Purani jeans aur guitar
Mohalle ki vo chhat
Aur mere yaar
Vo raaton ko jaagna
Subah ghar jaan
Kood ke deewar
Vo cigaretee peena
Gali mein jaake
Wo karna daanton ko
Ghadi ghadi saaf

A group of startup founders sang this college time favorite song during the starry, drunk, passionate and bindaas late night sessions, that went on till 0300 am every night, during Morpheus’ Startup Gurukul. Gurukul was organized with the purpose of bringing together the gang of morpheus founders at one place for 4 days of immersive experience. Away from the normal world, away from their hectic day-to-day schedules – just to hang out, share learnings and to know each other. The sheer energy in the atmosphere was intoxicating.  People were – talking, dancing, asking questions, listening intently, showing demos, discussing stuff , giving/ taking feedbacks, taking pictures, fooling around, jumping into the pool. But with all this as a backdrop they were all starting lifelong friendships – with folks who are also weird like themselves, those who have chosen the uncertain path of entrepreneurship – leaving behind the certainty & security of jobs. Because nature has cursed (or gifted them) them with the “entrepreneurial gene”. Be an Entrepreneur or Die – thats their calling. Just can’t do anything else. Gurukul is a world in which everyone is an entrepreneur – everyone inspires you, everyone believes in your audacious vision and the non-believers are totally absent.

I still remember the day we started the journey in Jan 2008 – 2.5 years back. Coming out of our 3 yrs as the founders of madhouse, we realized that this was badly needed in India and we had a kind of stupid confidence in our ability to figure this out. Most of the folks around said you guys can’t do this / this cant be done in India or some variation of a negative comment. Like all entrepreneurs – every time someone said that it increased our determination to crack this.

From the Starting point to the Startup Gurukul – the ride has been a lot of fun but at the same time quite rough, things have moved a very rapid pace, there was always so much to do, so much to figure out, so many moving pieces, we just kept working 12-14 hrs everyday.  I never got a chance to step back and look at the overall picture. So at the Gurukul when I saw, at one place, all portfolio companies, all founders, our investors – and I saw people from outside morpheus who came to spend time with us, said nice things about what they saw. I had this realization that we are on to something important, we are starting to have a small impact on Indian Startup Ecosystem, our efforts are paying off. This has given me a lot of energy to keep doing this for many more years to come.

Thanks

On behalf all partners @ Morpheus I would like to give a big Thank You to all the founders in the morpheus gang – for making us part of their teams, their dreams and their families. Thanks guys for believing in us – for taking the chance. Together we can and we will change many things in the world around us.

Also a very big thanks to guys @ Sequoia Capital for supporting and sponsoring Startup Gurukul.

Enjoy the gurukul pics