I've always been a guy who believed that having a job I like, would be my best case scenario, and maybe after a few years, would think about starting something of my own. Maybe the mental barriers included feeling a technical and operational gap between my current skillset and what I assumed it took to succeed at running your own company. But then a multitude of things happened that caused those barriers to break down.
In my final year, I started interning at a medical drone delivery startup called Airbound, based in Bengaluru. It was just 4 people in the company at that time. Two founders, me and another guy working remotely. The CEO was a 17 year old guy who started the company when he was 15, and wanted to "prove to the world that tailsitter VTOLs are efficient and viable". That seemed pretty maverick-y to me. This was around the time when I started to think about startups in a more serious light. What seemed like far fetched business acumen or technical expertise, was actually just bold pursuit of an end-goal, with a lot of learning and iteration along the way. They weren't perfect, but they were closer to perfection daily. I think when I mentally accepted that most startups were just a bunch of 20-something YOs creating value for people without giving a fuck about what their credentials were, suddenly I felt more open to doing such things myself.
In my final semester at IITB, I took up an entrepreneurship course just for the hell of it. It was based around the model of startup creation that focused on customer discovery before product development itself. Similar to "" by Peter Thiel. The time I spent there actively participating, and hearing actual founder journeys removed those existing barriers even more. These were just ordinary people like me who were going out there and creating value for others, and being paid handsomely for it!
Quite coincidentially, the EF Bangalore Cohort was also being formed at this time, and I got in touch with them by chance on an afternoon at IITB. I really liked the structure of the cohort, and the fact that they would be willing to invest pre-idea into a person was interesting. At the time, I wasnt really aware of the usual dilutions at each stages of funding, and so 10% equity in exchange of the amount of help they would provide did not seem bad whatsoever. It was a win-win.
I'm currently still at Airbound, and waiting for October to arrive so that the EF Cohort begins. I've explored a few potential idea spaces with folks at EF, and there has been positive potential customer feedback! It seems to be a good starting point, so I'm hopeful.