Date archives "December 2011"

Lessons Learned in 2011

As the clock turned to midnight, I paused for a moment and thought to myself, I wouldn’t trade places with anyone else at this moment in time…..

I am pretty certain that in time when I look back at my journey as an entrepreneur, 2011 will be a defining year. It will be an year about which I will recount hundreds of stories and incidents that shaped and lay the foundation of things to come. This year has had its share of extreme highs and scary lows. It was a year in which I definitely felt alive every single day. A year I pushed myself to go outside established comfort zones and do the best that I could in them.

In the end it all comes down to the people we work with and the vision that you are working towards. There are two people I really want to thank for making 2011 such a meaningful one at work, Shahzaib Khan & Song Kwang Lee. I have co-founded companies with both of them and I truly believe that working side by side with them has made all the difference.

The three key lessons from this year for me were:

1. Listen and review advice from mentors, ultimately do make a decision that you are most comfortable with. I need to thank Shahzaib again here for helping me to rely more on my gut and intuition for moving forward.

2. When raising money, choose your investors carefully. Avoid angels who are not active investors (min 3 investments a year). Do background checks on them before due diligence starts. (I met some truly scumbag investors this year which will make for an interesting chapter for the book I want to eventually write).

3. Avoid business ventures with family at all costs. Even though I have written about doing business with family, I broke one of my own rules and learned this lesson the hard way once again.

2012 is poised to be a great year. If you are in technology space consider yourself one of the fortunate ones who are in the right place at the right time.

I miss writing on my blog and for 2012 I plan to write one post/essay every month, a more realistic target!

For all the readers that are still subscribed to this blog, thank you very much! Wishing you all great success and happiness in 2012!