Foundering 102
There I sit.
On the floor, in my room, beside the table.
Staring up the wall, whiteboard hanging over my head.
It’s filled up. It always has been these days.
Sections range from “Things I need to do” to “Words to live by”
Vague list of words fill up headings of “Company Vision” and “HR 102”
There’s a squiggly list of ideas to pursue and weird conversations to be had
On top of it all is a name. By Choice Club.
I stare at it. With joy and amusement.
Three words that have become my identity, that now are 95% of my life
In the last 3 months we’ve gone from half an idea to a functioning company.
It feels like a phase coming to an end, ushering in a new one.
And as is convention, we welcome this next step by reflecting back on the 100 footprints that led to it. In no particular order of importance or timeline, here’s foundering 102:
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PS — This blog reads slightly differently. With a million things happening at once, there isn’t a single story I could weave the learnings into. Hence the writing does not “flow”, rather it’s a set of distinct sections that can be read independently.
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BTS of a company
An idea
Dec 7, ‘23.
The Habba was coming to an end, and with it my time at Unboxing.
What next, Shah? What next? I asked myself, more clueless than ever before.
I knew I wished to tread a thin line between culture and community. I knew I wished to build a product. The Habba website was terrible, maybe I can develop it for the next year I thought? Maybe I could pitch that at the wrap-up meeting? Maybe I should write down my proposition? Lot of maybes.
I roamed around for a few days with these maybes in my head. Went to a million events, thought about why the website did not work, why it felt transactional. Thought about the difference between a website and a product. Parallels drawn from other community products started pointing towards a clear whitespace.
As I tried to verbalise these ideas, 4 months of context came pouring in like wet cement. My own ideology of interest-led discovery became a corner-stone. BCC spoke about being local-first, thrived on cross-pollination. 1989 gave importance to an induction program. FirstWav wanted newbies to learn.
I had thrown too many balls on the wall, and they just started connecting by themselves. The maybes crystallised into a possibility. And before I knew it I was sending voice notes to people at 2am, preparing for an early pitch
Idea -> Product
Anyone can develop an app, not everyone can solve a problem.
From mid-December to the entirity of January, I just spoke to people. Explained the status to family during weddings. Discussed with friends on a bachelors trip. Took inputs from old mentors and got in touch with new ones. Visited Mumbai on a 4 day research-trip, stayed in a hostel attending events on the go.
I realised that the fact about good ideas is, above all, they feel right. Making a pitch earlier felt like a drag, as if I was selling someone a toothbrush while they were brushing their teeth.
This time it felt natural, I just told the story as it came to me, let people shape it further. Every day a new version was coming out of my mouth. Every person — from users to artists, mentors to partners — added a new perspective. Conviction came in over time. By the end I had a solid product proposal that I could defend with anyone.
There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. It’s almost an art, and we’ve just started putting in the first few strokes. It’s a topic I hope to write about separately at some point. But the goal is clear — we wish to build an insanely beautiful, obviously awesome product.
Product -> Business
Creating value, and converting it to money are two separate steps
A business needs to do both. It is incredible how much confusion, and subsequent clarity, figuring out the business model brings. It defines and guides so many decisions — what scale do we need to reach, what team size could we sustain, how fast do we grow.
It was quite a learning curve, probably brought with it the most amount of pressure in the entire ride. There were a few days and nights where I thought nothing else. Filled up the whiteboard. Tried to sleep, woke up, wrote something new — repeated this thrice out of sheer restlessness.
Money in itself is a wicked son of a bitch, and cash is king. That lesson gets drilled down well when you’re scrambling around for funds to pay salaries, and end up doing so from your own savings. It also brought along an important realisation, that as founder it is purely my responsibility to make sure we have enough money in the bank to pay the bills.
Fundraising was an odd ball as well. It’s the kind of think that can make you feel extremely small, extremely quickly. It feels even weirder in the case of a friends-family-mentors round. Imagine asking a friend to lend you 5 lakhs so that you can just do your thing, except that you might not return it! It was clear that any money raised, expects an RoI — even if someone is investing for me personally.
Through it all I adjusted to a “just enough” kind of mindset. I plan to avoid raising funds unless absolutely necessary. Money isn’t inherently bad though — it’s like the oil that powers a train. A source of power that can put us on the fast track, once we see something clicking.
Audacity
Oh the courage to have a dream and the audacity to pursue it.
You have to give ambition the space it deserves, stop shying away from it. Ambition feels good. But also comes with the risk of failure, of dreaming big and falling hard. It will often have you living in the future, unsatisfied with the present.
Audacity take it a step further — you need to be absolutely shameless, to make big bets and go after them. Subtlety has to stay dead. Stop playing defensive and start chasing things. Always try to seek the new and do the more. Startups run on shamelessness — maangne me sharam nahi aani chahiye.
Working with people
Unboxing
While we’re talking about money, Unboxing has been a god-sent. There are minor ifs and buts about the partnership, but it let’s us build a product with assured distribution, while paying us for it.
More than the money, a certain legitimisation came with the partnership. As someone who had never sold anything before, I was a bit insecure about my own capabilities to do so. Their trust in the product boosted the conviction many fold. It gave a clear signal on both fronts — that this product can add value, and we can get paid to build it. That confidence was critical to go to the next step.
The team
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The team is one of the biggest joy about work.
It has come together so naturally. A sequence of happy coincidences, individual priorities and ambitions that aligned so very well. It’s a genuine pleasure to work with a team where everyone believes in the problem statement, owns up their role towards solving it, and trusts others to do their bit.
One thing I’ve done right, and will continue to do so, is to treat people personally. Rather than ask if they’d like to join, listen to what’s going on with them. Figure out if we can work together, in ways which are mutually beneficial to both of us. At some level I think of By Choice as a lifestyle company. And the hope is that everyone in the team gets the opportunity to move towards their ideal lifestyle.
The team is now just as important, if not more so, than the idea itself. There have been days of intense confusion where I’ve questioned “is this a mistake?”. But a quick catchup with the team later I felt more optimistic. There is a certain warmth in the conversations that is so refreshing, supportive, pleasantly surprising.
A note of gratitude for the many other people who help along the way. Mentors who dished out advice without expectations. Friends who are always ready to brainstorm, happy to help, often offering help — almost aggressively. On my part I will always try to offer help generously, and accept help graciously.
Team culture
Culture is a shared way of doing things.
It’s an extremely vague thing to define. But it’s also the most evident. Cultures are not necessarily good and bad, but weak and strong.
Firstly the culture has to align with my own personal values and goals. I want to build an exciting company. I want to create value and have the most amount of fun while doing so. I want to keep the surprise, the ambition alive. I want to make sure people feel comfortable in the team, while also pushing themselves.
Trust is a given — it’s not something you need to earn. In each role, people should have creative liberty to trust their instincts and go for it. I trust your instincts, you trust mine.
Another sticking concept seems to be “Do your best”. It’s hilariously simple, and yet so freaking powerful. The idea is you try your very best towards the goal, and if after that we still fail — then be it. If we can put in our collective bests we’ll reach farther than any of us individually could, and then winning or losing won’t matter. A half hearted effort would just leave behind regret.
There is no management whatsoever. Neither are there timelines — all timelines are artificial. The idea is that no one is better at managing your time than yourself. You do your best in your own time, respect everyone else’s time and give them space to work according to their own style.
The pre-requisite to a strong culture is conscious hiring, which seems like the next thing to learn.
Leading
The first team meeting I held was a disaster
I was glad to have these wonderful people willing to come collaborate with me. And so I just hopped on the call, probably thinking it would work itself out now. Boy was I wrong. While management is a strict no-no, leadership is important. The next day was spent in a full-fledged leadership crisis, forming my views around what it means to lead.
The weirdest thing in leading is to start. To assume that position and act on it. It did not come naturally to me, but soon you develop your own style and mental models around it.
You first and foremost have to believe. Believe in the cause, believe in your ability to achieve it, believe that this could be the start of something good. Work from a space of hope, not just lazy optimism. Stop hiding your excitement, rather showcase it. And commit to it publicly — even if it doesn’t work I’ll be the last person to walk away.
Next you learn to value the capabilities of your team, the unique flavour each individual brings. The job then is to orchestrate the effort — none of us can achieve the goal individually, but how do we work cohesively towards it? This needs a certain amount of direction, which most often just means verbalising the unsaid expectations already filling the air.
Letting people do great work while directing their efforts in the right direction requires you to lead with context, not control. Part of the deal is also to push people. Ask people to set ambitious timelines, state them confidently, and allow them the room to fail at them. As a team lead, I will never question your skills or decision, always your intention. In return, as a team member, I want you to always question my skills and decisions, never my intention.
The last bit is to maintain humility. To be a member of the team while leading it — you have to be both. Start acting like a know-it-all, better-than-others and you’ll be doomed.
Business is personal
Work life balance
No really, what’s that?
It’s been a blurry boundary between meetings and casual hangouts these days. Part of my job is to meet people, constantly. It’s like a montage of people changing in the background. I never know when a friendly conversations turns towards work. My brain is constantly on the lookout for insights, always curious to dig a bit deeper when it hears something of interest.
Doing a startup. Doing it honestly. Is non stop. It’s not a job you take, it’s a life you live. You stop existing passively, start shaping your life actively. I’ve been running at 160% capacity constantly for the past many months. And giving that extra 60% is all that matters.
I’m not exactly always “busy”. The amount of freedom I enjoy is beautiful. I can take a break when I deem it required, choose to work on things I find engaging. There are days where I’m just been sitting around, passively thinking of work. The power of undirected, passive thinking is quite underrated in my opinion.
A constant imposter syndrome
A lot of the work I end up doing, is learn a new thing.
When you approach something new, you have no mental models to understand it — no sense of style, size, numbers. You just have to be brave enough to suck at something new. What’s got you this far won’t take you all the way. You have to grow faster than the company or you’re pulling it down.
The newness leads to a persistent imposter syndrome. It was even more pronounced while volunteering with any organisation. You’re a stranger in a close knit of people, not exactly welcome, not exactly ignored. You go for a chai with them. Listen to their life, sneak in a quick comment. Feel like you’re part of the group. Close your eyes and onto the next set you go.
Was this a mistake?
Is a tough fucking question to not ask.
The days aren’t exactly the smoothest. It’s rather funny how one moment you’re riding the high of a new team member joining, the next moment you feel lost from an investor call, wondering how to pay the current team, let alone a new one. A constant rollercoaster, without seat belts.
It’s a fuzzy-restless-chaotic-sparkly constancy in my head that makes me respond to most people without registering their words. The stress feels like a long term tenant. It won’t go away, I’ll just have to get better at managing it.
It’s also so easy to be delusional. So easy to focus on the wrong things. To get ahead of yourself once a thing goes right, to assume success even without having started.
The amount of things you give up in this pursuit is just inordinate. There were days when I felt like I let people down, felt like just disappearing for a while. But as a founder, you can’t bail.
As much as I love it, one thing I now very clearly believe is that not everyone should / has to be a founder.
I love it
And I don’t use that word lightly, love has eluded me enough for that.
People have asked me. Why am I doing what I’m doing. If I’d do anything else? Would I want to do this long term?
I tell them I’d do nothing else. I love it so much. I believe in the mission, yes. But I also love the rest of it — meeting people, telling stories. Building a product from scratch, seeing the first few screens get deployed on a website we own. Seeing people I know grow into a lifestyle they’d like to live.
I also love to see it unfold by itself at times. No I can’t control it. No I don’t know where it’ll go. But I know I will care for it however it unfolds, tend to it with the the most honest of intentions. Give it my best, and have the most amount of fun while doing so.
If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
End notes
I’ve been advised. To not associate my self worth, my identity with this far too much. But to be honest, I don’t have much else to go to — 90% of my waking hours revolve around it. I’ve been breathing in some form of this idea for most of the last year. And if I can’t give it my all right now, then I may as well retire.
A new phase is beginning, an all important one. One where we’ll finally launch to users, come to know what the market has to say. Planning is difficult, let alone predicting. Honestly things can go wild from here on — and I’ll fucking welcome it.
All we can do is give it out best and have fun doing so.
