Just placing my startup experience here.
For a little over 1 year, I was a part of a startup started by my school friends and join is as an employee. It was not funded, no seed or series. I withdrew just 20% of my original salary. We were 5 tech people and 1 sales(incl founders). We were a gamification startup, first of its kind in india and at one point were really taking it to our US competition (we poached 1 large client with minimal effort). We were also voted the best tech startup in inTech50 2015.
Things were (and still are) tough. Initially we had no clients and in a product space which is not well defined, it was not easy to decide your path. We used to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day and barely took a 15min break during the day. The team only spoke for about 20-25 min in whole day and the rest of the time was spent on coding. At the end of about 6 months, we had a solid product. In terms of technology, we were far better than most established cos. In Jan of 2015 we had our first paying client and about 700,000 users. Remember, this was our first client, anyone from the tech side would know the problems in scaling, but it turned out to pretty good for us and we managed to scale very well. Soon, we got more clients and the current count is 5. We are a SaaS, B2B business which generally takes time to grow. Even then its not a lot of money, by any stretch of imagination. We (the company) made around 1 lakh a month via revenues, which would get consumed in salaries(very low ones), office expenses and server costs. Later on, near april of 2015, we had approached a bunch of investors and some had shown interest. We were closing a seed round at a ridiculous valuation (indian investors, you suck) but had to go for it to gain momentum. At this point, things for me started getting sour.
A little more on the background. The company's founder was a very good friend of mine since childhood and we had been in constant touch even when he moved to a different city. He was a master programmer. I don't think i have seen anyone like him. He knows over 30 different programming languages and at depth. He codes complex pieces with ease, stuff even people with above average intelligence would struggle. He had worked at CERN during college days but came back to start something he enjoyed. He was an avid gamer, hence the idea of gamification appealed to him and that's why he chose it. He, along with 2 other friends from college started the company in 2011 while in college. So it took them almost 4 years to land their first client. This is not always the case as these guys were true programmers and not sales folk, so what mattered to them was engineering and not money.
They were working from delhi initially but came to bangalore when they went broke. That is when I decided I wanted to join them and did so without too much thinking. I left my job and join them immediately. Did not say much about the extremely low salary and did not discuss equity, I though these guys are friends and we will figure it out later. BAD MOVE. Never do this. When the time came and we were closing to a seed round, we started formalizing these things and that's when I saw a huge difference in my expectations and their offer. So, as many other things in the startup world that just happen, I rage quit and left. The company did never eventually go though the seed round (the investor turned out to be a jackass) but now I think they have given up running behind investors and are pursuing more and more clients.
So from my experience, I have learned 2 things.
1. Keep all equity related discussion right up front. Keep no grey here.
2. Believe in your team. If you don't think your team can do it, don't even start. This is because things WILL get tough and at that point if you raise the issue that someone is incompetent at their work, it won't end well (either you will seem like a dick or the other will quit).
Finally, startup world is hardly as rosy as most newspaper articles/news channels project. I hate TVF pitches for this too. Its good entertainment but they make startups look so trivial and only challenge in a startup is funding. Everytime I here a guy in a large IT company say 'tu beer hai' just pisses me off. You got no idea what your talking about.
PS: this is the company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playlyfe
For a little over 1 year, I was a part of a startup started by my school friends and join is as an employee. It was not funded, no seed or series. I withdrew just 20% of my original salary. We were 5 tech people and 1 sales(incl founders). We were a gamification startup, first of its kind in india and at one point were really taking it to our US competition (we poached 1 large client with minimal effort). We were also voted the best tech startup in inTech50 2015.
Things were (and still are) tough. Initially we had no clients and in a product space which is not well defined, it was not easy to decide your path. We used to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day and barely took a 15min break during the day. The team only spoke for about 20-25 min in whole day and the rest of the time was spent on coding. At the end of about 6 months, we had a solid product. In terms of technology, we were far better than most established cos. In Jan of 2015 we had our first paying client and about 700,000 users. Remember, this was our first client, anyone from the tech side would know the problems in scaling, but it turned out to pretty good for us and we managed to scale very well. Soon, we got more clients and the current count is 5. We are a SaaS, B2B business which generally takes time to grow. Even then its not a lot of money, by any stretch of imagination. We (the company) made around 1 lakh a month via revenues, which would get consumed in salaries(very low ones), office expenses and server costs. Later on, near april of 2015, we had approached a bunch of investors and some had shown interest. We were closing a seed round at a ridiculous valuation (indian investors, you suck) but had to go for it to gain momentum. At this point, things for me started getting sour.
A little more on the background. The company's founder was a very good friend of mine since childhood and we had been in constant touch even when he moved to a different city. He was a master programmer. I don't think i have seen anyone like him. He knows over 30 different programming languages and at depth. He codes complex pieces with ease, stuff even people with above average intelligence would struggle. He had worked at CERN during college days but came back to start something he enjoyed. He was an avid gamer, hence the idea of gamification appealed to him and that's why he chose it. He, along with 2 other friends from college started the company in 2011 while in college. So it took them almost 4 years to land their first client. This is not always the case as these guys were true programmers and not sales folk, so what mattered to them was engineering and not money.
They were working from delhi initially but came to bangalore when they went broke. That is when I decided I wanted to join them and did so without too much thinking. I left my job and join them immediately. Did not say much about the extremely low salary and did not discuss equity, I though these guys are friends and we will figure it out later. BAD MOVE. Never do this. When the time came and we were closing to a seed round, we started formalizing these things and that's when I saw a huge difference in my expectations and their offer. So, as many other things in the startup world that just happen, I rage quit and left. The company did never eventually go though the seed round (the investor turned out to be a jackass) but now I think they have given up running behind investors and are pursuing more and more clients.
So from my experience, I have learned 2 things.
1. Keep all equity related discussion right up front. Keep no grey here.
2. Believe in your team. If you don't think your team can do it, don't even start. This is because things WILL get tough and at that point if you raise the issue that someone is incompetent at their work, it won't end well (either you will seem like a dick or the other will quit).
Finally, startup world is hardly as rosy as most newspaper articles/news channels project. I hate TVF pitches for this too. Its good entertainment but they make startups look so trivial and only challenge in a startup is funding. Everytime I here a guy in a large IT company say 'tu beer hai' just pisses me off. You got no idea what your talking about.
PS: this is the company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playlyfe
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