The Defining Moment
From an early age, I knew I wanted to start my own business. As a child, I sold candy and lemonade on the corner by my house. In high school, I pursued various entrepreneurial endeavors like flipping cars and clothes online. While my friends mostly talked about getting good jobs, I dreamed of being my own boss. Through these experiences, I developed a strong entrepreneurial spirit and desire for risk-taking.
After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in Finance, I joined Bain & Company as a management consultant. Though I learned valuable skills at Bain about business strategy and problem-solving, I still longed to launch my own venture. Two years into my career, a colleague brought up the idea of starting a software company together. I saw this as my chance to finally achieve my entrepreneurial ambitions.
We founded our company, OnPoint Analytics, in July 2015 to build predictive analytics software for retailers. From the beginning, it was a huge challenge to get the company off the ground while still working full-time at Bain. I worked nights and weekends, recruiting our founding team, writing business plans, and developing initial product demos. After a year of hustling after hours, we finally had an MVP product and first customers. I was ready to take the leap into starting OnPoint full-time.
Leaving Bain to join a risky startup was a difficult decision. I had job security, an ample salary, and colleagues I genuinely liked working with. Most importantly, I was not sure if I had what it takes to succeed as a founder. Entrepreneurship is full of unknowns and constant obstacles, and failure seemed much more likely than success. As a Pakistani-American first generation immigrant, it was also not a given that my family would fully support leaving a stable career path.
After many restless nights weighing the pros and cons, I realized this venture had too much long-term potential to pass up. If it succeeded, OnPoint could become a huge business and fulfill my deepest career ambitions. But most of all, I did not want to live with the “what if” of not finding out if I had what it takes to be an entrepreneur. I was ready to face challenges head on and take full responsibility for building a company from the ground up.
So in June 2017, I took the leap of faith and resigned from Bain to work on OnPoint full-time. The following two years were an absolute whirlwind as I faced challenges far beyond what I ever imagined. Fundraising proved much more difficult than expected as many investors did not believe in our vision or capabilities as first-time founders. Recruiting top engineering talent to a startup without name recognition or funding was like an uphill battle. Product development stalled multiple times as we pivoted from failed ideas and addressed engineering roadblocks. We constantly ran out of money and had to make payroll cuts, which put immense stress on team morale.
Personally, the stress took a toll as well. I barely slept and worked every waking hour of every day. Family responsibilities increased as my wife and I had our first child during this period. Juggling parenting duties with entrepreneurial demands was like trying to put out constant fires. There were many nights I questioned if I made the right decision leaving stability for uncertainty and instability. The pressure to succeed was intense as failure would mean losing everything I worked so hard for over two decades.
Despite facing every startup challenge imaginable, we managed to push forward through grit and determination. After a year of product iterations and landing first customers, we closed a successful Series A funding round in June 2019. Seeing that major validation after years of doubters made all the struggle worthwhile. We have since grown to a team of 30 with offices in San Francisco and Bangalore. OnPoint software is now used by leading retailers and our business is growing rapidly.
Looking back, taking the entrepreneurial leap was easily the toughest professional decision I have ever made but also the most rewarding. By pushing past fears of failure and discomfort with uncertainty, I discovered immense personal growth and capabilities I never knew I had. While the past few years have tested me in every way, building a successful startup from scratch has fulfilled my deepest professional aspirations. Most of all, I proved to myself that with resilience and perseverance, you can achieve anything you put your mind to – even the intimidating task of starting your own company.
This experience has transformed me into a leader who thrives facing challenges head on with creativity, grit, and tenacity. Now more than ever, I want to continually learn and better myself to become an even stronger founder and executive. An MBA from Kellogg would give me the advanced business skills and network needed to take OnPoint to the next level and achieve global scale. The program’s entrepreneurial focus would also provide invaluable lessons from other founders who succeeded against all odds. My experience taking an immense professional risk to start my own company has shaped me into someone driven to solve difficult problems through resilience and innovation. I believe these skills along with what I learn in Kellogg’s program would allow me to build OnPoint into a transformative technology powerhouse.