Then to Now

March 2025 · 8 minute read

I think it’s the Journey

I’m writing this as I’ve just boarded Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto. The Wi-Fi won’t connect, but the views are incredible. Emotions? All over the place. So, like always, I’m thinking about the road that got me here.

View from CalTrain Window

At Nine

Summer break at my mamu’s place. He had a Windows 95 PC, basically wonder to a kid who’d only seen computers in rich people’s houses. My cousin and I would sneak in to play games, and I’d ask anyone who’d listen: How does this box paint pictures? Why does a “mouse” move the arrow? Most answers were okayish, the rest were “shh.” People were irritated basically.

The Long Beg

I begged my parents for a computer. But, understanding our financial condition, I stopped. But I was in lov with computers. I tried making friends who had a computer at home or a more advanced mobile phone, something that did more than just calling. Even in my dreams, I was in love with computers. I borrowed CS books from senior friends in my neighborhood. Most of the time, they thought I wouldn’t understand anything, but I just wanted to grasp everything written in those pages. I learned about hardware, how it works and which part does what. In 5th grade, I joined a local computer center that charged 250 rupees per month. I learned MS-DOS, spent a bunch of time playing with kernels & basically, by 11, I was assembling computers.

Ghar ke Kalesh (Family squabbles) & some breakthroughs

My current school wasn’t competitive enough, hence I wanted another one. Had a huge Kalesh (family squabble) at home since the fee for the new school was a lot. But mom came to the rescue, sided with me.

But the new school’s computer lab was boring. Same HTML stuff being taught. There was no competition except for everyone fighting to get good marks. This was boring to me. I wasn’t allowed to do my own stuff on the school computer. So, now it was time to get my own computer. Time for another kalesh (family squabble) at home. There was no chance I was getting this. But my maternal uncle came to the rescue, arranged an old Lenovo All-in-One Desktop. This was my time. Hell yeah, after school I was glued to it. I had strict instructions that I would share it with my sister and wouldn’t perform any surgery on it.

Now, my time to shine. Grabbed my Pen Drive, installed bootable Kali Linux on it. And started the real cooking. I didn’t have Wi-Fi, so my world was limited and I couldn’t ask for Wi-Fi lol. So, let’s guess the neighbour’s Wi-Fi password. Lmao, I kept guessing for a week. But then, the ego in me wanted to get to the bottom of this. Read a few blogs on my phone. Wrote steps in my phone. And then,

First few attempts failed, but yeah, with a new dictionary, I COULD FINALLY CRACK IT!!

some early puns

In my 8th class, I learnt about Bitcoin and had a few satoshis in my wallet, but idk where that private key is now. I earned it by reading a few blogs and solving some quests. Back then, the only guy teaching about Bitcoin in Hindi was Sandeep Bahuguna.

Created a YouTube channel where I used to teach physics. Had 100K views on my YT channel back then. Lol. I deleted that channel btw, idk why, I just felt cringed. But I want it back now lol.

Academics Cooked me

After 10th, academics took over me JEE, NDA, and board prep all at once. Couldn’t afford coaching, but JIO Dhan Dhana Dhan happened. I could download lectures from YouTube, which helped me clear boards. But, JEE scores weren’t good. Had to take a drop year, this year pattern changed lol, got two chances yayyy!! but still got cooked. Two subjects at 99.9 percentile, but one ruined the shot. Advanced didn’t go well either. Top IITs were out of hand now. I ended up in NITJ (actually didn’t get top NITs either).

So college was in a different city. Had to move to hostel. I could manage alone, but not without my PC which had to stay home, as my sister used it too. So now, in college with no PC. Got wrecked in the first minor exams. Started studying on my phone (redmi note 5), borrowed laptops when I could. But the spark was missing. I had dreamt of doing Iron Man level stuff in engineering. Reality was far off. TBH frustating.

Started building on my phone. Used Replit, found apps to run C++ and Linux environments. Still felt empty, made no friends, grades were slipping & doubts were creeping in. Then there was a hackathon by the DSC Club, a very small one. I coded entirely on my phone, and won. Here’s the LinkedIn post I made back then lol: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubhamkukreti_developerstudentclubs-code2success-webdevelopment-activity-6629801113094848512-FWum/

That’s when I felt alive again. Building, breaking, figuring stuff out. Then I Joined a few clubs. Contributed where it felt right.

Covid & Lockdown

I was back home for the Holi holidays. Then COVID happened. Our second sem minor exams got postponed, and soon after, the lockdown began. It was an unfortunate time, but it gave me a chance to reconnect with my computer. I also received a 2008 Lenovo laptop from my uncle. Now, I had my own machine (suddenly now two) and that changed everything. Fist thing i did first, was installed manjaro & custom shell. Now, i could build anything on this machine.

With classes shifting online, all I had to do was open another tab. Gave time to explore things like open source, communities, hackathons. I ended up winning bounties worth several thousand dollars. I created a small community with few online friends with a charter that after winning hackathon we would take up 80% & rest 20% we would give away to budding devs in the community. I remember giving away $5000 in total. During that time one of my pull requests to an open-source organization caught attention and led to a part-time opportunity, which eventually turned into a full-time role. That became a solid income stream.

I was able to help my family pay off their debts.

Participating in online hackathons and remote work brought in money I had never imagined earning before. I attended a hackathon hosted by Devfolio with Lightspeed as one leg of the flight was sponsored, which really helped: https://x.com/ShubhamKukretii/status/1530492054081458176

Life finally felt on track. I bought myself a MacBook Air M1 (first machine with my own money). From there, I kept making steady progress, learning everything I could with a deep sense of gratitude.

I consider myself LUCKY.

Travels

Now, even before graduating, I had full-time work exp. I had built up a sufficient fund corpus, enough to keep me afloat and ensure I never had to struggle again for basic needs or go without proper computing power.

When my batch had its farewell, I went backpacking in Vietnam for 20 days. I covered everything from Phu Quoc Island to Hanoi and Halong Bay. To be honest, I was loving it and really wanted to do SAPA and the Ha Giang Loop, but I had to return for my exams. That trip was my first time visiting a foreign country.

Around the same time, I received a job offer that was 3x my current compensation. I declined it. I genuinely liked where I was working, and there was no immediate need for more funds.

Since then, I’ve traveled to more countries for work and hackathons and I’ve loved every bit of it.

I met my co-founder in a Clubhouse in BLR. We exchanged ideas and started building a bunch of things together. It didn’t work out, but we shared a similar builder’s spirit.

New Journey

A few days back, just before heading back from Denver, I resigned from my job to start building something of my own. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, and it finally feels like the right time. I’m not scared of what’s ahead. I’ve already lived through what most would call the worst. There’s no safety net. I’m back on the road again. Let’s see where it takes me.

If you’ve made it this far, Thanks for sticking around and bearing with my blog.

Caltrain’s slowing; Palo Alto’s next. Time to hop off and keep moving. Catch you on the other side. There’s a startup to build.