we became research fellows at 
IIT Kanpur while we were still balancing school and travel. it was a useful slap in the face. research does not give a shit how excited you are about an idea. it asks whether the result holds up.
we also got an incubation offer from SIIC at IIT Kanpur. it was serious, and turning it down was not us acting like we were too cool for it. we wanted to keep building toward Silicon Valley and YC, even though that path was obviously less certain.
that sounds clean when I write it now. at the time it felt like picking between something concrete and something much bigger but blurry as fuck. we picked the blurry one.