Why You Should Have No Doubts About Reading ‘Without a Doubt’

And why I wish the book jacket didn’t mention Surbhi’s partnership at Y Combinator

About 10 minutes after the time I was supposed to leave the city I was visiting for the airport, I found myself rushing inside the historic Higginbothams book store upon a friend’s recommendation. I spent all of 2 minutes there admiring its old architecture and wanted to spend even less than on picking a book for him to extend my gratitude but fortunately I spent far more than that and landed on Without a Doubt. What caught my eye was its tag line - ‘How to Go From Underrated to Unbeatable’. This seemed like a direct response to a conversation we were having a few days back making it the perfect gift. The book jacket was folded on the inside so I requested for a new copy only to find there was none. I left the book there to find a new one with a different one under my arm for myself. My mind’s as clear as the sky on a sunny day so with the book’s tag line badgering me constantly, I didn’t find any other that I liked as much so I bought the run down copy, stuck both of them in my back pack and rushed out. In all this hoopla, I hadn’t bothered reading the story, or about the author and I am glad I didn’t as I probably wouldn’t have bought it otherwise as I didn’t want another guide on how to build a start up.

All the while at the airport, I took meetings and urged people to send me urgent work that I could post process on the flight but failing to receive any, I was looking at a 3 hour chunk where I could relax and not work. As I got to my seat on the flight, I took my iPad out to open the ebooks I had on it, in process pulling out a collector’s edition comic I’d bought a month earlier from a flea market in London that I’d placed in my laptop sleeve to keep it straight. A corner of it was now poking out. I took out the two books I’d carried on my trip from home, the two new I bought and proceeded to open my own little bookshop on the flight, which with the comic seemed akin to the tiny book stores I’d seen as a kid on railway stations.

Why was all this so important to me and my story? As a kid, in summer breaks I’d often spend entire days sitting on my living room sofa, iced tea on side, finishing a book a day. As a budding entrepreneur with no mentionable personal life, my work hours often blend with my personal hours so I’d been looking forward to this chunk of 3 hours where I could pull off another such heist but for that the book needed to be gripping enough for me to give up a nap and Netflix for.

With the take off delayed I spent a good 30 minutes reading the summary on each book deciding which one would be my perfect accomplice. My mind was too saturated to find any of them gripping so I picked this one as I knew I’d have to give this to my friend the next day when I meet him so if I wanted to read it I had to treat it as a race against time.

I still didn’t get to reading the book description and started straight with the book and I’ll cut your suspense short, I finished it within the 3 hour flight finding it gripping enough to eat my food with the fork in one hand and the book in the other.

Did I learn how to stop underrating myself from the book? No. Did I learn how to overcome other’s perception of me being underrated? No. Did I learn how to be unbeatable at my work, or at life? No. Did I learn how to build a start up or how to be funded by Y Combinator? No. But why did I like this book? I learnt a few important life lessons on how to work, how to live, how to go easy on myself, and how to stay strong and focused.

Through the book, Surbhi talks of her journey from her childhood to her inspiration for her business to finally selling it. She does it chronologically, talking alongside of her family, her partner, her friends, her kids, her health, her struggles, her triumphs, her lessons, her learnings, her setbacks - but best of all - she spends equal time talking on it all. This book is balanced - neither does she spend too much time regretting the failures, nor does she spend too much time boasting her success. Neither is the book too technical, nor does it make me feel making a biotech company is a cakewalk. She talks of her struggles as a brown kid in an American community but just enough for me to feel like I can resonate with this person, just enough for me to have empathy for her character.

The story of an idea germinating and growing into a sapling that goes from being cared by one person to a few to many until it grows into a tree adopted by a big estate keeps the story enthralling. I keep turning the page to know what happens in the first trial, in the second investor meeting, the third FDA inspection, the fourth venture capitalist presentation. But what in between holds me to the page are the tidbits she throws in between that make me suddenly make mental notes. She talks of the pros and cons of hiring freelance consultants versus full time associates. She mulls over the time she took to build an office with a non virtual team. She agonises over whether her and her son would have been healthier had she stretched herself a little less for work. She worries about effective ways to hire and fire people. She notes how good or bad it is to off load work to people you know and are friends with. I can’t tell you the number of times I folded the page to return to certain advices or anecdotes (only to go back and unfold it and click a picture of the page instead as this book was after all a gift and I did not want it to seem used).

This book is a fascinating personal and professional journey that is presented so humbly that you find yourself living within the story and caring about the author and the company as if you’re an insider who has been let in on a personal secret or have been allowed to flip through someone’s personal diary. Don’t buy it thinking its another guidebook telling you how to build a company that gets funded by Y Combinator or Venture Capitalists. Don’t buy this book to get over your imposter syndrome. Don’t buy this book to learn self confidence. Buy this book to learn about not criticising yourself for how imbalanced or on what side the imbalance of your work-life see saw lies. Buy this book to read a cliff hanger that also helps you learn something. Buy this book to learn how to be okay if you’re scared and are just taking slow and gradual steps towards building your company. Or just buy this book to read a very fascinating story of a girl and a company.