First month of being back at 'Work'

So its a Friday and I am sitting alone in office sort of reflecting on the first month back in States. India feels like a warm blur. It was a lot of fun there. It is a lot of fun here. So that sort of neutralizes itself well. In the midst of all the settling down, we are working hard to put together some sort of rhythm to working on our ideas.

We are privileged to have a lot of supporters, friends, investors who all want to help and support us through this journey. So most of the effort is not on the infrastructure of a startup, but on the actual area that we want to work on. And we do not feel any hurry on that account yet. Lets ensure we find something that is valid, useful, and exciting.

Though the first month of being back at work (as an aspiring entrepreneur) has led to some interesting observations:

• Your schedule is truly your own. This is weird after being in larger companies for so long. You own your calendar and have be disciplined to ensure a productive day. If you slack off, or bum around, no one is going to be pissed off except you!
• Talking about entitled big company execs, the thing I miss the most is my EA. Man, there is a lot of overhead to appts, calendar, events, meetings, paperwork. For those who have one, pls go thank him/her. They are awesome!
• Being back on the ground has its merits though. Its very humbling, you are starting from basically an idea in your head. That feels very daunting at times but super exciting too.
• Your entrepreneur friends end up becoming your biggest supporters (h/t to folks like John Hering). The amount of help you get from your ecosystem is incredible. This is especially amazing in the valley.
• You have to find a framework to ideate and dig into things. Otherwise your mind will wander from one random idea to the other with little progress. Anshu Sharma and I are still working on ours, but we can see that we are getting better at running through areas over time.
• We recognize that our stab at entrepreneurship is hardly as taxing as it is for folks truly starting from scratch. Sitting in various VC offices, having access to the best of the valley is hardly the norm for entrepreneurs and that makes us doubly grateful to those who are working with us. Though all the access and experience in the world doesn’t guarantee success. It probably helps mitigate failure a little maybe. Maybe.
• Its fun! It is very early days, and there are days when you feel like something must be wrong with you to want to give up on all those interesting opportunities to work on something ambiguous that has a reasonable chance of failure. But this phase is a lot of fun. Its very intellectually challenging and even with the years spent building businesses, its another thing to apply those aspects to building your own without existing infrastructure and reach. Very enjoyable and liberating!

So we soldier on. Harder times will surely come, but right now it feels like we are on the cusp of the roller coaster. Might as well enjoy the view from here!

Happy 4th!