The Birth of Gigyasa Project

When I first read Jack Welch's autobiography, "Straight from the Gut", during my impressionable teenage years, there was a phrase which got etched deep in my subconscious.

Jack Welch gets a call from his boss, the erstwhile GE CEO, Reg Jones. He asks Jack to meet him the next day in his office to discuss his promotion. When Jack arrives at Reg's Office, Reg doles out this piece of advice.

"You can't be a big fish in a small pond anymore. If you want to be considered for bigger things, you're going to have to come here."

Even though I am a vegetarian and have no freakin clue about fishing, "Big fish in a small pond" became my pet catch phrase ever since.

Back in my school days, when I first announced to my friends that I was leaving the conservative cocoon of my upbringing, Mylapore, Chennai to reach the Baniya trading shores of Tapi River and join NIT Surat for my Engineering, I remember the sound of that presumptuous voice telling his school friends,

"You can't be a big fish in a small pond anymore"

In almost every other hiring interview, when I wanted to impress interviewers who were curious about my job change, my response at the drop of a hat was,

"You can't be a big fish in a small pond anymore"

Today, as I revisit my life story, I realize that I hold no attachment to this phrase. I no longer need it. Thanks for all the fish!

Some of you already know why I'm sharing this. Starting today, I am a free agent.

As Kabir says, in his most-famous, yet deeply misunderstood couplet

??? ???? ?? ?????? ??, ?????? ?? | Main mera ghar jaadiya re, jogiya ji 

I burnt down my house, yogi

???? ????? ??? | Liyo paleeta haath 

I took up the flaming torch

??? ??? ???? ?? ???? ??, ?????? ?? | Koi agar jaado ghar aapro re, jogiya ji

If you scorch your own house, yogi

??? ????? ??? | Chalo humaare saath.

Then join me on this walk

At some point in your life, if you want to move beyond this pond-jumping business and embark on a odyssey into the infinite ocean, you have to burn down the comforts of your pay cheque lifestyle. And today, with a tinkling sensation which is a heady cocktail of nervousness and excitement, I feel ready to take the plunge.

Scorching Your Own House

I don't have any hardship tales to narrate why I am choosing to go down the free agency road. I had no compelling reasons to leave my job, and many excellent reasons to stay. Unlike many who take this plunge, the job I just left gave me plenty of autonomy, a wonderful boss to work with, purposeful work in agriculture with some brilliant colleagues to learn from.

I have no huge early retirement savings to hedge this move. Just enough saved to last few months.

I'll be honest.

I don't have a neat and shiny business model laid out with orgasmic TAM (Total Addressable Market) projections worth salivating for.

I do have a consulting engagement with my previous employer for few hours a month and with another interesting startup which wants to transform how skills are imparted to the youth of our country. Together, they will take care of my rent and other bills, but will not replace the steady income I am walking away from.

The only rational thing about this move is that the timing seems right.

My work with the Traceability Platform I had launched with my team is on a steady vertical SaaS growth trajectory with 3 big-ticket, flagship customers. It is only a matter of time when it will be the de facto industry platform for agri-input traceability needs. I can now comfortably hand over the reins without much disruption.

Few weeks back, we successfully completed the registration of Mandram Indic Talks Foundation, a non-profit section-8 company which I co-founded with my partner-in-crime Maggie Inbamuthiah. With six events so far spanning Tamil, Kannada and Hindi languages, the time seems ripe to put my skin in the game and work towards realizing the deep and beautiful vision of Mandram.

Perhaps for the first time in my life, I find myself at work with that same feeling that arises when I sit down to jam with fellow musicians whom I am meeting for the first time,

"Let's make this fun and see where it goes"

What fun are you talking about? With no business model in sight and a non-profit venture to be taken into the next orbit, how on earth do you plan to make money, oh young man?

Do I hear you asking that?

What I have sort of worked out is a business philosophy, which has been the underlying girding force driving every "career" decision I have taken so far in my life. Going forward, this business philosophy will guide the financial choices that I will make in my life.

Here is Gigyasa Project V1.0. I'll post updates as I evolve it.

The Birth of 'Gig'yasa Project

Those who've read my blogs before, know my soft corner for the word Jigyasa (Curiosity). If I am serious about making this Odyssey an adventure of a lifetime, I will have to design my work portfolio in such a way that every gig I do across my occupassional work-play domains - Agritech, Product Management, Storytelling and Leadership - pays me well enough to satiate my deep curiosity and learn more of what I want to learn.

There is a reason for calling these occupassional work-play domains. They represent the superset venn diagram of what I have learned and what I want to learn.

Since I have a stake in the outcome of these gigs, my skin in the game is intact and helps me learn faster, which in turns leads to better outcomes for my clients, thereby making it both a fun learning journey and a financially sustainable ride to keep the game on.

Here is the full blown operating model of the Gigyasa Project V1.0. I can't tell you how excited I am to invest my whole life energies to test this model out.

Do you know that the word 'gig' originally comes from the world of music?

In case you didn't spot the devil in the diagram, I have included my Kabir musical storytelling gigs with Vipul also in my work portfolio so that the larger hypothesis which defines the physics of my gig work completes a full circle.

"Any sufficiently advanced work is indistinguishable from Play" - Seb Paquet

I'm not the first one to experiment with this work portfolio model. I have borrowed a lot of lessons from playbook of the wise Ribbonfarm Blogger Venkatesh Rao. My favourite productivity blogger Tiago Forte has written in greater depth about being a Full-Stack Freelancer . My friend Kenneth Mikelsen has taken this paradigm six feet deeper and fleshed out the philosophical arguments behind the wisdom of this approach in his book, Neo-Generalist.

If you ask me, every time I have my wholesome meal at home, the wisdom of this approach becomes obvious. When I sit down to pray before eating my Thali (for the uninitiated, a Thali is a set meal prepared both at an Indian restaurant or home ), what I see looks something like this.

Unlike previous generations of free agents/freelancers, I choose not to be a narrow-bound specialist eating mostly one type of food, day in and day-out, for my economic sustenance.

My biggest problem with this approach is this: You end up divorcing work from learning.

Over the last decade or so, through my blog writings and my cultivated online presence, I have invested enough energies and built plethora of relationships with my community across each of these four work-play domains. And so it makes sense to take the plunge now and experiment my life energies with Giyasa Project and make my income portfolio resemble the Thali that I love so much.

This isn't the first time I have opted to become a free-agent.

In 2010, when I first discovered the Internet and its potential, I made a documentary trilogy, chronicling the story of the Internet with my best buddy Avinash. Web Brahhman- Past, Present and Future was screened to students in Pune. It was a ceremonial beginning to start a private blogging consultancy firm from my dorm. Remember this. We are talking about 2009-10. During those heady days of discovering my feet on the ground and my home on the Internet, I had made my first visiting card.

Today, as I dig this old artifact, I can't stop laughing and cringing at the recall of writing such cheesy lines in my business card.

Nine years have passed. My email address hasn't changed. My personal website hasn't changed. What has changed is this.

Perhaps now, more than ever, I am truly discovering the joys of exploring infinite possibilities in a networked world.

What's Next?

I don't know. If you like what you've read so far, and would like to support me in pursuing this, there are several things you can do.

1) Read, comment and share my blog writings with your friends.

2) Hire me or recommend me for consulting gigs.

3) Host a Kabir Satsang with Vipul and I at your place/institution.

4) Send me your thoughts and ideas to make this business philosophy work.

And finally, wish me the best of luck.