Single Founder’s Dilemma #14
After taking the big leap of deciding to start, and that too, after leaving Citrix, jobless, I was thrown into a big dilemma! Is it an individual sport? Or a team sport? I had the strong will to build a product company from India. Can I do it alone? Will I be able to pull this off? What else is needed?
A couple of months later, thanks to mentors who advised me to look for like-minded people in my network, I found some clarity. When I started ActOnMagic, I had 13 years of experience (now I have 23 years 😊 Are you a math expert? When did I start ActOnMagic? 😊). I am primarily a tech guy, maybe a CTO + Developer kind of person. Given a problem, I can come up with a beautiful working production solution.
Thankfully, a couple of developers from my previous company helped me build a PoC of Cloud Analytics (at that time, we were comparing ActOnMagic with the solutions of ThoughtSpot, R kind). Having no prior sales experience, and being somewhat of an introverted, shy guy, it was a big task for me to go ask difficult questions. Could somebody be a co-founder? Who could that be? Especially since I hadn’t yet decided what I would end up building?
It happened that I was surrounded by good mentors (yes, God is also included in my mentors club) who nudged me to move forward. Many times, I tell everyone that entrepreneurship is a self-realizing journey. It takes guts to give 100% regardless of how tough the situation may be. The best thing that happened to me in my life (after my family) is ActOnMagic.
There was another reason for me to choose the entrepreneurial path: to ensure that my children do not fall into the regular trap of – study hard, join a company, and just work for earning. I want them to choose the area of their choice to make a big positive impact and make this planet a better place. Many choose to settle! But how and why it matters!
Along the way, many VCs and advisors showed me that raising funds would be challenging for single-founder companies. I had not figured out the question – why should I raise funds at that time? Mr. Wonderful of Shark Tank used to ask – what if a bus runs over the founder? (Well, mystically speaking, I would answer now, I will pick up another body and I will pay you back!)
And yes, there is a lot of risk involved in being a single founder. It takes a lot of energy, both physical and astral. Fifteen months later, when I was about to sign up for a big contract with a Swiss-based cloud provider, my life partner Sumathi decided to come on board as a co-founder to run the engineering, while I took care of sales, marketing, and products.
As I mentioned in my previous post, https://habitzup.com/startup/inspirations-from-hp-way/, “Believe that you can change the world!” When one’s intentions are pure, God will send you help to make it happen.
Jai Founders!
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