The Magic of a 1.0 GPA Transcript

[Music]

life can only be understood

backwards the famous quote from an 18th

century

danish philosopher soren kirkgard years

later

steve jobs said you can’t connect the

dots looking forward

you can only connect them looking

backwards

how these words have rung true for me

i am a failed computer science graduate

that flunked his first year of college i

got put on probation

because my grades were too low for the

scholarship that the college had given

me

and i had to do summer school for three

years to be able to graduate

on time i did not know then that getting

a 1.0 gpa transcript

would completely change the course of my

life

however at the time listening to my

father’s voice

yelling because he was disappointed in

the grades i had

i wanted my life to be over i had a keen

interest in technology from a very early

age

we did not have a lot of money so we i

spent my holidays at my dad’s office

pulling apart computers that he was not

using taking a part with x386 down to

its back components

and then putting them all back together

so that it would start working again

but it did not work all the time there

were many times

when i would miss a wire or i would put

a chip in the wrong place

and then i had to make that quick sos

call to the to the computer engineer

so that i could get the computer fixed

before my father found out

however after several months of

these sos calls right i finally

started to get a hang of how this

computer worked and this was really my

own jigard

way of playing lego my keen interest in

computers

led me to believe that i should pursue

computer science

as my as as my engineering degree

i believe that i got a scholarship

therefore

you know that further validated my

belief that i actually might be good at

computer engineering

however i have never been so wrong about

my

own abilities as i was then

i hated every minute of staying up

and working on code drinking large cups

of coffee

on those cold texas nights and writing

pages and pages and pages of code

i got it was doubly frustrating to miss

a comma here or there

and then that would lead to a syntax

error and then would

again lead to hours and hours of going

through my

already already written code to figure

out the error my inability to master the

subject got reflected in my grades

i was lost in class i regularly flunked

tests i regularly missed class

and despite the best efforts of my

professors i was a lost cause

what was truly ironic was that i

actually roomed with four computer

science graduates

therefore they you know they just got

and they loved every single thing that i

hated

i feared telling my parents about my

falling grades

because and that the fact that i did not

like computer science

because you know we all are that way

but i also made a plan to make sure that

my parents did not see the transcript

i got a friend to camp out at home and

wait until the transcript came in

and then she quickly flicked that

transfer transcript

destroyed it and ensured that my parents

never got to see how low my grades were

but my college turned out to be smarter

than i was right

so they sent another letter to my

parents

talking about how i was on probation and

my grades were too low

and if i did not improve my grades in

the next semester

i could lose my scholarship i can still

remember

the ringing feeling in my ear as my

father yelled his heart out

you know on a cross-country call telling

me that

my career in the u.s was over and i

should come back home and start college

over there

however i told him that i was not coming

back that i would not come back till i

graduated

and while i did not have a clear plan

when i put down that phone call

my first order of business was to get

out of computer science

exactly three years later from that day

i graduated with a double major in

business administration and economics

i could see from the stage that my

parents eyes

were tearing up and they could not hold

back their emotions as i received my

college degree

during the campus visit every single

professor referred to my parents by

their

by their name and they got wined and

dined because my professors wanted me to

pursue a phd in economics

i did not pursue further higher

education work

but neither does this story end over

that

a senior from the business

administration stream somebody i would

have never met

in the computer science stream got me an

interview

with the ceo of a fast growing energy

startup

in dallas called stream energy after my

interview

my college senior sameer asked me to

attend

what was a sales training seminar for

the direct sales team that sold for

stream

he sold me on the trading by saying you

know you’re going to meet the coolest

indian

that he had ever met to which i said

sameer i am actually the coolest indian

that you have ever met

despite my reservations and despite you

know my reluctance to go in

i was after under an obligation because

he got me that interview

so i joined the sales training very very

reluctantly

it was here that my life changed once

again

i met the mentor that i would have for

the next five years

and somebody who would teach me how to

sell any product and service to anyone

at a price that i wanted he mentored me

to

create a nationwide sales force of over

500 people

and we sold long-term energy contracts

to small and medium business owners

across the country

my role required me to not cold call

walk into at least 50 to 60 businesses

per day and

meet with 20 to 30 business owners on a

daily daily basis

and understand their power requirements

my mentors sold instruction tool

was that i had to get kicked out of five

businesses every single day

that was that was the requirement of the

job because if i wasn’t getting kicked

out five times a day

it meant that i wasn’t asking for

business hard enough and i had to call

him every time

i got kicked out but i also had to

understand these businesses at a very

minute level because i had to prepare

customized pricing proposals for the

businesses to match

the requirements of their business over

the course of eight years of being in

this space in the us i met over a

hundred thousand

business owners i contracted everyone

from the

the highest revenue generating dunkin

donuts in the world which is located in

chicago

to all the independent businesses that i

signed up at the cross street of

south 14th street and butternut street

in abilene texas

the chance to get to see these

businesses from a very close vantage

point

and the fact that i could talk and and

and build rapport with so many business

owners

i had no idea what impact i would have

later on in life

ultimately my mentor also gave me

my my break in entrepreneurship my

mentor’s name by the way

michael jomana mj as we call him we ran

that business after acquiring it from

him

for three years and the exit from that

business

was actually the capital utilized to

invest into crap

into startups like purple tala exotel

you know it’s the first few stellar

companies coming out of india ventures

portfolio

interest interestingly my first ever

equity investment in a startup was

also due to mj he got me shares in a

company called in this in stream energy

whose energy vertical got sold to nrg

last year nrg is a five

it’s a fortune 500 company and this deal

happened at 300 million dollars

which was quite exciting for all the

investors obviously

all these successful investments

encouraged over 50 individuals and

family offices

to back india’s first early stage micro

vc fund

started by me called venture fund the

fund has current investments in

companies like agni cool

landing club dalchini everest fleet

jado’s entertainment and employs over 2

000 people directly

and also impacts the lives of hundreds

of thousands of people

every single day now none of this could

have happened

if i hadn’t flunked the first year of

college my failure in pursuing a

computer science

career ended up being the best mistake

of my life

sometimes i wonder how different life

could have really been

if that massive ripple had never taken

place

it is here that i remember the last six

lines of john whittier’s poem

that all us daughter or salesmen are

made to memorize

for those tough days of sales when we

come back home without selling anything

success is failure turned inside out the

silver tint

in the clouds of doubt and you can never

just tell

how close you are it may be near

when it seems so far so stick to the

fight

when your hardest hit it’s only when

things

seem worse that you must not quit

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