Don't Follow Your Dreams

“Please do make your decisions in life and feel confident that they are right. However, if fate is involved, feel just as confident even if they aren’t.
”

— C. Elizabeth, Absolute Obsession

As part of my job, I see a lot of ideas come through my desk. A few of them, I get excited about and decide to pursue. Many of them are not the right fit. However, the common trend between these ideas are the people - the startup entrepreneurs. They range from 18 to 60. Their eyes are glowing and they are passionate. They want it. Who knows what it is, but it is clearly important. 

Despite most of my writing that focuses on the positive aspects of startup life, this post is not about the good things. It's about the struggle. Despite the glow in entrepreneur's eyes and the burning desire to succeed, what goes on in the background is crazy and insane. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies. 

These are people who have asked for money from their parents, friends and family. Yet, they have nothing to show for it. 

These are people who have closed out their savings accounts and their paycheck is still $0. 

These are people who have gone from living in a nice apartment to under their desk. 

These are people who have gone into irrecoverable debt and sometimes into bankruptcy. 

These are people who have lost family and friends because the time commitment to building this thing - which may or may not succeed - is inhuman. 

These are people who have sacrificed the best  part of their lives to focus on a dream. 

And that's what is so scary about being a founder. Dreams do come true. Only if you want them to. And the reason I say "these people" is because I have been there. And it was terrifying. It still is terrifying. It keeps me up at night. It scares the living crap out of me. 

But you know what? I am fucking happy. Every single day. Every decision I make is mine. Every word I write is calculated. Every person that has survived this shitstorm with me is family. And that to me is success. 

The world will try to mold you into something that aspirational people disagree with. Every day. Every single minute. It starts off with your GPA, then your SAT scores, then your internship and then your first job. And you realize, during this process, you hate it all. It's not what you thought your life would be. And it sure as hell doesn't make you happy. 

So, here's my advise: don't follow your dreams. It's fucking hard. Instead, follow your heart. It already knows what you can't admit.  

Building a Future

“At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you’ll have left.
”

— Chuck Palahniuk

As I'm writing this piece, I'm sitting in a two-floor house on the beautiful island of Bermuda. I flew here on a Friday evening, made sure there were no emergencies at work and I'll be going straight back to work on Monday. 

This weekend is not very different than many of the weekends from the past year. 

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my office and I decided to book a trip of a lifetime. Flying the world’s first apartment in the sky, spending a few weeks traveling through Dubai, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Sydney to get to the South Island of New Zealand. I'll be renting a car and camping along the way until I get to Milford Sound. After that, it’s time to drive back and find more adventures along the way. The trip is booked entirely in first class and a lot of it is being left up to day of planning. 

The reason I booked the New Zealand trip for June and the way I booked the trip coincides with something important in my life. I started working very early on in my career and was consulting for companies like Adobe by the time I was 17. I've worked really hard in my life but apart from the strange work stories, I don’t have anything to show for it. 

A few years ago, I walked away from a very lucrative career in broadcast production only to end up in advertising 3 days later. I worked in advertising for a few years and I left that industry to pursue my dreams. First, via a company called PaLaCart and then to start, join and advise many other amazing companies. 

Over my time building startups, I realized that despite being extremely stressed and overworked about professional aspects, startup founders are the happiest and most driven people in the world. Their passion to be themselves and to pursue their dreams is amazingly powerful. 

I would love to be paid my former salary today, but only if it didn't come with just 2 weeks off or limit me to a certain bubble. 

Some of the greatest things in my life happened because I decided to jump off the cliff. There is no way I would have ever been able to spend a week in Maui celebrating a friends birthday or been able to go to family weddings in the middle of a work week. Or realize that someone I’ve worked with in my periphery is going to be a huge part of my life. Those things are far more important than sitting in an office and indispensable when leaving behind a legacy. 

From cliff diving in Maui to buying a last minute plane ticket for the FIFA World Cup and spending a week exploring the Great Barrier Reef are all stories from the past 12 months. Those memories will last a lifetime. 

And only because I walked away from a paycheck 400 days ago. Whether temporarily or permanently is yet to be seen. But life, despite its uncertainty, has never been better. 

Business is Personal: The Story of PaLaCart

“Starting a company is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”

— Ron Conway

A few weeks ago, we launched PaLaCart to a small group of friends and family to test the product and get some feedback. 

Thankfully, these select group of people have been extremely patient and for that, as a start-up founder, I am grateful. 

The journey till this point has been an incredibly unique one - a story that captures talent, vision and determination. But more than anything - it is a human story. A story about founders, investors, advisors, engineers, marketers and a whole lot more. It's a story about how you realize a dream without giving up. 

A friend of mine sent me an email not too long ago and at the bottom of his email was the following quote. It's one that reminds me every single day - that entrepreneurship is more personal than any other job in the world. 

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

— Calvin Coolidge

The trade press largely focuses on stories that show a very one-sided view of startup life: venture capital funding, acquisition, growth, etc. 

But for every one of those companies - it doesn't show the level of effort it goes into building those companies. The good. The bad. The ugly. But more importantly, the personal. This story is about people that have helped build PaLaCart. And it's a story of those people that have always had our back - regardless of circumstance. 

The first investor in PaLaCart is my brother - a 22-year old at the time who wrote over a significant check. Our most recent investor is a friend of the family for nearly 2 decades. These investors don't necessarily invest in the idea, but more so than the people. 

And they're not unique. Yes, they're investing because they know us and trust us to do the right thing. That's why every VC fund has the same criteria - invest in the people, then the idea and finally the execution. 

Money aside, there are significantly more criteria to running a company - it requires dedication, passion and more importantly the need to succeed in order to actually succeed. 

PaLaCart - even prior to product launch - has gone through a significant amount of ups and a considerable amount of lows. When we started on the path to unify the shopping experience across the web, we didn't realize we needed specific licenses from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc. We didn't know that retailers don't have technical teams to integrate a set of complicated APIs to make this vision work. Yet, we worked through all of it and delivered. 

The first retailer on PaLaCart is a brand that has been around for a long time. They are highly visible in the community, they are experts and specialists in what they do. When we had some QA issues, instead of calling us out and asking us to not be a part of PaLaCart, they helped us diagnose a platform level issue. 

Convincing retailers to sign-on with PaLaCart is a unique challenge - it's a different way to shop and conduct transactions. Far easier and yet at the same time, far advanced. Without the first few retailers - all personal relationships - PaLaCart wouldn't be doing transactions or earning revenue today.  

We launched PaLaCart on an Indian holiday - Diwali. The PaLaCart engineering team is in India. When we had a critical error in a situation we had not tested earlier, they woke up in the middle of the night - went to the office - fixed it and then went back to celebrating the holiday with their family. 

And lastly, the support system of a startup - the friends, family and fellow founders - are absolutely essential to the success of a startup. Like most founders, I go through a lot of freak out moments - whether the situation becomes overwhelming or something falls through. But, without these people - it would be a lot harder to build a company. 

So, to those who say business isn't personal - I ask them to speak to the founder of an emerging company. Because, business is incredibly personal. 

An Entrepreneur's Vision

The people who move the world forward are those that make the biggest sacrifices. They challenge institutions, they are looked upon as rebels and they fight harder than anyone else. 

Why? 

For one simple reason: they want to live in a better world. A more comfortable world. A more connected world. A world that has solutions to problems - easy and hard. And for this one reason alone - entrepreneurs are rewarded handsomely when they succeed. And if that financial payday doesn't come, they reap their rewards via experiences. Anyone can be a millionaire if they don't live life. 

Not entrepreneurs. They leverage everything they have - they are the first ones to clear out their bank accounts and then ask friends and families to do the same. 

As I've built PaLaCart over the past few years, I've been privileged to meet so many entrepreneurs who are making the world a better place in their own way. 

A friend is building an ed-tech company. Another is making it easier for investors to track their investments. A third is making communication easier. And dozens others. 

Outsiders often criticize entrepreneurs - the market is not big enough, the idea is dumb, the team is inexperienced, the product will never work, etc. But outsiders are outsiders for a reason - they don't have the entrepreneur's vision. 

Entrepreneurs don't start companies because it's an easy path to success. Sure, some have gotten lucky. However, more often than not, building a company is a lot of work. It requires far too many sacrifices. But, entrepreneurs stick to their vision. 

That vision is simple - to make their product better than anything else available and to solve a problem. How do you challenge that vision? How do you challenge an entrepreneur's vision to make the world a better place, so that you, your family and the next generation of people to occupy our places can live in a better world?

You don't.