This afternoon (technically yesterday as it is already past midnight), IESE High Tech club organized a talk session with the founder of Loquo.com Ubaldo Huerta. It was one of the best sessions I ever went to. He had this fantastic story to share with us, how he left his high paying job in Silicon Valley and moved with his savings to Barcelona to start a new life. After that, the idea of Loquo.com was born. Similar to other great examples like how Microsoft and Google started, the work of Loquo.com basically started in his apartment. Until sometime back, he was actually hosting it from his apartment. He told us about how his wife and most of his friends thought he was following a stupid idea and how he sometimes wondered if they were right. He warned us that starting our own company is basically deciding to be our own slave. Although you are not working for anyone, you can't afford to go for a day in a beach because you feel the inward pressure from the things in the "to-do" list you haven't completed yet. He also told us about the tough negotiation phase when he was approached by Ebay for the acquisition of the company. I could relate his experience of how as a seller, he had to start of with a maximum and then lower it down to some practice sessions in our negotiation class. A great success story indeed!

I was at times comparing his story to mine. I also have this site vanasthali.org which I, along with my friends from my high school, started as a networking site for alumni of our high school. This site was born as a part of my senior project of my undergraduate program. And it flourished and had more than 1500 members. Last time I was in Nepal, I met 4 smart students from a top engineering school in Nepal and had them work for this project. I covered all the development cost. After few months of work, it was live. It was hosted by this company called supplehost.com. Since the last few months, the site has been down, I have not been able to contact the people from SuppleHost via phone or email. I have a feeling they went out of business. And along this, I have learnt an important lesson the hard way. I did not have the latest backup of the site before it went down. In fact, I think I only had a backup copy just when I started hosting with them. I will wait for few more weeks and start all over again with whatever data I have. My high school friends have contacted me saying they are willing to host the site, so hosting would not be a problem and it would be in safe hands as being alumni, they would understand the value of keeping the site live and kicking.