Faatlab: A dream that didn't end well
My journey with Faatlab ends here !!!
It’s been more than two years of working day and night for a dream, it has come to an end. This was a total rollercoaster ride with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. A lot of learnings, wins, losses, and a bunch of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I’ll narrate what went wrong (for me) in this chapter of my career and what went right. These 2 years of my life made me grow from an average software engineer to a team lead, a total jack of all trades and master of few (still building breaking, and learning new things every day). I don’t recognize myself as a good businessman, nor do I think I can work a full-time 9 to 5. My power lies in the freedom I possess and compliment the strengths of non-technical business people around me. I can architect and build software, lead a tech team, I can implement and maintain team standards, and culture, and improve motivation. I can’t (or probably don’t want to) run a business alone or take on the unnecessary hassle and headaches that come along with it, moreover, I can be a support system for the non-tech leadership (a proper CTO material I guess)
Story of Faatlab in a nutshell
It all started in February 2022, me and my co-founder had a night-long conversation about starting up a software company, we fixed the name, and logo and bought the domain for the new company “Faatlab”. the motivation was at its peak, the plan was to build a bunch of software products and bootstrap the company by fueling with the software service project we undertook. fast forward a couple of months we had a small team of devs and was doing good business, reinvesting everything we made into growth and expansion. Again fast fast-forwarding to early 2024, we had a few private limited companies, a company in Europe, and a pretty big team of ~15 (was really on adrenaline). We did bluff, we did anticipate only ideal scenarios, and we were not prepared for this scale (if it’s not we, I surely was not ready). That was where we stood at the end, and as a spoiler, things were not that good even though it sounds like a lot.
What happened?
Things were going pretty fine, but somewhere last year the rapport between the cofounders started to deteriorate, we weren’t talking as much as we did before, and the internal restructurings inside the company took me away from him, I was also responsible for the same as I didn’t took much efforts to keep the momentum between us going. The expansion plans were becoming really aggressive, collaborating with people whom I either didn’t like to work with or people I barely knew. The financials were ugly, and the accounting, filings, and other compliances were messed up. It was I who took care of the accounting jobs at Faatlab apart from the tech responsibility, which I shouldn’t have done from the beginning. The process of juggling multiple things was fun in the beginning, but when things grew, so did the headache. the unregulated aggressive growth and expansion plans, casually neglecting to keep the house clean in terms of accounting, filing, and keeping the compliances right, and starting up multiple private limited entities without having proper planning and seriousness and a bunch of other reasons as well that led me to make this hard decision.
What went wrong?
Firstly, All the decisions that we took at Faatlab were mutual and those decisions were right at that point in time. But later when my thought processes evolved and my perspectives changed, certain things became wrong and I wanted to correct my mistakes. When asked what went wrong, the first answer would be, that we didn’t have anything on paper, no formal legal agreement. I now think that’s the foremost thing anyone should take care of while committing to anything professionally. We were challenging the traditional rules of business and running against the odds to build a business faster. we bypassed several processes, we disregarded all the pieces of advice that some mentors gave, and we blindly believed we were growing, in reality, we were living a fantasy with bleeding edges. We did no budgeting, we had no projections, our plans were extremely long term and the short-term goals fluctuated heavily. In this rat race, we (I) didn’t think about any personal benefits, whole 24x7 was for the company using blood and sweat.
Where am I standing now?
As of 16th April 2024, I left Faatlab Technologies Pvt Ltd and a couple of entities we both started together (including a company registered in Hungary), I took with me byt.so a.k.a Bytsolv from him and yeah Bytsolv is no longer a Faatlab company👇🏼.
This journey took a toll on my personal finances and finally, we’ve made agreements on resolving those issues for both of us. The 15-member team mentioned above is now just 6 and I’m finally finding some peace with my career, doing things that I love and the things that keep me on the game.
Takeaways
- Never engage in any Business or Financial deals without proper agreements, that’ll ruin personal relationships.
- Do not mix up personal and professional relationships together, always keep the boundaries and speak up your gut feelings.
- The goal of any business is to make money and it should do the same from day one. Every penny that comes in and goes out should have proper records. terms like budgeting, accounting, etc are not for fun, every business should have a plan.
- Don’t fake, bluff, or give false promises, I believe bluffing is the lie that we tell ourselves.
- Don’t go all in, if you can’t afford to lose all. A mistake we made was trying to build a hypergrowth business without capital, I now think, that if we were realistic with our expectations all the time, it wouldn’t have ended like this
Athul (my cofounder) was my best friend, and I enjoyed every moment with him, I don’t think he can be a proper business partner to me now, Initially, we both were on the same pages, but when the company grew, perspectives changed and moreover we weren’t talking much and these entanglements of personal - professional relationship made me lose a best friend, idk we can be back normal as before, idk if I’d take effort for that, idk how hurt he’s But looking back, if it was not for business we wouldn’t have met again, became friends. Those were nice days. Sorry, Athul If something from my end hurt you, to my best belief I’ve made everything fair for both of us.
Mistakes happen; everything in life has a price, and this chapter was a costly one. It cost me two years, a friendship, my physical and mental health, and some finances. But I believe it was worth every drop of sweat I spent. On to the next adventures and dreams! I’m sharing this as a lesson to my fellow entrepreneurs and aspirants. There’s still a lot more to learn!!!
fin Faris.