5yr Co-Founder Journey — Learnings Hard & Good

In the 12yrs of my professional career, I have been incredibly lucky.

Lucky to have been hired by a really cool boss who believed in me in the craziness of 2008; at a company that supported & accelerated my green card journey; to eventually introducing my future partner who for a long time was not only my boss, my mentor but also who I considered my best friend.

Fast forward a few years and my generous partner asked me to come on a journey of starting Liatrio, a DevOps Consulting Services firm, giving me equity and a title that in vanity I craved for, which in 5yrs, grew to be about ~ 35 folks. I have been supported, loved, respected, tolerated, been given responsibilities far beyond my capabilities, been allowed to make mistakes, mess up beyond belief but never ever asked to not be myself. As an immigrant in San Francisco, who did not know much about a lot of things expect a burning desire to do something interesting professionally before settling into a more tried and tested path, the last 12 years have been incredibly fun and I am deeply grateful for it.

Liatrio helps large enterprise clients with their DevOps, CI/CD, and Cloud transformations. We are a niche, opinionated, and a blue collared ethos firm who really take our client’s success seriously and go above and beyond in many ways to make their life a little better every day. Consulting Services is hard work — there are battles every day but our one ethic has always been doing right by the client no matter what it entails. From the culture I come from, the aspect of Dharma (or “what is right”) trumps all and we embody it fully in our every action.

I can sum up our journey so far as — exhilarating at the start, toil & anxiety in the middle, and lightness + consistency recently — none of which made us doubt our core beliefs and principles. I made a lot of mistakes personally but as a firm, we never did wrong by our clients and employees which is something I am extremely proud of.

The desire to share my learnings is purely to give back to anyone like me, who wants to start or is running a consulting services firm, and if, in any small way, this helps on their own journey. In that spirit, here are my learnings from this journey:

1. Honest Relationships matter the most — In the long run, what matters are relationships and honesty with which you maintain them. I have strived to be honest with my clients every day and on all issues and it has paid rich dividends even at the expense of short-term setbacks
2. Enterprises are fundamentally the same except in name — The fundamentals of most enterprises don’t change much — the tools, the people, the platforms change but the struggle at the end of the day is still with mindsets, varied interests, and miscommunication and misalignment. Never forget this, especially as a services provider
3. Make your clients journey, your journey — Your idealism will only get you in the door. What keeps you going is how you meet the client where they are and bring them on the journey daily, weekly, in good months and bad quarters. Know your work and be 3 steps ahead in both strategy and technology but what works is taking the client from what they know to what they need to know. Do anything else and you lose them
4. Consulting Services business is putting one foot in front of the other at all times— Showing up and keeping the conversation going resolves 99% of the issues. Drawing hard lines and putting up barriers to talking leads to nowhere
5. Be monk-like & bliss is yours — Technology Consulting Services business is akin to a monks journey. It's long, it's repetitive and from the outside, it's mundane but there is certain zen you feel when you are really good at it. I have experienced it and it is very satisfying. Be like a monk.

In the coming days, I will share specifics around consulting services business & technology transformation learnings in-depth. To whoever is following along, my sincere gratitude. Namaste.