This has to be one of the more interesting years of my life, and though it has been an eventful year I have not had the chance to share my experiences with the many friends I seem to have lost touch with. Here I wish to recount the highlights of what happened and what I learned, with the hope that some of you will read through it. In a few days I will attempt to write about what I hope the New Year will bring.
The year started with me watching TV in bed at my parents’ place in India. Live New Year celebrations came streaming in from all different corners of the world and the sky outside felt like it does at daytime. I fell asleep through the occasional burst of rockets as the celebrations of the night waned away.
When I was leaving India I waved goodbye to my parents, my father wearing a red Stanford sweatshirt I had bought for myself but he fell in love with. As always it was a bittersweet moment. I was returning back to the country where I grew up, leaving behind the country where I was born and the country that my parents had never left in their hearts for the 11 years they lived in America.
As I was flying back I remembered the not so unexpected email from a friend that vaguely said that he wanted to talk. I knew it was about an idea that had been churning in his mind and was awaiting its disclosure.
Upon landing back in SFO I quickly found myself surrounded by the great zeal and excitement of starting a new venture and inventing a new product with two great friends. In the first three months we applied for a grant and started building a prototype of an exciting new idea in the world of mobile phones. We worked hard through the evenings, juggling our previously held commitments of research, teaching and studies with a new promise to ourselves.
Our hard work started paying off when we received the grant near the end of winter quarter after having declined offers for promising internships. But on the advent of the grant we found ourselves in a new conundrum. We knew we wanted to launch our product with the launch of the iPhone App Store, and we knew that was almost impossible if we continued with school the following quarter. After much deliberation we reached the most sensible consensus. Two of us (who could) took Spring quarter off to focus all of our attention to meeting this hard deadline.
For the next three months all three of us worked away our days and nights in the office graciously provided to us by the firm that gave us the grant. We biked to our office on some days and would bike back late at night on an un-lit road feeling the cool spring air run through our fingers clenched tightly to the handles. The three of us worked as a unit through those months, constantly working as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The night before the launch we printed thousands of fliers for our product to hand out to the long lines already forming at Apple Stores throughout the country. At a completely unexpected moment during the night we found the App Store come to life. We quickly downloaded an early version of our app that had been approved and was up for grabs on the store. When we turned on our app we held our breath and waited for the released version to come to life. For a few moments nothing happened. The app opened and a spinning wheel that said it was waiting to connect did just that, spin, nothing more. We felt a deep sinking feeling in our hearts, then started scrambling to figure out what was wrong when suddenly, there it was. The screen filled up with nearby users and we breathed a sigh of relief. We watched our first customers walk in the door.
A few hours later, when morning rolled in, the three of us and various friends and family dispersed throughout the state to the lines snaking around Apple Stores. We handed out countless fliers that day and watched as our user count increased much faster than we expected. It was a triumphant day, and the next few days we continued flyering the endless lines. I can’t thank enough everyone that helped and supported us through it all. This includes all the new friends we made at our shared office during the summer.
I fell sick one of these days; it was a new type of sickness for me. It felt exactly like a bad cold and I rested through it like any other cold and drank some NyQuil to help me sleep through the night. The next day I felt much better, and the day after I was completely back to normal. This was the quickest sickness-to-health cycle I had ever been through. But this wasn’t the last time it happened. Through the remainder of the year I found myself in this state a couple more times. I still can’t completely explain it, but I believe it’s from exhaustion.
Through the rest of the summer we continued building our app, zintin, improving it and making it more useful. Much to our surprise another app we built as a spin off became far more popular than we expected; Scribble became one of the top apps on the App Store.
Alas, the summer ended, and with our grant money mostly depleted we returned back to continue school. But we did not leave work behind and continued working through school.
It was nice being back in the environment that gave birth to our idea; it was nice after a harrowing few months to be back in the company of old friends. But it was also hard to efficiently continue working. Juggling various responsibilities again became the essence of our existence. Through the course of the quarter we began finding the balance yet again and became efficient once again.
Then came winter break and that’s where I find myself now. Though we continue working, we have also returned to our respective homes. Spending time with family has started restoring much of what had drained away from my mind and body through the year. And having a few moments to reflect has allowed me to evaluate the ups and downs of the year, what it means to me and how it has changed me.
I feel that I have become more confident in myself. My abilities and way of thinking have very much been validated. But there has also been some real change. I have learned to understand when I am simply reacting and when I am acting after careful thought and how and when to use either of those modes of work. I have learned to trust in others, their abilities and quality of work. I have also honed my ability to recognize good and better ideas.
Most importantly I found a form of work that I have not become annoyed or bored of. I find myself at home in this world of entrepreneurship, through all it’s ups and downs, through all the moments when everything feels like it is doomed and through all the moments when a bright future seems only an inch away.
