Written in 2018. I've left it mostly as it was, so some links and details may be out of date.
A few days ago I delivered a talk on entrepreneurship to the Master’s students at GLS University in Ahmedabad. Standing in front of them, I kept thinking about another December, seven years earlier, when I walked onto the same campus for the first time.
December 2011
I was in the second year of my Bachelor of Computer Applications in Palanpur, a few hours north of Ahmedabad. On December 24, 2011, I posted on Facebook that I was going to Ahmedabad to attend a web designing competition at GLS.
For a student from a small town, that trip was a big deal. I didn’t own a laptop then. I learned on college lab machines, and sometimes on a laptop I borrowed from my cousin. I had started taking part in coding and design contests across Gujarat, and each one felt like a window into a bigger world: other students who were better than me, judges who had built real things, and campuses that looked very different from mine.
Participating in that competition felt like a dream. I didn’t think about startups or incubators. I just wanted to build something good, be judged fairly, and see how far I could go.
What those competitions gave me
Looking back, those contests gave me a few things that no classroom did.
A deadline and a stranger’s judgment. In class, you’re graded by people who know you. In a competition, you build under time pressure and strangers decide whether your work is any good. That’s much closer to how the real world works, whether you’re shipping a product or pitching a client.
Proof that effort compounds. A month later, in January 2012, a friend and I won first prize in a web designing competition at New Progressive College in Mehsana, and another friend and I won a national-level quiz at Christ College in Rajkot. I eventually topped my class and won the Best Student Award, and the prize money bought my first laptop. None of those wins came from one big moment. They came from showing up to the next competition, and the next.
A network before I knew what a network was. Every contest meant meeting students from other colleges, and sometimes the people organizing them. Some of those connections lasted years.
December 2018
A lot happened in between. I did my Master’s at DA-IICT, got into Google Summer of Code in 2013, worked on big data systems for telecom operators, and in March 2016 co-founded DataOne Innovation Labs.
For almost a year now, DataOne has been part of the Leaf - GLS University Incubator. The GLS campus, the same one I visited as a nervous student, has quietly become my second home. These days I walk past buildings I first saw in 2011, on my way to work on a company I didn’t know I would start.
And a few days ago, I was the one standing in front of a room of students, talking about entrepreneurship.
What I’d tell any student in those seats
Standing in that room, I kept thinking about what I wish someone had told me back then. This is it.
You don’t need permission to start. I didn’t have a laptop, a network, or a famous college name when I started building. You don’t need ideal conditions. You need a reason to build and a place to show your work.
Competitions, hackathons, and communities are shortcuts. They put you in front of people who are better than you, earlier than you’d otherwise meet them. They teach you to ship under pressure and take feedback from strangers. Go to more of them.
The path won’t be straight, and that’s fine. Placements didn’t go the way I hoped. Some of my side projects failed. Each of those detours taught me something I still use. The students who worry most about choosing the perfect path are often the ones who wait too long to choose any path at all.
Give back to the places that helped you. Incubators, colleges, and communities run on people who come back. Mentoring, speaking, or just answering questions from students is how the circle keeps turning.
Grateful
When I think about the student who took that trip to Ahmedabad in 2011, I mostly feel grateful. Grateful to the colleges that ran those competitions, to the friends who teamed up with me, and to life for giving me so many opportunities since.
Seven years ago, I came to GLS to take part in someone else’s competition. Today I come to the same campus to work on my own dream. I couldn’t ask for a better circle.
Here’s to a great 2019, and to every student walking onto an unfamiliar campus for the first time, wondering how far they can go.