The Wedding. The Wait. The Shoot. And Friends.

This conversation is imaginary. But some of it is based on fact.

Bijoy is getting married.

I remember the first time I saw him- walking upto the front of the class in our engineering class to introduce himself.

A typical Cochin lad, I presumed.

Over the next 11 years since we first met, Bijoy, me and a bunch of 3 other classmates from our Mechanical Engineering class formed a friendship that has been one of the closest I've ever had.

The 5 of us studied together. Lived in the same dorm. Partied, fooled around together.

After my university education, I set out to fulfil a long-time dream of building a marketing agency.

But we stayed in touch.

The occasional meetup in Cochin.

A friend's wedding.

Or at bachelor parties when someone in our 5-member group was getting married.

But as the years passed by, we started spending lesser and lesser time meeting. Talking. Opening up about our lives.

For when you're a hardcore introvert, you value the few you can be yourself with. And when you're running a company, it can be depressingly few.

And then Bijoy met Evelyn. She was an intern where he worked. They fell for each other. She was from Mumbai.

And a few months ago, he called me one day.

"Adi, my parents met with hers. They came home.

They've decided on a date. It'll be in Mumbai. On the 1st of May."

I just smiled.

"I'm coming Bijoy."

-----------------------------------------------------------

I had just reached Mumbai.

The initial plan was to attend the wedding.

And then I decided to stay for a week, and work with the GrowthClub team in Mumbai for a few days, at the coworking space they worked from.

And then we hatched a plan to stick around a bit more and do a shoot-

The goal?

GrowthClub.org was releasing our very first product-

The LinkedIn Growthcamp- a 7 day LinkedIn training program we created to help students land the jobs they've dreamed of, freelancers win gigs they're interested in, and businesses generate actual revenue from LinkedIn.

And we had to do a shoot of 'yours truly' bragging about our LinkedIn prowess, and what the Growthcamp was. We needed videos for our ads, our landing pages. And the actual course material.

The challenge?

Mumbai is the 2nd most populous city in India. The 8th most populous city in the world. That's 20 million people crammed into a city.

And we needed quiet locations for the shoot. Mumbai didn't have many.

Heck- this was unplanned- I didn't even bring good clothes.

So straight after the wedding, we moved to a hotel close to the coworking space the GrowthClub team in Mumbai worked out of.

Armed with some locations I scouted in the area with Nikhil, our COO, a Saturday where we could all spare some of our own time for the shoot, and an iPhone, we planned the shoot.

-----------------------------------------------------------

It was Friday evening.

Nikhil has just informed me that Vanshika Mehta, a LinkedIn Top Voice and someone whose journey I'd been following for a while on LinkedIn, was organizing a meetup in the very same coworking space we worked out of.

By eve she was there. I barged in and said hi. She was thrilled.

We clicked a pic.

But we had the shoot early morning the next day, and everyone wanted to rest. I made my leave and suddenly recalled that I hadn't introduced Nikhil to her.

"Vanshika, this is Nikhil, my cofounder."

As I said those words, my mind sped elsewhere.

It was to conversations I never had with Bijoy and Nikhil.

-----------------------------------------------------------

While I met Bijoy at college, I met Nikhil by what'd you'd call engineered 'chance'-

I was publishing everyday, generating an average of 150,000 views per day. Completely organically. Here on LinkedIn.

While the primary goal was to build brand awareness for GrowthClub and our efforts on LinkedIn, I also wanted to attract really good talent to GrowthClub.

And we were completely bootstrapped. That meant limited salary ranges for a lot of roles we wanted to hire for.

That meant I had to hire to the team in India. So trying to create a massive brand on LinkedIn made sense.

Most founders don't realize this, but LinkedIn has been historically used as a hiring platform. The first two products they launched were Jobs and Subscriptions.

When such a platform launches a feed for businesses and users to share content, it will still continue to function as a great place to hire-

And being active on LinkedIn will help you win better talent, because candidates will look at these things.

Over the course of 3 months, we generated over 250 MQLs, hundreds of job enquiries, press and content opportunities, a comfy following for my profile, and a stable, growing revenue for GrowthClub.

But I had a choice on the table-

Pivot to a more scalable way to service clients, or start taking on more clients.

Eventually, we did both. But back then, I realized that both would need a good team. So hiring was the only way forward.

And amidst all this happening, a 26~something lad reached out to me on LinkedIn.

He had skills- he managed Video Ops at Hotstar.

And I badly wanted to get into video. And I knew nothing about it. Let's just say that this platform has already borne witness to the travesty that is my video editing skills.

The same day, I made him an offer.

And that's how Nikhil Hiranandani joined GrowthClub. Initially, as a the Head of Video.

A lot of things at GrowthClub changed since that day.

Here's the thing:

When you're an inexperienced founder trying to build a startup, you're often forced to ignore a lot of other things at the very start-

Processes. People management. Team engagement. Branding. Even hiring the right people.

You never get time for these things amidst experimenting with different service propositions. Business models. And the constant doubt that all founders are plagued with at the very start.

And the best thing about Nikhil?

He never asked for permission.

When he saw something that needed improvement, he just went ahead and took care of it.

Video?

He built out a video process that, to this day, is the process GrowthClub uses for video content for us and our clients.

Team?

On our very first retreat, he hounded me so much about issues in the team and people management that I decided that something had to be done.

After months of interviewing candidates for Operations Management, even coveted IIM grads (who I had to fire), I promoted Nikhil as the Head of Operations at GrowthClub.

Did he stop being a trailblazer?

Nope. He just went on doing what he thought GrowthClub needed-

Processes. Better hires. Consistent feedback calls. Content ideas.

Even hounding me to maintain a proper routine.

Heck- when we had upcoming shoots, he even picked out dresses for me because my fashion sense was lamentable at best.

You're busting your ass off figuring out how to build something and here's comes a guy who worries, thinks, and works for your vision as much as you.

And finally, in March, early this year, I offered him a Chief Operations Officer role and a profit-share. He deserved atleast that.

My mind raced back to conversation with Vanshika just as quickly.

I stuttered something along the lines of:

'I regard Nikhil as my co-founder. He's our COO.'

I wanted to say something else though.

I wanted to say that he's one of the most hard-working people I've met in my career.

I wanted to say that having someone with you in a startup who takes ownership as much as you is often, all a founder needs to focus on things that matter.

I wanted to say that I considered him as a co-founder in all respects.

All through the rickshaw ride back to the hotel, all through the shoot we had the next morning, and the 27-hour journey back home, my mind kept wandering back to thoughts about Bijoy and Nikhil.

What I wanted to tell them all along.

What I never told them. How much they've helped me come out of my cocoon, and how incapable I was of voicing out these thoughts.

Maybe I should write about it..

But it's strange how most of us never say some things even to those in our lives we can open up most to.