Lately, I’ve been feeling super low and lost.
Not in a “I need a break” kind of way.
More like, do I actually still have it in me?
And that thought has been fucking with me a lot.
I was 19 when I was making over ₹10 lakh a month. Around $10,000 in today’s money. Every single month.
At that age, I think I started believing that I was just someone who could figure things out.
Build something. Sell something. Make money. Repeat.
Then I started building BeHooked.
And for the last two years, almost nothing has gone the way I thought it would.
I raised money.
I tried raising more and couldn’t.
I built.
I changed things.
I tried different directions.
I kept going when, honestly, there were many points where it would have been easier to just stop.
Sometimes I think maybe I should have been in SF.
Maybe things would have been different there.
But even coming to Mumbai took a ridiculous amount of effort for me. SF felt like a completely different ball game altogether.
And I can keep making these “maybe if…” arguments forever.
Maybe if I was in SF.
Maybe if I had raised more.
Maybe if I had met the right investor.
Maybe if we had launched differently.
But none of that changes where I am right now.
The weirdest part is that from the outside, some of it probably looked like things were working.
BeerBiceps used our app.
Finance With Sharan used our app.
Those are the kind of names you proudly put on your website and pitch deck.
And I did.
But if I’m being fair with myself, it changed almost nothing.
It didn’t meaningfully increase revenue.
It didn’t suddenly make the business work.
It didn’t create the kind of momentum I thought it would.
And that gap between how things look from the outside and how they actually are has started messing with my head.
Sometimes I post something on LinkedIn or Instagram and people tell me I’m hustling, killing it, building like crazy.
And a part of me thinks:
If you actually saw the numbers, would you still think that?
That’s probably where the impostor syndrome comes from.
Because yes, I can work hard.
I know I can hustle.
I know how much effort I’ve put into this.
But effort doesn’t automatically mean output.
And if I look at the last two years purely based on output, there isn’t much I can point to and say, “Fuck yes, this worked.”
That’s difficult to admit.
Especially when I’ve already experienced the opposite.
I already know what it feels like to make money.
I already know what it feels like when things are working.
So being older, supposedly smarter, more experienced, more connected, and still struggling somehow hurts even more.
It makes you question whether the earlier success was skill or luck.
Whether you were actually good or just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Whether you still have it.
That’s the part I’m trying to fight right now.
Because somewhere in these last two years, failure stopped being something that happened to me and started becoming something I used as evidence against myself.
And I don’t want to do that anymore.
I still believe in BeHooked.
I still believe I can build something meaningful.
I still want this badly.
I’m just not as blindly confident as I used to be.
Maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.
I don’t know if BeHooked will become the company I think it can become.
I wish I could write that with complete certainty, but I can’t.
What I do know is that I’m not done.
I haven’t lost hope.
I’ve just started doubting myself.
And maybe the next battle isn’t proving everyone else wrong.
Maybe it’s proving to myself that the last two years don’t define what I’m capable of.