Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks

by Alok Kejriwal

I bitterly learned that the best-laid plans could go up in smoke when the wind changes direction. Nothing was certain in business and a hero today could quickly become a zero tomorrow. We were lucky that we had started generating revenues as compared to the other more popular portals of that time that had not yet figured out how to make money. Those websites vanished in a few weeks after the dot-com bust because they had been late in getting down to generating cash flow. In a down market, no one wanted to risk spending their money on them. The VC debacle taught me about the fickle nature of money and how one could never assume that it would always be available. I decided never to build a business by relying solely on venture capital funding. This incident also helped me evolve a vital caveat of mine: ‘You never get money when you most want it, but it’s always available when you least need it.’