Monday, August 30, 2010

I followed my own advice

I was trying to find myself at work when I read First, Break all the rules and blogged about it. I took the questionnaire and found out that it was time for me to move on as well. So, I did.

I’ve been through a roller coaster ride since then. To be honest, more lows than highs but I don’t regret taking that decision. I joined a past colleague of mine to build an education and family events based web platform, only to disband it after few quarters. We got the rude awakening when we realized there was hardly any money in the bank, business model was not good-enough, we weren’t nimble enough and we lacked good strategic vision. I learned a lot in the process about product development, fund raising, running a startup and how not to do things. I just wish had learned more of how to do things as success is a great teacher but I would do with failure as a teacher right now.

Since then, I’ve been a solopreneur. Well, more like an accidental solopreneur. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t design it to be that way, it was a mere serendipity.  I just wish I could claim that I always wanted to start a company and worked towards my vision but the reality is that it just happened. I started my own software services company with focus on designing and building products using Microsoft technologies. It was a natural choice for me as I was involved in building software products for good number of years at GlobalLogic. The experience at GlobalLogic taught me how to bring business ideas to life in a pragmatic and an agile way. I just thought of leveraging that experience in trying to collaborate with as many version 1.0 companies as possible. Thus, Quovantis was incubated.

Life has been good since then. There is not that much revenue, hardly any profits to speak of but the road ahead looks bright and sunny. I’ve been getting tremendous amount of support and help from past colleagues and friends. I consciously want Quovantis to be a small company and help other small and mid size companies to build better software.  I’m not sure if I would succeed in realizing my vision but I’m  we’re working hard towards it.

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