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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