It is tempting when you end an association that is over three and a half years old to lean back and let it rip at all things negative and gloat over all things positive. Setting up a product from scratch, which is part of a larger product, is an exhilarating experience. Starting with just two people and an old beaten up computer, watching it grow into a 40-plus strong family, absorbing along the way the pains of growth, squabbles, glory and joy, is something everyone has to experience. Then again, like any narrative that involves the progress from infancy to adulthood, there is also the inevitable shadow of departure for the person who helped it grow always hanging in the background. And that is where I am at now.

It is one of the hardest things to have the certainty about what you want to do, without not much of a certainly about how you want to go about it. The process has been daunting, with years of learning gulped down the gullet in a timeframe of months. That, combined with the downturn, has made it into a roller coaster ride -- both emotional and professional -- which has often made it way more difficult than what it should ideally be. In the current set of circumstances, things that you think you know is a quantum that is forever in flux. Plans change, projections change; what you can/will also changes in line with that.

The first lesson on the long road to entrepreneurship is that it is not easy. Unlike other instances of difficulty in life, starting on your own is something that you bring upon yourself. It is often like bringing up a child; you can give the best of everything you can get for it, but that has little bearing on how the child will eventually turn out. Most importantly, like a child, you can't wish it away. It demands an absolute commitment and that is where most stumble. It demands nothing but the best out of you, which, if you can't provide, will eventually lead you into failure sooner or later.

The cacophony of contrasts on the day (on November 1st) I resigned from my job was an apt music to set the events to. It is the most insane time to leave the safe confines of a regular job when people are getting laid off left, right and centre. It is the worst possible time in about a decade to try and raise any kind of capital. And to make matters even more interesting, I have little by means of any background worth mentioning in attempting what I am trying to do. Even the day I left, a nice, bright, sunny day was not really the best of days to do something like that. But this is an eventuality I've been avoiding for a while now. It really is now or never.

Going forward, there are numerous options, covering product niches from publishing to enterprise software. There are numerous opportunities for convergence between what we know in the so-called web 2.0 world and the more traditional business establishments. Consumer-facing options are not really high on the agenda. They are easy to build, but costly to distribute (in terms of traction) and an absolute bitch to monetize. We still don't have an online consumer-facing product that is not directly tied to advertising to make a living, which is an opportunity. But I don't think the market is there for it yet.

I have been working with couple of start ups in an informal way with guidance and advice for a while now, so the space is not entirely unknown to me, but transforming something irregular and free into a monetizable entity is a different ball game altogether. But I do strongly believe that there is a significant pool of talent out there which does not fit into any traditional set up. This, if properly leveraged, and backed up by the right resources can bring about some of the best days of the Indian digital space ever. Whether that is possible is something I will find out in the days and months to come.

If you do think what you have just read finds a resonance in you, drop me a line, we can always talk.