Eragap Ventures — A life update.
This is a non-technical blog post. You may skip if not interested.
After working as a Software Engineer for almost one and a half years at a fin-tech startup, midst the global pandemic 2020, I decided to take a personal sabbatical to understand and explore areas complementary to my core domain (which is building software products).
The goal of this endeavor was to learn how successful founders craft and build companies around their software products. And how can one do this (again and again) without being lucky — the fundamental principles and the character that goes behind doing this.
A Quick history: Before working at the fintech startup, I used to run an offline coaching institute with my friends where I also happened to teach physics. The drill was on for four years alongside my engineering college. It was an amazing experience that I totally love and cherish.
Exploratory phase
Non-Tech
There are only two things in any business, either you build or you sell. For us, it’s the combination of product and engineering with sales and marketing. That’s it. Those are the only two things you need to nail down for building any successful venture.
But I didn’t stop there and went deep. I spent time understanding human behavior, markets, and their relationship with technology in detail. My concern was not just to understand how the world operates but to know and understand the forks that we could still take.
I explored the basics of money, human evolution, neuroscience, and psychology. Went through a whole lot of essays and content by YC, a16z, and a few others. Learned from books, podcasts, blogs, youtube, and twitter. Took a few courses too.
(Will be sharing in detail on individual topics in the future.)
Tech
Apart from the non-technical things I explored a whole bunch of tech tools. I realized that it’s the use case in question that matters more and not the technology in itself.
The major change I made was to migrate from angular + bootstrap ecosystem to react (nextjs) + tailwindcss ecosystem. Tried my hands on a bunch of new libraries and packages. Upgraded the depth of my existing knowledge base.
Extended the stack to include web 3.0 via ethereum, solidity, and truffle suite.
Execution phase
Experiments and Projects
Eragap Ventures is an umbrella for all my tech and media initiatives that may or may not work. But one thing I know for sure is that I’ll keep experimenting with one or the other thing for my entire life until something works. lol.
Below are some projects under experimentation:
We the Sapiens: It is a philosophy page (as of now) with 100K+ monthly impressions and 4K+ followers. I wanted to convert it into a content platform, even built a prototype that was loved by a handful of early users, but soon realized it is wiser to turn it into an info product than software for sustainability reasons, as its USP will always be content and not the code.
One good thing about this project is that it attracts people at the top of Maslow's hierarchy.
Ecom Eragap: It is an ecom platform I built for my friend, but has been built in a way that it’s not business-specific much like the dukaan app. The same platform can be reused by any business for selling any product. For market reasons, I’m not actively pushing it. Will be selling it on-demand basis. Low on priority.
Trading: It was a detour that I took while I was in the exploratory phase. Since my college days I used to trade passively, and seeing an opportunity to do it actively, I pushed all my way through it, thanks to varsity! My goal was to gain some level of domain expertise so that when the time comes I can build the tech for it. After some time I refocused on tech.
Technology Pro: This is a media initiative in the technology space, and will operate as the traditional media does. The goal of this initiative is to serve as a distribution channel (targetting the top of the funnel) for all other Eragap Venture initiatives.
ezCreatives: It is an automation tool for generating social media creatives. Targeted towards marketers and content creators. I stumbled upon this idea while working on wts project. Bullish here.
Plan ahead
Most of my work on these projects is now on the seller side of things — marketing them using content, creating brand awareness, and selling.
Also, my strategy with Eragap Ventures in general is going to be distribution first. In the meantime, I might as well help other founders build their tech.
Thank you for taking the time and reading this.
