Dear Writer,
I am seated in the YourQuote office, looking at Prem — Prem Kumar Chanda, the Head of Community of YQ browsing through job listings on a website. He is looking for opportunities in Hyderabad, a city where his wife works. Less than two weeks ago, he got married. Less than two weeks ago, YourQuote had to let go of most of its team, including Prem, owing to a funding crunch.
The year was 2016. The month, October. Prem was working in Standard Chartered Bank, Chennai as a Financial Analyst when one night he saw an ad on Facebook about an app that turned your quotes Google searchable. YourQuote, it was called. Intrigued, he installed the app and gave it a spin. It was simple, let him write whatever he wanted to, select a wallpaper that suited his words and broadcast to the community of writers from across the world. He fell in love with YourQuote. Over the next few weeks, he had scribbled over 100 quotes — short poems, PJs, musings and more. He added the founders Harsh Snehanshu and Ashish Singh to his Facebook and celebrated his 100 quotes on the super-active YourQuote Family group there. Prem was filled with questions and suggestions for YourQuote. It helped him find his voice and he wanted to make the most from the platform not only for himself but also for every other user. Late at night, he would be conversing with Harsh and Ashish on Messenger, a heap of feature suggestions for them to note and a bunch of new ideas to explore.
YourQuote founders were in the Himalayas during those days, having started from a small village called Burwa near Manali. They were bootstrapped i.e. working without money — literally, strapping the boots with cello tape unable to afford a new shoe. They moved to a small guesthouse in the mountains to save on costs and didn’t quite have a team. One evening in late October, Prem pinged Harsh on Facebook asking if he could be of help, as he’d love to volunteer. Since Prem was one of the most active community members, Harsh heartily accepted Prem’s help and delegated him most of the community tasks such as moderation of content, troubleshooting user queries, replying to the emails and Play Store reviews, social media featuring of content that was original and relatable. Over the next couple of months, Prem showed his mettle and took over the entire community load from Harsh, helping him focus on the product, growth, and fundraising.
In the Christmas holidays, when the bank offered Prem a year-end leave of around 10 days, Prem decided not to visit home in Telengana and stay at his PG in Chennai to wrap up community backlogs. On 22nd December 2016, it was Prem’s birthday and instead of celebrating it, Prem stayed at his PG the entire day and just volunteered with the community work. Harsh, touched with Prem’s dedication & belief, texted him that if YourQuote ever raises funds, Prem will be the first person to be hired as a community manager. This promise was the only birthday gift YourQuote’s founders could afford.
Over the next five months, Prem led every little and big things related to YourQuote community. He organized open mics in Chennai, helped find enthusiastic volunteers such as him and helped scale open mics across 8 cities of India besides of course managing the social media and community work. He identified folks from among the users to lead the language handles such as YourQuote Dada for Bengali, YourQuote Kanmani for Tamil, YourQuote Kavi for Telugu and so on.
In May 2017, Harsh and Ashish had shifted to Bengaluru and were unsuccessfully knocking on every investor’s doors for fundraising, when Prem surprised them by visiting Bengaluru. After conversing on messages for good 8 months, it was the first time the founders were meeting Prem. Prem took the duo out on dinner and revealed to them that he’d resigned from his job and was now going to work full-time with YourQuote. This freaked Harsh and Ashish out and they pleaded to Prem to not be rash as they had no money to pay him. There won’t be any salary. Prem’s answer came like a reassurance. He said he has enough savings to sustain for 6 months and if needed, he could also help the founders financially. Prem told them that he was not able to devote time and mind to his banking job, being hooked to the YourQuote app, and it was ethical for him to put his energy where his heart was.
And just like that, in July 2017, after countless tries, one investor agreed to invest in YourQuote. A million frigging dollars. Harsh has a funny way of putting it. He says, ‘As long as Ashish and I were bootstrapping, God was like it’s okay, these guys can struggle. But the moment Prem quit his job, God freaked out. God couldn’t see the selfless and dedicated Prem struggling and God got us the money. Technically, it’s because of Prem that we got funded.’ I agree. It’s the collective will of the believers that make any movement work, that makes any organization scale. Prem, which in Hindi means love, embodies the true spirit of YourQuote. Spirit of helping, giving, loving and enabling.
As promised, Prem joined YourQuote on 1st August 2017 full-time as the first hire and was promoted to Head of Community in no time. He scaled everything he touched, from users to volunteer teams, to YourQuote team and donned multiple roles — HR, Community Head, Culture Manager, Head of Volunteers, Accountant, Talent Hunter, Social Media Manager & Content Lead — in the startup. For two years, he like most of our team members didn’t ask for appraisal and worked on a salary that was way below what he deserved, hoping for a new round of funding to turn things around financially. Unfortunately, things didn’t work as planned. The investor market bucketed YourQuote in the pool of other content platforms, undermining the well-knit community and the impact YourQuote has had on the lives of millions by being their digital friend, philosopher & guide.
A million dollars can only last for some time. It has been almost two years and only a fraction of the funding amount is left and the most heartbreaking moment for any founder arrived on the first day of this month. Prem had returned from his marriage and Harsh and Ashish had to ask 15 people from their team of 24 to look for opportunities outside, as YourQuote won’t be able to afford them. The duo couldn’t interest the investors, despite the growth and massive community of 2 million people, on the YourQuote opportunity to put in the next round of funding. 15 of those people who built YourQuote into what it is today are now seeking opportunities and it breaks my heart seeing them in the office applying for other jobs. While their heart is still stuck to YourQuote, their realities are different. Without pay, they won’t be able to survive the grueling metro life of Bengaluru and their families and futures are at stake.
YourQuote is still alive and hopes to be alive with your kind support. We continue to believe things will turn around, we will find a believer in what we have built and we will get our team back. You could help us do that by subscribing to YourQuote Premium membership, which offers a bunch of cool features, including daily secret letters. We have drastically cut down our costs and we are temporarily shutting our office to go back to our bootstrapping self, working out of our homes. While we might have lost Prem and 14 others who made YourQuote what it is today, we still have you, dear writer. Two million of you. If every one of you could upgrade to YourQuote Premium, we can last for ten years with our entire team back.
Revolutions and movements are led by people and their belief. Would you believe in YQ like Prem once did?
With faith that you’ll support YQ,
YourQuote Baba
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