….In continuation of what I did after I reached affected villages:
These are the 2 people (the woman in black Indian clothes and the guy in middle wearing white shirt) without whom I could not have done anything. They drove me around and did the translation for me since I could not understand villager’s language.

Trying to figure out the next step, we went to a private weaving society to get an estimate of the amount needed to fix a loom. We also found out the monthly amount earned by a weaver and whether there is a loan schema for weavers. When it came to loans, villagers were used to free loans and most of the times, close to elections, government
will forgive their loans.

On one hand I wanted to help them on other hand I never believed in free money. My belief is people don’t appreciate the help or the money if it’s given for free to them. I decided to setup a micro loan payment scheme where all those weavers who receive money have to pay a small amount back. To my surprise, some of them refused any kind of help on those terms. But I knew what I wanted to do so I decided to help only those who were willing to help themselves. Also I setup the system so that weavers receive the looms instead of getting money directly. Best of all I could help not only one but help 12 weavers establish their livelihoods one more time.

All those grueling flights and drives from San Francisco to these villages seemed worth it when I captured the smiles of 12 weavers whose families I helped.

On Nov26th, I flew for my long due trip to flood affected villages in Andhra Pradesh On oct 6th, I read this news on BBC and decided to do something about it. I was flying almost one and a half months later to put a face on the 4000 bucks we had raised to help the villagers. Some people I knew were doubtful about how much I can help after so many days of the flood. However I still wanted to see the situation first hand. So after 20 hours of flying and 4 hours of driving I reached the affected villages near Kurnool.

My first sight was rows of temporary tents built for villagers on both sides of the road.
Here is a video I recorded while driving by it:

I simply didn’t know where to start who to help? No government people around no NGOs in vicinity. After talking to people it seemed like NGOs give everything raised to government office which works directly with villagers. However due to corruption, nothing reaches to people. At that moment I was glad I decided to visit personally.

Here are some villagers waiting for their farms to be reusable again. I could not have done much for these people.

After driving around villages, talking to people, we finally reached Rajoli, one of the most affected villages. As the major profession, these villagers convert raw thread to beautiful Indian silk.

All the weaved clothes, weaving equipments(looms) were destroyed by the flood. On top looms are not even insured. This is how looms looked like after the flood.

Here is one villager trying to fix his destroyed loom.

Overall, the first impression was pretty sad one after seeing people living in tents with both privacy and security exposed. On top of that no hope for the future with nothing left to try one more time. I never felt more gratitude for what I have.

What?

This is how my tweets looked like starting from Oct 6th to Oct 9th (people had trusted me with $3000 with in 72 hours)

Why?

This picture in BBC headlines reminded me of my village and I wanted to do something about it no matter how small. So I decided to raise 3000. It was all on the spur of the moment. I did not know why I chose a region in India I don’t even understand its language. I don’t know who and how I wanted to help once I have the money. But none of these details were important to think about at that time. I just wanted to start with a faith that I can figure these things out once I am literally on the field.

How?

1. Technology

On Oct 6th I sent out a message asking people to donate to my cause. What was my cause? I wanted to change one person’s life( most likely an entrepreneur) in the region which was washed away by flood. To my surprise within 72 hours, I had more than 3000 in my Paypal. It would not have been possible to do it so fast with out technology.

I used FB causes application to create a cause.

I know charities,esp the ones far away, don’t have credibility among people, so I decided to go myself to the affected area and get first hand experience of the situation. This meant that people can not use Causes to transfer money. Paypal was my only option but that also meant that people had to trust me with their money.
Transparency has its virtues in these situations. So I used Google doc to list out all the details of the fund raising.

2. People, people and people

Everything else would have been useless if it were not for everyone who trusted me.

Thanks to all these people for their support:

Deepak Sridhar, Sachin Gandhi, Shuchi Rana, Baat Enosh, Prasad Boddupalli, Aihui Ong, Jazmin Hupp, Srividya Vemulakonda, Xue Jessie, Aryata Agarwal, Sashadry Divakarla, Jitendra Deshpande, Paresh Upadhyay, Neil Fernandes, Niraj Sharma, Karl & Fernanda, Mehran Bazargan, Sanjeet H Desai, Anonymous, Nitasha Verma, Vajji & Charu, srinivas sabbella, Alok Nagdev , Milan Mantri, Ruchira Modi, Vinodh and Mythili, saurabh shrivastava, Priti & Jayanto, Anonymous, Amit Gohil
Puneet Thapliyal, Anonymous, Surekha Saharan, Jitender Hooda, Naveen and Sakina, Shaherose Charania, Amanpreet Sidhu, Niharika Mateti

Next Step?

I am waiting for immigration document I need to travel outside US. I am hoping to receive it within weeks time frame. Hopefully till then basic facilities would have worked out for the affected people in the flood region and our money can go towards a sustainable business or something like that.

I would like to believe that all extra ordinary things must have started with ordinary moments like these when you just wanted to do something, no matter how small, about things. I hope I have such instinctive moments more often and I wish everyone find things they are passionate about.

I bought this book at San Francisco airport on my way to Utah. When I started reading it, first 50 pages were not very convincing to spend time finishing this book but I am glad I did finish it. The book is an interesting tale of a woman who goes to Rome, India and Indonesia to find some peace after having gone through a rough divorce and a rough relationship/fling. After finishing this book, I somehow had a wish that everyone I know including myself should be forced to go on a similar travel. World will be a much better place.

Below are some of my favorite lines from Elizabeth’s travel stories:

1. Love change?

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough – but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation”

2. Your choice of compromises?

“All those that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things, too”. In that moment, it was as if my strong mother reached across the table, opened her fist and finally showed me the handful of bullet she’d had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married to my father. My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. The benefits of her choices are massive. May be somethings were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too – but who amongst us lives without sacrifices? And the question now for me is, What are my choices to be? What do I believe that I deserve in this life? where can I accept sacrifice, and where can I not?

3. Word of the street?

Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there.
NYC – achieve
Vatican – power (not faith as you’d think)
Rome – sex
for San Francisco, I think it’s “Hippie” in a good way of course.
for India, it’s “Love”
What’s the word in your family/life?

4. You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not

The Yogis say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears, flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a Supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That Supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this line “You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not”

Yoga is the effort to experience one’s divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek a place of eternal presence.

The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. the only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go.

5. “What have you done for me lately?” - Eddie Murphy in Raw

I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, “There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through the history. How much do you love me? And who’s in charge?”
Everything else is somehow manageable. but these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering.

6. Way from hell to heaven

Even in one lifetime, it’s obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our head against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until was can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of western psychology, by the way) – take care of the problem now, or else you’ll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up next time. And that repetition of suffering – that’s hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding – there’s where you’ll find heaven.

I am lucky to have another year to my whims, another year to play, love and be peaceful. That pretty much defines my goals for next year.

1. Friends : One thing I miss lately is spending carefree time with friends. I got nostagiac for the times when I used to have plain old fun pretty much doing nothing with friends. Watching movies, gossiping, playing, drinking – I miss all that. So not surprisingly that’s real high in my list of things to do for next year.

2. Family: world literally becoming flat with skypes and youtubes and facebooks, I don’t have any excuse not to be more connected with my family.

3. Peace: I want to get rid of all clutter around and in me. Throwing away 75% of the stuff in my apt was quite a nice start. Similar to my apt, I want to make room for new experiences, new people and more creativity. I want to be more in touch with music & arts – 2 things I know I just love.

4. Travel: I want to visit at least one new country next year. I’d be really happy if I can go to next Burning Man.

5. Think Big: Last 2 years have really shaped me and my attitude. There is no better time than now to think big and go for my dreams.

Another year almost gone. I have spent another 3650 hours(day-time) doing something and it’s time to see if it was worth it.

Looking back things which occupied most of my time:

1. Supercool School
I believe first startup is like your first love – no matter how it ends you always have fond memories mostly about your naivete. This is how I feel about Supercool School – my first startup which gave me a crash course in entrepreneurship and taught me things I would have never learned otherwise. It most importantly introduced me to amazing people. Even though I had to leave it after working/living it for more than an year, I heart Supercool School and all Supercool people who were/are associated with it.

2. Women2.0
As part of In Conversation series of Women2.0, I met and got inspired by amazing women CEO/founders like Caterina Fake of Flickr and Hunch, Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream, Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era, Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator (publishing soon), Xochi Birch of Beebo (publishing soon), Amra Tareen of allvoices.com, Megan Casey of Squidoo , Veronica Belmont of Tekzilla, and Qore

3. Epocrates
My new job. I am part of this amazing team of people led by a really dynamic person. Outside my current team, I am lucky to know other people in the company who constantly inspire me. What else can you ask for?

4. Kiva team
I started my Kiva team – Samvedna which means “compassion”. Every pay check I have been making micro loans to entrepreneurs via my team.
Great feeling.

5. Argentina & Patagonia backpacking trip
My best trip so far (wow!! I can’t believe I am saying it). I love love Patagonia (W hike) and Buenos Aires. Life is just beautiful in that part of the world.

6. India
Home sweet home. This time when I made my usual annual trip to my home country, first time I vaguely felt that I can have a cool life style in India as well.

7. Utah
The state itself, I believe, should be declared a national park. I did breath taking Angel’s Landing and The Narrows hike in Zion and witnessed the beautiful Hoodoos at
Bryce National park.

That’s all I did in an year – not bad at all!!

Recently I got a chance to talk to Megan Casey, co-founder of squidoo.com.

My favorite part of the conversation is when Megan talked about difference between having an idea and a vision. An Idea is something that strikes you in the night and you go “ooh!! that can be a lot of fun”. A vision is when you’ve taken your idea and started to articulate it, you’ve started to write it down and spec it out may be bounce it off a few people, but for the most part it is your vision. You start to come up with texture on how you are going to make it happen – these are the resources I need, this is the problem I am going to solve.

The biggest suggestion Megan had for all budding entrepreneurs is to have some discipline to take yourself to the point where you can say I have a vision and you can confidently tell the rest of the world what your vision is. As oppose to just saying that there’s this little thing I want to do or I am part of this team I or something like I work at Google – well, that in itself can be answer these days but you work at Google – why? what do you do everyday? what’s your vision?.

The minute you think of yourself as somebody with a vision that’s kind of empowering. It changes how you describe what you are doing, it changes how you care about what you are starting.

Below is the complete women2.0 video conversation with Megan:

Recently Women2.0 team – Shaherose, Emily and I got a chance to talk to Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch.

It’s really interesting when Caterina talks about how restraints breed creativity. There is a big advantage when you are starting out and nobody knows you and nobody cares about you. There is such a thing as too much money, too much attention, too much traffic – you can get lazy you, you can develop bad products – you see that happening at big companies all the time. You see people taking their customers for granted. When you are small , you are starving and you have to be incredibly creative to come up with marketing ideas, ways to distribute your software. You would not have been same creative if you had tons of cash, lots of attention and people are blogging about you all over.

Check the complete women2.0 video conversation below:

This is one of my favorite books mostly because it gives a glimpse into how all big-name extraordinary companies were started by ordinary people. Below are some of my favorite founders along with their quotes which stood out to me:

Evan William, Blogger.com

Luck comes in many forms and often looks bad at first. If you have some plan and it doesn’t go that way roll with it. There is no way to know if it’s good or bad until later, if ever.

I think I was also surprised by the success of something so simple. How far you can get on a simple idea is amazing. Simplicity is powerful.

Ray ozzie, Lotus Notes

I am one of those people who believes he can  accomplish basically anything in software – it’s just a big toolbox. So if you know that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to what’s worth accomplishing

James Hong, Hot or not hot

Do it while you are young. There is no right path. There’s no plan that fits every business; you have to figure it out yourself. There is no magic formula. There is no such thing as easy entreprenuership. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be emotionally unstable. You are going to feel insecure. if you are not already bipolar you will feel like you are.

Tim Brady, Yahoo (first employee)

Do all the thinking upfront: why I am getting in, when do I leave, if I leave then why am I doing it, what gets me up in the morning, what would happen that could make me stop getting up in the morning. I’ve seen lot of people got so emotional coz they start something on whim; they are doing this thinking while they are doing business and when things don’t go well, you don’t act normally. There’s lot to it. It can get really emotional because you get tired and there’s a lot of work and you are vested in it.

Caterina Fake, Flickr

“Women have to be twice as prepared as men”. it takes lots of nerve for women to face up to this assumption and that assumption is everywhere, even in some of the most surprising places – that they don’t measure up, that they are not good enough. Twice as much will be expected of them”

Craig Newmark, Craigslist

The biggest entreprenuerial lesson I have leaned has been that you really do need to follow your instincts. I truedted some poeple who my insticnts were telling me were untrustworthy, and in some cases they proved to be untrustworthy.

Mena Troff, Six Apart

Since it never occurred to us that we can do it, it also did not occur to us that we could not do it. The lack of experience made us think “why can’t this just be done”. There were all these little things you had no clue about. It was incredibly overwhelming. But if you think about it too much, then you don’t do it. You almost have to not know what you are getting into to actually do it.

David Heinemeier, 37 Signals

If turns out that when you build only software that you absolutely need, you don’t get more software than you’ll actually use.

If we took the same people and put them in an enviornment where they had all the money & time even we can’t make Basecamp again.

During my early days at Supercool School, one day Steli entered our newly leased office with 2 books and asked me which one I’d like to read. More than the books, I was impressed by his gesture and I picked  “Ask & it’s given”. He said I would like it.

The book is based on a central theme called “law of attraction” which essentially says that your  thoughts &  emotions have a certain vibration and that similar vibrations attract each other.

“You are a vibrational transmitter, and you are broadcasting your signal in every moment of your existence. Your feelings are representative of your guidance system – the way you feel is true indicator of your alignment with your source & of your alignment with your intentions. Your powerful beliefs were once gentle thoughts. The longer you think thoughts, the stronger the become. With your practiced attention to any subject, the law of attraction delivers circumstances, conditions, experiences, people and all manner of things that match your habitual dominant vibration. And as things begin to manifest around you that match the thoughts you have been holding, you now develop stronger and stronger vibrational habits. And so, your once small & insignificant thought has now evolved into a powerful belief – and your powerful belief will always be played out in your experience.”

“Journey – a path full of optimism, positive expectations and joy no matter what your goal is because that source of energy flows through you all the time. You are the source.”

The “Source of energy” concept is very similar to “Aham Brahma Asmi ” (meaning I am the creator)  in Bhagavad Gita. However I always interpreted Gita in the sense that we create our lives through our actions. Definitely having a plan which glues these actions in long term is critical. However this book adds another dimesion to planning and acting. It talks about  thinking & dreaming about your goals and it says if you do that you will get situations/people/things which will take you closer to your final goal.  Thinking & dreaming seems to be ranked higher than acting towards those goals.

There are certain things suggested to put you in “right vibration” e.g. don’t be conflicted within yourself; if you are in a negative emotion don’t try to hide it by acting out positive; think about your goal, how it would feel when you reach that goal etc. It even talks about gathering pictures, texts about your dream and put it in front of you so that you have “positive vibrations”.

Even though I agree about clarity of thoughts & goals , I would still like to believe that my actions will help me more towards reaching those goals than dreaming about it. Though would be nice if I can just sit & dream and things will come to me – I’d start by dreaming about an apt by the bay,  lots of romance,  a chef, a fitter body and of course million dollars  :)