(This blog is subject to change and refinement. All irrelevant details have been suppressed.)
Our final exams ended on June 10th, 2005. It was a satisfying end to a great journey.
What happened after that was more exciting. Wanna know what happened? Read on… It's not a secret anymore.
I have this tendency. My mind works the most, during exams.
It so happened that this concept of Ananyeah hit upon me during the exams. And I was waiting for exams to end. Once the exams ended, I started working on it full time. Me and were quite excited about it.
Now nothing comes easily and for some vague reasons I had to try for other job options. (How bad, I am not allowed to work on my idea even in vacations 🙁 ). I found myself in Bangalore, the IT hub. That week, I talked to many people in Bangalore. (Company directors, managers etc).
Suddenly, Mr. sent me a message:
“Got placed in a cool startup. They want you to be director. Come online soon.”
What?! What?! What?!
I was already excited about all the developments (or rather the events) that were occurring and then this one.
I messaged him back and you know right? He does not answer properly. So I had to go to the browsing center to find out.
Now this is what it turned out to be:
An offer from a US company to start their India operations! They wanted us to start a “Private Limited” in India and they were ready to fund it. We were allowed to continue working in the companies that we were placed in and once we felt this company that we started is able to sustain itself, we could quit our jobs and continue working on it full-time. Sounds reasonable. Worth trying. That's what I felt.
So we started working on this for the next one week in home lab. The main problem that concerned us was, “How can we work in another company when we are already placed in another? Will it help us achieve our dream? We are not after money, so is this worth it?” The person who made this offer (hereafter referred to as Mr. CTO) didn't know how tough it is to start a pvt ltd in India. He wanted us to start it in 2 days and start work immediately. Also, he was probably unaware that in India nothing works without under-hand transactions. So we told Mr. CTO that since we have these problems, we won't start this pvt ltd immediately, but start working on the project. (It would violate BCG of our company, but let's see what can be done about it…)
We had read about the starting of a company in “Management in Engineering” and now we were looking at the practical aspects of it.
Mr. CTO, was not aware that we were placed in IBM. When he did, he was shocked. He knew it was impossible for us to work on this offer. So he made another offer:
Work on an open source project for the next 3 months and at the end of it, I'll give you the entire salary what IBM pays you in one year. You then quit IBM and join us full time.
Reasonable again. Remember that I had not -joined- IBM and so I didn't know what IBM allows and what it does not. But when I read the BCG, I knew that even this would not be possible according to the BCG.
Meanwhile, Mr. CTO, who was not even aware of our problems, was in full-zoom. He sent us the “First assignment”. We found that the “First Assignment” clashes with the interests of Ananyeah. It was clear that, if at all we were working on this idea, we had to make sure that we also own it. So we told Mr. CTO about this. Mr. CTO changed the offer. We soon felt, he was trying to “utilize” us. We could not see any advantages of working with him or his company. So we declined the offer.
In the meantime, we had joined our jobs. And you know how my IBM offer mail began,
“Hope you are having a nice vacation, free from worries since your examinations are complete and you have an offer from an excellent company in hand.”
Well said!!!
(All people relevant to this blog, may write comments putting in their own experiences or blog about it in their own blogs. There is no point in hiding it.)