The Last One Year! (Strictly Professional)

It’s been a year today (actually on 29th of Feb but technically today) since I quit my job at Google to start on my own. The last one year has been full of ups and downs but I have no regrets.

The product that I was working on was in development phase and Google’s stocks were soaring when I had decided to quit.. I decided to offer an extended notice period of 2 months instead of a month as I was handling quite a few things at Google and transition would take some time.

That did not work out well for me, stocks fell around the same time (from approximately $700 to $400 per share) and I lost bulk of the savings. I put the project on hold as I did not have enough money to complete it.

I after leaving Google took a break for couple of months to relax a little and got back to work. While my well wishers and people around me thought I should get a “real” job. I didn’t think it was such a good idea as I quit Google to do something on my own not to work for another company.

I started focusing on what I love to do the most, TNerd.com. My goal was to make it a revenue generating blog. Within 4 months number of unique visitors increased from 30K to 250K. Today I make more money than I was making at my previous job.

During the time I was working on TNerd.com there came a few consulting opportunities (Thanks to Vivek) however those didn’t materialize as our consulting fees was “high”. It was a good experience, during the process we met few of the known/top personalities from the Indian advertising industry and they loved what we had to offer.

Had quite a few offers but the notable ones came in the last four months. I’ve had offers from two different companies to come onboard as stakeholders. One I couldn’t take and the other I couldn’t deny. Also, I am on the advisory board of Adaptive Mobile Networks Ltd. offering insights and feedback on the product.

I’d like to think that the turbulent financial phase is over in the last one year. I have recently started reviving the project I originally wanted to work on, nothing concrete yet but definitely working towards BRINGING IT TO LIFE!

When I look back at what I’ve been up to in the last one year, I think it went pretty well professionally. It changed my perspective towards a lot of things and has refined my thought process.

Though the whole year was just Talk, Talk, Talk & Talk.. the coming year is going to be full of action.

Things to watch out for.. 1) TNerd.com will achieve new heights and a lot more recognition, 2) Launch at least one product with the companies I am working with, and 3) I will have my product ready for launch.

Check back in a year to see what I’ve been up to :)

Image Credit: Jon Block