Why I hope we always remain a start-up

I personally think there is no set in the stone definition for start-ups. To each his own, and for me - start up is a 'state of being'. You qualify as a start-up only when you are a disrupter at heart and dare to think bigger than what is achievable. You take risks to follow your heart and intuition. It is a place where every single individual is kindled with the spirit of entrepreneurship and enjoys freedom to explore. A place where your passion becomes the culture and processes do not exist. Start-up is a state of being irrespective of how old or new, how big or small, or how local or global you are. You are a start-up if you are free. 

By staying a start-up forever, it is the culture and the mind-set of the people that I wish to retain. InMobi has just turned 8 and we are still proudly called a start-up because of our energy and the thirst to be more. Our people have the freedom to take risks and innovate path-breaking platforms and products. We give value to passion over processes and to freedom over tradition. That is what cuts us apart and that is what we want to retain. 

I believe that when processes take over passion, when the spirit of entrepreneurship begin to flicker in people, when culture becomes just a poster, happiness and fun become a concept, and people become machines - that’s when a company ceases to be a start-up.

To me a start-up is the poem by Rabindranath Tagore

A start-up is a place ….
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”

And that is why I hope that we remain a start-up forever!

Cover Image: Our 6th floor library set up for the InMobians and by the InMobians. As you can see it is not a conventional library but neither are we.