It had been 2 months since the core team of Startups Club had started the group in meetup and had around 200 members and core committee meetings were considered very important by the core team.. We had no idea what we had started off, was it just another run of the mill thing, just another meetup group, just another reaction which will die with time or something good.. Nothing great for sure. After all, we were all a set of 5 strangers who knew each other just from 60 days.. We met at 6 pm.. Raining cats and dogs and we still did meet at Barista, Koramangala and we laughed and chatted for something.. Every one had just one thing at the back of our heads.. We are all fools.. We are making a hill out of a mole, instead of going back home and hitting the sack, here we were at a coffee shop in a rainy dreadful evening, traffic jams when we hit the road back home was a bigger problem for us than anything else.. Niladri.. Always the person other than me to start business talk in these meetings starts off.. All try to pay attention.. He says we are doing good.. Startups Club has had one successful meeting at Mr. Beans with 38 attendees and 200 members and counting and we had to now at least have some presence other than meetup.. I as usual, the attention seeker in meetings barges in and says "we do have a FB page and we have some 40 likes" very proud of myself.. He and the others are really happy and suddenly we all very interested to know things and our very own technically more qualified core team member Najmul comes up by saying we need to go on LinkedIn as it has serious business people and our marketing expert.. All fun guy Arnab jumps in saying it must be Twitter as it enables a lot of fellowship and within minutes we had all 5 of us talking together and loudly, trying to make our own point.. Just not aware or not caring about people around us, the rain, the time or our own urge to head back home.. Finally, the coffee shop boy cuts in to ask if we would order something (maybe that was his sweet way to let us know how noisy and chaotic we all were) that put all of us to silence, we brushed him off by lying to him and saying we were waiting for few other.. He was even more shocked to know that there were few more like us coming. We all sat silent and Vivek, our most intelligent and person with a knack for numbers, spoke " this Club is for members so that they could promote and reach out other members and a FB close group would be the best" immediately every one started speaking.. How many things can we handle.. Having is not the problem, managing is the thing, leaving it dead will even more demotivated our members blah blah blah.. Finally.. I do not know who spoke this but a line went like "WE CANNOT MANAGE A GROUP, AFTER HAVING A PAGE, LINKEDIN & TWITTER" that was it.. I looked so shocked that all thought I would faint.. The CAN'T word was used and I could not take it.. I proposed to the core team that we would try the FB group out if it does not catch momentum and it does not grow, we leave it and for some reason - no one opposed, maybe all wanted to go back home.. We parted off from Barista and headed home, long, wet and traffic clogged drive.. Vivek driving the car and I acted as if I was asleep but all I wanted to do was reach home and make that group of Startups Club.. How can anyone say we can't.. That was like sin, like the end of the world.. I kept playing a plan.. Reached home, did not even remove my foot ware, pulled out my system and there I was.. Created the Group.. Put a googled picture on networking as my group picture and then there is was.. 1 member.. ME.. Must I send an invite to the core team?? Would they be pissed off.. Would they feel I challenged them, I loved them all and my intention was not to hurt them but I had heard the CAN'T word.. I was helpless.. Anyway.. I decided that I was happy that I had created the group and would just share the link on my timeline and not invite any body and would talk to my core team and then do the rest.. I went to my room to change and freshen up and I heard 4 notifications came by on my phone.. My dearest core team.. All of them had sent a request to join.. I knew even more today why I loved them all so very much.. We stood beside each other for everything that is good for the club.. In 5 minutes we grew from 1 to 5. We had no plans, no SEO, no keywords.. All we, the core team did was just communicated to all our 200 members on meetup, our friends and contacts on FB and slowly it kept growing in numbers.. Every meetings we would tell our members, "please join our group & the page, and the Twitter & the LinkedIn".. We at times would feel so bad to make so many announcements.. Promote ur offerings there... Every day and every meeting.. Most importantly, even today.. What the group does to you is let's you talk about yourself, your idea, your offerings to a set of people who at times read it and at times just brush through but also at times who end up being your co-founders, ur customers and your trusted associations.
So, this is the story of your Startups Club.. Your platform for your selling.. Your voice to the 1001 & counting pairs or eyes who could be one and all to you.. Love you all people for giving me this opportunity to share this little story of that rainy evening, the loud talks between trusted associations and the result got today and the great future for all of us....
