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arunaugustine

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Maker of things and thinker of thoughts.

I took a leap of faith from Mountain View and landed in Kochi.

Read the story: https://www.indiehackers.com/edit-article/@arunaugustine/my-long-journey-from-quitting-silicon-valley-to-getting-our-first-paid-customer-aeda7e0cb9

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Cloudflare was down 8 months ago

They had a scheduled maintenance between 7am and 11am UTC in Chicago. But that should have re-routed traffic not take down internet right?

For someone who wants to tread this path, using postgreSQL stored procedures in a team settings, what would be a good dev workflow in a team. Update them in git and use a CI to update the DB etc? Is there some tips that you can share on that?

TinyBase looks very promising! Is there a doc or reference you can guide me to, for using TinyBase with Preact.js instead of React?

Also an Ex-FANG software engineer.

1. Quit and returned to home country before starting up. I did try the evenings and weekend startup approach, but got close to burn out. For me at least, starting up meant working on something full time.

2. Took 4 pivots and as many years to get our first dollar. In year 2, we did earn some money but was cost of goods sold (travel tickets, building materials, do can't really count that as dollar earned).

3. It was a series of plateaus. Took a long time for the first $10, then about a year to first $1000, then an year to $3000 and then another year to $10K. This is just one data point. Smarter/Luckier people may do it faster/better.

4. I love software engineering. I am still doing it at my startup. I'm doing it my way, learning and experimenting with stuff. Actually my core motivation is to keep doing software (and someday even build a programming language) supported by a team and company creating value for others and getting paid for it.

5. With a co-founder.

6. An article on the initial journey, I wrote down a while back. https://medium.com/messengermarketing/from-quitting-silicon-...

Btw, the idea mentioned at the end of the article also failed. But that final pivot is what we are still working on (in-cart campaign software for Shopify stores). This second half of the journey is still ongoing. Will try to write it down someday.

I stayed as a guest student in San Francisco Zen center for $20/night (currently it's $25/night). But you will have assigned work to do during the day (I cut onions in the kitchen) but you will be free in the evenings and on weekends to explore the city. The city center of the Zen center is right in the city. Details here [1]

I stayed mostly to learn about Zen meditation (I had heard that Steve Jobs practiced Zen meditation). This was when I was brand new to San Francisco just before joining my first job after finishing up my Masters as an International student.

Post my one week stay here, I stayed in a hacker house (Startup Embassy) for one whole year, staying in a bunk bed and having some of the best days of my life chatting and exploring with other founders and wannabe-entrepreneurs. Then started own own hacker house (community living with airbnb beds for founders) with friends I made there for the next year, near Mountain View California. My friends made it into YC and I returned to India to startup (due to H1B visa considerations among other things). I'm not sure if these are accepting guests anymore.

[1] https://www.sfzc.org/locations/city-center/visits-stays-city...

Back to India 4 years ago

Kerala also has support from the local state government for startups. I returned to India in 2015 to startup and an equity free grant from Kerala state government sustained me and my team for a couple of years till we could stand on our own feet using revenue. Of course we also had support from our family (financial and otherwise, which the government grant helped a lot). Plus the cost of living is absurdly low compared to my life in Mountain View, California

I have tried that in my work at my startup and failed. Alternating days did not work either. Jon's recommendation about alternating weeks is what I am going to try next.

I feel it's more akin to music genres. Sometimes two genres merge to create a new one. So that kind of mix-and-match of ideas can create more programming languages, without waiting for a paradigm change I think.