At Lehman, I was doing $25-50 million deals. I was paid over $100,000 per year. I wore expensive suits and travelled business class.
When we started Twish, my first startup, we struggled to generate sales. No one wanted our product so we tried different things. After a few months, one of the colleges expressed interest in running a technical analysis workshop. It’s difficult to describe the intense joy I felt when the college called to confirm that they were indeed buying a Rs. 15,000 (about $300 at the time) workshop from us. I remember running and jumping in my house, I was so happy! None of my multi-million dollar deals at Lehman (not even my first one) brought the joy that I got from selling a $300 workshop. At Lehman, I was just a cog in a giant machine. But Twish was my own company and this was my own revenue.
Twish ultimately failed, but it helped me understand the joy of ownership.