Even as the world mourns the passing of Steve Jobs, I am slowly beginning to understand how dreamers can change our lives. I now realize that when such dreamers make it their life's ambition to turn their dreams into a reality, persist with their dreams, become successful innovators and entrepreneurs, they change the way we live. Imagine how the world would be if Michael Faraday had given up working with dynamos and electricity because he was not sure how electricity can be used once it was generated. Or, Edison not bothering to perfect his Electric Bulb and discard it as a failure. No wonder such entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors are remembered for a long time. Mostly for all the right reasons. They also happen to be good idols for kids with dreams.
While I was still in college, a bunch of friends of mine wanted to go down the path of innovation and entrepreneurship following such idols. Whilst some did eventually become entrepreneurs, others took up jobs with their 'dream companies'.
I did not have any 'Dream Company' or a 'dream' to begin with because I was not sure where I was headed. A series of fortunate and sometimes not-so-fortunate events led me to be where I am today. In a sometimes dull, sometimes monotonous, sometimes direction-less and sometimes not-so-creative but overall a not-too-bad job. And I'm not complaining. That's because one can't complain when he is set all adrift in the sea on a rudderless raft and hopes to end beached up on a lovely sun-kissed island - or at least an island where you can survive by still being a vegetarian - one fine day.
While 'adrift', I did gather some survival experiences that helped me understand how things worked in the world of entrepreneurship. I had joined a small start up (started by a very bright entrepreneur and his very bright brother-in-law) that took up back office and Quality Assurance work of Silicon Valley start ups. These Silicon Valley start ups were mainly headed by IT wizards who had left their cushy jobs in their 'dream' companies and now felt that they could venture out on their own. Every venture was a ".com" whose two foundations were 1. a good/very good/brilliant/not-so-brilliant idea and 2. "HTML & ASP for Dummies". Our company took up QA work for such ventures. Though some of the ideas were neat, some of them were downright stupid. One even came up with a keylogger concept to capture stock trading done on the internet so that user need not bother with the additional step of saving his data on an excel sheet at the end of each transaction he did on several stock-trading websites. In today's terms this would have been a classic case of security breach and would have landed a lot of people on the other side of the law. Thankfully, it never worked. For some weird reason, despite being a newbie, I knew that not all of these ideas might work out. I was not wrong. Six months later, if I tried to type in the URL of the websites that I had painstakingly QA'ed, I'd get the 404.
Starting up is one thing but sustaining the idea (provided it was good) till it succeeded was a whole different ball game altogether. I must say that some of the websites did survive the six-month test but not for long. The only company that stood the test of time and still continues to outlive all others today happened to be the startup I worked for. It had taken up the dirty job of QA'ing webpages and became a leader in the world of QA. Yes, QA projects. Boring QA projects. A job no company would want to take. That's because while every self-proclaimed hotshot programmer and start up guru dreamed of writing zillions of lines of adventurous code, a QA engineer tested someone else's bug-infested, error-ridden, pathetically documented code while cursing his luck for ending up in such a job. Doing QA was not a new idea, nor a great idea (in fact a very boring idea) but building expertise in QA helped the organization grow to extraordinary levels. Lesson learned.
So, looking back I now realize that entrepreneurship need not always require a new or a non-boring idea but instead requires the will to survive with whatever expertise you build. No matter how boring it is. Till the time you don't have such a plan or a 'dream' or have a 'dream job' in mind, stick onto your sometimes dull, sometimes monotonous, sometimes direction-less and sometimes not-so-creative job. As they say, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. And it might actually work till the time you hit that sun-kissed island. There is a fortune waiting in taking up things which others don't want to do. Till that time, as someone once said, "Stay hungry, stay foolish". And dream.
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