Why did I even start a startup?

My life had two goals, professionally and personally:

• Wanting to own my own time
• Getting up each day and having something exciting to look forward to.

I found myself thinking of possibilities during my university time. I didn’t even know what startups were until seven years from now. In 2006, I found myself thinking about tools that would let people post on multiple social media at once, but neither I had an ecosystem, nor any inspiration to know what to do with these ideas. Fast forward seven years, and three years into my software engineering job, I learned what startups were and I was hooked. I knew what I could do to solve the problems that I am obsessed with.

I grew up working at my dad’s garment shop as a child. This is where I learned to manage resources, inventory, and people. I learned how much dedication it takes to build a business. I learned how to speak, sell and negotiate with people far older and smarter than me. I learned how to lead a sale, and how to put the customer’s needs first, rather than just focusing on selling. I even learned to vet if a certain customer would buy something or not. I learned to estimate the health of a business, and what its revenues would be, just by looking around in their shop. I loved testing my estimations. It was a great crash course in business.

This is where I developed a theory on what a business is all about. There has to be something to be sold and, someone who buys it, at minimum. Everything else is there to support this exchange. And that’s what I think a startup is also about, it?IS?a business after all. Although by nature, it would be widely different, in scale, ambition, and execution, it is still a business. If selling price — buying price = negative outcome, it won’t survive. There are nuances, like building a business for acquisition, but the equation stand valid).

I realized that in order to build a startup, I need a creator and a seller at minimum, and then product, fundraising, and general management. So I kept joining opportunities that would teach me about all these building blocks of startups. I didn’t have to be good at all the skills, I just wanted to be good enough so that I could get started and then understand how to assess the right teammates who could do it better.

So I joined a startup where I learned all the things I SHOULDN’T do. Then I joined hands with an ex-founder, where I learned that past and pedigree don’t matter, what they can deliver matters. I also discovered that I still don’t know how to sell B2B, and how to raise funds, so I started looking for an opportunity where I can learn that.

This is where I learned about a startup that almost reached unicorn status, and they did it while being BOOTSTRAPPED! I have never heard of anything like that before. I had practically read about every startup that was coming up in the Indian startup sector, but this one flew under the radar. I immediately applied and chased them because I really wanted to join them. After a tough interview and a good amount of luck, I joined Browserstack.

I spent the next two years learning the power of grit and focus, how doubling down on something that you know, and keep delivering it leads to big results. I learned that marketing to the right audience and a solid product-market fit leads to a business that doesn’t need external capital to grow. I learned how their founders constantly expanded themselves to learn skills that were needed at each stage of their growing company. I used to joke that these people are so intense that they would rather pass out on their laptops than let someone else win. Most importantly, I noticed their sales team from a distance, I read each one of the sales case studies that were available internally like a novel. I asked questions, I kept learning about it, and I got myself ready to do it myself.

Now came the part:?actually?starting a startup. I had all the building blocks, except a teammate, a co-founder!?Read it here!

This post is part of five post series that was intended to walk you through our journey of building our startup and shutting it down. Please find all the posts?here.

Originally appeared here