I’m sharing a copy of my last email to PepUp users. Most of you wouldn’t have heard about PepUp before this. For me it was living an idea for an year day in and out. This was one of the toughest email I wrote ever. To be honest, I was filled with some extreme conflicting emotions at that moment. One was ‘disappointment of failure’ and other was ‘sense of achievement’. Go figure!
Little background about PepUp: with PepUp we were making “getting together with friends/family” easier and more fun. We helped people in organizing parties and discover parties/places personalized for their group.
We flipped the switches and shut down PepUp in March, 2016 after dedicating an year of hard work, persistence and doing things which we did not imagine ourselves capable of doing(like working in events industry about which we had no idea initially and then organizing events successfully with planning & execution time of just 3 hours).
Here it goes
That last email to PepUp users
Update: A lot of people are asking what have I been doing after PepUp?
Before that, let me tell you that I wore many hats in my previous stints but the most time I dedicated was being a developer and a problem solver. I am deeply satisfied with this role. I want to be a developer and solve problems using technology for the rest of my life.
For past two years, I’ve been improving my technical skills, productivity and connecting with a lot of other developers. I’m committed to a mission to create a network of top 1000 high-tech experts(programmers, developers, software engineers whatever you may want to call but only the best ones). The idea is that collective efforts of so many intellectual people will create opportunity for every community member to grow, to get support and push amazing ideas forward. Think about this, there are so many accelerators/incubators/investors who push growth of startups. And there’re no such things to push growth of developers. Companies look at developers as “resource”.
I believe developers are the backbone of any new internet/technology business. For talented developers, I can feel so strongly that there’s a lack of recognition, lack of support system, lack of growth & learning opportunities and lack of work-life balance. Except for few companies, all of them call their tech talent “resource”. Seriously, that’s how you look at your people, your team members? There must be a better way, better way to work, better way to live. It is inevitable that the way we work, is going to change a lot in near future. I can feel there’s a revolution happening silently already. People are moving from in-office work to 100% remote work. We have changed a lot in past decade. From sharing source-code files to git, face to face meetings/emails to slack, managing projects in emails to Asana/Trello. We have to shape the future of work. It cannot be done alone, I need your support. And does not start by building a community, it starts by building a cult for developers. A cult which can inspire others to value freedom, recognition. A culture where change is the only constant.
Till now, we’re 100 member strong. This is a startup for me for lifetime. Looking forward to connect with you all from startup & developer communities. Join me in this journey. Your ideas/suggestions/support is valuable.
LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me.
