Fundraising for Machine Dalal is now probably a metaphor for building the product. Apart from the initial few weeks, I had hardly spent any time creating decks, evaluating the valuations, writing emails to VCs or asking someone if they someone who might know someone. Although I did run into a bunch of Bangalore guys who became co-founders before realising that I am trying to build a sustainable business, well but not that they said, or something along those lines, but that will be a short chapter later in this long tale.
Things do not happen – they are brought about by careful planning, diligence, application and direction.”
– George Mecherle, 1939
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When asked what is the secret of your success, George Mecherle replied, ‘ A man has to live and sleep with his business if he wants to make a go of it. You have to take it home with you at night, so you can lie there in the darkness and figure out what you can do to improve it. In fact, you have to become sort of a ‘nut’ about it, so that you become so enthused that you will bore your friends talking about it. You have to be a one-man crusade.’
For those not in the know, George J Mecherle was founder of State Farm Insurance.
To be clear things are not drastic, may be a bit clamorous, but that is nature of business, and nature of risk, and more importantly nature of following your dream and obsession. To lead is a responsibility. You are responsible for more than just meeting the payroll. You also have to pay for utilities. Also compute but these things do not bother me as much as the fact that I am unable to allocate optimum resources towards building the product.
Sometimes you have to balance, and balance you must, what you do, where you earn from, your responsibility as a man running a company viz-a-viz your ambitions. There are facts that I do not share, for good reasons perhaps, as much as this is a literal exercise, it also provides an anchor to those facts, as they might become pertinent to this story when I sit again to retell the tale.
So did I find the answer?
I do not know but I feel every day I have this fork in the road moment and I often wonder how would I feel about the decisions I make, will I look back at this with pride and comfort, do I have confidence in myself that I am doing the right thing for me, for my users, for my team and the future of my child?
Hence I leave myself open and available to the surprising contradictions in life, and perhaps will find the strength to go on.