how i built a startup program in 3 months in a city i had never been to, without having built a startup myself
9 minute read with lots of pictures
tldr: frustrated with being in university, i took a gap year that changed my life, where i helped change other lives.
i talk specifically about my work in creating the residency in bangalore.
i take you through the journey of how we pulled this off logistically, how this program almost fully fell apart and how i ended up helping someone raise $250,000 without having done any of that myself before.
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just before the start of 2nd year in university, on august 11 2023, i made a decision to take a gap year and move to san francisco to build the residency with Nick who i met through a cold dm on twitter.
i had $2672 USD in my bank account, visa confusion, and the uncertainty if this idea would even work.
the idea was simple: attract the most ambitious and driven young people in the world who were also authentic and kind, put them in a big house together for four months, and magic will happen. we charge an extra buck on top of rent to sustain operations.
we, the team, hadn’t founded successful startups (i hadn’t founded a startup ever!), but we thought we were exceptional at finding exceptional people.
today, after one year, we have 10 houses in 5 countries. we get 1000+ applications for ~60 spots for each cohort. and we’re profitable.
sept 2023 to dec 2023, we tested out our first micro cohort with 3 people to see if it worked.
it proved it would work. january 2024 to april 2024, we’d run our second cohort of 14 ppl with two houses. we ended the cohort with a beautiful demo day. here’s a teaser video:
the results ppl showed at the demo day:
Alex, a robotics engineer ended up going from 0 to viral on twitter and raising 7 figures in venture capital. he came to the residency primarily because he wasn’t able to get a job.
Anker, building parahelp, got into YCombinator and recently got perplexity as their client. also raised 7 figures.
Mei got her first few customers for cache homes, foldable homes in the housing crisis.
most importantly, beyond all their impressive credentials, they were genuinely awesome people: nerdy, curious, driven (for the right reasons) and unfathomably hardworking.
our demo day ended the night of april 24th. i packed my bags the next morning and left san francisco for good.
what felt like the end of a chaotic 8 months, was only the beginning to an even more chaotic 3 months.
i landed in bangalore, india — a city i didn’t know a soul in and had never stepped in before — to run another cohort of the residency there.
i am writing this blog about the journey of building the residency in bangalore and not san francisco, because i knew people in san francisco which made it easier and if I didn’t, Nick did. if our residents wanted intros to investors or mentorship, we had their back.
but not in bangalore.
why did we choose bangalore?
firstly, it was the silicon valley of asia. so we naturally had a lot of ppl reaching out from there already.
secondly, i knew it was time for me to get out of sf. but not be done with the residency.
thirdly, i was visiting new delhi to see mom & family, and bangalore was close.
it was a wild idea. i didn’t know the culture as well either. i hadn’t lived in india for 7 years at this point. it seemed risky (i didn’t know anything about the indian market nor anyone), i knew ppl didn’t take gap semesters there like in the west.
and yet somehow i had convinced 7 people (and sometimes also their indian parents) to leave their entire life, move to bangalore, and work on their startup ideas full-time because i thought they were cool. and i had convinced them to pay us a decent buck for this.
to this day i don’t know if i was the insane one or them. but i couldn’t have asked for a better 3 months.
here’s the making of bangalore house story:
we didn’t do much to formalize this idea, all we did was put bangalore as one of the locations on the residency application form, a few tweets and then waited to see what happens.
we started gradually getting some applications for Bangalore. our twitter threads + having sam altman’s name as one of our advisors on the website helped!
from february to april, i did ~60 hours of interviews, each interview lasting around 10 minutes, with approximately interviewing 150-250 ppl.
i asked friends around which part of bangalore had startup-y people. i was told HSR Layout.
it was clear the talent and demand in india was there but getting a 1-year lease for a 6-bedroom house in a target market i didn’t fully understand yet felt unwise financially. i really didn’t know what i was doing.
i searched up co-working spaces in HSR Layout
so instead of getting a house, i got a 10-seat desk in a coworking space. i also found a hostel nearby which had 6 rooms available.
so technically it was not a ‘house’, just a scrappy setup i made to test if our service would work in india.
the cohort started may 15th.
i am not gonna lie, between may 1st to may 10th, there were about 10-20 times i went back and forth in my mind if i should even pull this off or cancel the entire thing.
i realized our target audience in india (18 y/o to 25 y/o) was reliant on their parents for financial support unlike the west. which meant they had to justify their parents when they asked “what the fuck is residency”, which also meant their willingness to pay was lower.
after interviews, i chose who to accept and sent them acceptances. usually, most people accept us. but for bangalore, i had more people reject us than any other residency location. why? ppl’s parents didn’t allow them and gap semesters were frowned upon in india.
i didn’t pay security deposits to our coworking space and hostel for the cohort until May 7th (the cohort began May 15) even though some residents had already wired me money for the cohort.
on may 7th, i had a “fuck it we ball” moment and put $4K USD for the security deposits, gave a ~$1000 USD full-ride scholarship to a resident even though we were barely making money, bought a flight to bangalore leaving in 2 days, and got to studying linear algebra calmly (i was taking a summer course at my uni virtually while running the cohort lmao).
7 ppl were finally confirmed. we were rolling.
i landed in bangalore. i get to the hostel (this is the first time i’m seeing this place in irl where i now have 5 rooms booked for the next 3 months).
there’s this moment, where i am at the roof of our hostel, looking around and doubting every bit of myself in this city i have never stepped in, where i don’t know anyone, where i have promised 7 ppl that they are going to have some of their most productive and life-changing moments.
then i think to myself this picture whenever i am stressed:
“no time to die.” and i start doing some linear algebra to calm my nerves.
next day, the community architect, Neeraj who is going to co-run the cohort with me pulls up. his vibes are immaculate. i met him through a warm connection and now he’s was roommate for 3 months.
it's May 15th and the residents start pulling up.
vibes are good, i have put a welcome package in everyone’s room. we’re chilling.
me and Neeraj take these folks for dinner. it’s good!
day’s over, i head to sleep. at 2 am, Neeraj wakes me up.
turns out one girl who had just arrived earlier in the day had her parents take her home because they didn’t feel the hostel was a safe space. this was when the cultural difference hit hard. i had completely overlooked a few things:
india is generally not as safe of a place for women like the west (it’s a common expectation you should have a security guard/receptionist at the entrance of the hostel, which we didn’t).
if i’m selling a program like this to anyone who is under 22 years old in india, mostly, i am not selling it to them (that would have been easy), i am selling it to their parents.
and there was no recovery from this, even after i tried convincing the parents. 2 days into the cohort, 3 people had arrived, 1 person was down. this one person leaving so fast also brought the general vibes down where we could sense people doubting if this program was even going to provide them value and was worth their money.
suddenly, there was a possibility that the entire cohort might fall apart (which means we lose ~$10k in money). but there was nothing i or anyone could do apart from making this experience seem worth it for these folks. me and neeraj went to bed at 11 that morning, after that night.
then slowly we got momentum. the rest of the people arrived.
and then suddenly…the people started vibing.
then we had an orientation for the residency.
and thank the lord, we had a banger orientation.
a part of the orientation was everyone had to make slides for themselves beforehand where they’d tell everyone in the cohort their life story and that was so banger.
and at that time, it hit me. the beauty of the residency is i could do a lot of things wrong and dumb. but as long as we picked the right people, all ends well.
this is may 17th. we were so back.
the next 2 months flew by so fast. my days started at 9/10 AM, going to the gym for 1 hour, showering, getting to the co-working space, grinding on linear algebra throughout the day, in breaks brainstorming how to solve other people’s startup problems and plan out activities of the cohort weeks in advance and stop working at 11:30 PM.
we had also promised these residents a network of mentors and workshops on essential startup things.
so on mondays, we’d host ‘demo days.’ i’d invite founders/investors who i found capable. i found these people through tweets like this and warm connects.
as per the workshops, two workshops were hosted by us. one by me on cold-emailing and one by Neeraj on storytelling.
Neeraj and i hosted a massive hackathon too, it was pretty wild.
on any other day, we were all just grinding in our co-working space. day in and day out. but the beauty of the residency was very much that, people became super close to each other this way. even today, months are the cohort ended, they still talk to each other regularly.
a few days before i left india for good for canada, a team gave me this gift:
the logo on the front of the hoodie is their company logo. and homies said “we consider you one of our founders in the making of this company so we thought to give you our first merch” and i was like…bro.
i wasn’t emotionally developed yet to absorb so much love.
the cohort came to drop me off at the airport even after me saying thats a waste of 4 hours but oh well. i gave gifts to some folks. and i was off!
and then something beautiful happened.
a few days of me being in canada, i get a call from one of my residents. he raised $250,000 from (let’s call him Investor John). Investor John was the same guy, to whom a successful cold-email was addressed, in the cold-emailing workshop i had given earlier in the cohort. Sai had thought why not just send the email to the same guy to whom the email in the workshop seemed to have worked on.
Investor John originally wasn’t interested but Sai kept updating him with his progress.
eventually, he gets this email. this felt especially nice because Sai was the only resident i had given a full-ride scholarship to the residency.
india was a crazy experience. as much as i loved sf, i feel i just had way more ownership and responsibility in india. and that's what made it such an learning intense experience.
this resident, Sai, who successful raised this angel cheque ended up wiring us back $1500 USD, the full-ride scholarship money we gave him, and more money on top of it, to pass the scholarship off to another person to participate in the residency. it was such a full-circle moment.
Kiran, one of our residents ended up writing her own subtack article “I Thought I Had All the Answers—Then The Residency Happened”
the residency bangalore now has an official house we have leased for a year. neeraj, my co-host in running the first cohort, now runs it.
most of my life i have thought i want to impact a lot of lives, which i have through some of my past work, but the residency is where i have felt i have most deeply impacted people’s lives.
shoutout to more people than i can count: neeraj who was always there putting off the fires with me, nilesh, nick. all the ppl who took a bet on us and just flew to bangalore for this: kushagra, kiran, anshul, sai, khushi, rania. mentors for our bangalore, harish for lending his office for demo days, and so many more.
What a wild ride! So grateful I got to see this grow from when it was just you and no money in your bank account. Incredibly proud of you and the team!
Absolutely loved this! I'm moving to Bangalore soon and couldn't be more excited about the city