The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions

by Gurbaksh Chahal

  I tried to bite my tongue, but I couldn’t manage it. “No! It is not a special day! It is a regular day!”

  “Well, thank you for clearing that up for us, Gurbaksh,” she said with a harsh edge.

  Since both my parents worked double shifts, Kamal became a second mother to me. She helped me with my homework and went to PTA meetings on my parents’ behalf, sharing what she’d learned from my teachers as soon as Mom and Dad got home from work. “He’s doing well. He’s getting mostly Bs. But he’s smart and he could get As if he applied himself.”

  “So you’re not applying yourself?” my father would say.

  Kamal went on: “He doesn’t speak up in class. And he mumbles when he speaks and won’t look people in the eye.”

  “I’m shy,” I protested.

  “And he’s not very social,” Kamal went on. “He should make more of an effort to make friends.”

  “Everybody hates me,” I said.

  “Stop whining,” my father would say, and then he would launch into one of his regular tirades. “You children are such ingrates! Do you have any idea how much your mother and I have sacrificed to give you this opportunity? Not another word out of you! Now sit down and do your homework!”

  Eventually I did stop whining, mostly because it didn’t do any good. My parents were too busy making their way in the New World to worry about my little problems. And they did have problems of their own: One Saturday I heard a scream, and I rushed into the living room to find my father flat on his back on the floor, with my mother, still screaming, on her knees next to him, still screaming, and my sister on the phone, calling for help. I was only nine at the time, but I noticed the way my father’s eyes kept darting around the room without really seeing us, and I remember thinking, He is looking at Death. He is fighting with Death.

  By this time we were all crying, and by the time the ambulance arrived we were near despair. But they stabilized him on the way to the hospital, where he spent the next three days hooked to all manner of pinging, bleating monitoring equipment. He had had a pretty serious heart attack, and the doctors told my mother that he was lucky to be alive.

  When my father finally came home, we tiptoed around him, as if he were fragile, and at every opportunity we told him how glad we were to have him back. None of us had ever had a warm, fuzzy relationship with Dad, but we certainly loved him, and for a long time afterward I loved him more ferociously than ever.

  Months later, when he was finally beginning to feel somewhat recovered, the technology sector took a dive and he was laid off. “I will find something,” he said. “Not to worry. One must always have a positive attitude.”

  A few weeks later, my father got a job with the postal service. The money wasn’t particularly good, but they had excellent health benefits, along with a solid retirement plan, and he began thinking about moving the family into a nicer neighborhood. He announced his intentions one Sunday afternoon, just before we went to the video store for Bollywood Movie Night. “We are going to be extra careful with our money from now on,” he said. “We need to save up for our new home.” We all cheered, as if the new home were already ours, then we piled into the car for the drive to the video store.

  Sunday night was my favorite night of the week. My father would walk into the store. He always said the same thing to the clerk. “We are looking for a family movie. Do you understand me? A family movie.”

  “Yes sir, I understand precisely.”

  We would then go home and take our regular seats in front of the TV, and within minutes we would be glued to the unfolding stories. The movies were always very chaste, because Bollywood actors aren’t even permitted to kiss. Sometimes they would look at each other with intense longing, however, and you knew that at any moment they would leap into each other’s arms, but the director always cut away at that point. The next scene was usually some kind of frenzied dance number that took the place of the kissing and whatever followed.

  My father would get very worked up about those scenes. When the actors began to look at each other with longing, he’d hunt around for the remote. “Where’s the remote? Give me the remote! I told that silly clerk I wanted a family movie, and he gives me this immoral trash!”

  Invariably, we’d arrive at the song-and-dance number before Dad found the remote, and he’d sit back and relax a little, but he was never less than vigilant. And we could expect to see him tense up at least two or three more times in the course of the film. “Where’s the remote? Who is hiding the remote?”

  Poor Kamal always got a little nervous at these junctures. Some years earlier, my father had attempted to fast-forward through a racy scene, and the remote had gone dead in his hands. He had become quite upset, and had turned to look at Kamal. “You are the eldest child,” he said, unable to hide his displeasure. “You will make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

  Every Sunday, we would go back to the store to return the video, and to find another one, less racy, perhaps, and my father always let the poor clerk have it. “I said I was looking for a family movie! What is wrong with you! They almost kissed!”

  In 1992, the years of frugality finally paid off. My parents felt secure enough to take their savings and buy a small house on Gridley Street, on the east side of San Jose. We were still in the heart of the projects, but this was an actual home, and it even had a small yard.

  It was almost directly across the street from the McCollam Elementary School, and one afternoon—thinking I should try to start losing some of that Twinkie-fueled weight—I went over to the school’s rundown basketball courts, empty at that hour, and started shooting hoops. Before long, I noticed a pair of Hispanic teenagers watching me. I tried to ignore them.

  “Hey!” one of them said.

  I kept shooting.

  “Hey! Towel-head! I’m talking to you! What the hell are you doing, man?”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You heard me,” he said.

  “I’m shooting baskets,” I said.

  They came closer. “Take that thing off your head,” the guy said. The other one said nothing, and for a moment I wondered whether he was mute.

  “I can’t,” I said. “It’s part of my religion.”

  “You don’t listen too good, do you?” he said, and he took a knife out of his pocket. “Take that shit off right now!”

  I dropped the basketball and began the slow, laborious process of removing the many hooks that were holding my turban together. I was on the verge of tears, but I forced myself not to cry. When I was done, I handed him the turban, hardly breathing, and he and his friend called me an ugly name and walked away. As soon as they were out of sight, I picked up the basketball and ran home, and I was sobbing by the time I came through the front door. My grandmother hurried out to see what was wrong and was shocked to find me standing there in tears, without my turban.

  I told her what had happened, crying even harder now, and she took me in her arms and held me close. “But it’s not your fault, Gurbaksh,” she said. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Even so,” she continued. “I don’t want you going over there by yourself anymore. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. But I didn’t. Not really.

  When my father came home, I repeated the story.

  “And you just gave them your turban?” he asked.

  “One of them had a knife,” I said. “I thought he was going to cut me.”

  “Well, I’m glad that nothing happened, but next time you need to be stronger. You need to stand up to people like that.”

  I had gone to my father to be comforted, but his response only made me feel worse. And it was doubly painful because I wished I had stood up to those two boys. I had wanted to tell them, just as I’d wanted to tell everyone who had ever taunted me, that I was proud of my family, proud of my heritage, and proud to be a Sikh—but I was just a kid, and I didn’t know where to begin. Instead, I began to long for ano
ther kind of existence, one where I was in charge.

  That same year, my brother Taj turned thirteen, and he had a formal turban ceremony at our home, with a Sikh priest in attendance. I was ten at the time, and both Taj and I were wearing keski- or patka-style turbans, the turban of choice for children. Our hair was braided and tied into a single, bulblike knot atop our heads. Now it was time for Taj to make the transition to a dastar-style turban, the peaked turban one sees on most adult males.

  I guess in some ways the ceremony is the Sikh equivalent of a bar mitzvah. I wasn’t thrilled because I knew I would be next, and I didn’t like the idea of someday being forced to endure the same ritual. I had already suffered enough ridicule with my little patka, and I knew that a full, adult turban would only make things worse. I was tired of being picked on for being different. I wanted to blend in, to avoid notice, to disappear.

  I think I half hoped that my brother would refuse to have anything to do with the ceremony, because I knew my turn was just around the corner. There was a great deal of talk during the service about the turban’s significance, which has been an important part of Sikh culture since the time of Guru Nanak, who founded the religion five hundred years ago. The turban is part of the Sikh identity and speaks to our spirituality, honor, self-respect, moral values, courage, and piety. Leaving our hair uncut, and tying the turban daily, is a token of our love for and our obedience to the Sikh gurus. At age ten, I can’t say I fully understood much of this, but I sat through the ceremony with only moderate fidgeting, and when it was over, finally, I was among the first in line for food.

  That night, when we got home, my father continued to talk about the ceremony. Clearly, he had been very moved by the proceedings. His own father-in-law had been a priest at a Sikh temple in India, and my father had brought the religion and the culture with him to America. We went to local services on Wednesdays and Sundays, and after the Sunday services, I had Sunday school. We also had morning prayers every morning, the Japji Sahib, which my father recited in Gurmukhi, which literally means “from the mouth of the guru.” Although I had no idea what the words meant, I was urged to memorize them, and I was quite proud of the accomplishment.

  My father tried to explain it to me, as he explained other aspects of the Sikh religion over the years, and only a little of it stuck. I knew, for example, that Sikhs believed in a universal God and that they followed the teachings of the ten gurus, or “ambassadors.” I also knew that the religion had its roots in Hinduism and that—like most religions—it was focused on the idea of salvation. And I was familiar with the idea of karma, and of reincarnation, and with the fact that Sikhs viewed life as a cycle of birth and rebirth that stopped only when one was united with God.

  The summer after the turban ceremony, my father took me to India to acquaint me with my past. “I want to make sure that you never forget where you came from,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I remembered absolutely nothing. I would always feel tied to my culture, and proud of it, but I felt more American every day.

  We first went to Chandigarh, to meet a large contingent of cousins on my mother’s side, and I can say unequivocally that I felt absolutely no connection to them. They weren’t particularly welcoming, and within days the visit had turned into some kind of competition. I was the dumb American; they were the smart Indians. They were older than I, and they would show me their battered schoolbooks and ask me to do one of the problems—algebra, for example—and of course I wouldn’t know where to begin. This would reduce them to paroxysms of laughter. “How stupid people get in America,” they would say. “In America, you learn nothing.”

  My father took me aside and told me to ignore them. “They are just jealous,” he said. “They wish they could live in America. But that’s the way people are. If they can’t have what you have, they will bring you down.”

  Before long, we left and went to visit my grandmother’s sister in a tiny village in Uttar Pradesh. The place was incredibly primitive. There was no running water, and no electricity, and the outhouse seemed to be miles away, but the people here—family and nonfamily alike—welcomed us with open arms. There were smiles and warm embraces, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see us.

  It taught me a valuable lesson, which served me well years later, when I went into business, and the lesson is this:

  Always surround yourself with people who want you to succeed. That seems simple on the surface, but when you get out there, in the real world, you will discover that most people are rooting for you to fail. Stay away from them.

  “Gurbaksh-Ji!” they called out. “Come here! Let me take a closer look at you, you handsome boy.” This Ji is a term of endearment, and is pronounced like the letter G. (Years later, while I was still in my teens, people began calling me G, short for Gurbaksh, and the name stuck. That is how I’m known to this day.)

  That first night, our hosts prepared a big meal for us, which included bakra (goat), a rare treat for people of such modest means, but they did it selflessly, with great joy. They had few material possessions, but their hearts were very full. And they made us eat until we were very full. That’s one of the more curious aspects of Indian hospitality, especially as it pertains to my parents’ generation. Any time you go to someone’s house, they insist on stuffing you to the point where it starts hurting. You don’t eat until you’re full; you eat until you’re in pain. I’m sure some other cultures are similarly generous about food, but in India you run the risk of insulting your hosts if you don’t eat, so you keep shoveling it in until you feel as if you’ll explode.

  “Everybody is nice to us here,” I told my father during a private moment. “And there’s so much food.”

  “This is why I brought you back to India,” he said. “So you would know; so you would remember.”

  Later still, I found myself talking to one of my grandmother’s cousins. “In this family, everything is about love,” she said. “All we have is each other, and we cherish this gift, and we are always mindful of the need to be good to one another. People who have too much often lose sight of the things that really count.”

  I must tell you, I felt loved for every minute of our stay. If the day was hot, someone would appear at my side with a fan. If I even looked a little hungry, snacks would materialize at my side. And if I so much as yawned, people went out of their way to entertain me or to offer me a cool spot in which to take a nap. I felt like a young prince.

  The thing that made the biggest impression on me, however, was what I’d been told about the need to appreciate one another. All we have is each other. There was no TV here. No video store. The only source of entertainment was a radio, in fact, and everyone enjoyed sitting in a room together listening to music and sharing stories. They were a family in the best sense of the word, and it was clear they loved each other’s company.

  That trip to India was the most extravagant vacation I had ever been on. All of our other vacations, as far as I can remember, consisted of a weeklong road trip in the early part of the summer. My father would rent a van, the seven of us would pile inside, and off we’d go. One year it was San Diego. Another, Los Angeles. And one summer we drove all the way to Vancouver, which took seventeen hours.

  Years later, when I thought back to these summers, I realized that my father had made the effort to take us on vacation for a couple of reasons. The first is simple: He wanted to give us something special, something to remember, even if it was a bit of a financial hardship. And the second—the real lesson—is that he wanted to expose us to the world beyond our neighborhood. I believe he did this in the hope that perhaps someday we would reach for bigger things.

  Also, no matter where we went, we always visited the local gurdwara. This gave the trip a religious component, and it also provided my father with an opportunity to remind us, again and again, that we were God-fearing people.

  “Whatever you do, wherever you are,” my father often said, “never forget
that God is watching.”

  2 A New CEO

  In the fall of 1996, at the age of fourteen, I started freshman year of high school. I was a heavyset kid with a turban, and puberty had arrived way too early—so I had a pronounced mustache and beard. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I felt as if even my genes were betraying me.

  The school was called Independence High, and—since my brother was a student there—I imagined I would show up on my very first day and be introduced to a great group of instant friends. That didn’t happen, though, because Taj and his friends were four years older than me, and I didn’t really exist for them. It was deeply disappointing. I was tired of being alone, tired of being the perpetual outsider, and I longed for human companionship. Alas, despite the large number of Indians at Independence High, I didn’t feel any connection to any of them, or them to me. I didn’t feel any connection to the Latinos, either, or to the Koreans, or to the Americans, black or white. It seemed as if everyone already had all the friends they wanted and that I’d come to the party too late. School seemed to get worse for me with each passing year.

  Gurbaksh on the cross country track team in high school, freshman year.

  In 1997, the year before I launched my first company, a great many people in Silicon Valley were getting very rich, very fast. My father had become somewhat obsessed with the stock market, which piqued my own interest, and before long I was following the news as assiduously as he was. I was particularly curious about some of the fledgling Internet companies, many of which were located right there in San Jose and in neighboring Palo Alto. Everything I read about them excited me, even the many things I didn’t understand. Still, I sensed that these entrepreneurs were riding a wave that was going to change the world, and I found myself longing to be part of it. That discovery made me hate school more than ever. I was a sophomore, a B+ student, with a 3.5 GPA, but that still didn’t do it for me. I didn’t know how I could possibly survive another three years of high school. I desperately wanted out.