Taking the leap

Exactly an year ago, I was vacationing in Rajasthan. Road tripping across the state from Jaipur to Udaipur to Kota. There is something incredibly clarifying about a road trip. The noise fades into the background and you can focus on what is really important.

An idea had been running in my head, but the decision was still pending. I mean, I had a job that I liked. One that paid really well. Landing such a job, in itself would be a dream for a lot of people. To jettison that and jump into the void seemed a little insane. There is nothing logical about it. And yet, the voice in my head wouldn't shut up. And so a thousand kilo meters, a flight trip and few more restless nights later, I found myself in the conference room with my manager. I was leaving the company.

The early days are exciting, but you are also very aware of the mountain of work in front of you. I have been programming seriously since high school but I was new to web development. There was a lot of ground to cover. And so it began, watching a lot of YouTube videos on the latest web frameworks, trying to build some simple web pages. And soon I was in the groove, coding day in and day out. It's one of the few things that comes naturally to me. I can code all day and not get bored. But this was the first time I was building something visual. Not just an algorithm running on a processor but human experience.

I released a landing page about 6 months ago. This release already had most of the design elements worked out and continues to influence the design of the app today.

The next 100 days, more than 3 months went into optimizing authentication, video uploads and video streaming. A seasoned web developer could have probably done this faster than me. But as I was building this I started to understand more about the structure of the web. How it provisions data at user request while ensuring both security and integrity.

One day I open up the website on my phone and find all the videos going blank after 10 seconds of load. There were no error messages to point the way. After a lot of debug I realized that I had no buffering control. All the videos on the page were simultaneously buffering in the background leading to a massive amount of data being downloaded. Based on my Cloudflare bill, I managed to stream 9000 minutes of video all on my own in a single month!!

There were a lot of anecdotes like this, where I was learning a lot and also having a lot of fun. Honestly, I would consider web and database optimization as a serious career path if I wasn't running a company. I could do this all day long.

As I was developing the app, I started to notice some of the bigger issues with the product. I originally wanted to build an interview platform that allowed working professionals to interview job seekers. The interviews would then be made available to hiring companies. So companies would have access to pre-recorded interviews before they approached a candidate. It started to dawn on me that this was complicated on several levels. The biggest blocker was the interview format. As it turns out, a typical online interview is not meant for a third party watching. It is not engaging on any level. People opening windows and code editors felt incredibly messy. I had a solution for this but I started to realize that I was trying to do too much for a first product. Building a robust software implementation alone would take too long and there was little guarantee that it would be well received by the market. I needed to find a solution that I could deploy and evaluate in a reasonable amount of time.

I had put out a job post on LinkedIn for a co-founder position. I got over 200 responses! It was impossible to filter out or even walk through all the candidates.

This got me thinking, what if I got video responses from them instead of just a resume?

Especially for a Co-Founder, subjective traits like communication matter a lot more than specific skills. It would allow me to get some sense of the person behind the resume. Even someone just describing their work experience in their own words often goes a long way in help me evaluate them.

So I decided to build a much simpler app. Founders, companies and leaders can post a video on the platform describing their vision and their company. Those who are interested can respond with a 5 minute video along with their contact and LinkedIn profile. So companies can now watch a video where the candidate answers a subjective question like, describing the biggest challenges they faced in their previous job, instead of just a resume. This will also help filter out casual job seekers, who are unlikely to put in the effort to respond with a video.

As I prepare to launch my website over the next few weeks, my feelings are that of cautious excitement. On one hand it is quite a release to be finally be able to launch your product after so much work. On the other hand, I have to be prepared for real customer feedback and criticism. Our success will ultimately depend on our ability to deliver real value to the world. This will be a core principle at Entangld, a focus on the value we deliver.

A word for those who want to start a company or work for a startup. Taking the leap is the hardest part. No amount of calculation or math will ever prepare you for it. It's not a logical decision. Starting a company is not all that different from jumping off a building and hoping that you will be able to fly. It's a leap of faith. But once you do, all existential questions in your life fade away. You don't ask yourself, "What am I doing with my life?". You wake up every day and there is a mountain of work waiting for you. You just dive in and never look back.

I would however recommend some amount of financial security. If you are worried about your finances, you won't be able to focus on your work.

Finally, my thoughts on funding. There are a lot of people excited about the prospect of a startup. But most of them are imagining all the flashy and glamorous parts of the startup life. None more so than raising funding. There seems to be this belief that the first thing you have to do is chart a way towards funding. So you have to start talking to VCs and start networking. While I am not downplaying the importance of all this, they are only relevant in the context of the solution you are building. The goal is not to build a product that VCs will fund but to build something that is meaningful to you. Something you can sign your name on. Ultimately, you are starting a company, so your ideas can have an impact on the world. A startup's focus should be 90% on the product and 10% on everything else. If you build a product that can deliver value, the funding will come.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Do watch out for our launch. Right now entangld.com is still a landing page, but that will change in a few weeks. Will wait for your feedback.