#doctorc

DoctorC was setup by late Dr. Dayakar Reddy with the vision of bringing transparency in the healthcare space. Dr. Reddy was known for testing direct-to-consumer health care initiatives.

Its been 5 months since I made the hardest (so far) decision of my life.

In June 2014, I moved to India to work on a startup.

On the surface it doesn't sound that hard. But I want to back up a bit to set the context. I had moved to US from India in Aug 2010 to do my master's at Cornell. After that, in 2011, I joined a gaming startup Funzio. It was an amazing experience where I grew a lot. We got acquired by Gree in May 2012 and I was working at Gree ever since then.

So within 3 years I had moved from India, graduated from a damn fine university, moved to the heart of the tech industry, worked in a successful startup which got acquired, and was earning really good money for someone 2 years into their career.

But (there is always one "but" eh?) I always wanted to do a startup on my own. From my undergrad days I used to gorge on techcrunch for tech news and was fascinated by startups and entrepreneurship. Then I discovered Paul Graham and Hacker News. It lit a fire inside me. Here was finally something where you can learn about all things tech and a community which actively pursues entrepreneurship.

From May 2012, during nights and weekends I was working on the now defunct startup called Shoutt. In early 2014, I managed to hop through the hoops of USCIS to work on it fulltime, but by that time Shoutt was on its last legs. It wasn't too long before it was clear that Shoutt was gonna die.

Mansi and Neehar, my co founders of Shoutt, had moved to India in 2013 to work full time on it since they could not stay in the US due to the visa requirements. Around the time that we decided that we needed to move on from Shoutt, they came across another idea - DoctorC - which seemed a pretty good one to pursue. They wanted me to join them if possible. There was an option where I could work on it while living in US but it made absolutely no sense to me to do that when the product, the market, the people and the business was in India.

Winding down Shoutt was gonna take about a couple of months and I needed to decide whether I wanted to work on DoctorC or find a new job in the Bay Area.

Several people helped me reach the decision and I wanted to share the things that affected my thinking the most.

1. Being comfortable taking risks is fundamental to the journey of entrepreneurship

One of my mentors (an entrepreneur himself) had mentioned this to me when we were talking about the life of an entrepreneur. You have to be comfortable with the fact that there are several unknowns and risks in your path. When the risks are very real and staring at you in your face, this attitude keeps me from going down a rabbit hole of what-ifs to insanity.

2. Don't let immigration issues ever be a major factor in your long term career decisions

The incredible lawyer who secured my visa for Shoutt gave me this advice when we were talking about the implications for me if I went back to India. This had an oddly calming effect on me, because the visa issue was the biggest thing that concerned me at that time. He made me realize that giving up my H1B is not an irreversible decision, I have enough of a network in the Bay Area that I will not "lose my roots" from here.

3. It will be not that hard to get back up if I fail completely and utterly

This ties in with point #1. Failing is part and parcel of everyone's life (more so for an entrepreneur). The world will not end if DoctorC fails completely. In fact, it will be a unique experience which I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

4. The opportunity was too damn good to pass up

While talking about Shoutt to one of my mentors (who is a serial entrepreneur), I mentioned DoctorC and the opportunity to work on it. His reaction was - "Stop wasting your time with Shoutt. You need to start working on this immediately." This was a couple of months before we actually decided to shut down Shoutt. Those words struck a chord within me and are looping over in my head ever since.

5. Regret Minimization Framework by Jeff Bezos

I don't know where I came across this. For me, this is clearly an extremely good technique to make any long term decisions easier. Its advice by Jeff Bezos which he dubs "Regret Minimization Framework". Summarizing here -

Project yourself to when you are age 80 and you are looking back on your life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have. Now if I decide X and it turns out to be a failure, would I regret doing it when I am 80?

I applied the same logic and the answer was immediately obvious to me. And it has held up so far. I don't regret moving to India to work on DoctorC.

6. The pros of living in India

My parents have been incredibly supportive through this transition. I can visit them more often, good indian food (though I still love the bay area more for its variety) etc. Plus, I wanted to learn golf since a while, the entire 10 lesson course costs less than $100! :)