Last year around this time we were throwing the Mumbai AI Film Festival which got 30M+ views in aggregate. Around this time, I had announced it was happening on November 2nd. And I remember a sponsor asking me “So it’s November 2nd 2027 right?” It was beyond people’s comprehension that we ideated the entire thing, were fundraising while putting money on our credit cards and just executing. 95% of the work happened between October 5th to November 2nd. I was tired of my inaction and I remember just deciding to impose the biggest dream to myself, putting in $30k of our own money and going all out. Throughout the month, @Chandan_Perla and I were so stressed running on adrenaline. We averaged 4-5 hours of sleep everyday. I learned new things about my body like how extreme stress could induce vomiting (when I had to fire a core employee who was abusive). We learned more in that one month than for me, probably 1 year of being in startups. The biggest lessons out of it was: 1. Put your own balls on the line first. When we told our sponsors we were putting $30k of our own money. It was unheard of and it made people up the amount they’d sponsor us by 5x magnitudes. 2. There is no speed limit The most common thing we heard from people saying this is a stupid idea was no panelists / famous Bollywood people are going to come on such a short notice. We were so delusional in aiming high, that even though we didn’t get some A-listers, I got on phone calls with many of the people I grew up watching in Bollywood which was insane. It’d be really funny because we’d be told “Listen man, you are 21 years old, you just came to Mumbai for the first time, and you want xyz person to come on a 15 day notice, no offence but I think you’re being “too ambitious” and days later we’d be on a call with the xyz person. All it took was a couple of people vouching for us and backing us to make it what it was. You don’t need everybody to say yes. You only need a couple believers and when you have the right intentions, the right values, and are public about it — the right people come through. I still remember @_sankyy from Invideo (whose agent model is phenomenal now) calling us and inviting us to his office like it was yesterday. I still remember meeting @zatakia from Morphic in Bangalore prior to our launch video for pizza. I still remember when @thetanmay just randomly calling me out of the blue on WhatsApp. @Shakunbatra became a close friend of ours after and a great supporter. And same for @krnx and many others. It was truly a fever dream and every AI film festival of ours since has ignited the same fire for team in Delhi and Tokyo. We have learned a lot since. The team isn’t dying of stress anymore. We give extra care to mitigate AV fuckups. We pick only the best films. We hire very carefully. And we don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Excited to see more to come to life in the AI creativity sphere and to many more learnings with the world-class team at @localhostIND. Grateful for everybody who made this event come true last year! @LumaLabsAI @ElevenLabs @balajis @OrangewoodLabs @heettike @devfolio And ofcourse @invideoOfficial @morphic