The Big Leap

Till December 2009, I had a nice job in a big company. I had a beautiful home in a quiet Chicago suburb, two cars and was living the American dream. And one fine day I lost my head – I quit my job, sold my house, returned to India and bootstrapped a startup. Or so it seemed to some of my acquaintances. To many of my friends and relatives, the decision to change my career and home seemed abrupt. Some suggested (only half-jokingly) that I was going through a mid-life crisis. Here is what actually happened:

• I took nine months to make up my mind. There was nothing abrupt about my decision.
• A big part of my decision was to do with aligning life and career goals. Should we fit our life around our career or the other way round? Most of us end up doing the former. A lot of times, it is a matter of necessity – typically financial needs or personal constraints. Sometimes though, it’s because we lose sight of what we really want to do in life. It’s important to consider that as we grow as individuals, what we want from our lives change. A career that may have met our life aspirations five years ago may not align with our current aspirations.
• I really did not have a choice. My decision practically made itself. I couldn’t express this point more eloquently than this post by Seth Godin.

Throughout the nine month period, I consumed an enormous amount of content related to life and career changes and startups. I had it easy because many had undertaken this exciting journey before me:

• Stories
  • Sahar Hashemi’s story of starting Coffee Republic. My favorite quote from a speech of hers I attended – “Leap and the net will appear”. Hence the title of this post.
  • Making of Mindtree – Great read in totality but nothing beats the story of the road trip from Bangalore to Vizag.
  • Success stories of many entrepreneurs
  • Press stories related to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Zappos, Facebook
• Videos
  • The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch – A lecture by a terminally ill professor talking about pursuing one’s dreams.
  • Triumph of the Nerds – Documents the beginning of the PC industry.
  • Beer Wars – Who does not like the stories of Davids standing up to Goliaths? I specially enjoyed the thread that follows Sam Calagione.
• Books
  • Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Googled by Ken Auletta
  • How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. My favorite section is titled “Reasons Not to Get Rich”
  • Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim
  • The Emyth Revisited by Michael Gerber
  • iWoz by Steve Wozniak

• Blogs
  • 6 AM Pacific
  • Seth Godin

• Movies – Clerks, High Fidelity, Notting Hill, Departures (a Japanese movie), Rocket Singh – Salesman of the Year

The long and deliberate process I went through is probably not right for everyone who is assessing a life/career change, but it held me in good stead. The day I finally put in my papers, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off me. For the first time in many years, I was the master of my destiny.