Sreejata's Bulletin

It’s been 7 years, 3 major pivots, 50% of founders leaving and countless broken dreams, sleepless nights, greyed hair later, here we are.

There have been many battles along the way, a lot of them that we’ve lost (my favourite co-founder left last year, we made some changes and had a year quarter that had no growth etc). But the war is yet to be won or lost. And don’t be fooled, we’re still running forward, inching forward at least, with guns blazing!

Is this an appropriate time to use “Some people move on, but not us” meme?

We all have some folks in our circle who we meet and are social with but we don’t quite trust.

1. Maybe an ex-lover who is clingy and lonely and you know is bad news
2. An employee who talks smack behind your back
3. A friend with a huge insatiable ego
4. A creepy fellow in your social circle who makes crude remarks or advances
5. A colleague who just wants to take you down
6. A buddy who is full of drama because of their own selfishness
7. A “friend” who is full of lies and dishonesty
8. Someone who is simply negative of everything
9. Super Jealous cousin secretly wishing you no good
10. etc…

If you nodded to any of the above, do yourself the BIGGEST favour you can. Cut them out. It might seem ruthless, unsocial, rude, but the upsides are too high. Trust me.

After a really shitty and resentful personal and professional 2015, I (almost accidentally) started getting rid of these folks and my only regret is, why didn’t I do this earlier.

The TOP thing to happen: It was liberating. Liberated of having to be civil with folks I deeply disagree with. A sense of peace, happiness and lack of negativity is just icing.

And most importantly – It was AS awesome for my personal life, as was for my professional one. If someone is being a douche more than serving any real purpose, cut them out.

And do it today.

I mean.. who am I to be giving out advice – but after 4 years of startup life, we have learned a few things… the hard way. We have made these mistakes, more than once and right now, are our biggest regrets.

• Listen to customers: So simple. Yet, we fail to do it. Customer interviews with scripted questions (how much would  you pay, how much of a pain is this, how many times do you do  this every week) and pre-set metrics (if less than 70% users say they want it, we scrap it; if less than 50% say it’s a strong pain we scrap it;) should be the starting point. Even if you start with 10. If you can’t find 10 prospective customers to interview, then your target market is too small anyway. There’s no bigger dirtier lie than “build it and they will come”. They will not. We almost killed ours. Twice. Don’t kill your startup. You will be left with a useless piece of expensive software that you and your friends think is super cool. Trust me on this one.
• Keep your burn low: Even simpler! Don’t travel if you don’t have to. Don’t pay for the booth which you can ill-afford, don’t pay through your nose for the one “game changer star” employee – they won’t change anything except your runway, use hacks where you can, use free data even if it’s a few extra lines of code, cheap hosting whatever you can find. If you must spend money, let it be used for employee motivation and celebration.
• Take the tough decision: You need to fire your friend. A founding employee. You need to tell your co-founder to show up at work on time. Or that he’s being too egoistic and irrational. Or tell an employee you can’t give him vacation time. Or tell your investors how you failed and you want to pivot.. again. Don’t deliberate and cringe and withdraw. These talks are difficult for everyone and you only get slightly better with practice, but everyone is better off if you just get it out asap. Do it. Once you do it, you will have wished you had done it much earlier. Every. Damn. Time.

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On this day, I would love to make a pledge and encourage all of you to take the same pledge.

Engaging in gifts, wishes, women’s awards, motivational workshops, quotas… has this connotation of the weaker sex – that women need to be taken care of. Let’s get to the root of the problem. Let’s try our best to challenge people, even when it seems rude. Let’s challenge our friends – girl friends and boy friends alike, let’s challenge our colleagues, our parents, cousins, neighbours and our leaders, for biased behavior. Let’s challenge ourselves – when we are being too critical, when we are taking something for granted, when we are using gender biased language, when we are laughing at gender biased jokes, when we are enjoying gender biased super hero movies or music – let us challenge ourselves, and imagine a world where these biases would not exist. Imagine a world where centuries of reinforcement didn’t exist that women are bad drivers, men are emotionless, being called a pussy equates to weakness, that mothers are better caretakers than fathers. Let’s challenge the bias and strife for equality.