Our first startup office - doraithodla/notes GitHub Wiki

Our First Office

Working with a team member is more fun than working alone. Having a partner allows you to brainstorm ideas, get questioned and forces you to think of different points of view. Sometimes working alone is more productive. You are not weighed down and you can progress much faster, especially in coding tasks. Every startup and every team needs to find the balance between working alone and working with others.

I described my woes about working alone in Chennai. To my immense relief, Suren arrived in Chennai. It was a big shift for him to move from his family (he was staying at his uncle's place in Bombay) to come and be alone. He needed some place to stay so we picked a hotel near Luz called Murudi Lodge. I don't remember exactly how we picked that place. It was central and had easy access to eating places and good bus connections. His room, however, was dinky and kind of dark (no natural sunlight). That place served as our first Chennai office. Fortunately in the corridor were some tables with a few chairs and had better ventilation. We used it as our conference space. Everyday, I would take a bus from Mandaveli to Luz and land up in Suren's place and we used to work together.

We got our first commercial customer and two projects. Suren had to work on 1401 simulator (which was already there in open source but had some bugs) and I was supposed to teach and write some Cobol programs. While I knew a bit of Cobol, through my support work, I had never written any commercial apps. I used to get the specifications from the EDP department analysts and write programs.

There was a small catch. We did not get computer time during day time. So we had to take a bus (I think it was 56c) to Ennore where Ashok Leyland was located, and work through the night, whenever the computer time was available. During heavy loads (like the payroll period), the computer was heavily loaded and very slow. Even though our work finished by 2 or 3am sometimes, there was no way to get back. The first 56c was in the morning around 5am. So I used to sleep on large desks for a few hours in the night. Sometimes, I would not sleep but read. That is where I developed the habit of reading Computer World, a magazine that covered IT. It was quite a fascinating tech magazine and I learned a lot reading the articles.

Sriram never liked me going to Ashok Leyland. He got used to me sleeping with him and telling him stories. I used to tell him the same story, every night. It was a made up story. It went something like this. We had a high tech bus. The bus was powered by a nuclear reactor and solar panels. The bus used to pick up and drop family members at various places. This way Sriram knew some of the places in Chennai and many of the members in the family. We made up special things about every member and created several funny situations. It was quite a bit of entertainment for him.

I used to come back, sleeping in the bus. That was not enough so I used to sleep in the afternoon. So even though I was working throughout the night, I used to make up part of my sleep. Suren had a problem. He could not sleep in the afternoons. So he was up in the night and pretty much throughout the day. That must have been really tough for him. But he never complained. He always used to smile and say that it is ok. I have never seen anyone with his level of endurance.

Having Suren, improved my quality of life too. We used to talk a lot about our plans. Mostly I used to talk and he used to listen. Once in a while, he would add his observations. Life was hectic. With two kids, very little money, night shifts and other miscellaneous bits of work, the first few months of our startup was a rickety ride.