So, As everyone knows, I worked hard to build Patterbuzz for more than 2 years. I discovered something new everyday. but one thing which I discovered was most important. This thing changed the way I used to think, behave, work and believe.

This was called :** Passion to make an impact in life of millions of people.**

The day I left my job at NDS (now Cisco) and walked out of campus, I felt relieved and happy. I discovered the path of creating something new. Something, if successful, will change my life forever. But, later on I realised, whether it will be successful or not, I’ll be changing forever anyway.

As I wrote that first task list on the whiteboard the next day, I was just overwhelmed with the enormity of the project I had undertaken. I had not realised even just a day before that technology is not everything. But with the growing task list, Technology was just showing 10% of the work required. and rest everything was non technical. It was all about meeting real people in the real world and getting the deals done. It was all supposed to be done manually without any involvement of computing world.

Just a day later, I was off to Delhi for my first meeting. I was meeting a publisher to convince him about my project with just a powerpoint presentation. Early morning flight from Bangalore and getting up at 3:30 AM to catch the flight so that I can reach for meeting in time. It was not the butterflies in the stomach but the bulls having a fight. and my brain was working with the speed of light. The meeting went great and publisher loved the idea. Ofcourse, he had his reservations on the execution but nevertheless, I signed my first contract.

And then the realisation struck. What next I thought. I did not have a clue of how to build this enormous system. There was only one thing which got me working. I just looked at the number of people I’ll be able to reach If I enabled this system. It was about an educational magazine. and I was thinking of reaching out to at least half a million electronics students across south east Asia and India. I was thinking about how they will be able to discover the brilliant articles written in this magazine. They will be able to buy them easily without worrying about complex magazine and shipping costs. They will be able to zoom into pictures and circuit diagrams published in the articles and even view the videos which they were not able to get earlier.

Bam !! and it just made life so easy. I was able to put the technical architecture together. I was able to quickly write the first piece of code to launch the backend for content handling. Got my friends involved to write code for me. The website went up in next 10 days. iPAD app started coming up. Meanwhile, I even got my first tranche of angel investment cheque. It was as if everything was coming together to help me reach out to those half a million students.

Before I had started off, I used to read stories of entrepreneurs making millions of dollars. And I used to think, It must be just write a piece of code, launch it, and get the VC funding and one had arrived. But, When I started off on my own, the money dream just flew out of the window. The only thing I was able to see that I have to reach out to people who want to read those articles out of the magazines which they might be interested but not aware of. I wanted to reach out to journalists who were living the life writing for big publishers to earn their pay cheques but about whom I felt, that they deserved to connect to people directly.

My motivation had changed. It was all about letting people read without paying any extra buck. but yes, asking people to pay as there was always something writing those wonderful articles for a living. My motivation was not about myself anymore. It was not about a billion dollar startup or buying a penthouse with VC money. It was all about bringing a change. It was all about making a dent in this universe and finding my own 42.

This is when I discovered my passion towards my work. This passion drove me to work day and night. This passion drove me to write code, do marketing, hire people, raise funds, get partnerships, acquire users, understand finance, run company operations, do accounts, discover new means to solve a problem. And above all, be patient and wait for the right time.

As everything cannot be achieved in a day. I did one thing at a time. I learnt about prioritisation. I learnt about saving money. I learnt about dealing with people. I learnt about helping others before helping oneself. I learnt that businesses are done by people and with people. Technology is just an enabler to the whole game. but Passion made me run towards my goals. I was always dreaming of those millions of people hitting my website, using my android and iOS apps, to discover and read those articles. I was visualising those happy faces of the journalists who were discovered through my platform and now, were getting regular cheques paid by Patterbuzz.

And again, till the last day of Patterbuzz, I hoped to run it one more day. It is my passion which makes me believe that I was not able to make it happen but someone will do the same thing and make it work.

and now, this passion is so engraved in me that every task I do, I know someone is going to get benefit out of it and bring a smile on someone’s face. Now, I work to see at least one smile everyday.