‘2024 Was Wild’: Bengaluru Entrepreneur Opens Up About Startup Setbacks After Quitting Rs 1 Crore Job – News18

Last Updated:December 31, 2024, 4:28 PM IST

Reflecting on his roller-coaster year on the social media platform X, Tripathi said he left his Rs 1 Crore job in 2024, driven by a desire to start his venture without a backup plan.

Embracing the entrepreneurial spirit that’s sweeping across industries, a Bengaluru-based techie recently shared his inspiring journey of leaving a lucrative six-figure salary to pursue the challenging yet rewarding path of building his startup. The user, Shakti Mani Tripathi, recently took to his social media account X (formerly Twitter) and opened up about the difficulties he faced in his entrepreneurial journey after quitting his high-paying job at Amazon as a software engineer.

Tripathi, the co-founder and CTO of Reflecc, an AI startup aimed at automating business and operational workflows of organisations, expressed that his journey from employee to entrepreneur was no cakewalk. In the now-viral post, he recounted his entrepreneurial journey in 2024, which was filled with setbacks.

Reflecting on his roller-coaster year on the social media platform X, Tripathi said he left his job in 2024, driven by a desire to start his venture without a backup plan. He wrote, “2024 has been a wild year for me. Left my Rs 1 crore job at Amazon without any backup, out of an urge to finally ‘start-up.’”

After quitting his job, Tripathi’s first attempt at entrepreneurship was at a startup called Hoobahoo AI, which uses AI for various business applications. However, the idea was rejected by Y Combinator. Then, he pitched it to more than 30 venture capitalists but failed to raise funds. This forced him to shut down Hoobahoo AI due to high customer acquisition costs and a lack of funds.

But he had no plans of giving up. Tripathi and his co-founder, Kunal Ranjan, started working on another idea—a B2B SaaS platform aimed at improving engineering team productivity metrics. Unfortunately, this idea was also abandoned after the duo realised that measuring the productivity of software engineers was “too much qualitative nuance.”

Their next attempt was Codermon AI, an AI agent for developers with ad-hoc tasks. They realised the market was already overcrowded and the duo decided to pivot again.

Continuing their quest, Tripathi and his team explored the supply chain industry to develop an AI agent for procurement. They realised that prior work experience in this domain is essential, which they lacked.

Undeterred by multiple setbacks, Tripathi started his new project, Reflecc AI. He and his team developed a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in just seven days and interviewed over 50 prospective clients and thought leaders for feedback. Their efforts finally paid off as they managed to secure three Letters of Intent (LOIs) from clients, showing genuine interest in the product. They even made it to Y Combinator’s top 10 per cent of applications but still got rejected in the end.

Reflecting on his experiences, Tripathi realised that the company had been trying to solve several problems at once, by taking a horizontal approach. So, they decided to focus more narrowly and now they are developing an AI-based digital marketing tool, with hopes for a fresh start in the brand new year.

The entrepreneur concluded the post, expressing that he had failed several times, but he had learnt valuable lessons along the way. He also exclaimed, “I hope 2025 doesn’t force me to quit my entrepreneurial journey and return to being an employee… once again.”

The now-viral post has reached over 70,000 viewers and users chimed in to share words of encouragement for their consistent efforts, while some also shared their own experiences of facing failures.