When Life gives you 2 choices, invent a 3rd
When I took the road not taken.
I had never failed in my life, until my final year of engineering, when I failed in a subject and was declared ineligible by the university to sit for campus placements.
I had 2 choices: Clear the exam and get a job later next year. Or clear the exam and pursue a masters degree abroad. So, I dismissed both of them.
I launched my first startup in entertainment industry in June 2017 in which we built a platform for people to look out for events and concerts happening around them. After googling and reading a couple of articles about “how to start a startup”, I came to Mumbai without any connections or a team. I borrowed money from my parents to pay INR 8500 to attend a conference in Mumbai hosted by one of the top VC firm in the country. I made a few contacts but most of them suggested me to get a job and get some experience because I had zero experience and I did not have any clue of what I was heading into.
It took me a few months to realise, the business model was not scalable and I failed my first startup miserably. I had 2 choices again: Get a job or move abroad to pursue masters degree.
During the same period, I heard about a new digital currency in the market from few of my friends and how they were making tons of money out of it without much effort. When I read more about it and the technology behind it, I realised that this technology not only questions the deep rooted & centuries old financial systems of the world, but also fundamentally questions the functioning of the whole internet; along with promising a new age solution for the same. I had discovered a young and rebellious industry, just like myself. So again I dismissed both the choices and I decided to pivot to this new industry in a new city altogether which I had never visited before in life.
I moved to Gurgaon and the Bitcoin bubble burst in a couple months. Most people were moving out of blockchain and crypto space and making huge losses when I started my next startup. But this time i felt different. It felt like home and that’s when I realised that home is not a place. You don’t feel at home when you visit your favourite beach or mountain or the place you were born, ‘Home is when you do what you love’. This time even more people around me were reluctant and thought I had gone complete crazy, but I was more confident than ever. Things started taking off and the people who ignored me at conferences began inviting me to have a chat, starting to consider I could add some value.
With no prior experience of speaking in front of crowd, being a newbie in the market and too young to make it big, I started filling left over speaker slots at conferences; and then few months ago, 20 months after my university decided it did not want to be responsible for my career in any way, the university invited me to give a lecture to their aspiring students and faculties on emerging technologies and even paid me on an hourly basis, a concept I was not aware of until then ( the proudest moment of my life till now ).
A month ago I charged six figures per hour to deliver key note at an international stage in front of hundreds of corporate representatives. We have recently sponsored our first conference as a gesture to support the community. Today we are eligible enough to be able to give back to the community by supporting growth of ecosystem and sponsoring such national scale conferences ( 2nd proudest moment of my life ).
In retrospect, I think we have just begun our journey and there is a long way to go and many other magnanimous milestones to achieve, but these 2 moments will always remain close to my heart and will fuel my passion towards technology and business in coming years.
The biggest risk is not taking risk. In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks (quoting Mark).
I am not saying one should never work a 9–5 job. But most people join and continue a monotonous routing job because it is what most of their peers are doing and it is the path they followed which was chosen for them, by the society. Most millennials do not devise their own path. We live in the most peaceful time of human history. Most of us do not have to worry about fundamental needs anymore and have resources available to pursue our dreams. The youth of ancient times had to hunt animals, fight wars & make life sacrifices without having a choice. In today’s world, one can identify an issue a certain set of people are facing, build a solution around it, and can become rich and a respected personality. Of course it is not as simple as it sounded but thats what a startup means. The people who successfully start and run a startup are solving a niche problem faced by a set of people around them.
The point here is that one should take a step back and try to figure out one’s true interests before blindly following a generic path for a lifetime. It took thousands of years for humanity to reach a stage where almost everybody from our generation has the resources and chance to find one’s true interest and follow one’s passion and even make a living out of it.
Dream Big. Take risks. Choose the road not taken. Make your parents proud. Love unconditionally. That’s YOLO.
We are embarking on a new journey with a vision and mission that will potentially impact millions of human lives positively; a choice that would have been unimaginable without the experience and exposure I gained in these 2 years. The risk and stakes are higher than ever before and regardless of how far we are able to propel forward with our vision, I look forward to share my learnings from my upcoming journey soon.
If you have any startup ideas or a problem you are trying to solve, reach out to me and we can explore a way to make business out of it.
My linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithilthakore/
My twitter — https://twitter.com/mithilthakore9
My Telegram — mithilthakore
