How did I figure out my own success path?

After college, I happily gave away all my notebooks to the scrap shop, thinking "Finally, no more books!" But life had other plans for me.

I got my first job at Stickystamp (now called Inkmonk) as an Operations Executive. I was the first employee to join after the founders at this startup. In the early days, while the founders were working on their ideas, I had a lot of free time. I would often use Isaac's (one of the founder) laptops, and that's when I noticed something – they always had articles about startups and business open in their browser tabs. Back then, I didn't even know much about what a startup was, but these articles caught my interest.

During the quiet times at work, I started reading these articles. Sometimes I would get sleepy (and Surya, one of the founders, would notice but was nice enough not to say anything!). I also found some books in the office and started reading them during my daily travel to work. "Eat That Frog" was the first book I read this way, and it helped me start a new habit of reading during my commute.

Things changed when Senthil joined our team. The office was filled with talks about business and future plans. I mostly just listened at first, since I couldn't add much to these discussions. But I noticed something interesting: whenever questions came up during these talks, Senthil would come back the next day with complete information about those topics. I was always amazed by how he did this.

This taught me something important: you have to keep learning to grow in your career. Working at a startup meant that while my colleagues could explain problems and guide me, I needed to find solutions on my own. This made me read more, search for information better, and learn how to solve problems.

Looking back at my ten-year journey from Operations Executive to Product Manager, many things have changed, but one thing has stayed the same – the importance of always learning. It's been the key to my growth at work and still helps me today.

The main lesson I learned is that sometimes we learn the most important things in unexpected ways, and once you start enjoying learning, it becomes your biggest strength. Happy learning!