Reliance launched at two cents a minute. My purchase price alone was eight.

No version of that business survived. Every customer I had was an Indian in America calling home. Exactly who Reliance had come for.

Staten Island, 2005. Drove out to the vendor who sold me routes into Africa and everywhere that was not India.

Not a sales call. I wanted him to hear it from me.

At some point I showed him the software. The routing engine I wrote at night because a MERA softswitch cost thousands I did not have.

Showed it the way you show someone a scar. Look what I spent two years on. Look what it is worth now.

He looked and said nothing.

Ten days of silence.

Then a call. Lets meet once.

He asked me to show it again. Then to test it. I gave him a login. He ran it a week.

When we met after that, he wanted the whole thing.

His business was Africa. Reliance had never touched him. The engine that had just become worthless in my market ran perfectly in his.

What I learned later is the part that stayed. He was already midway through licensing a softswitch and buying Cisco gear. What he paid me was a third of that.

I showed him proof of wasted nights.

He was reading an invoice he no longer had to pay.

What have you built that would be worth more inside somebody else's company than it ever was in yours?

Krishna Lakamsani | Entrepreneur · Venture Studio Founder · Investor. Writing at the intersection of AI, capital, and the future of work. For founders who build what's next. #MyLifeLessons #Reflections #InspireFounders #BuildInPublic #AiImpact

Krishna Lakamsani | Entrepreneur · Venture Studio Founder · Investor. Writing at the intersection of AI, capital, and the future of work. For founders who build what's next. #MyLifeLessons #Reflections #InspireFounders #BuildInPublic #AiImpact