The Real Xperiment @ NoPay Startups!

As an Individual we are born with abilitiy to have "Ideas". Most of us never persue them. Primarily due to fact that we do not know how to go about it or we don't have money or don't know how to raise money to commercialize the idea. Knowing that it is kind of impossible to execute, we just move on with our daily lives and never fathom persuing our ideas. I was one of those individuals as well and but few decisions changed my path.

Well, I just realized that I have never mentioned in my blogs about my startup passion and xperimentz. Tonight, I felt like letting you all know what has been my driving force, what makes me feel alive everyday I wake up.

I was about to give up almost two and half years ago when I was frustrated with fact that medyantraa.com, my medical tourism startup was a failure. While pondering over the reasons of this failure, the obvious answers were: bandwidth, the 'I cant do it alone' words and money obviously. Something clicked and as usual I started writing, by evening I had the name NoPay! Next day I made a decision to leave Iowa and move to the valley, the silicon valley. 

Couple of months down the line I was here in the valley settling down with my new job and simultaneously working on NoPay! Being in valley did help to an extent but it was not easy to bring a complex business idea to reality. This time I decided I wont quit, I found hacker dojo, a community of entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs. It infused new energy and ideas into me. Instead of knocking investors doors I decided to do an experiment with NoPay to prove it works, www.NoPayStartups.com was born in next few minutes and my first meetup was scheduled. I was not sure if people will show up so I requested few friends to rsvp yes and be there. My good friend and roommate then, Chai showed up with Padma, his wife and helped me setup the place. Over 25 people showed up, it was a success. 

I continued this xperiment for over one and half years till July this year, when I realized its time to take it to next level. Thanks to some of my mentors and great startup gurus who agreed to join me in taking NoPay to where it deserves to be. With over 7 success stories, today we are a great team of individuals helping new entrepreneurs to achieve their goals without spending any money at NoPay. 

I will write again to let you all know when NoPay is ready to help more startups and that would be soon. Wish NoPay team good luck!

Cheers!

Chet Jain

Mid-Career Dilemma!

Hi Friends,

I am starting a new series of posts to bring up issues related to mid-career dilemma. I will be publishing several opinions and suggestions from mentors/professionals about dilemma most people face in mid of their career. I request you all to post your comments and opinion. To start with I would like to share one of the articles I read few months ago. This article was about professionals not able to make career decision in the mid of their career. There is this simple six-question technique recommended for anyone who is experiencing a career problem. By answering these six questions (at your own pace), you’ll be able to “clarify what’s eating at you, how you want things to be different, what you need to do and whether you’re willing to do it.”

The questions are:

• What is your problem?
• Why is that a problem? What troubles you about that?
• How do you want this situation to be? If this problem were solved, what would the situation be like? How would you feel?
• What’s stopping you from making that happen?
• What do you need to do to make that happen? What needs to change? What do you need to ask of others? What do you need to change inside yourself?
• Now that you know what needs to be done, what are you going to do?

I think these questions are useful in that they allow you to step back and look at your problem somewhat objectively.

Give it a shot and I wish it works for you.