For some individuals, the thrill of fulfilling their dreams transcends the hardships and time required. It is about looking back one day with satisfaction, knowing they achieved everything they ever dreamt of, with a mix of failures and successes. Recently, one such story has captured the internet's hearts.
Aman Goel's Inspiring Journey
Aman Goel, co-founder and CEO of GreyLabsAI, took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his remarkable journey from being an intern at Palo Alto to creating a successful Rs100 crore startup in India.
The Internship Experience
Goel shared that ten years ago, at the age of 20, he moved from IIT Bombay to San Francisco to intern at Rubrik Inc.'s software engineering team. He was earning $8,000 a month, which felt like a dream. His mentor, an IIT Bombay senior, made him fall in love with databases and scalable backend systems. The work was exciting, and the culture was electric. Rubrik went on to go public, and Goel was one of the early interns in 2016, before any of that happened.
Clarity and Return to India
More than the work experience, Goel gained clarity from the internship: he did not want to build a life there but rather return to India and build something of his own. In July 2016, he returned and decided that during his fourth year of college, he would learn about building a company. He immersed himself in entrepreneurship courses, product thinking, sales, and marketing. Engineering was never his constraint; business-building became his obsession.
Goel quoted Bill Gates: "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years." He noted that this quote hits differently when you actually live it.
Building a Startup
Over the past ten years, Goel went from being an intern at Rubrik to co-founding Cogno AI, bootstrapping it past $1 million in revenue, getting it successfully acquired, and starting again from scratch. Today, at GreyLabsAI, he has raised close to Rs100 crores from z47_vc and ElevCap. The team consists of 85+ members and works with more than 75 large BFSI accounts across India. The company has grown more than 3x year on year.
Goel emphasized that it all started with a summer in Palo Alto with a great mentor, the courage to come back home, and betting on himself. He advised current interns to pay attention to what excites them and what does not, as that signal is worth more than the stipend. The next ten years are waiting.
Netizens React
Netizens were moved by Goel's inspiring journey. One user shared, "From reading your blogs on blogspot to reading your answers on quora to following you on X & LinkedIn. Been working in corporate world for over a year, now I'm also looking to start something of my own. Let's see how things pans out." Another added, "Feeling proud for you brother... You chose to come back to your mothers who both need you... more than that countless bright young minds who can't afford to go abroad to get the exposure you had. I hope and pray we don't disappoint you as Indians." A third wrote, "Great mentors during the professional journey are priceless. This resonates a lot."
