It's Never About the Money, It's About the Push

I have been thinking about something for a while now.

In India, we don’t really lack capital. There’s plenty of money in the system, and there are people who want to invest, but we need to motivate them to do so at such an early stage. What we lack is the mentality that encourages people, especially students, to take chances early on.

When I am here in SF, I see the support system is entirely different. VCs walk onto campuses, talk to students, and even back them at very early stages. There’s mentorship, fast feedback loops, and this underlying belief that it’s okay, even good, to try something crazy and fail.

At BITS, the only memory I have of something like this was when EF came once and that too, talking about their residency program. Beyond that, no active push. No encouragement to experiment with bold ideas.

As a student, I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to try. I wanted to start a student-run VC fund, similar to Dorm Room Fund. I wanted to build a community and platform where researchers across the world could connect with labs, almost like a Reddit for researchers.

But those ideas never really saw the light of day. I shared them with seniors (which got me into this cell I was a part of), but slowly they got bottled up. Instead of taking the leap, I found myself working on things “on the side,” while staying in the same safe cycle.

Here’s the thing: if the mentality changes, capital availability will follow. Imagine if people had actually gotten a pushback, some encouragement, a bit of mentorship, maybe even a small fund to experiment with. Even if 90% of those early projects failed, the experience itself would have shaped them into stronger builders and risk-takers.

That’s the part I think we often miss — it’s never really about the money. It’s about the experience. Trying, failing, learning, and trying again.

It took me a long time to realise this: you should pursue what you want to do. If you are genuine, if you really want to make it happen, you will eventually find a way. But the journey becomes a lot easier if you have the right push at the right time.

And that’s the intervention we need: less caution, more belief. More permission to take shots, even if most don’t work out. Because those failures won’t be wasted — they will build the next generation of founders, researchers, and dreamers.