Landing on my feet
A non-guide to starting a technology company while starting a family.
If there is one phrase I would use to describe 2023, it would be “Landing on my feet“. 2023 has got to be the year I worked the hardest on my life. You always have SOME idea of what life is going to be like each year, but never the full range of things and the way they can impact you and your family. Mine was the same. And mind you, a lot can happen in 1 year. This was the year I truly learned to embrace life for everything it has to offer - the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s start with the good.
My wife and I welcomed a beautiful baby boy in June. Life has never been the same after that. For one, I could never function with less than 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I now know that this hypothesis is partly wrong. I still need 8 hours of sleep. But it can lot more broken. And I can still function. No coffee needed. I had always thought that I had a very happy life. But never imagined how much happier I would be after the baby. The range of feelings and emotions I can feel now has at least doubled. I have a completely new understanding of unconditional love and how it feels to be the one providing it. And completely new understanding of gratitude. I have fully embraced my new identity as a father. I feel more responsible, not just for my son, but everything else I do as well. It's weird.
Work and life has blended in a good way. I leave home super energized and come back eager to spend time with my son. I work at odd hours and sometimes think about work problems when I wake up to care for the baby. I think about the baby while I'm at work. So, it's a lot of thinking overall. The worst of days at work don't have much of an effect on my mood anymore. It feels like a superpower. This is fitting, now that I'm building a startup company. This is the second baby I'm responsible for. And it's equally fun to think and work on growing this baby. Being able to build a technology business from the ground up with a talented team is a dream come true. I'm truly grateful to my cofounders and the (small) team I work with. There's a lot to accomplish and we're just getting started. 2024 is going to be a defining year. LFG 🚀
Other good things that happened in 2023:
Getting my O1 Visa, which allowed me to start the company.
Meeting my cofounders.
Being backed by Y Combinator.
Raising a good seed round.
Publishing a book (3D Deep Learning with Python: Design and develop your computer vision model with 3D data using PyTorch3D and more https://a.co/d/f3UIsx0)
Spending considerable time with parents.
It's not to say that things are always rosey. One piece of unsolicited advice - if you are thinking of starting a tech. company while starting a family - don't do it. Unless you have a truly resourceful and supportive set of people around you who understand what it takes (spouse being the most crucial in this). Even with this, it's hard on most days. You need balls of steel and a strong support system to actually pull it off. I'm in the midst of it. So ask me again in a few years.
I lost my uncle this year. It's something I'll think about a lot in the next few months - life is unpredictable in many ways. This is partly what makes it interesting. But it can throw a few bad surprises. And one can never be prepared for it. Sometimes, you just need to accept it and keep going. Because life is worth it. It's worth everything you put into it.
I don't know for sure what 2024 is going to be like. But I know I'm in it for the ride. If 2023 was about landing on my feet, 2024 will be about learning to fly 🚀