One. More. Time.

I have built and sold two companies. Sounds rather nice, doesn't it? But inspite of this, why do I stick to calling myself a Mini Founder; and still cringe at the entrepreneur tag let alone a serial entrepreneur one? Why did I start up in the first place? And why I want to go at it one more time? Read on.

Work Horse

2009 was a pretty awesome year, professionally one of my most satisfying. I was in what was then called the Mobile Value Added Service industry. It was what has today come to be the digital economy. Back then it was the world of walled garden mobile websites, Telecom Operator only payment ecosystems, Interactive Voice Recognition systems (IVRs) that could beat Siri (at least), and content that was best described by a single word - 'shady'. That industry is dead. It wasn't as if I had incredible foresight to tell this was going to happen, and my reasons for stepping out were something entirely different. Like I said, 2008-09 was a super year - I was 27, and on a high from being recently promoted to what was a VP level position - I headed the Operator Business vertical for a super fun VAS platform co, reporting directly to my CXOs. I regularly put in long hours, often returning home post 11 pm. A few days when we really had to get something out for a telco it went a bit beyond - we camped at the office and got home at perhaps 4 or 5 AM. Not just customers, but even my hard to please Japanese investors were rather happy. But in the midst of this all, there was one nagging question that kept coming back to me - Why am I doing this? During this phase I read a book that really pushed me hard to change. Tuesday's with Morrie - by Mitch Albom. If you haven't read it, you simply must. Basically what it does is ask you one hard hitting question - If today was your last day to live, what would be your regrets? No matter how cliched, you start to question everything. I figured if I had to bust my ass as much, why not do it for myself.

Mobile First

Hello MM or Mobimasta as we called it back then - some major genius went into thinking up the name and once we sold it we were like wtf were we thinking with that name. The name apart, it was one of India's coolest, and more accurately, first full service mobile advertising agencies. It was 2009 mind you so mobile was super new and super cool. Not revenue cool but 'oh we must add mobile to the marketing mix' cool. But the world was fast changing around us and by end of 2010 we had already started to have to partner with larger agencies. And frankly back then we really had no idea, rather vision, of where we wanted to take it - we lacked the experience and foresight - and this was one time I wish I was more open to mentorship (if you know me personally you'd know what I think of mentoring ;). However by the time it was 2012 there was already talk of new bigger agencies setting up their Mobile arms - there was talk of D2C by Dentsu Docomo and MadHouse by GroupM, and out of the blue we got a call from a company we used to work with with an interest and eventually offer of acquisition. We had just about completed two years operationally and given it was in the window I had set for myself, it made sense.

Before I go to the next phase, a reality check - everyone in the small industry of mobile marketers we had then would have gone on to think we made a killing. I wish we had. If you read through my profiles you'll get a sense of what the numbers were like, but the reality of it is that much of it remains in unrealised equity. When you sell a company, especially a service one, you are likely to get a part cash part equity deal. One that will be at best in double digit millions. And the equity bit is the one that should *some day* realise and hopefully at a price that you yourself could not have realised. Takeaway - exits are not always what they seem and never put a two year window, it's likely to need ten.

So even though I had had an exit, I just didn't feel like I was done. Or that it was an achievement worthy of the Entrepreneur tag. In trying to justify it, I created what might be an imperfect definition of who an Entrepreneur was and came up with this - you can call yourself one if you "Sold, raised, or created revenue of $100 million and/or hired over 100 people". Given this was/is my mindset, till the time I don't hit that target I feel like pushing on. However, one could very well challenge this definition and if you want to know what a true entrepreneur is, read this by Sahil Lavingia, Founder of Gumroad. It boils down to one thing - never settle. Whatever be that hook that drives you, push on.

Commerce Calling

Advertising to Commerce. 2015 was an exciting year for India with the 2014 elections just having concluded and a somewhat euphoric market sentiment that it created. Incidentally it was also a great year for mobile. All around us we saw e-commerce web co's "enter our domain" - mobile. With transactions going mobile first, I wanted to do something in the cross section of mobile and commerce. And #O2O - Offline to Online Commerce - seemed perfect for that. Thus was born markt.ooo - a hyperlocal offline to online commerce marketplace that I thought could beat Amazon at its game by having a high focus on discovering offline stores with a cracker Zero Commission model and 30 mins delivery :) We launched end of 2016, but by then the market sentiment had turned - even Flipkart's existence wasn't certain and e-commerce, no matter how different, was a long forgotten buzzword. The far cooler Hyperlocal was also burning, rather flowing down the drain with some big names shutting shop. Even though we did everything by the book, two cofounders - one biz, one tech - quit our jobs to focus 100% on building, went to raise only with a full on product (not just an idea) + a whole lot more including making it to India's Top 10 Mobile Start Ups as part of YourStory's Mobilesparks 2016; it didn't add up.

Above is a short video on markt's original take; but because of the capital needed for a marketplace play and the entire timing of it [watch this video by Bill Gross to see why timing the market is so critical], we pivoted towards an Enterprise platform play and managed, against all odds, to get an exit. Nothing spectacular, but enough to get me to go at it again.

That again brings me to a bit of realism. There are no heroics in starting up. At 37 it's not easy to decide to start up. Your constraints are much more than when you were 27. The realism I am talking is not just about having time on your side but also about ensuring that you have at least some financial stability. I had sufficient funds stacked up from my first exit to try the second, and just sufficient from my second to start up the next. But one needs to invest time in equal measures, or far more. Both my stints were around two years, and as I've come to see if you want that Entrepreneur tag you're probably going to have to go at it for 10+ years. So..

Starting Up, One More Time

2019. After the downturn of 2017 its looking up again, thanks to a face saving 2018 it's great to see some positivity back. And inspite of how the above two experiences may seem, they were amazing learnings. With mobimasta we had no clue how the start up scene worked, but by the time markt.ooo happened I did think we knew a lot more with some great insights on what to do vs. what not to do. Heck, I even gave a talk at IIT Delhi's Entrepreneurship cell and this is what I shared with them:

While the talk covered Stages of a Start Up - Idea, Team, Starting Up (coming together), POC, MVP, Traction, Investment, PMF, Scale, and Exit. What it, and my two attempts, taught me was that the only thing that really mattered was traction. Traction, Traction and Traction. It is the only way to know that you are on to something. With mobimasta we had proven revenue traction but with markt.ooo for some reason we had thought that building a fully functional product would be enough to fund raise - it wasn't, we were still expected to have traction. It was another matter that the founder of one of India's top e-commerce marketplaces told me 'if you don't have $200 million don't even bother with this play'. He was bang on right, sometimes you have to have the funds to experiment your way to traction but then you can also build something you can test for traction without any funds. This time I'm building for the latter.

Mesh - Business Networking on Chat

Say hello to Mesh - a business networking on chat product that makes it easier to connect with your trusted networks - alumni, colleagues, industry folks or others - using an all new chat experience. Its a product that meets my criteria of being something easy to test - I'll know if its working or not by just tracking my firebase analytics. I need no other validation. And as to why this? I am at heart a product guy who almost hates selling, even though many would tell you that I love selling.. products that I believe in or build. And because I found selling difficult and networking superbly unnatural, I felt there had to be a better way to do it. A better way to connect and make your outreach easy and fruitful. Therefore, at the heart of Mesh is the need to connect with meaningful networks, in a more comfortable, hesitation-free, easy setting. A chat experience fills that void spot on (hopefully). Here's a sneak peak of the app.

We've launched our closed beta test run and if you'd like to help test scalability and shape our early product, head on over and submit details here. Only time will tell if we make it this time around. Till then.. Chat. Network. Do Business.

#OneMoreTime #StartUps #Entrepreneurship