Chapter 37 – Building the Company
San Francisco moved at a completely different pace compared to Pune.
The city never seemed to slow down. Cafés were filled with programmers discussing ideas, startup founders pitching products, and investors analyzing the next big opportunity.
For Anshul, it felt like stepping into the center of the technology world.
Only a year earlier he had been working alone on StudyFlow inside his room in Pune. Now he was overseeing a rapidly growing education platform used by hundreds of schools across multiple countries.
But despite the growth, the company itself was still small.
A startup.
And like every startup, it had to grow carefully.
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After arriving in San Francisco, one of the first decisions Anshul made was finalizing the company structure.
The main company was registered as:
StudyFlow Technologies Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco
This office handled partnerships with schools, server infrastructure, and international operations.
But Anshul never forgot where the project started.
Development would continue in India.
So the company opened a branch office in Pune:
StudyFlow Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
The Pune branch focused mainly on programming and backend development.
Most of the core code improvements were still written there.
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Even with two offices, the company was still relatively small.
The San Francisco headquarters had only a few employees.
Three software developers.
One technical support engineer.
And Anshul himself.
Meanwhile in Pune, a small team of programmers continued improving the platform remotely.
It was a lean team.
But efficient.
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Over the past year, StudyFlow had expanded steadily.
Teachers across different education forums had begun recommending the platform.
Students liked the automated study planning tools.
Schools appreciated the assignment tracking system that helped organize their classes more efficiently.
Because of this steady growth, StudyFlow had reached a new milestone.
More than 160,000 students were now using the platform.
Over 450 schools had purchased the licensed version.
The annual revenue had approached $350,000.
For a company barely a year old, the growth was impressive.
But Anshul knew something important.
Numbers alone didn't build a successful technology company.
Understanding users did.
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This realization led him to make another decision.
Even though he was running a startup, Anshul chose to continue his education.
Studying inside a real school environment helped him understand the problems students faced every day.
And those insights helped improve StudyFlow.
So after settling the company operations in San Francisco, he applied for transfer to a private high school in the city.
The school had a good academic reputation.
But Anshul chose it for another reason as well.
It was the same school attended by a girl named Mia Thermopolis.
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At the moment, Mia was still just another student.
Quiet.
Awkward.
Often ignored by the popular groups in school.
She had absolutely no idea that her life was about to change.
Or that she was actually the heir to a European kingdom called Genovia.
But that revelation had not happened yet.
For now, everything remained normal.
And soon, the paths of two very different lives were about to cross inside the same school.
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