How did I get the courage to start a startup?

Question

Everyone says that books are your best friends.

At the beginning of 2026, I finally understood why.

I was reading The Courage to Be Disliked, and honestly, it challenged almost everything I believed about failure and other people's opinions.

When I finished the book, I had one thought:

"Let's give it a shot."

What was the worst that could happen?

People would criticize me.

They would say,

"Krrish, we told you to get a job. We told you not to waste your time building a startup."

But for the first time...

I was okay with being disliked.

So I started with a very small idea.
No investors.
No team.
No certainty.

Just an idea and the willingness to work on it every single day.
Fast forward 8 months.

That small idea has become a vision.

I'm building an intelligent engineering companion that lives inside backend infrastructure.

It observes , detects issues before they become disasters, and emails you with:
• What went wrong.
• Why it happened.
• How to resolve it.

Most monitoring tools tell you where something broke.

I want to build something that tells you why it broke and how to fix it.
Think of it as a doctor for backend.

A doctor doesn't just tell you that you're sick.

They diagnose the root cause, explain what's happening, and recommend the right treatment.

That's the future I'm trying to build.

If I hadn't picked up that one book at the beginning of 2026, I probably would have never had the courage to begin.

Sometimes, a single book doesn't just change your perspective.
It changes the direction of your life.

What's one book that changed yours?