Startup Thinking

The day Priya quit her job

Priya had a good life. MNC job in Bangalore, ₹18 lakh package, air-conditioned office, free snacks. She'd worked there for four years after engineering college. Her parents in Almora were proud. The neighbors talked about "Priya beti who works in Bangalore."

Then one Diwali, she came home. She visited her grandmother's village near Ranikhet. She watched her mama ji load 200 kilos of fresh malta oranges onto a truck. The bichauliya paid him ₹12 per kilo. That same malta was selling for ₹60-80 per kilo in Delhi and Bangalore supermarkets. Her mama ji was getting less than 20% of what the final consumer paid.

"This is how it's always been," mama ji said, shrugging.

Priya couldn't stop thinking about it. Back in Bangalore, sitting in her ergonomic chair, she kept running the numbers. If you could connect farmers directly to buyers — even partially cutting out two layers of middlemen — farmers could double their income. She started researching. She talked to more farmers. She found that the problem was the same everywhere: Uttarakhand farmers were getting crushed by a system that hadn't changed in decades.

Six months later, Priya resigned.

Her mother cried. Her father said, "Beta, at least wait until you're married." Her college friends said she was crazy. Her manager said the company would always take her back.

But Priya had found a problem she couldn't ignore.

This chapter is about thinking like a startup founder. Not everyone should start a startup — we'll be very clear about that by the end. But if you're going to do it, you need to understand what you're getting into.

What makes a startup different from a small business?

We covered this briefly in Chapter 1, but now we need to go deeper because Part 3 of this book is entirely about the startup path.

A small business is built to be profitable from day one (or as soon as possible). It grows at a natural pace. Pushpa didi's chai shop, Bhandari uncle's hardware store — they're designed to make money and sustain a family.

A startup is built on a different bet: sacrifice short-term profit for long-term, outsized growth.

Three things make a startup different:

1. Growth mindset A small business grows 10-20% a year and that's fine. A startup is trying to grow 10-20% per month. The entire structure is built around aggressive growth.

2. Scalable model A chai shop makes more money by selling more cups — but there's a physical limit. A startup builds something (usually technology) that can serve 10x more users without 10x more cost. Priya's app can connect 100 farmers or 100,000 farmers — the server costs go up, but not proportionally.

3. Venture-backable Startups are designed to attract outside investment. Investors put in money not for monthly dividends, but because they believe the company will become very valuable — and they'll make money when it's sold or goes public.

Important: Neither model is better. A profitable small business that supports your family is a genuine success. A startup that raises ₹10 crore but fails to find customers is a failure. Don't chase the startup path because it looks glamorous. Choose it because you've found a massive problem that needs a scalable solution.

Problem-first thinking

Here's the most important lesson in startup thinking:

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.

Most first-time founders do it backwards. They think: "I want to build an app." Then they go looking for a problem the app can solve. That's solution-first thinking, and it usually leads to building something nobody wants.

Priya didn't start by saying "I want to build an agri-tech app." She started by watching her mama ji get ₹12 for oranges worth ₹60. The problem came first. The solution — whatever form it would eventually take — came second.

How do you know if you've found a real problem?

1. People are already paying to solve it (even badly). Farmers were already paying commission to middlemen — that's money flowing through the system.
2. People complain about it regularly. Every farmer Priya talked to had the same frustration.
3. The current solutions are broken or outdated. The mandi system hadn't changed in decades. Smartphones were now in every farmer's pocket, but no one was using them to sell directly.
4. You can't stop thinking about it. This one's personal but real. If you can walk away from the problem and forget about it, it's probably not your startup to build.

Priya's problem in numbers

Priya mapped the value chain for a typical Uttarakhand farmer selling malta oranges:

Farmer sells at:        ₹12/kg
Village aggregator:     takes ₹3/kg margin
Mandi trader:           takes ₹8/kg margin
Wholesaler:             takes ₹10/kg margin
Retailer:               takes ₹15-20/kg margin
Consumer pays:          ₹60-80/kg

Farmer's share:         15-20% of final price

If Priya's platform could connect farmers directly to retailers (or even directly to consumers), cutting out two of those layers, the farmer could earn ₹25-35/kg instead of ₹12/kg. More than double.

That's a problem worth solving.

But how big is the opportunity? Investors will ask. Your own planning will require it. That's where market sizing comes in.

Market size: TAM, SAM, SOM

When someone asks "How big is your market?", they're really asking three nested questions:

TAM (Total Addressable Market) — The total demand if you could serve everyone in your category.

For Priya: The entire Indian fresh produce market. That's roughly ₹6-7 lakh crore annually. Massive. But meaningless for planning — Priya is not going to capture the entire Indian produce market.

SAM (Serviceable Available Market) — The portion of TAM that your specific product can realistically address.

For Priya: Fresh produce from hilly and semi-urban regions in Uttarakhand and neighboring states, sold through digital channels. Maybe ₹2,000-3,000 crore.

SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) — The portion of SAM you can realistically capture in the next 2-3 years.

For Priya: Farmers in Kumaon and Garhwal regions who have smartphones and are willing to try a new platform. Maybe ₹50-100 crore in transaction volume in year 3.

TAM:  ₹6-7 lakh crore (entire Indian fresh produce)
 └── SAM: ₹2,000-3,000 crore (Uttarakhand + hills, digital)
      └── SOM: ₹50-100 crore (Kumaon/Garhwal, 2-3 years)

The honest answer is always the SOM. That's your real playing field.

Tip: Investors see hundreds of pitches where founders claim "If we capture just 1% of a trillion-dollar market..." This is lazy math. Show them your SOM with a bottom-up calculation: how many farmers you can onboard, at what transaction size, at what frequency. That's credible.

The Lean Startup approach

In the old world, you'd build a complete product, launch it, and hope people would buy it. This is expensive and risky.

The Lean Startup method (popularized by Eric Ries) flips this:

Build → Measure → Learn → Repeat

1. Build the smallest possible version of your product
2. Measure what happens when real people use it
3. Learn what to change, improve, or abandon
4. Repeat — fast

The goal is to minimize the time and money you spend before you discover whether your idea actually works. Every loop through this cycle should teach you something.

Priya didn't build an app first. Let's see what she actually did.

MVP: Minimum Viable Product

The MVP is the simplest version of your product that lets you test your core assumption.

Priya's core assumption: If farmers could see real-time buyer prices and connect with buyers directly, they'd earn significantly more.

Her MVP? A WhatsApp group.

Priya created a WhatsApp group with 23 farmers from the Ranikhet area and 5 buyers (small fruit shops and a juice company in Haldwani). Every morning, she'd manually collect what farmers had available (type, quantity, expected price) and post it in the group. Buyers would respond. She'd coordinate the logistics — which usually meant the farmer loading a truck and the buyer paying on delivery.

It was messy. She was doing everything manually. But within two weeks, 4 farmers had sold directly to buyers at 40-60% more than their usual mandi price.

That was enough signal. The core assumption was valid.

The WhatsApp group cost ₹0 to build. An app would have cost ₹5-10 lakh and taken 3-4 months. If the idea had failed, she would have lost nothing but time.

What makes a good MVP:

After the WhatsApp group proved the concept, Priya built a simple Android app (using a freelance developer for ₹2 lakh). It had three screens: farmer lists produce, buyer browses and orders, both get notifications. No payment gateway, no logistics tracking, no ratings system. Just the core.

Pivoting: when to change direction

A pivot is when you change your strategy without changing your vision.

Priya's vision: improve farmer income by connecting them to better markets.

But her original strategy — connecting individual farmers to individual small retailers — hit a wall. Small retailers were unreliable. They'd cancel orders, negotiate prices down after delivery, or just disappear.

So she pivoted. Instead of targeting small retailers, she pivoted to institutional buyers — juice companies, hotel chains, and hospital canteens that needed regular, bulk supply. Fewer buyers, but much more reliable demand.

Same problem. Same mission. Different approach.

When should you pivot?

• Your metrics are flat despite months of effort
• Users sign up but don't come back
• You discover a much bigger opportunity adjacent to your current one
• Your paying customers are using your product in a way you didn't expect (follow that signal)

When should you NOT pivot?

• Things are hard (they're always hard)
• You've only been at it for 2 months (too early to tell)
• Someone on Twitter said your idea is bad (ignore them)
• A competitor launched something similar (competition validates the market)

Ankita's pivot: Ankita started her pahadi food brand planning to sell through retail stores. The margins were terrible — stores wanted 30-40% commission. She pivoted to D2C (Direct to Consumer) online sales. Same products, same brand, completely different distribution model. Her margins improved dramatically.

The emotional reality

Let's be honest about what starting a startup actually feels like.

Loneliness. Your MNC friends are posting vacation photos. You're sitting alone in a rented room in Haldwani, debugging a server at 2 AM. Nobody around you understands what you're building or why.

Uncertainty. There's no manager telling you what to do. No quarterly review. No guaranteed paycheck. You wake up every morning and decide what matters most — and you're often wrong.

Family pressure. "Beta, you had such a good job." "Your cousin just got promoted to Senior Manager." "When will you start earning properly?" In Uttarakhand, where a government job is the gold standard, choosing a startup feels like betrayal to some families.

Self-doubt. Some days you feel like a genius. Most days you wonder if you've made the biggest mistake of your life.

Financial stress. Priya lived on her savings for 14 months. She skipped dinners, shared a flat with three roommates, and said no to every wedding she was invited to. Savings running out is a real, physical anxiety.

Priya's mother called her every Sunday. For the first six months, every call ended with, "Come back, beta. It's not too late." Around month eight, when Priya showed her a video of a farmer thanking her because he sold his apples at 50% more than last year, her mother went quiet. Then she said, "Theek hai. But eat properly."

This is real. If you're going to start a startup, prepare for this. Build a support system — even if it's just one or two people who believe in you.

Not everyone should start a startup

This might be the most important section in this chapter.

Starting a startup is not a moral virtue. It's not better than having a job. It's not better than running a small business. It's a specific choice for a specific type of problem and a specific type of person.

Don't start a startup if:

• You mainly want to be your own boss (start a small business instead — less risk, faster income)
• You want to get rich quick (startups take 7-10 years; most fail)
• You don't have a specific problem you're obsessed with (you'll quit when it gets hard)
• You can't handle financial uncertainty for 1-2 years minimum
• You're running away from a bad job rather than running toward a compelling problem

Consider a startup if:

• You've found a large, painful problem that technology can solve at scale
• You're willing to live cheaply for years while building
• You have (or can develop) deep expertise in the problem area
• You can handle rejection, failure, and uncertainty without falling apart
• You have some financial runway (savings, family support, or a working spouse)

There's a third option nobody talks about: start a small business first, then build a startup. Ankita ran a kitchen-based food business for a year before turning it into a proper D2C brand. The small business gave her revenue, customer understanding, and confidence. The startup thinking came later, when she was ready to scale.

Idea validation checklist

Before you quit your job, before you write a business plan, before you tell anyone — run your idea through this checklist:

1. Problem validation

• Can you describe the problem in one sentence?
• Have you personally experienced this problem (or observed it closely)?
• Have you talked to at least 20 people who have this problem?
• Are people currently spending money (or significant time) to solve this problem — even imperfectly?

2. Solution validation

• Can you describe your solution in one sentence?
• Is your solution 10x better (not just 2x) than the current alternative?
• Can you build an MVP in under 4 weeks?
• Have at least 5 people said they would pay for this solution?

3. Market validation

• Is the market large enough to build a venture-scale business? (SOM > ₹50 crore)
• Is the market growing?
• Are there comparable companies that have succeeded (proving the market exists)?

4. Founder validation

• Do you have (or can you develop) deep domain expertise?
• Do you have at least 12 months of financial runway?
• Can you dedicate full-time effort to this?
• Do you have (or can you find) the complementary skills you lack? (If you're non-technical, can you find a technical co-founder?)

If you can check most of these boxes — not all, but most — you have something worth pursuing. If you can only check 3-4, spend more time validating before taking the leap.

The first 90 days

If you've decided to start, here's a practical framework for your first three months:

Days 1-30: Deep dive into the problem

• Talk to 50+ potential users
• Map the current value chain (who does what, who pays whom, where does value leak?)
• Identify the 2-3 sharpest pain points
• Study competitors and alternatives (including the "do nothing" alternative)
• Write a one-page problem statement

Days 31-60: Build and test your MVP

• Build the simplest possible solution (WhatsApp group, Google Form, landing page, basic app)
• Get it into the hands of 10-20 real users
• Measure: are they using it? Coming back? Telling others?
• Iterate based on what you learn
• Talk to every single early user personally

Days 61-90: Decide and commit

• Do you have early signs of product-market fit?
• Can you articulate your business model (how will you make money)?
• Have you learned anything that makes you MORE excited, not less?
• Have you found (or started looking for) a co-founder?
• Set your first 3-month goals: user count, transaction volume, revenue target

Priya's first 90 days: She spent weeks 1-4 visiting mandis and orchards across Kumaon. Weeks 5-8, she ran the WhatsApp group experiment. Weeks 9-12, she had enough validation to commit full-time and start building the app. She didn't rush. She also didn't wait for perfect information.

The Uttarakhand advantage

One last thing worth noting: starting a startup from Uttarakhand has real advantages that founders in Bangalore or Mumbai don't have.

Lower burn rate. Living costs in Haldwani or Dehradun are a fraction of Bangalore. Priya's monthly expenses were ₹1.2 lakh. In Bangalore, the same would be ₹3-4 lakh. Lower burn = longer runway = more time to figure things out.

Proximity to the problem. If your startup serves rural India, being in rural India is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Priya could visit farmers every week. A Bangalore-based agri-tech founder flies in once a quarter.

Uniqueness of perspective. Investors see 100 food delivery apps from Bangalore. They rarely see an agri-tech platform built by someone who grew up watching their family farm in the hills. Your perspective is your moat.

Government support. Uttarakhand has startup policies, incubation centers (like the ones in SIDCUL, Haridwar), and specific schemes for agri-tech and rural innovation. Research what's available.

The disadvantage is access to talent and investor networks, which are concentrated in metros. But in a remote-work world, this gap is closing fast.

Key takeaways

1. A startup is different from a small business: it's built for aggressive growth with a scalable model
2. Start with the problem, not the solution
3. Size your market honestly: TAM → SAM → SOM
4. Use the Build → Measure → Learn cycle to move fast and waste less
5. Your MVP should be embarrassingly simple — Priya started with a WhatsApp group
6. Pivot when the data says your strategy isn't working, not when you're just frustrated
7. The emotional cost is real — loneliness, family pressure, financial stress
8. Not everyone should start a startup. A great small business is just as valid a path.

In the next chapter, Priya's WhatsApp group has worked. Now she needs to build a real product. But how do you build something when you're not a developer? How do you know what features to build first? And how do you know when your product is actually good enough?