The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions Read Online Free PDF Page B

all, as I’ve said, I learned that one should never, ever give up. Tough as things were, my father had pulled himself together. And he never got tired of reassuring us that we were going to be all right.
    A month after the stock market crash, when the housing market began to pick up, we put a FOR SALE sign in front of our modest Gridley Street home. That was the only equity we had, and we needed it—badly.
    In mid-January, we got a decent offer, and a month later we moved into our new digs. We rented a U-Haul truck and spent the entire weekend making trips to and from the house, and when we finally unloaded the last of the boxes I could see joy and victory in my father’s eyes. He had managed to keep his word to his family. Despite the setbacks, he had given us a new home. It wasn’t a palace by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a huge step up from the ’hood. There were five small bedrooms. I shared one of them with my brother, and my sisters took the one next door. My parents were in theroom across the hall, my grandmother slept at the end of the corridor, in a small room that had its own bathroom, and the fifth room was our prayer room (Baba Ji’s room). There was no fighting over this room: We all understood that under our father’s roof, a space would always be set aside for worship.
    That first night—with the kitchen still a long way from unpacked—we splurged on Kentucky Fried Chicken. We ate with our hands, grinning at each other across the table. We were happy. We were
home.
    The next day, before dinner, my father ran a brief
ardas
ceremony, in which we thanked God for his generosity. And over the next two weeks, we performed the
akhand
path, reading the entire Holy Book to give thanks, again, for our many blessings. The real ceremony usually takes place over the space of three days, and it is supposed to be performed, uninterrupted, by a team of professional readers, but my parents had jobs to go to and my siblings had school
and
jobs, so we spread it out over a longer period without suffering any ill effects.
    So there we were, living the middle-class dream. My parents had made it. We had left the projects for a nice neighborhood. Things were looking good.
    I, meanwhile, had become obsessed with CNBC, with making something of my life. I was driven. I wanted to be successful, and I wanted it to happen quickly. Inspired by themany entrepreneurs I kept seeing on the news, I decided I would build a company from the ground up, something that was wholly mine. I remained drawn to the Internet, which was still in its embryonic stages. Nowadays, of course, everyone knows what the Internet is, and life would be almost unimaginable without it, but back then, it was still uncharted territory. I was fascinated by the madness and euphoria that seemed to affect everyone connected to it.
    In the fall of 1998, I finally got accepted into the accelerated program at Accel Middle College. When I did the math, I realized I could be a doctor by the time I was twenty-five, which of course would have been the fulfillment of my parents’ dreams. But I had absolutely no interest in becoming a doctor—despite the fact that George Clooney made it look so cool on
ER.
My heart was in business.
    Much as I disliked school, it was refreshing to be in an adult environment, among mature students who were thinking about their future.
    The school hours were also a big plus. I had mandatory classes between twelve and two, Monday through Friday, but the rest of the time I was pretty much on my own. And I didn’t have to attend any of the college courses as long as I did the required work and kept up my grades. I also used the opportunity to challenge myself. For example, I was a bit of an introvert, so I signed up for public speaking. On the first day ofclass, the professor launched right in. “I am going to hand out a list of topics, at random,” she said. “Whatever topic you get, be prepared to come in and make a speech about