Live physically in India, digitally in the USA, imaginatively in 2035!
My entrepreneurship advice for young grads in India
Someone graduating from college and interested in entrepreneurship asked for a one-line piece of advice!
I told him to “Live physically in India, digitally in the USA, imaginatively in 2035!”
1. Living physically in India
India is still cheap! It accommodates a $100 per month wage worker and a $100 per hour freelancer, quite often on the same street! One lives in a gated community with zeroth world amenities and the other works as a watchman for a small 15-flat apartment with tiny room accommodation.
Inflation exists in the world but not in the common people’s minds! One can come from any small town to a city like Hyderabad and take a 4-sharing PG (hostel) in Kukatpally with provided food for 6000 rupees (~$70) a month in 2013. Guess what! You can do the same today in 2024 and for the same money! It literally blows your mind!
I rented my current flat a little over 4 years back! Someone offered daily car cleaning for 500 rupees a month (~$6). Guess what! The apartment society/individual hasn’t changed their prices since then. Even today in 2024, they clean the car every day and do a deep vacuum cleaning once a month for literally $6 a month! I compensate by giving bonuses during festivals, but you get a sense of how unaware the common population is of inflation. It literally blows your mind!
2. Digitally in the USA
As an entrepreneur, it costs more money to operate a bank account / open a company (C-corp/LLC) in the USA, but I can’t stress enough how helpful a first-world bank account and company is when applying for any startup credits, winning SaaS customer trust, integrating payment gateways like Stripe, etc. It’s much better even if you are VC fundraising and later want to move to the US/ Y-Combinator, etc.
Any international money transactions originating from India are assumed to be fraudulent by default by most first-world folks! You have to prove yourself otherwise!
3. Imaginatively in 2035
Build your processes considering the next decade’s AI progress in advance!
Lean/solo operations, fractional bets on multiple ideas, remote and async communication, etc. Imagine how an AI-accelerated world would be a decade later and build your existing processes to be ready for that! In short, build for an AI-automated and human supervision/feedback system for everything and anything!
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