# All hail the blood of the heroes

Seven half-bloods shall answer the call,

To storm or fire the world must fall.

An oath to keep with a final breath,

And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.

Blood of Olympus

Test post

*It's like jumping of a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down*

On February 10th, 2021, through a LinkedIn connect, I got the opportunity to work as a React Developer at Farmako Healthcare, a healthtech startup, then based out of Calangute, Goa, India.

I am not going to lie, the thing that initially drew me to the company was the brand value it had achieved by securing a backing from Y Combinator, an amazing startup incubator and accelerator led by some of the most inspiring visionaries I've come to idolize.

However, as I write this article, I'm 3 months into this, and not a day goes by when I don't smile about jumping at this window - against the wishes of my family, an increasingly challenging online semester, amidst a global pandemic and a couple other imbalanced things in life.

In my 3 months as an intern (as of May 2021), I have not written a lot of code, maybe lesser than what I would have if I stayed put with my routine, but I have grown as a person and earned experiences and people, that pretty much dwarf what most certifications, accomplishments and compensations, any other work would have yielded.

This journey has been a tale of friendship, sacrifices, losses, dreams, chaos but for the most part, it resonates a glimmer of undying hope, to help society, to make something people want.

# About Farmako

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of  something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation and the result is something fresh and strange.
~Peter Thiel, (Paypal, Facebook, Palantir)
Farmako is the brilliant brainchild of 3 insanely crazy, visionary engineers out of IIT Roorkee, India :

1. Aman Bhandula - CEO, Graphic Designer, Machine Learning Engineer, ever-dead-Apple-watch wearer.
2. Kaishu Sahu - CTO, Software Developer, guitarist and fitness enthusiast.
3. Nikhil Kumar - Technical Lead, omniscient hacker of code and people, caffeine connoisseur.
Farmako is a healthtech startup that takes the 4 main components of any healthcare system i.e.

1. Patient
2. Doctor
3. Laboratory
4. Medical Store

and digitally integrates them all in a privacy regulated manner in a cloud of software services, such that the speed and effectiveness of communication between these components would make the healthcare pipeline - right from symptom to diagnosis to testing prescription to recovery - cheaper, faster and more accessible for anyone.

*"Everything these days, right from banking to booking a cab these days is digitized in a unified manner. There seems no logical reason why healthcare hasn't undergone this transformation yet"*
**~ Aman Bhandula, (Farmako)**

Also, once enough records are safely stored in the database, Farmako can actually perform machine learning to predict future disease outbreaks, effective medications and potential hotspots where most healthcare resources and expertise needs to be diverted to.

Also, the thing that sets apart Farmako from most startups I've seen is that most discussions were not on monetizing and profiting from the idea, but on helping make healthcare technology, a real support system for everyone.  

Also, funny thing is these post titles and job divisions of CEO, CTO etc. are nothing but names to the outside world as with the kind of amicable culture inside Farmako, literally everyone is doing everything. The most interesting kind of workplace I could possibly ask for.

# First Impressions

*Be a cockroach. They're much harder to kill*
**~Paul Graham (Y Combinator, ViaWeb)**

My first introductions to the company started with a LinkedIn post announcing for hiring a React Developer Intern. I was lucky to be tagged onto it by a friend.
As researched more about the people, I got amazed more and more about how 3 extraordinarily talented people, from different walks of life, had gotten together on an idea and stood by it, since 2018 (3 years back), against all odds.

I even went through one of their blogs on why something like this had to be done.

The more I researched, the more I was convinced that the problem, the idea, the people and the approach all seemed to somehow fit perfectly into actually solving one of the biggest problems of the 21st century. I was drawn to it quite strongly

# Hiring...
*If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.*
**~Edmund Catmull, (Pixar)**

Applied. Interview scheduled. I was battered with questions about software development and in fact, the project I was most proud of upto that point in my journey as a programmer was hacked within a minute by Nikhil Bhaiya. ("Bhaiya" means "brother", in Hindi language).
In those 30 minutes I actually experienced the diversity in thoughts and approach of Aman Bhaiya and Nikhil Bhaiya. Someday later, Aman Bhaiya, drawing from Paul Graham's observations, would explain to me, how 2 distinct kinds of people - hackers and painters, come together to create marvellous pieces together

Case in point : 1st April, 1976, California, USA. A Reed college dropout, brilliant artist meets a University of Colorado expellee, elite hacker and the 2 set up a small venture selling home computers from the artist's parents' garage. As of 2021, this venture has grown to a $2 trillion company, we know by the name Apple Inc. - brainchild of hacker Steve Wozniak and artist Steve Jobs.

A funny anecdote that comes to mind is that Aman Bhaiya started conversation with how life was going and at 1 point Nikhil Bhaiya just barged into the talk with - "Is Node JS single threaded or multi-threaded ?". After a short answer, Aman Bhaiya realised that they hadn't introduced themselves to me yet so after about 5 minutes of awkward questioning, I hear - "Hi ! I'm Aman, and these are my co-founders Nikhil and Kaishu (who was wired into code, and just greeted me with a classic ✌)."

Post-interview, one thing was for sure though. Something was really different about these entrepreneurs. I knew I had to get to know them better hence I kept spamming Aman Bhaiya with text messages asking for the technical assignment that would be the last evaluation in my application for an internship.

Funny thing is, first 2 hours of starting the assignment, I am dead spirit-broken because of some small bug because of which the project wouldn't even initialize. At this point I start having 2nd thoughts.

I mean - I had a full-blown online semester going on, I had institute club commitments, I wished to continue playing around in shallow waters of being a student developer and enjoy the luxury of being a child in a family and there was 1 other integral reason as well which was yearning me to give up on this chance and move on.

*"You always regret the things that you don't do"*
**~Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin)**

Somehow, deep down, I knew I had to do this. 20 years down the line, I didn't want to face myself regretting the question - "When you had the chance to work with a bunch of great people on a transformational idea, where did you go ?"

That was it. 22 hours. Wired in. At the end, I was able to create a simple dashboard that could be used by a doctor for viewing the medical records of the upcoming patient appointments.

For the first time ever since I started programming, I felt a wave of confidence wash over me, that somehow, amidst the nights of staring frustratingly at errors for hours altogether, I'd managed to gather enough grit to disect a problem into code blocks and weave it all together in a functioning software solution that people could use.

# A shot in the dark

*When you find the right people, you don't have a choice, but to work with them. When you meet somebody who's that alter ego, don't let them go.*
*Find a way, however crazy and however weird to make them part of your world.*
**~Eric Schmidt (Google CEO, 2002-2011)**

A day after the submission, I get a call from Aman Bhaiya, and he told me that they really liked my code and quite casually, his next question was - "How soon can you move to Goa ?"

Now see, I come from a family of order and security. The path I was expected to tread was one of a Masters from a college of repute, a high-paying engineering job at a tech giant and a settled life. So, a startup was a big red flag on this road. And upto this point, these were the exact footsteps I'd been taking.

But this time, I somehow gathered enough confidence to go against my family and explore this uncharted territory, purely because my heart knew this was the place I had to be in. Sometimes it's okay to be stupid and instinctive. Sometimes you have to trust your gut and take a leap, however irrational it may seem. Flight ticket booked for the day after.

That night, at around 11pm, I was introduced to the team in a more informal fashion.

Aman Bhaiya was getting anxious about not having the monitor properly set up for a video call. Nikhil Bhaiya was getting teased about flexing his AirPods on call. Kaishu Bhaiya walked up from behind, sipping a chocolate smoothie. Hemil, the Flutter Developer intern was being laughed at, for turning his camera on for the 1st time on call. Arun Bhaiya, the graphic designer, smiled, not understanding most of what we were saying as we spoke in Hindi, a language that was not-native to the South Indian origins he hails from.  Ankita Didi was laughing, complaining about being detained at Khosla House (I think it's a guest house) back in IIT Roorkee, where she was balancing her dissertation side by side with a graphic designing internship at Farmako.

I remember laughing a lot without realizing at how this strangely messed up medley of people would become family to me in the upcoming weeks, and how we would embark upon a great journey on revitalizing the healthcare situation in India.

As I lay down that night, I could barely believe how this had all happened so fast, in a span of less than 1 year, that I started programming. Tomorrow, I'd meet the friend who was pivotal to this entire transformative journey, enjoy a warm cup of tea and traditional Maharashtrian snacks to kickstart a new chapter, say my thanks, goodbyes and promises to keep in touch.

Day after, I'd fly.

*Sometimes it's important to wake up and stop dreaming*
**~Larry Page (Google, Alphabet)**

Why work at a startup

# hello world

this

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festivals in india

# Sam Altman (OpenAI, Y Combinator)

Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[7][14] In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its cofounder Paul Graham.[15][16] His first batch of investments included Loopt. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe.[17] In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator and other units.[18]

Altman has said that he hopes to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He has also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially 'hard technology' companies.[19]

In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[20] Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[21] YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.[22]

Altman was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes in 2015,[23] one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by BusinessWeek in 2008[24] and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.[25]

In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI.[26] This decision came shortly after YC announced it will be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[27] Today, he is no longer affiliated with YC.


Sam Altman

Steven Paul Jobs (/dʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc., the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.  Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, and put up for adoption. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism.  Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI. The Macintosh introduced the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics. Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took a few of Apple's members with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher-education and business markets. In addition, he helped to develop the visual effects industry when he funded the computer graphics division of George Lucas's Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company was Pixar, which produced the first 3D computer animated feature film Toy Story (1995), and went on to become a major animation studio, producing over 20 films since then.  Jobs became CEO of Apple in 1997, following his company's acquisition of NeXT. He was largely responsible for helping revive Apple, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with designer Jony Ive to develop a line of products that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning in 1997 with the "Think different" advertising campaign and leading to the iMac, iTunes, iTunes Store, Apple Store, iPod, iPhone, App Store, and the iPad. In 2001, the original Mac OS was replaced with the completely new Mac OS X (now known as macOS), based on NeXT's NeXTSTEP platform, giving the OS a modern Unix-based foundation for the first time. Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor at age 56 on October 5, 2011.

steve-jobs

Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate, industrial designer, and engineer.[3] He is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor,[b] CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk is one of the richest people in the world.[c]  Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received dual bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form the company PayPal and was subsequently bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.  In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO, CTO, and lead designer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company and current Tesla subsidiary. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.  Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a diver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue; a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. Also, in 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued him for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and has received criticism from experts for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence and public transport.