“This truck is going there.”
He pointed outside.
“And that one is coming from there.”
Another truck pulled in.
I was standing there thinking, what the fuck am I doing here?
My first reaction was basically: “this guy is wasting my time”
I thought, is this guy seriously going to show me trucks for four hours?
I had gone to this chemical factory to learn about chemicals.
Instead, this guy had spent the last few hours teaching me about trucks. Truck comes in. Truck goes out. Another one leaves. He tells me where it's going, who buys from him, how often they come, how much they take.
I'm just waiting for him to finally show me the interesting part. The chemicals. He doesn't. After maybe 3-4 hours, he says something that, at the time, I didn't realize I'd remember years later.
“Our business is just reaching the customer. The chemical is just an excuse.”
I remember thinking... What does he even mean? Then he starts giving me examples.
“Bisleri.”I know Bisleri.
“Do you know all the other bottled-water companies? ”No.
“Exactly.”
Then biscuits. How many biscuit companies can I name? Maybe five. Ten if I really try. But there are so many more.
And suddenly I'm looking at this whole thing differently.
I'm thinking...How many good products are sitting in factories right now that nobody knows about?
And then, on the way back, something uncomfortable hit me. I 've done exactly this. Just in reverse.
My first business was basically me falling in love with the thing I was building. I had an idea. I got excited. Then I started spending money. Building. Improving. Fixing things. Making it better. And somewhere along the way, I forgot to ask the most boring question:
Who the hell is going to buy this? I spent heavily before even checking it! (it looks insane now) By the time reality caught up with me, I'd lost around ₹15,00,000.
And I remember how stupid that felt. Not because I had lost money. Because I'd been working so hard. I was busy every day. I felt like I was making progress. Except that I was just hiding. I was just getting better at building something that people hadn't asked me for. That stayed with me. So the next time I started something, I tried to catch myself before I made the same mistake. I started thinking roughly 80% about getting to customers and 20% about making the product better.
And honestly, I wish I'd understood that earlier. Because I think we're entering a weird period where making things is becoming incredibly easy.
AI can help you build the product. Write the content. Make the design. Write the code. Whatever. Everyone can make more. So making something isn't necessarily going to make you special. Getting people to actually notice it might.
We are living in a world ruled by average people, average products & average ideas.
And I think that's why that factory visit stayed with me. Because before that, I used to look at successful products and think: They must have built something better.
Now I sometimes wonder:
Or did they just get seen? There are probably thousands of genuinely good products I'll never hear about. Businesses I'll never discover. People who are much better than the people I know. Not because they're worse. They just never reached me. And that's probably one of the biggest things that changed in me as a builder. I don't get as excited about building something anymore. I get excited when I see that someone actually wants it. Which is a very different feeling.
And yeah...I went to that factory to learn about chemicals. I came back with a completely different understanding of business & life.
Funny thing is that I still think about those trucks!