The dilemmas, conflicts & self-talk as a founder of a yogic tech startup

"That’s the lovely journey of building something, isn’t it? It transforms you. And it transformed me for sure. From a quiet fearless mind who was deeply in touch with herself, I was transformed into a fearful tech founder on quite an ego trip."

Let me give you some unfiltered context. I'm Aastha, founder of Still, a classical yoga practitioner and teacher. I’m back in the ashram. It’s already been 2 weeks (out of 4) of intense Hatha Yoga practices. Sure, advanced pranayamas do make you teary (quite a bit) and emotional, it’s all a part of the game. But they do one thing really well. They make you see things clearly.

Today was one of those days. I feel happy, slightly sad too, but also really inspired. And you know who’s inspired me so much? Myself only, from like a year and a half ago. Check her out here in this?video sometime, she’s on fire. Today, I wish I was her.

Ok, I’ll tell you the whole story. When I completed my advanced training at the ashram in 2021, I was obsessed with the potential of classical yoga, and how it could transform our generation into humble, resilient, happy and fearless individuals. My mind was still, I was full of love, and I was so in tune with my intuition that I felt unstoppable. That’s also when Still was born. A year and a half back I put up a little page, and started teaching whoever wanted to learn classical yogic tools for a daily practice. These people came back, month after month, and referred my classes to hundreds others. I knew they were feeling what I did when I learnt these practices.

In the early days of building Still I always knew, if I have a quiet mind, a strong willpower, and a feeling to truly contribute to something beyond myself, stillness will spread. (And the company will do well etc.) It doesn’t have to be the no.1 app on the play store. It just needs to be authentic, accessible and it has to come from within.

Somewhere, along the way, while teaching hundreds of lovely practitioners (whom I deeply miss teaching now), I realised yoga sadhana is all about repetition. It’s about teaching a routine, and making people do the same thing everyday. And hah, the bright idea hit. This can be automated! This can be done through an app! And I will reach so many more people. Still will grow, and be a big company. And finally there will be an app from India teaching authentic stuff rooted in yogic wisdom. I could envision this pretty clearly. And so, I started. I started to educate myself in a million different ways on all aspects of building a tech company.

I’m someone who thrives on learning and exploring, so this playground of uncertainty became steady state. I just reached out to people with no hesitation whatsoever, every single day, and kept learning about all these cool aspects of a tech business, to build our ‘MVP.’ I learnt about brand and tone of voice, and wrote tons of content. Next I immersed myself in ‘UI/UX’ and I could see all that the Still app could do. I spent nights on figma, and it was truly a state of flow. I soon started getting a hang of terms like acquisition, GTM, user journey mapping, ICPs, features, PRDs, metrics and I read almost every famous product book out there. I was so consumed, it’s not even funny. That's when I found 2 noble souls who helped code the beta version of the webapp and we did some early beta testing. Then came my favourite part, the content. The teacher in me was alive again, after like 5 months, and I shot some 30 instructional videos in a day, and recorded some 21 pranayamas audios in the studio the next few days. Worked with a beautiful musician to get the meditation audios and learnt all about the sound waves that help the mind focus. This was May 22 to Dec 22. I had consumed too much content on what the big tech companies do. I’d seen too many pitch decks of founders that wanted to reach the moon. I now knew the language, I understood most aspects of a tech business, I’d carefully penned down Still’s values and principles and built a team even, but somewhere I lost being in touch with myself. (You can read more about Still’s values here)

And in a world that endlessly romanticises ambition, leading and building with noise, fear, hurry, greed, "hustle" and tons of ego is fairly normalised for founders, so I didn’t quite see anything wrong. And to be frank, I still don’t. I think it works for so many people to build the way they do, and offer wonderful products to millions in the world at large. The only issue though, it’s not me.

Still has always been an extension of my heart and soul. And my heart and soul, (more often after deep pranayama practice) is fearless, calm, free and fairly detached. I seek to build Still with the same spirit, and a feeling of service, on the bedrock of yoga philosophy - which romanticises action, not outcome.

Sure, it’ll be nice someday to see an Indian-origin app taking this wisdom globally, but in traditional Indian essence, that will never be the point. And every time I lose track (which is likely to happen again, let’s face it), I’m confident my practice will bring me back.

So those on our waitlist - waiting to try our beta app, forgive us for all this time we’ve taken. When you try to build stuff, bootstrapped, you take some extra time. And bugs never go. (And developers don’t take your MVP stage startup seriously - secretly hoping they read this and follow demo timelines)

But, let’s not wait any longer.....

I’ve decided to get back into teaching, with live cohorts. As and when bugs go, and stuff works, we migrate you to the app. The point is simple. Let’s get you on your mat, and make you practice. I’m doing the same, and as you can see - this classical stuff really works. There is clarity, there is intuition, there is peace and joy - all with some daily practice. First cohort when I step out of the ashram in 2 weeks, for all of you on the waitlist. (click here to join waitlist if you haven't already)

I’m reminded of 2 yoga sutras of Patanjali from my raja yoga lectures - so I’ll conclude this reflection with them!

1. Sutra 1.2?yogas chitta vritti nirodhah - yoga is stilling the thought waves of the mind.
2. Sutra 1.3 tada drashtuh svaroope avasthanam -?Only?then the seer (self) gets established in his/her self-pristine form.”

It means only when we can still the thoughts through the process of yoga, can we rest in our true nature. :)

Reflection time over. Getting back to struggling with developers.

Aastha

Founder, Still <3

P.S - Building a tech company from ground up, bootstrapped, is not impossible, but a bit slow. If you like what we're building, and can help us move a bit faster with some seed funding and back Still as an early patron, please write to me at [email protected], and I'll do everything I can to make you see what I can see very very clearly :)

Rainmatter by Zerodha Foundation and Nithin Kamath , may this article serendipitously reach you and we get to talk!!!