Yup I came in to say the same thing. I think this is terrible advice. If your goal is to come back to the US then going back to India for a startup is a terrible idea. If you don't care if you never return back to the US, then it's fine but if you do want to return, you have no idea what the immigration laws will be or how hard it is to return.
Thats the whole point of risk. I risk not coming back because i wont have any idea what the immigration laws will be or how hard it is to return. I am ok with taking that risk, many are not.
But so far in my experience I have always found that there is always an option/a way to your goal. It might be shitty, long (as in multiple years long) and tons of headache and hassle, but there is always a way.
Pay attention to a couple of things in your response. Whatever happens I wish you the best.
(1) You contradicted yourself. What multiple years long translates to as you increase the number of years is death. So it's not true that there is always an option to your goal. At some point you run out of time and it leaves you without options.
If you haven't found this so far in your experience you might find it in the future in your experience. The important thing isn't whether you found it so far or not. It's whether it's true.
If by getting back up you mean returning to the US and getting past visa issues to continue entrepreneurship there, then you said something that's not true: you can't say it won't be hard to get back up. You don't know how hard it will be.
It is true though that reward is proportionate to risk. I also agree with the more general advice: make an option work for you. As long as it's qualified with: be aware the option that will work for you will have limitations another option wouldn't. The closer you get to the truth, the messier your sentence gets.
(2) When you find yourself justifying something with guilty words like "always" and "whole point" ("incredible" for the lawyer, "damn fine" for the university, "too damn good" for the opportunity) it's often to counteract something you subconsciously know is true. Else you wouldn't find the need to try hard to qualify the statement. You would just say the statement instead. You should be alarmed when you catch yourself do that.
After identifying the logical fallacy in (1), the second interpretation I had to reading your blog post was it was a cry for help from your subconscious. That it needed evidence it didn't have to convince your conscious part to reconsider the decision. I don't know if this is possible now that 5 months have passed.
It's also slightly suspicious you defended your blog post with risk. You might have subconsciously done it to camouflage the possibly bigger risk of deciding to stay in the US permanently if you are from India. You'd have to part from your family, possibly for a lifetime, and that can be a scarier thing than returning home. You'd also part with two co-founder friends and a startup idea. I can't know exactly what's going on in your case but if paying more attention to your subconscious helps your journey I'm glad this long response might have helped.
Tricky thing that subconscious:
The vast majority of goals you are pursuing, every day
of your life, operate entirely without your awareness.
- Heidi Grant Halvorson
All the best and hope this product works. I am still wondering how you manage to give those discounts in a place where people don't really understand what are the tests recommended by doctors. And doctors referring to certain labs and with their hand-writing that is hard to read (many do it for commission - some don't). And how would you manage the scenario where (few) doctors "reject" the reports from the labs that are not the ones they referred.
Scarily, NABL website has a meta description set to "Joomla! blah blah blah..." that shows up on Google search results.
As a Cornell Computer Science undergraduate from India myself, I find this post very thought provoking. Other factors that I personally would probably take into account is gaining some industry experience before one jumps into entrepreneurship in India and simply acquiring some capital from a few years of employment in the US which can you lean back on during your difficult startup days back in India. Just a thought.
>3. It will be not that hard to get back up if I fail completely and utterly
Most people are too risk-adverse. As long as you can keep playing after a loss, there's little reason to be risk-adverse. The exception is when the risk is so extreme—death, imprisonment, etc..—that losing means you couldn't play again.
Welcome home to India! I'm another Cornell alum here who did the same. You're certainly not alone. I moved to the US after my undergrad and studied and worked there before returning home to eventually become an entrepreneur. One of the driving factors in my decision to return to India, was that it is a lot easier for an Indian (citizen) to be an entrepreneur in India, than it was for a H1B visa holder to be an entrepreneur in the US. That visa is not designed for that purpose. For me the decision was straight forward. And I was surprised to find how many folks with similar backgrounds had come to the same conclusion. And fortunately, India as a startup destination has only become more attractive in the years since I've returned.
I looked at your product, very interesting indeed. I think you made the correct decision. Is it possible to negotiate a bulk discount for patients with chronic illness. These people need to repeat these tests almost weekly.
I spend at least once a year in Delhi and/or Hyderbad. I have friends in both places and have met multiple times with many movers and shakers in the tech and other communities, including the former ceo of microsoft india, the defense minister, and many below that level.
My trip two or three years ago let me observe something amazing - the start of many Indians that were born and raised outside of India are moving to India to start up companies - tech, biotech, etc. The parties I went to... hanging out with brits, french, americans, but all Indian ancestry but not Indian.
Many, but not all, were doing quite well with their companies. The ones that had left the West at the highest level of their jobs possible (e.g., cto of louis vuitton, head scientist of a pharma company, etc) were doing the best. The others were struggling.
But, given all of that, I couldn't help but think that they may be dooming their children and future generations. It's much easier to move to India with money and success than to move to the West, and I don't think India is there yet to support a successful business/tech class.
I do think overall the move back to India is going to be good for India. There's a conflict between the tech and the political class and the political class needs to be taken down a few notches. Can you imagine your outrage when a government official demands a bribe in order for your business to move forward? The Western-originated Indians won't stand for it - one of my trips to Hyderabad a house sale made the news because there was no black money involved...
Maybe it wasn't an irreversible decision for the blog author personally. But it can be an irreversible decision. I've seen it.
And a question: is the incredible laywer who gave you this advice an immigrant?