To go or to not go

"To go or to not go" is a frequently occurring question in our lives. Could be in the context of going to office on a beautiful, bright sunny day or trying to push for the next camp, on an already long day of hiking or waking up early for that early morning run or for that matter, contemplating having a kid. 

On a hot summer day in May, I was sitting (and sweating) in our home in Pune (India) wondering if I was to start a company of my own. It was not an easy question to answer. The probability of finding a business in my family hierarchy is almost equal to finding a polar bear on the streets of Mumbai. There was no precedent in the family and nobody to guide. My earlier half-hearted, part-time attempt a few years ago did not end well. 

I was anxious to trace the origin of this question. 

The Origin

My exile in the Himalayas made me learn a few things. One key learning was persistence, the drive to keep going beyond what would have normally been a time to stop. There have been excruciatingly long days high up on the mountain (15,000 ft+) when I have been tempted to stop but kept going because it was the right thing to do. Everything in real life seems a breeze when I compare these situations to "those" days. 

Post my return, after giving away my life savings to a family emergency, I was on the lookout for a job. This was my first time in the open job market - my earlier jobs have been fairly easy to get on college campuses. I was soon going to figure out how privileged my life was. The jog hunting approach was wrong, the types of jobs I applied to were wrong (hiking guide being one of them) and the entire process backfired. I must have applied for a couple of hundred jobs and was not able to land a single interview. Indian companies, at that time, were not ready for the transparent disclosure of a voluntary, 4 month break in career.  

There are times when, unbeknownst to you, life is planning its own vicious plot. One of my close friends reached out to me with an assignment and gave me an option to help him fix his business. Of course, he wanted me to do this in my free time which, at that time, included every degree of the clock that the hour and minute hand can cover. 

    

This project set in motion a detailed review of off-the-shelf products for enterprise resource planning for small businesses. When I couldn't find anything that met the requirements, I turned to customization of open source alternatives. I found one of them to be very promising - OpenErp (Now called Odoo). customizing this Open Source product meant that I had to learn Python. I spent the next 3 months learning its syntax and the code structure of OpenErp. In the next few months, step by step, I customized this open source to meet the requirements of my friend. 

I felt a tremendous uplift from this creation (I was tempted to call it "customization", but that didn't fit the feeling I am trying to describe here). I was able to solve a problem and that made me happy. It was natural to think of extending this effort to make it a commercial venture. That, right there, gave birth to my company called Monakus. 

 
"Monachus" is the Latin name for a monk. This company's sole purpose was to provide direction to companies just like a monk. I was tempted to use the name "Monachus" but dropped the idea after a few friends apprised me of the negative connotations in Hindi when you break it into two. It would have translated to "Mona suck" and that would have been a tremendous distraction throughout the life of the company!

The Struggle and the end

With no prior experience in sales, I resorted to tried and tested approaches like cold calling, attending exhibitions, etc. to score customers. There were days when I made 100+ calls in a day and then, there were other days, when I would spend the entire day in industrial complexes knocking the doors of small businesses. I was given the same treatment that other cold callers receive, ranging from polite declines to extremely uncivil responses. I did not take any of this personally but the whole process was taking a toll on me. With each passing day, I was running the risk of running out of money and nearing my breaking point. 

I kept going. 

Six months passed by with not much progress. I did not have a sustainable sales pipeline and was beginning to question the viability of the venture. Just then, on one of those blind pitches, I met my partner. He had a very strong network due to his real estate background, and I was good at managing everything else. We clicked instantly and, after a few conversations, converted the company into a Private limited entity.   

We did well for about a year. And by "well", I mean visibility into the next 2-3 months and a consistent cash flow to manage our expenses. We had one or more 6+ month assignments with recurring monthly billing. We grew from just us to a team of 6. Things were looking up despite the fact that we running on thin margins. Basic technology based projects like websites were proving to be bread and butter. High value consulting work, though, was proving to be elusive.  

And, in a desperate attempt to raise money, we digressed. Side projects started to consume more time. Fondofood.com (home cooked food delivered from centralized kitchens), Ghartak.com (Grocery delivery), Monakus realty (real estate) folded up after pilots and did not even take off to a real commercial launch. We spent time pitching these ideas to investors in the hope that we would land seed capital to launch one of these. Our travel schedule was becoming hectic with these frequent trips to Mumbai to meet potential investors. 

The grand idea was to make Monakus an incubator where these new ideas and businesses would be born. The dream was big, time was running out and cash was running out faster. 

After a few desperate attempts, we had to acknowledge the fact that we were on a downward spiral. We started trimming down our expenses and tried to get back to our bread and butter website projects. Unfortunately, it was too late. We had lost time, opportunities, employees and leads. By May 2015, I took the call to end the venture. My partner wanted to continue using the name and trademarks. He pivoted back to his real estate business and I turned back to corporate life. 

Both of us are doing well and often wonder where we would have been, had one of those ideas grown into a real company. 

And for me, the monthly (or bi-weekly) paycheck has a new meaning now - I now know how difficult it is to earn that by yourself!