After completing my master's in US, I wanted to go back to India (my home country) and start a company there. Fortunately, I was able to do so immediately after completing MS. A friend of mine and I had discussed about starting up together. After I went back, he promptly quit his job and we decided to take the plunge.

Both of us had absolutely no business backgrounds. Leave aside parents, nobody from our extended families even, had ever ventured into entrepreneurship. But we found support in our families, which definitely helps in an Indian setting. Around the same time, both of us also got married. Our wives were doing a steady job and that really helped as well.

I was the techie and my partner would handle other aspects. That was the deal between us. We felt that it is always a good idea to grow from our own revenue. That way we'd retain control over the operations for a longer time. So we had no option but to go the services way, as we didn't have enough money to incubate and develop a product idea. Some might disagree with this but those were our thoughts at that time.

When we started, neither of us was naturally good at selling. So getting good and lucrative projects in the first few years was really hard. So we focused on delivering exceptionally well at whatever work we were getting. Slowly but surely, it started paying off. We positioned ourselves as a small boutique firm with really good engineering capabilities, that delivers better than others on hand-picked projects. It took around 5 years for us to establish a reasonably good reputation.

In those 5 years, living below the means, was our survival strategy. We didn't have a swanky office, nor could we pay very high salaries to our employees. But still, we were able to retain really good developers, probably because the work that was given to them was always on the latest tech stacks. People always thought of us as a great company to kickstart / catapult their career, a company where you spend a couple of years of your career, and transform your career experience-wise.

When we were in the initial survival mode, there definitely were mental struggles I had to deal with from time-to-time. For instance, most of my classmates, even juniors, were earning a lot, going on expensive vacations, buying expensive things, and here I was, being as qualified as them, still struggling to make a good living from my own money. But two things helped. One, family support was rock solid and two, I genuinely believed that there is more to life than the lure of money. In my experience, when you are in your initial stages, it also becomes a little easier to rationalize your hardships, because you can tell yourself that it is still early in your journey and you can still make it.

Eventually, we began getting good clients, started getting retainers from even international clients, who were leaders in their respective markets. Our team got bigger and we achieved good and stable cashflow with steady growth. All of this with zero debt.

Then COVID hit, but to us, it didn't really matter. Our work structure & delivery processes were robust and in no time, we were fully functional being fully remote. In fact during the COVID, in terms of revenue, we grew more than 300 percent.

It is funny that when you are in survival mode, you can hardly spare any time to actively think about just yourself. You never get any bandwidth to ponder about your evolving wants and likes. You are so constantly engrossed in making ends meet that you can hardly spare a moment or two, only for yourself. You never realize the need of some space and time, where only you are in the spotlight, not your company, not your business partner, not your family.

I found out that after I transcended the survival mode, these things began to matter. I was always a creator, a problem solver, an engineer at heart and that is what I loved the most. As the services business grew, I realized I was doing less and less of that. Both to the client and to us, as a service provider, things became more commerce-driven than value or innovation-driven. I began spending more time in meetings on inconsequential issues than spending time on building something with value. I tried to deal with it, but a point came, when it really became an everyday stress-creator.

That was when, I really focused on myself, just myself. I realized that my wants and likings have evolved away from the software service industry. I am no longer enjoying the thriving business that I had started a decade ago. That was the plain brutal truth. The more I procrastinated from accepting it, the more time I was losing everyday.

So after months of thinking & mulling over it, I decided to exit. I won't say there weren't any insecurities. What will the clients say? What will happen to my reputation that I have cultivated so judiciously? What will happen to the company after I leave? It was very hard to predict how the world would take it and react to this. But I knew I had to do it. And I finally stepped down from the CEO post. And over the next few weeks gradually and completely exited from the business.

That is a glimpse in my journey as an entrepreneur so far. I am planning a fresh venture now, which is more aligned with me. The exit has given me a runway for a couple of years now, hopefully I'll be a little smarter this time :).