, the only thing that keeps you going is the treasure at the end of the tunnel and that's something I hope to attain soon.
- Philip Moses
Good luck bro for your entrepreneur life.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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