Hello friends,
This is something that I wanted to share from sometime. What is the best reward that a startup can get. Or to put this question in a different perspective why are we in this startup game altogether, putting in years of hard-work and always staring into uncertainty.
I really don’t know what it should be, but at least for us we have found the answer.
This happened some two weeks back. One fine evening we received this email from a guy based in Australia. It was not our first email, having received over 100 feedback/love/hate emails.
But this email was different and it went something like this..
“I recently did a factory reset to my tablet and lost all my apps. I would normally just reinstall from Google Play store but since reset my play store won’t work. I scoured the web for answers but there are no answers. The only app I really miss is your airstream app. I have the server on my PC and hoping you could give me a link to download your apk….. “
Wait… did he say THE ONLY APP I REALLY MISS IS YOUR AIRSTREAM APP???
I mean among the other 7,00,000 apps on Google Play he misses the AirStream the most, an app developed by some random guys at a corner street in Pune?
Whoa… this is huge.. when I read this, it was as if time came to a standstill. That moment was perfect, like it was serene & filled with excitement at the same time.
But then a sudden thought occurred, is this why we do this. Could there be a better motivation? Because in front of an email like this, questions about metrics, traction, active installs falls apart. Because now typical VC questions like do you really think people will use your app, where do you see your app two years from now, etc. just won’t matter. What matters is that right now our app has made a big difference in this person’s life oceans away, and he misses it. And we are pretty sure there are 1000 other lives that we have touched in a big way and who have not yet expressed it.
This is more than motivation & validation of our work. Looking at it once again, maybe this is main reason we started – to make a difference in people’s lives. In the startup noise this got replaced by having xxx,xxx users, traction, funding, getting featured here & there, etc. Now I can say thanks to this guy, we are again back on track, focussed on doing what we really intend to do. And I would like to ask all my entrepreneur friends to find the reason why they started in the first place, things will be much easier, everything will start to fall in place.
I would like to conclude with this quote I read somewhere:
“No one said its gonna be easy, they just said its worth it” Indeed.
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**We are Nityaa Labs, a startup based in Pune. We are developers of AirStream app on Google Play, using which you can stream media content and other files from PC to your smartphone. The world is moving towards a post-PC era, and we are here to accelerate it.
App Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nityaalabs.airstream
Landing Page: https://airstream.io
(please try out AirStream & give your feedback :))
Jitin Pillai
Thanks Asha for approving this post! And have to say TheRodinhoods is indeed a great platform.
Anamika Joshi
“ That moment was perfect, like it was serene & filled with excitement at the same time.” – wishing many more such moments to you!! 🙂
asha chaudhry
this is a great post jitin.
my humblest wish – for every rodinhooder to have such an uplifting story to share 🙂
Jitin Pillai
Thanks Anamika 🙂
Jitin Pillai
Thanks Asha 🙂
Rupesh Agarwal
Gr8 post Jitin!!!
Jitin Pillai
Thanks Rupesh 🙂
Akash Sachdev
Hi Jitin ,
Great post and I could relate to the fact of one such email or message offloading any other metric. The exhilaration is Gatorade on steroids. 🙂
Best of luck for your venture,
Cheers,
Mw
Jitin Pillai
Hi Akash, Thanks a lot!
I loved this – “The exhilaration is Gatorade on steroids” 🙂