A year ago, everything changed today. And here's the story behind it.

Today, Rajesh and I went for a long walk around the park in front of his house.

Somewhere along the walk, I told him, "You know Rajesh, a year ago, today is the day when everything changed. It's the day it all started, thanks to you." I smiled at him.

"Ohhh." He paused for a moment. "You're right, Soundarya."

We both spent a few minutes reminiscing all that had happened over the past year, and how, it all started so innocently.

You see, a year ago, today, Unshackled was born.

The moment that changed everything

June 17th, 2022

It was a Friday afternoon. I was feeling anxious, pacing across my room, and speaking to Rajesh on a call.

“You know, Rajesh, I really want to start working on that book about immigration. I feel I’m uniquely positioned to write it..." I trailed off.

“What’s stopping you?” he inquired.

I replied, hesitantly, "Hmm, I need to speak to Sameer Khedekar first. And, I'm worried it might be a distraction from the book I’m already working on now. However, if I don't write it this year, I'm also worried I'll never write the book..."

He thought for a moment, "Okay. Well, how about you just do one thing to make progress toward it today? What could that be?"

I pondered.

"Well, I could email my newsletter audience and let them know I'm beginning to work on the book."

He said, "Great! Even better, why don't you ask them in the email to send you the top questions that they want answered in the book?"

That was it. That was the spark.

I immediately wrote a shabby email within 5 minutes and hit send to over 2000 people -- mostly immigrants in America -- and forgot about it.

100 emails on a Monday morning

June 20th, 2022

It was a regular Monday morning.

I began my planning exercise for the week, spending an hour pondering how I should spend that week, what are the top goals, and reflecting on what I got done the past week. At this point in my life, I was knee-deep in working on a book around the idea of What makes a balanced life? I had spent the last few months poring over research, staring at walls, and completely frustrated with the lack of progress.

After my planning was over, I opened my email, and... Oh. My. God.

It had over a hundred emails.

Over a hundred people had "hit reply" and sent me their questions. Some of them were long, thoughtfully-written emails like the following:

And the others were bursts of frustration from hopeful immigrants who felt disillusioned with the system:

I immediately called Rajesh.

"You won't believe this!" I exclaimed. "I've never seen a response like this for any of the emails I've sent in my life."

Even Rajesh couldn't believe it. We both expected maybe ten people to respond. Not a hundred. Over the coming week, the responses kept pouring in, and I knew I had to do something about it.

This wasn't just an intangible thought anymore.

Meeting Brad Feld

August 16th, 2022

I was looking at myself on the Zoom video screen, feeling anxious.

Sameer Khedekar and I were about to meet Brad Feld , the author of Venture Deals, co-founder of Techstars , and a Managing Partner at the Foundry Group. More than anything, Brad was a passionate supporter of immigrant entrepreneurs. He had spent over a decade helping immigrant founders -- and immigrants on a whole -- through several of his initiatives, including the "Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence" program. He was a big deal.

I needed that meeting to go well.

While waiting for Brad to join the call, I replayed what Rajesh Setty had told me the previous day.

"The fact that you're scared means that you care. It's a good thing," he reassured me. He continued, "Nobody knows this, but with my first company, I was terrified when the 21st of each month would roll around because I had to pay salaries to dozens of employees. There were 15 months in those 3 years when I took no salary from the company and many months when I requested my cofounders not to as well. It was scary, but we always got through and paid our employees."

I was replaying those lines when Brad and Sameer joined the call.

For the next 20 minutes, Brad asked us questions about the project, motivation, and our vision. We answered the best we could.

"I'm glad you both are working on this. But, it's not an investable project for me," he said. And then he continued, "But, if you were to set up a crowdfunding campaign, then I'll donate to that." [paraphrased]

And that was the second spark that stoked the glorious fire.

The glorious fire

If that comment from Rajesh on June 17th, 2022 is akin to a spark, then the past year is a glorious fire.

That comment led to me sending that email to over 2000 immigrants.

The overwhelming response to my email led to me talking to Sameer.

Sameer agreeing to co-author led to us making a public post on LinkedIn.

The momentum from the post (and the meeting with Brad Feld) led to a successful crowdfunding campaign.

The support from the campaign led to receiving a grant from Emergent Ventures India .

The funds raised led to us writing a book and building a community.

Impact, in numbers

A year later, we've managed to accomplish the following:

• $100,000 raised in a span of 5 weeks.
• 1000 immigrants have pre-ordered Unshackled .
• 250 immigrants have joined the https://unshackled.club online community.
• 6 million+ have seen posts that I've created in the past 9 months.
• 500+ queries related to immigration were answered via email and messages.

And, along the way I met over 100 incredible people as a result of this project, including Doug Rand , Craig Montuori , Jonathan Nelson , Sunny Shuoyang Zhang, PhD , Lakshmi Pratury , Seth Leech, Partner , Ron Matten , Xiao Wang , Jeremy Neufeld , Nikin Iyer , Aditi Paul, PhD , Prasanna Naik , Yash Sagar Santani , Julien Denaes , Danielle Goldman and several dozen more people that I've had the pleasure of meeting over the last year.

But, despite how rich the past year has been, what I'm most grateful for is not the progress we've made with Unshackled or the money raised. Rather, it's that I was able to walk a 5k with Rajesh Setty today in the park.

That is more incredible than anything that I've managed to accomplish, combined.

Rajesh's Parkinson journey

Rajesh Setty was diagnosed with Parkinson's more than a decade ago.

Last year, this time, he could barely walk out of his house. He weighed 133 pounds. And he was sure that life only had another 6 months in store for him. Yet today, he was able to walk a 5k with me. He is as lively, animated, and joyful as one can possibly be. For that, I'm grateful to all the Gods out there.

It will take me a book to tell you what Rajesh means to me, or why he's God in human form. I do plan to write this book soon enough.

For now, whatever may happen in life, I'm just glad I got to live this moment with Rajesh Setty .

Thank you for reading all the way till here.

You're incredible. And I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

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Btw, if you're an immigrant in America, I send out a newsletter every week packed with resources. Join over 7000 people who enjoy it every Wednesday: https://www.readunshackled.com.