Cracking Clans- Past, Present and Future!
Hey,
Hope you are holding up great and enjoying every present moment of life.
In March of 2021, I stumbled across the idea of helping fellow students to crack their exams, and to make sure nobody misses out on the things that matter, of course this idea originated from my own personal hardships and that of my peers. In the beginning, it seemed Extremely Exciting and gave hope to people that a better tomorrow is coming. Hope is a hard thing to possess after all, But the Hope that I had to solving this problem of effort in a large scale was high (needless to say). Following a lot of Brainstorming, a bit of researching and a strong amount of belief, I took a 6-month break from my academics (CA Final) to work on this idea of solving the effort gap prevailing in the self-study-based study ecosystem. My Friends and family called me crazy for the break, just before the exams, but I knew what I was doing all-along, it was not the failure that would make me regret but the thought of not trying at all would make me feel immense regrets. But things didn’t play out as I expected to (and that’s a good thing!).
I did a lot of things, looking back I wonder how and when and the timeline- (Beware Rant ahead)
June – Meet entrepreneurs, people in the ecosystem, and take advice/perspective/ideas from them and reflect/try them out for once. I remember meeting up with 10-15 people few of which I knew earlier and the most out of platforms like linkedin, Clubhouse, coffeemug, suprememinds(networking platforms). Talked with Nithish( great lad, straight forward) he kinda set me up with a good perspective, Explored the existing players in the field and researched on their “How’s” .Also read through 3-4 Books, blogs/ videos on youtube on and off (IIMA series, YS Fireside chats), Took Ankur Warikoo’s Start-up Course , And a few Udemy courses on Idea Validation and User Research
July- Stumbled upon YCombinator’s Startup School Blogs and Paul Grahm’s Blogs (Esp “Do things that don’t scale”) Binge read them and joined twitter (met the real ones and no Linkedin BS kind) , ended up changing the way I thought+talked+did things, Met 10-15 entrepreneurs + people who work at startups, content writers , Took Notes of the Book “Mom Test” and went word by word , reflected , stressed upon a lot of small stuff and thus started my user research by reaching out to my circle to my outside circle and making sure not to be biased with the questions , so that I could extract the pure motivations towards their actions/thoughts. Until this very moment I was targeting all 4 of the Segments (CA, UPSC, MED, Eng (JEE), CAT/GMAT). Then I decided to focus on a niche which gives me advantage in the short term and Just choose CA.
August- Before narrowing down to CA for the short term I chose to do user interviews with at least 1 person from each JEE, CAT, UPSC, NEET and that went well, this exercise was of little to no use , I just did this for a personal satisfaction/re-assurance of not deviating from dreaming big. I ended up interviewing around 44 people for User research in CA, got numerous types of data-oriented pain problems , understood them better , and After a good understanding I found myself feeling confident of a Problem Statement Validation (Not exactly idea validation). Again, met a lot of new people this month (one thing I never stopped doing) and read new resources and went back to read on a few ones, Dugged up research papers on STEM/Mentorship/ and Self Study Curriculum (skimmed through them read like 2% of the entire content – which was relevant for framing my SOPs). Also brainstormed like insane to come up with a name, exhausting but at the end it turned out to be a hit. I was travelling once a week to Chennai for my BCom exams as well. Connected with Divyansh (COO at Teach Mint) for a 45 min call (advice/picking his brain/mentorship), that was one of the highlighting/striking moments for me in this entire journey, it gave me the go ahead for whatever that came on, also he made me come to terms with why it is crucial for me to be a CA (looks silly but I had my own moments of existential crisis). Met Praveen Krishna (while I signed up for the Tamilpreneur Fellowship Program), little did I know he would end up being my roommate(future), he was more than that, a best-friend/support system, I (+he) earned his (+my) trust within like 15 hr talks (in 2-3 weeks) and that’s a story for another day.
Sept- Its time to build the MVP and Launch an Alpha version (spoiler alert: couldn’t build the Matching Algo, the dataset didn’t seem processable and lot of other tech stuff I never ended up understanding). Also Started looking out for Mentors, I was really happy with the responses and love that I got throughout, Planned the entire onboarding process (Intro Call for Q&A , Behav Test, Training Videos, Interview), I planned the Intro call to be a 10-15 min call , but most often it went for 45 mins (the max was 2 hours, the least was 17 mins). I got a whopping response from around 47 Mentors and called up every one of them. Also experimented with a part time CTO/co-founder on a trial basis and we decided to part ways in less than 5 days, due to reasons that we were almost exactly alike and the tech skillsets gap still existed even after the collaboration, also that it was a too early for a co-founder, I didn’t know what I was doing (+ about to do), Great lad though. Was also attending the TPF at the same time parallelly. I bunked on few activities in the TPF, but patched by contributing to their reels (as freelance).
Also, this is the month where things started to pick up and blew up at the same time and same rate.
Oct- Things started to fall apart with the tech part, I made up ways to make things simple with just basic forms and manual matching instead of crazy matching tech, Completed Cracking Clans’s first assignment by connecting a student with a mentor for a 1 hour consultation call (one feel good moment) ,Outsourced website content and got it done . I also started to kindle up multiple solutions and directions that Cracking Clans can take, Briefly was in contact with icai for incubation (haven’t heard from them ever since)met CA MP Vijay Kumar sir (turned out well) , the Training Videos for the mentors was messed up (multiple retakes, multiple revision in content, silly malfunctions such as audio input failure etc) (truly exhausting), Also picked up the study materials back again and started preparing for December exams (spoiler alert: I didn’t prepare well and ended up messing up in the exam), After a lot of new advice, info built a better roadmap , distribution and community focused (yes, Pivot to Community led) and started building a Free MCQ test portal through the website (all thanks to Ekanath NC , for the data entry support) (briefly ended the same since we lost direction and ekanath lost energy to continue as well)
By the end of October realized balance is a tricky concept and I suck at it (given my personal life, habits and routines). By Mid-November I decided concretely that I had to pause/temporarily shut down every other aspect of my career and give my all CA until I confidently crack the exams, by that I knew given my preparations I most likely will not be able to make it in December’21 and started preparing again right after the exams (of course 2 days break). It was hard to come to terms with that, but this had to be my way forward. I realized I needed to be fully ready, by that I mean in a space where I could give my entire focus to my hustle mentally (without any commitments and energy failures) to focus completely back on to Cracking Clans and freedom of thought and action to do so. Now I’ve Set on a Journey of Deep study with CA Final, May 2022 here I come. It’s not that the Idea/intentions failed, it was received well enough , its just me.
In Short: Dreamed of changing the ecosystem for good ,tried to give my best, learned a lot new, met a lot of new people (w/great intentions), knew myself better , grew higher than I expected , couldn’t balance studies with building the company , realized priorities and I’m back on course, yet Still Dreaming and hungry!
Special Mentions: Vijay M, Ekanath NC, Sriram S K , Aiswarya Ajmani, Anirudh P and my parents. Crucial Support at every juncture , can’t thank them enough.
This does not mean the end of Cracking Clans or my entrepreneurial journey, Its merely a speed bump, I’m Coming back soon, but next time different!
But is that all? “Definitely Not”!, Here’s the thing , 3 things you need to put in the right efforts to crack any exams, - Direction , Atmosphere and Supervision
For Direction, I got a great Mentor for me and my friend
For the Atmosphere and Supervision aspects , I came up with a thing, in the Absence of libraries given the pandemic and friends to get inspired + study along , I’ve set up a Discord Server which acts as a Community for Thriving students , I’m Studying around 8-12 hours nowadays, I’ve decided to Stream it through YouTube like the famous “ Study with Me: Live” Videos , tested it out , it helps me stick to my schedule , and i got traction without even sharing it ! Apparently it helps more people than i thought , so i’m gonna stick to continue doing it !
If you’re a Student preparing for the exams or watching classes , Hop into our Community in Discord and Also Check out My YouTube Channel
Thanks for Every inch of support you offered !means the world to me !!
Yours One and Only,
Venkat Ramanan K
P.S: Since I’m mostly in solitude, I would like to keep you guys in the loop of what’s up with me , what am I doing and some reads, music, memes, my takes on few stuff(the real catch) , So Subscribe to this Newsletter and I’ll send out these out on the 1st Day of every Month! Cheers!!!!!