I started to write down enigmatic feelings that I got from people, places, and events around me over the next few weeks. During that time, I took a day-trip up the Maine coastline with a friend and had a similar, unexplainable feeling at a restaurant in a town called Ogunquit, Maine. I wrote it down along with a host of other items that didn't seem relevant to my entrepreneurial journey as per my agreement with Ramaswami.

That was when I began to notice a few "clues" that started to point me more and more toward the direction of launching a business.

The first of these had to do with a friend of mine at Lotus, Mario. A few weeks after my experience at the Christian Science Center, I noticed an "unusual" tug at my attention when Mario abruptly left the company because of a disagreement with our boss.

Mario and I often talked about starting a company together in this market-space. As we went out to a farewell lunch, I had the strange sense that his departure was somehow related to my attempts to start a company. I wrote it down in my notebook with the word "CLUE" in BIG letters at the top.

I decided that his departure was fortuitous and that maybe he could help my roommate, Mitch, and I start this business as a "third partner". I called Ramaswami and told him about these "clues" that I had written down. He said, "that's very interesting ... you're getting into the right habit. Keep this up with other things you notice, not just clues related to your company."

"But, " I protested. "The main reason I'm doing this is to help me become an entrepreneur, right?"

"That's one reason, " he responded.

"Do you think that Mario leaving could be a sign that the time is right for me to launch the company?" I asked him.

"The feeling that you had was certainly a clue related to your wanting to start this business...but that doesn't mean that you're ready to launch the business. "

"Why doesn't it?" I asked.

"Because, most entrepreneur need a whole host of clues before they're ready to go, not just one or two."

"But I've been thinking about this idea for months!"

"Yes, but you haven't been tracking clues for months yet, have you?"

I had to admit that I hadn't.

"More importantly, starting a business is not just about having a great idea that you're convinced is a great idea and then jumping in! In fact, most entrepreneurs try to get a business off the ground for months, maybe even years before the circumstances are right to launch" he explained to me patiently.

"Why are you so against me starting a company now?" I said, not happy that he wasn't encouraging me to jump into the business.

"You've misinterpreted me, " he explained. "I'm not against you starting the company now. But you're using Mario's leaving as a potential 'excuse' to start the company. The fact is that you're looking for other people to help you start the company, which isn't a bad thing, but you already have one partner, Mitch. The fact that you want another partner shows me that perhaps you're not there yet."

"Not where?"

"The point of no return. Until the point of no return, you place conditions on starting the business: only if this happens or if that happens will I start the company. Many folks think that entrepreneurs just jump in and start their company once they have a good idea! But it's not that simple ... certain conditions have to be met too."

"Is it a bad thing to have conditions?" I asked.

"No not at all. It's essential to have conditions. Particularly conditions about testing the market and making sure you have a good product idea. But it's even more important to have conditions related to how ready you feel, internally to start this considerably difficult journey. If you start and the timing isn't right, you might as well not have started at all. It just means that you aren't there yet. It doesn't mean you won't get there."

I didn't agree that I wasn't there, but decided to humor him some more. "But how will I know when I'm there?" I asked.

"Many entrepreneurs jump through many hoops before leaving their jobs to start a company. They try to convince others that it's a good idea to start the company and to give them money to start the company with them, but very often, no one believes them and no one is willing to sign on until they have some momentum behind them.

"Then, finally, as a last resort, when the clues that this is a great idea are so significant, and the entrepreneur has no choice but to jump in and start it himself, that's often the point of no return."

"No choice?" I asked.

"No choice and right timing are two of the keys to deciding when to start a business" he replied.

"Huh?"

"They reach a boiling point internally and decide they have to start this company, because the timing of the market is so great that they'll miss out on the opportunity. It starts to nag them day and night. More importantly, their internal timing is right; they are ready and able to make a change in their lives."

"Don't you think I'm there yet?" I asked.

"Only you can answer that, " he said cryptically.

I ended the conversation convinced that I could convince Mario to join Mitch & I in our entrepreneurial journey. He had more experience with Lotus Notes than either of us, seemed very entrepreneurial, and had five years more experience in the "real world" than we did.

I discussed this idea with Mitch over lunch one day. Mitch, who wanted to do more market research before we started, was enthusiastic about having another partner to "share the risk" and to help us with this market research. We could both see that starting this company was going to be "a lot of work".

A few weeks after he left Lotus, I tried to track Mario down. This could be the "sign" that helps us launch our business, I thought, as I practiced my sales pitch to Mario to convince him that he could make millions of dollars by joining us.

I called his number. Unfortunately, no one answered. When I asked around, the only reply that I got was that Mario went to take a "long vacation on the beach." Mario had disappeared, and both Mitch and I got too busy over the next few weeks to even think of starting the company by ourselves.

Perhaps, I thought, I had been too eager to "latch" onto this clue. Perhaps it wasn't like Ramaswami said at all. Perhaps that little "tugging" feeling that indicated a clue was just crap, I told myself and resolved to ignore the clues and decide by myself when the timing was right.

A few weeks afterward, it happened again. I had the unmistakable feeling that I was being pulled to start the company. By now, I could clearly identify the feeling that Ramaswami had referred to as a "clue" and I wrote it down.

PCWeek, one of the best known magazines in the computer industry, wrote a front page article about how Lotus had been promising some way to integrate other applications (like Microsoft applications with) with Notes. Lotus was over a year late with something, and this article didn't see a solution coming anytime soon.

"It's perfect!" I told Mitch one evening. "This is exactly what I've been talking about. All we need to do is build the product and I'm certain I can get us an article in a magazine like this, " I told him.

We began to discuss in more detail how we might get the product done. I wanted to be the CEO of the company, and Mitch wanted to be in charge of marketing, but neither one of us really wanted to write the code to build the product ourselves. Mitch had a co-worker, Joel, who was a very good programmer and we decided that perhaps he could be the "third partner", the one who actually wrote the code to make the product work while we concentrated on the business side.

We described the project to Joel and he was very enthusiastic about writing the code part time, but he certainly wasn't ready to leave his job to jump on the bandwagon. Neither were we, but I took this to be a major "clue" that the timing was right.

I called Ramaswami and met him for coffee in Harvard Square at an Algerian coffeehouse. The interior of the building was decorated with Moroccan designs and it was populated with a mixture of students and tourists.

We found a table in the smoking section upstairs. We noticed that they had "hookahs" for smoking in one corner and though neither of us smoked, we sat down next to one. Ramaswami, dressed in his usual double-breasted suit, seemed completely out of place. But he seemed to be enjoying "hanging out in Harvard Square. I haven't done this in a while, " he assured me.

I was eager to describe my latest "clues to him." This consisted of the PCWeek article and the emergence of Joel as the "third partner." Ramaswami listened as I described how the timing was definitely right now that these two things had happened and simply nodded his head.

"Well, what do you think?"

"Hmmm... the timing looks better ... and the PCWeek article definitely is a tip-off that customers may want something like this. But tell me one thing ... Joel is going to do the work of building the product, right?"

"Yes, part-time."

"But you and Mitch are the primary partners, and Joel will not be an equal partner, correct?"

"Yes, " I answered.

"Then why is Joel doing all the work?"

"He's not doing all the work, " I replied. "I'm going to be the CEO and concentrate on strategy."

He laughed. "Well, maybe I could understand that if you weren't capable of doing the technical work. But my impression is that both of you are capable of building the product, so why are neither of you working on building the product."

"Because we want to concentrate on the business side, " I replied.

"What exactly does that mean to you ... the business side ... strategy ... what will you be doing on a day to day basis?" he asked.

"Well, designing the product, doing market research, managing the developer, getting an article in the newspaper..."

He nodded as he listened. "It's not a bad idea to have one of you doing the business side and one of you doing nothing but the technical side. But once you verify that the market is there, my sense is that you and Mitch have the skills to launch the business, but you're hesitant to do it for some other reason."

"No, no we're not hesitant ... but wouldn't it be better if we had someone like Joel concentrate just on the technical side? " I asked.

"It is good to have someone concentrate just on the technical side, yes" he repeated. "But why would he accept a lesser partnership if he's going to be doing the bulk of the work, unless you guys are going to pay him for it...?"

I thought about it. We had no money to pay Joel for the work, but we were sure that his piece of the pie, though much smaller than ours, would pay off for him down the road.

I felt that Ramaswami was unnecessarily convinced that "something was holding us back." I assured him that we were ready, as long as the pieces were in place.

He sipped the rest of his hot chocolate and said, " we shall see." Then abruptly changed the subject. "How has your meditation been going?"

I had to admit that I hadn't been meditating much lately, feeling too rushed in the morning and being too scatterbrained after work to feel comfortable sitting down.

"I'd like to teach you a different meditation technique, one that is much more attuned to meditating at work. I'll be in California for the next few weeks, but perhaps we can meet when I get back? Meanwhile, try to start meditating again."

I agreed to start meditating again. I left the coffee shop feeling that the timing was right and we were finally going to have the pieces in place to launch the company.

The next day, Mitch and I were both asked to do a part-time contract for a start-up company to help them to write some code for an interactive children's game. The pay was great, and I figured we could use some extra money, especially if we were going to launch our business soon.

I worked at Lotus during the day and on this other contract at night. It was a fun contract, and we were making good money, even though it had nothing to do with our intended product idea. Meanwhile, Mitch agreed to start on the market research, and Joel agreed to start looking into the technical side of building our own product in his spare time.

We identified 15 potential customers. It took us some time to get through to the customers, and even then we only reached five of the fifteen. They all reacted positively to our idea. One person in particular, who worked for a very large company was extremely enthusiastic.

"If you had that product today, I'd buy it today! I have three potential projects I could use it for today!"

After this conversation, I felt an unmistakable pull; the timing seemed right. His emphasis on the word 'today' seemed enough to increase our sense of urgency. I wrote down this latest indication that we were on to something as yet another "clue" that we were on the right track.

Two weeks later, things seemed to be slowing down. I was extremely tired from working on this other contract at night, in addition to my work at Lotus, and was starting to run out of steam. Joel hadn't made very much progress on the technical side, and Mitch was having trouble reaching any of the other 10 potential customers.

That week, Joel asked to have dinner with both of us to talk about his arrangement.

"I think it's a good idea, and I think you will be successful, but I have a problem..." he started. "I'm getting married in a month, and my fiancée doesn't think that I should be spending all of this time on this project at night without getting paid. Plus I want to spend more time with her."

"But Joel, " I replied. "Think about what this could mean if we're successful. You just said that it's a good idea."

At the end of the meeting, we agreed to pay him a certain dollars per hour for his work, in addition to his equity stake, to be paid only after the product was shipping and successful. I hoped this would be the end of that discussion, for now.

Several days later, we had dinner with Joel again; this time he had another issue. His fiancée, he told us, thought that this was too risky of a thing to be working on under this arrangement, and he politely bowed out of the project.

It was now near the end of July, and though we had high hopes to get the company off the ground, our lead programmer had just quit. We were both committed to delivering a lot of code for the children's game, and all this work was tiring me out considerably. I also hadn't kept my promise to Ramaswami to start meditating again as I had become extremely frazzled by all this.

We decided that perhaps the timing wasn't quite right for us to launch yet. I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders when this happened, and found it very easy to start meditating again for some reason.