Tag: entrepreneur life

In Business Breakups, the Winner Writes the Story


There is a kind of loss no one prepares you for.

Not failure.
Not bankruptcy.
Not even a breakup.

This is when a business partnership breaks, the other person walks away with the company, and you walk away with silence, blame, and a long legal shadow.

What makes it brutal is not just losing money or position.
It is losing identity, narrative, and fairness—all at once.

And watching the world applaud the aggressor.

1. Corporate Betrayal Trauma

This is not “a partnership issue.”

This is when:

  • Your life is deeply tied to the company
  • Your work continues—without your name
  • Your seat is occupied by the very person who pushed you out

It feels like divorce + job loss + public humiliation, rolled into one.

The worst part?
People expect you to “move on” while the wound is still open.

2. Asymmetric Power War

This is never a fair fight.

The aggressor has:

  • Company money
  • Legal teams on payroll
  • Employees, agencies, and advisors
  • Time and continuity

The victim has:

  • Personal savings
  • Family pressure
  • Emotional fatigue
  • And a ticking clock

Yet society judges both sides as equals.

They are not.

3. Narrative Hijack (Corrected Reality)

This is the most dangerous phase and the least understood.

The aggressor never speaks alone.

They have:

  • Employees
  • Friends
  • Consultants
  • PR agencies

All speaking on their behalf.

It looks like third-party endorsement, so people believe it.

But when the victim speaks:

  • It looks like self-defense
  • It looks like self-interest
  • It looks like weakness

Silence hurts you.
Speaking hurts you.

This is a communication trap with no clean exit.

4. Success Mask Injustice

Here is the cruel illusion:

The aggressor looks successful:

  • Company runs
  • Team stays
  • Money flows

The victim looks stuck:

  • Legal cases
  • Restarts
  • Explaining life to others

Society quietly assumes:

“If he’s successful, he must be right.”

This is how appearance replaces truth.

5. Stakeholder Cross-Examination

You are forced to answer questions you never caused:

  • “Why did this happen to you?”
  • “Couldn’t you have avoided it?”
  • “What did you do wrong?”

Each question chips away at self-worth.

Not because you failed, but because you are the only one explaining.

6. Legal Time Distortion

Legal battles don’t just drain money.

They:

  • Freeze emotional closure
  • Reopen wounds every hearing
  • Delay life itself

Years pass.
Energy leaks.
Life waits unfairly.

7. Moral Injury

This is deeper than stress.

This is when:

  • You played fair
  • Trusted deeply
  • Followed ethics
  • And still lost publicly

It shakes your belief in:
Justice. Karma. Systems. Even faith.

How Do People Actually Survive This?

Not with motivation quotes.
Not with loud comebacks.

1. Stop Fighting on the Old Battlefield

You cannot:

  • Out-spend a company
  • Out-narrate a system
  • Out-perform a machine as an individual

Survival begins when you stop trying to win there.

This is not surrender.
This is strategy.

2. Replace the Narrative, Don’t Defend It

Don’t explain your past.

Build a present so strong that explanations become unnecessary.

People don’t revise beliefs.
They shift attention.

3. Re-Anchor Identity

Betrayal collapses identity.

Survivors consciously anchor themselves to:

  • A new domain
  • A new mission
  • A new value system

Not for money first.
For mental stability.

4. Shrink Your Circles

Keep only:

  • One truth circle
  • One energy-safe circle
  • One work circle

Everyone else gets distance.

Over-exposure is self-harm.

5. Accept Delayed Justice Without Losing Self-Respect

Acceptance is not saying:
“They were right.”

Acceptance is saying:
“My life will not wait for justice to arrive.”

Justice may come or not.

Self-respect cannot wait.

The Quiet Truth

Many successful people carry one silent ruin in their past.
One betrayal they never speak about.
One phase that reshaped them completely.

Some battles are not meant to be won.

They are meant to change the person who survives them.

Friends in Oblivion: A Reflection on Those Mad, Beautiful Years


They say friendships are the family we choose. But sometimes, life gives us friends we never knew we needed — and takes them away just as unexpectedly.

Between 2008 and 2012, I had a circle that was nothing short of electric. We weren’t just building businesses; we were building each other.

It was a phase of wild nights and wilder dreams. Knowledge collaboration in the day, partying hard at night, getting stoned over the weekends — we did things that today sound crazy and almost unbelievable. But that madness was our glue. It detoxed us from daily business stress, kept us alive, and taught us more than any MBA ever could.

But life, as always, had its own plans.

End of 2012, I got married. My father’s sudden hospitalization soon after shattered that rhythm. One by one, the circle started breaking — some had fallouts among themselves, some quit entrepreneurship, some got into serious personal crises, others moved abroad, and a few simply withdrew into their own worlds.

Then came COVID. Financial struggles and the survival grind tightened the last few threads. I got so entangled in rebuilding my life that those friendships, once my lifeline, drifted into oblivion.

Today, I look back and wonder: What were those friendships? Why did they feel so irreplaceable? Why do they hurt to remember?

What were they really?

Those were what I now understand as situational friendships — connections born out of a specific context, a shared madness, and a common dream. We didn’t become friends because of shared childhoods or family ties, but because we shared the same burning fire in that phase of life.

We were all entrepreneurs — each of us a little broken, a little foolish, yet unshakably hopeful. We learned from each other, fought with each other, and celebrated every tiny win like it was the end of the world.

Why do they fade?

Because life is not a constant. Priorities change. Marriage, kids, health crises, business failures, relocations — all these start pulling us in different directions. Some find new tribes, some retreat into personal solitude, and some get consumed by survival.

There’s no big betrayal or dramatic end — just a quiet drifting apart. A slow fade into silence.

Do I miss them?

Every day.

I miss the impulsive midnight drives, the heated debates that went from business models to philosophical rabbit holes, the sense of belonging to a gang that truly “got it.”

But I also know that those friendships, like beautiful old songs, belong to a time and place that can’t be recreated. They were chapters meant to end, lessons meant to be carried forward, not lived on repeat.

Some friendships are like rivers — they flow into your life, shape your shores, then find their way to the sea. You can’t hold them back, but you can always feel the shape they left on your soul.

A final whisper to that gang

Wherever you all are — running a new venture, teaching your kids to ride a bicycle in Canada, or quietly reflecting on those reckless days — I hope you feel the same warmth when you think of our nights in Adambakkam.

Some friendships are meant to be wild tides — crashing, roaring, unforgettable — before they dissolve into the larger sea of life.