In the middle of the Fall, 2015  We held a special question and answer event with Tint Co-Founder Nikhil Aitharaju right in the heart of China Town at 1920C, an awesome and inspirational co-working space. This event was created especially for the founders that attend our SVE events, we wanted Influential people to answer the burning questions we get all the time and be able to answer them in person!

“Hey, I am Nikhil, CoFounder @ Tint. I moved to US in 2010, to pursue masters in CS in USC. My goal was to settle down and have a happy life. During college, I secured a job offer from amazon and first question my parents asked was ‘What’s Amazon’, so I explained it to them and they were fine with it. Then in few days I got an offer from the startup. Now I had to explain my parents why I am joining a 30 people company instead of Amazon. 3 months later I told them I am going to start my own company. My Parents were shocked! 3 months later I told them I am going to start my own company. My Parents were shocked! All I would say, It all turns out fine. “Life gives one chance. Take it” While in school, I had co-founded a company and just with 1000 users, we hustled to get Mark Cuban’s attention and managed to get 250K$ in funding and a bunch of press. However, our original product failed to grow. After 1 yr only 30K were left in the bank. So my startup, gave up the idea of applying for my h1b visa. Being an immigrant I had 2 things to worry about compared to my co-founders. 1] Get company on track 2] Stay in US. I feel US immigration is running Windows 95, while the economy is like iOS! I had decisions to make. Choose a job offer or work at a startup. This quote influenced my decision When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.” – Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub. So we persisted. An opportunity presented in the form of a PR agency who wanted to use our technology in a different way. That worked! We remained tenacious and turned around the product as Tint and we grew to 40K customers, 1M+ in revenue in just a few months. There is one thing I would say “When you fail, don’t give up. Things work if you persist and focus on product.” Coming close to losing my US visa status to growing our company to 25 employees and 4M$ in annual revenue, it’s been an adventure. Happy to share my experiences. AskMeAnything! Check out some talks by Nikhil.” Hope to see you all there!

This event was a huge success, hundreds of questions, lots of laughs and definitely will happen again.