Leadership Insights Chapter 2: Sanket Sahu, CEO, GeekyAnts

I loved to solve problems with technology. I remember I once built an electronic morning alarm that would beep with the sunrise when I learnt about light-dependent-resistors. I also built a desktop app to log the visits of patients at my uncle's clinic in the early 2000s. I think my love for building products has its roots in those little problems.

A lot! It transformed me and my team from just faces in the crowd into a company that loves to put their work out in the open. OSS makes you insecure at first, but eventually makes you courageous and open to feedback. When it eases the lives of other devs, you feel good. It's a mix of gratitude for others in the community and being content at heart that you helped someone at the end of the day.

I get bored fast. I don't like monotony. Whenever I have to do the same task for the second or the third time, I stop and try to think of ways to automate it, and that's where most of my projects start.

Transitioning from a dev role to a managerial role for me was like going from working alone in a room as a shy developer to standing on a stage and speaking my heart out on what I believe in. It was hard. I am selectively introverted and extroverted and it depends on a lot of factors. I went from writing conditional statements in code to making decisions that have bigger impacts on a much larger scale. It was scary at first, but it only gets better like everything else. As a CEO, empathy becomes more important than IQ. You know you are directly impacting the lives of other people and it’s just not binary anymore. Emotional intelligence is an important skill that I had to learn and that has made me a better manager at the end of the day.

No surprises here. I think the best way to manage both is to acknowledge the fact that both of them exist and one comes after the other, like night and day. I know, it sounds very philosophical but that is what it is.

I want to continue learning, earning, relaxing and exercising; and outsource everything else. Yes, that's by Naval but looks like I have taken it too seriously. While I want to continue looking for the next big thing that’s to come my way, I want to continue to stay content at heart and grateful for everything that I have in my life. It’s the only way forward for me.