Why we quit our jobs at The Economic Times to start FactorDaily

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The room was full, with ten of us staring at the picture projected on the screen. It was nothing close to how we had pitched the startup to each member of the founding team originally. The format, focus, tagline, target audience, and almost everything looked different. Somebody even questioned the name of the startup, explaining why it didn’t make sense anymore given our newfound positioning.

Everything looked different. Everything, except all of us in the room.

And this was happening at a time when at least four members of the founding team were serving their notice period with their existing employers. Disrupting the original premise of the startup seemed riskier than quitting our jobs at The Economic Times four months ago.

It looked suicidal and foolish.

Standing in that room and trying to explain the reasons for pivoting from the original idea, my mind flashed back to the time when both me and Jayadevan were quitting our jobs in December last year. The questions we faced then were quite similar. The only big difference was that our team was ready to disrupt itself because we’re in this together.

“What if you fail?”

“How will you make money?”

“How will you find talent to work with the startup?”

“Facebook, Google, Twitter are killing the media.”

“What’s your Mickey?”

“Are you disrupting for the sake of it?”

So why are we doing this?

Why now?

What will FactorDaily do?

Technology meets storytelling and design

Meet Regina, India’s first newsbot

Born on Slack and WhatsApp