Every week we pick one of the many people around us who are up to something good and try to bring out some of the interesting aspects of the person. The DOER of this week is Lokesh Chauhan, one of the Co-Founders of PlusTxt, a great texting app that supports Indian languages.
Lokesh was never in love with the idea of working for a corporate. “The formal attire, the cabin and the idea of a timetable sounded mundane and uninspiring to me,” he says. The idea of being bogged down by a hierarchy and tending to a schedule was not in tune with his free spirited approach to life. At his first job in Webaroo, he realised that its where he belonged: “A place where we worked at our own pace and schedule.”
The deliverable mattered not your sitting at office adhering to a time table. “The culture of startup was such that I instantly fell in love with it,” he says.
So far, he has worked at three startups. To our question about the not so great salaries in the startup world, he had one thing to say
Take the chances while you are young. Your ability to learn is higher when you are working for a startup as you get to don many hats. You get recognition for your good work and you are criticized about your mistakes much sooner in a startup environment.
The buzz of startup drives you to put more efforts than in a regular corporate job making you realize your own limits and pushing hard to get better with each day. Money matters but the experience and knowledge that comes along with a startup equips you for higher dividends at later part of life.
What does he think about ESOPS?
ESOPs are like a lottery ticket. You cannot make your plans on basis of ESOPs. They are a good driving factor but your priorities should be learning and growing as an individual and team contributor. You should not base your monitory expectations on it as ESOPs can be of zero worth if things don’t turn out well for the startup. Never be afraid of the worst outcome but always be ready for it.
‘Engineering’ vs ‘Coding’ – how would he define them?
Engineering – Creating a solution for a hard to define problem. Requires imaginative thought process.
Coding – Implementing a solution. Requires following the guidelines.
His weapons of choice? DJango/Python for development. Vim is his favorite editor and Eclipse for everything else.
Now that he works for an app startup, we took a peek at his phone’s home screen to see what it looks like. Being a communication and news junkie, its filled with reading and communication apps.
What does he think of the Indian product eco system? Indian product startups need more help as compared to valley because of lack of early adopters Indian angels and investors need to start believing more in them because waiting in line for a trend to start will never allow the startups to grow at the right time and pace as required, he says.
