Our skateboard year
This is a personal account of running AltCampus and is more like a personal meditation on the year than sharing the learnings.
At the end of 2018, sitting on one of the boulders overlooking the Dharamshala town I was thinking — this would be “the year”, the base year. I had a sense that it would be tough and we would be fighting for survival but if we made it through we would have covered a lot of ground. AltCampus was, still is, super tiny and not even a batch had graduated.
This has been the kind of year where you put four tiny wheels on a plank, move, stumble, fall, rise, tighten the wheels, learn to glide, move and repeat — The skateboard year. This post shares the highlights; Time, Health, Patience, Meaning, Long game.
AltCampus is modeled to be a learning community, more open and affordable than a college and less isolating than a real-world-living-and-learning-alone-in-an-apartment. It’s something that a lot of us have not even experienced. Community is at the core of things. We are building something that we wish our younger selves could have been a part of(actually I kind of did).
We want to build something that lasts. We believe more in slow-burn over hustle, systems over goals, quality over quantity, profitability over hockey curve.
Move & Stumble
One of the fascinating parts of this offline community model in a beautiful location, especially as you grow, is the need for a physical space that we could call ours and that helps in building the community vigor, or at least I thought so. We decided to set up our own small space, a real campus. Most of our close friends and mentors advised against it and probably they were right but it seemed pretty meaningful to us, we pursued and these people stood by us ♥️. It’s a decision that I regretted for most of this year; maybe simply because we were in the messy middle. It’s been a massive distraction for me. Our core learning program never took the hit, thanks to my co-founders.
For that, we along with students went through some tough and testing times. I will spare the details but now I look back and think — “oh damn! We stood through the rain, holding the sail waiting for the storm to pass.”. Anyway, mostly it was a test of patience, hope, and perseverance.
Being okay
AltCampus model is a bit operation heavy and needs capital, and we have been producing good results albeit tiny. We have never considered outside funding. However, almost all major VC firms in India have had some level of talk with us regarding funding, mostly because they want to back an indigenous LambdaSchool. Invariably one of the first questions they would ask is — if we fund you, would you be willing to quit Dharamshala and move to Bangalore? What’s your growth curve and when are you scaling? They might be right in suggesting so but they have been wrong in understanding us. We are okay being small. Also, we are not here to compete. I have often found myself saying some version of — Ok VC!
We would rather take the slow train than the wrong train. Thanks to family and friends we remain bootstrapped.
Health
I have had sleep issues for the last 3–4 years because of working long hours, sometimes late into the night and also being a bit too hard on myself in the early 20s. Being an operator with super limited resources is stressful. Multiple times this year I have found myself running out of all the resourcefulness. I have fought but I have struggled. Many nights I just couldn’t sleep, my energy was rock bottom. Most of the time, I would just be a walking zombie. If you are responsible for pushing people forward, nothing hits your morale more than your own productivity falling below your bar.
In October, I decided to take a month-long Diwali break. The break helped me remind an obvious fact — You can’t take care of anything if you can’t take care of yourself. You can only serve if you have the self. I got a full medical check-up done and made a few major changes. I have been sleeping way better and feel like a completely different person. If you are struggling with sleep/stress, please take care of yourself first, feel free to DM me. I wrote about getting better sleep as the very first post on my new blog.
I have pulled enough all-nighters in my early 20s to realize that the next day is a total waste. Go easy on yourself, work can wait. All the hustle porn, changing the world narrative is bullshit. Change yourself. Make your health, especially sleep a priority, it will help you change the world.
A few all-nighters stand out because they make for great memories; if life gives you those occasional ones, take it. As a rule of thumb, never pull an all-nighter alone.
Worth it?
What makes it worth it? Tiny things -
- when a student walks up tells you that they just published their 7th article
- that they didn’t know HTML 6 months ago and now can build full-stack apps.
- that they learned how to be in a social setting or learned to play basketball
- that they enjoy their very first month here
- that they made good friends, or that it was life-changing.
- that they learned about learning and had great late-night conversations, sitting under a star-lit sky enjoying the view of the mighty Himalayas and the city lights.
- when a student gets his/her first tech job
- seeing their confidence grow as they understand Redux or some data structure.
- when a student gets a job and parents call up to tell us what it means
I cannot imagine myself working on anything as meaningful as making some impact on these young folks. If there is anything, I wish I had more personal energy so that I could have spent more time with students personally.
Bicycle
Things are visibly better, our core learning program is way better now, students have started getting good jobs with really good pay. Word of mouth has kicked in. But to be honest, by the end of this year I had hoped that we would have much more in place than what we have now but then I have also learned to respect time. All lasting things come from compounding and compounding needs time.
I will be the first to admit that we are still a mediocre organization. We need to push ourselves further, set up higher standards and better processes. This is the year that we get to be more than a coding bootcamp. We can’t yet put an engine in the skateboard but this year I hope we can get bigger wheels, sturdy frame, put up a chain, get some leverage and ride our bicycle up the hill. 2020 🚵♂️.
After all this, my most prominent emotion remains to be the one of gratefulness. I am extremely grateful to our team, supportive families and some great friends and mentors who have been there no matter what. Thanks, Setu, Ramesh, Vaibhav, Abhinay, Santu, Akshay, Ansal, freeman, all AltCampus students and staff, and everyone who has stood by us!
One of the maxims I live by is — “When I am 80 years old what interesting personal stories will I tell to my grandkids?”. This year gave me a lot of those! I learned a good deal about operating, human behavior, sales, and setting up systems but more importantly about myself.
That’s the year for us, over the next 4 days we are going to celebrate our failures, successes and enjoy our year-end AltCampus’ fest — Encore!
Happy New Year, folks!
PS — I just started writing here, please subscribe if you would like to hear more from me.
