Captive Adaptations

Last March, while I was working at a startup in San Mateo, I learnt some basic truths. Mediocre & Insecure minds, are a big threat to shared accomplishment & can dent your positive spirits significantly. I was acquainted to the people behind that startup for a while, and had quit a very stable & high paying job at a decent company, to help that startup with good intent.

But like all analytical minds, it did not take much time for me to figure out that ideological / cultural differences can never be bridged. I wanted to get otta there, and had started to look for new avenues, in the process I had stumbled upon a novel approach by Paul Graham. The Summer Founder’s Program I thought was a unique opportunity to get involved in. I had also counselled a few friends of mine, and nearly sent out my business idea to them, but then I was strapped in my strides, thanks to the H1-B Visa I had, which the good folks at YCombinator declined to endorse or support due to some limitations, and hence I had to endure the next few months only by venting out my frustrations.

Mostly I forgot about it with all the new beginnings later in 2005 and nearly a year after I first stumbled across YCombinator, I decided to check out how the idea has been performing, and voila, this thrilles me. Not only that, I am glad to see that a similar Winter Founder’s Program has been started by them. If any of your contacts or friends still at school are itching to start a startup, I think this is where they should get involved. At this point let me quote what Confucius the genius once said

“Tell me and I might forget, Show me and I might remember, Involve me and I will understand”.

You can’t tell people how to do business, you can’t show people how to do business, you can only get them involved & they will mean business. The success rate of the Summer Founder’s Program and the performance of YCombinator are proof of the Power that Confucius’s words carry !