What do you do?
Umm…
That is how I seem to start my answer these days. Back in 2010, that was easy. My answer would have been “ I work as a Chemist”. If people asked more, i would expand into the details of Biotechnology industry I was working at.
Fast forward 7 years, I never seem to have a good answer. Primary reason for that being I have a lot of interests.
I have always had a lot of interests but back then I was set on following my safe path. Even since I can remember, I my interest was in computers, business, and writing. There was a slight problem. Back in my home country of Nepal, if you had good grades you studied Science. In fact if you had great grades, you went to medical school otherwise you followed other disciplines of Science. In fact, this is what I remember from my childhood. If you had first division(Similar to A average), you studied science; if you had second division( B average equivalent), you studied Business; and if you had third division( C average equivalent) you studied Arts and Humanities. I know, it makes no sense, but these were the norms. As for anything related to computers, it was something new and risky, and risky we did not do.
Back to question at hand. In 2010, I started exploring apps and used a drag and drop builder to create an app for Nepal. Even though i was doing no programming, i loved the process of creating something from scratch. When, I published the app to the app store and was able to reach thousands of users instantly, I was hooked! I kept building apps, and before I knew had a sizable app portfolio. Couple years later, I started a mobile app company with my brother and we have been running a fun and profitable operation. Our apps range from news and radio apps for underdeveloped countries to Chemistry and Biology learning apps. In fact, I quit my full time job in 2015 and have been running Kduo Productions full time.
During this process, I figured it would be good to get some formal business education and got my MBA from Colorado State University. While at CSU, I met a group of amazing innovators and we have been working on an innovative veterinary technology startup, Lacuna Diagnostics since early 2016. We have got some traction and excited to expand out services to veterinary hospitals nationwide.
Recently, I had enough courage to share my writing and published my first Novel. It is no bestseller but I loved writing and the whole process. Sharing my writing to the world was probably one of the scariest thing I had ever done.
When I look back to how we decided what to study back in Nepal, I feel like I have gone a full on backward from my what I was supposed to do ( MS in Chemistry) to the bottom of the pile(Writing a book) but in reality I feel the most satisfied and love everything I am doing.
So, my answer usually is, “umm, I play around with different ideas”
I know there are a lot of people out there who like to play around with different ideas. How do you answer this question?