Aswath Krishnan

Many people in America crave walkable neighborhoods instead of suburban sprawl; where they can walk to their daily chores, food & entertainment, and parks. It’s so much more livelier, healthier, and connected. Not to mention, better for the environment.  But walkability also requires density, so that there are enough people within walking distance around you and around businesses.  You can’t have both large, affordable single family homes and walkability. 

My entire career has been in software, and I have taken it for granted. Only when I recently started considering brick-and-mortar businesses, I truly appreciated the magnificence of software businesses.  If you know how to code, you can create and sell software from your bedroom, with little investment or risk. You don’t have to sign leases, buy expensive tools or materials, or hire many people. It's so much easier and quicker to go from idea to MVP.  Software also has tremendous leverage. Once written, it can serve millions of customers with little marginal cost and high margins. Aside from dealing with the occasional fires, you are free to direct your time and resources to innovate (or chill). Compare that to running a restaurant where you (or an employee) have to bake a pizza for every single customer, over and over again.  And the reach of software is limitless! You can live in an idyllic village in India, like the CEO of Zoho, and sell your software to the Fortune 50...

"Sparks of inspiration" is an astute metaphor. A spark can turn into a glorious fire, but only if it immediately gets in contact with some kindling, which can burn and produce enough heat for bigger logs to light up.  Think of how many times you have had compelling ideas, but didn't act on them. Most of our sparks of inspiration just die, without kindling and logs. Eventually, we even stop paying attention to the sparks and the sparks just stop. Why bother?  What a tragedy it is to not follow our inspiration and to not engage our uniquely extraordinary capacity for creation!  I have my share of unrequited inspiration, but I like how a recent spark turned into a fire.  Last week, I had an idea to build a newsletter that automatically summarizes top Hacker News posts and comments. A spark!  If I had tried to develop a full program to do it with my rusty programming skills, it'd have been too overwhelming and a slog, and the spark would have died. Before throwing i...

I shut down a startup within a year and closed a position on a stock within a day. In retrospect, I folded earlier than I should have.  Many high-reward business and life opportunities start as bleak, lonely, and hard but pay off over the long run.  You don't have to play these games. You can fare well with low/mid-risk-reward opportunities. But if you do decide to play these games, you might as well play to win. Don't half-ass them!  The only way to win is if you commit for a long time. You can only commit if you have (a) deep belief, passion, and rationale in the thesis, outcomes, project, and yourself, (b) staying power to sustain losses and bad case scenarios, and (c) emotional resilience to weather failures and naysayers In my recent, prematurely ended ventures, I was missing more than one of these factors. 

There's no surfing without waves.  Surfers need skills to balance, maneuver, and ride the waves as they break towards the shore. But it's as important for them to have waves! And to know where and when the waves will be swelling.  Business is no different.  We all know how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs surfed the microprocessor wave to create humongous businesses around personal computers, operating systems, and applications. That caused the internet wave, which shifted consumer behaviors online and led to the creation Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, and many popular web businesses. Then came the smartphone wave, which led to the rise of the likes of Uber, Instagram, and Robinhood. The fourth-degree and third decade ripples of the humble microprocessor led to an explosion of creator tools and businesses like Canva. All this explosion of digitized knowledge, data, and compute has resulted in the latest AI wave.  The largest opportunities emerge from shifts in ...

Someone on my team was facing a crisis and needed my help. I had room in my calendar, so I could spend a few hours to help them out.  Slack in my calendar also means that I can explore curiosities and opportunities that could turn into something meaningful and significant. I can have leisurely strolls, or brunches that turn into day-long adventures.  We are in a world obsessed with productivity and efficiency. Being busy with a packed calendar seems like the best way to succeed at work and in life. But high efficiency often means low resilience and innovation, because of low capacity to fight fires or uncover new possibilities. And not to mention, the risk of debilitating burnout.  Gaps in your days and weeks because they are essential - to survive and to provide fertile ground for growth. Create and guard them. 

You can make fully rational decisions in a small, closed, predictable universe.  But most situations aren't that. There are too many variables, unknowns, and unpredictability. The source and purpose of life itself are on shaky grounds, causing any rationality on top of it to be baseless outside a defined scope. Evolution through randomness, not logic, is the nature of our reality.  Most big and hard decisions are based on some rationality but largely by instinct or circumstances. When a decision succeeds, there's post hoc rationalization and further success. When it fails, as most do, they disappear and are forgotten. This gives an illusion of a rational and deterministic universe.  The best you can do is reason and decide on the high-order bits and then go with your gut for the rest. Make bets proportional to your risk tolerance and resources, make multiple bets, bias toward action, and course-correct along the way. As John Von Neumann said, "Truth…is much too complicate...

We are remodeling our bathroom and I have to ensure that the work is done right and within a reasonable time and cost. But I have zero experience in construction! So how can I do this well?! This is the predicament of product managers and leaders as well - they are responsible for product outcomes and quality, without having the functional expertise in engineering, design, or GTM. Here’s what helped me with remodeling and product management - 1. You can be the curator and editor, even if you aren't the artist. You can bring an eye and taste for great work and craft; not just the end deliverables, but also how the sausage is made. You develop this through curiosity and interest, and by working with amazing people who can show you what's possible. 2. Make the goals, vision, and milestones crystal clear for everyone involved, and be an effective communication bridge. This will help the team avoid wastage and frustration because of miscommunication and misunderstanding.  3. Help yo...

Our contractor hired a tiler who quoted 1/4th of the usual price for our remodel. It seemed like a GREAT deal until 3 days later.  We noticed many fundamental problems - the tiles weren’t lining up, the spacing was uneven and incorrect, the shower floor wasn’t sloped correctly, and one of the installed tiles was cracked.  So the contractor had to bring in a more competent and expensive tiler who had to undo and redo the entire work, get another handyman to spend hours cleaning up the tiles for use again, and buy some new tile as well. Overall, it cost us more money, time, and frustration than hiring a more reputed and expensive tiler upfront.  The lesson here isn’t to pay more. Not everything that’s expensive is good and not everything that’s cheap is bad; sometimes you can get a good deal. It’s to prioritize quality and risk as well when making consequential purchases or hiring decisions. 

If you always instinctively react to negative feelings - say, anxiety, anger, insecurity, or boredom - then you’ll behave erratically, irrationally, and experience an emotional roller coaster. The underlying conflict or knot that’s causing the emotion will remain unresolved  Instead, a Buddhist teacher advised me to invite the feeling to have tea with me. Talk to it to understand what it wants and why. Maybe you end up letting go of the underlying attachment and freeing yourself,  or you act on the need deliberately and practically. Either way, you’ll be calmer and more successful than being controlled by your emotions. 

The modern American house is a miracle. The richest kings from 500 years ago would give up their palaces to live in a middle-grade townhome with taps that dispense instant hot water, abundant electricity and lighting, and centralized heating and cooling systems.  Until I saw the innards of my house during a recent remodeling project, I took it for granted. I'm sharing a few basics about this marvel I learned.  Let's start with the city infrastructure that makes this possible. Three main pipes come into your house from the public system - water, electricity, and gas (not always). Each pipe connects to the main line on the street, through a meter and a shutoff switch. And one pipe - the sewer - leaves the house and connects to the sewer line.  The water pipe connects first to the water heater and splits into two - a hot and cold line, which then flows through to the faucets, toilets, and showers in the house. This is how nearly every tap and shower in an American house disp...

"All the benefits in life come from compound interest - relationship, money, habits - anything of importance." - Naval Ravikant While there's excitement and discovery in trying new things, they don't last long. I find more sustained meaning, joy, and success in pursuing a few things deeply and over a long time.  For instance, I feel happier and connected through spending quality time and conversing with close friends and family than mindlessly scrolling through and hearting posts of hundreds of people I barely know on Instagram or Facebook.  I learn more by reading a book or doing a course or project on a subject than by reading fleeting tweets or news articles.  I enjoy and succeed at a profession or hobby more as I practice and master it over many years. It's more enjoyable and effective to work with a familiar and trusted crew.  As an immigrant and frequent mover, I have also found comfort and appreciation in living in the same neighborhood for a long time and ...

Most religious leaders want us to believe that the forces of the universe (god) are all-powerful and all-loving. But I’m skeptical. I’m aware of the joys in the universe, but I’m also not blind to the unavoidable suffering that most beings have to endure - like the deer that falls prey to the lion, the mother who loses a child, or the frailties that come with aging. It’s hard for me to perform the mental gymnastics of theodicies to conclude that the omnipotent, benevolent creator didn’t have creative alternatives to this suffering for whatever their end goal might be. Maybe that’s a limitation of my intellect, but I don’t see any other proponents of the theory articulating a sound defense either.  I understand that the belief in a benevolent force can lead to psychological benefits, like optimism. But naive optimism only lasts so long as your brain is blissfully ignorant of the naivety. Such optimism is fragile and risks collapsing under the weight of reality.  ...

We are in the middle of a bathroom remodeling project. There are so many possibilities, it's an expensive project with long-term implications, and I had never done something like this before, so I was having a tough time figuring out the layout. Though warranted, I realized I was struggling more than necessary because of 3 reasons:  1. Not having clarity on goals and priorities. We wanted a better bathroom, but we hadn't really articulated and ranked our main priorities. When we decided that our main goals were a larger shower, access from the bedroom, and a larger vanity, it was so much easier to come up with options and rank them against the clear criteria. This simple and nifty trick has helped me with every major decision like picking jobs or buying a home.   2. Not having clarity on constraints.  When I understood that we couldn't place the vanity in a spot because of a window, or place a shower in another spot because of the low ceiling, it eliminated more opt...

I had a realization that whenever I'm attacked by the flu or any sickness, my mood's also caught in the crossfire! My usual sunny outlook clouds over faster than you can say "pass the tissues." As I start to claw my way back to health, my spirits lift too. But try as I might, I'm not able to "happy thought" my way out of feeling crummy when sick.  "Mind over matter" is exaggerated. Sure, our thoughts have power, but they're not always the captain of this ship. For most of us who aren't Buddha, our well-being is this intricate tapestry woven from our physical health, the love we get from those around us, where we are in life – literally and figuratively – and whether we feel safe and sound in our world. Ever caught an episode of "Queer Eye"? It's like a masterclass in holistic healing. That fab five don't just revamp wardrobes; they renovate lives with their all-hands-on-deck approach – tackling everything from throw pi...

It was a beautiful tropical day and I was at the beach, happy to be away from the bustle of regular life. But as luck may have it, the spot we landed was right next to two ladies reading NY Times political articles to each other like they were poems of love. They smugly basked in the Times’ self-righteousness, eschewing the ignoramus followers of De Santis and Trump. “How can they not get the separation of church and state”, one of them commented incredulously. “Right right right”, the other affirmed, with little consideration that it was as much a belief as the Bible. They continued “right right right” ing each other as they preached familiar talking points with as little nuance and balance as an election pamphlet, each exchange lifting them higher on their horses and further from any middle ground. Radicalization isn’t a distant phenomenon in mass gatherings in the Middle East or middle America. There are little bubbles of polarizing echo chambers all around us.

I attended an inspiring talk by Robin Wall Kinmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, last year. In the talk and in her book, she poignantly describes the contrast between the colonizers and her indigenous peoples’ view of the world. The settlers regarded nature as a resource, whereas they regarded the earth as a generous mother who bestows them with life and gifts. The Westerners regarded humans as occupying the top position of a pyramid, whereas they regarded all species as inter-dependent kin in a circle of life and humans being the little brothers who are new to the scene and have a lot to learn from wise elder species. The Westerners endlessly sought more and played god, while the natives learned to live harmoniously and gently, with divine reverence. This difference in mindset and the language used to describe the world and our place in it both causes and affects their relationships and behaviors. We live in a world of colonizers and are offsprings of colonizers because colonizers ...

A cousin shared his 5 year rule with me recently - if you want to be successful at something hard and probabilistic, commit and do it for 5 years. Success = Execution x Opportunity It takes a few years to learn, make mistakes, understand the game, know the players, become known, and build trust in any new domain. The longer you play the game, the more skillful and “luckier” you become. Overnight success is a myth. You have to risk it and work it to get the biscuit. Such commitment isn’t easy, especially during the early years when nothing seems to work out. You need to pick a game that you enjoy, have high conviction in, and leverages your aptitude, resources, and talents. You need to drop many other games that are also enticing. You need staying power (money, time, emotional fortitude, support) to sustain the 5 years.

Solve  valuable and underserved problems or desires  exceedingly well and sustainably  while accumulating advantages . Let's break it down! (1) Valuable  = It's very important and top of mind for enough people.  I have heard someone describe these well as "hair-on-fire" problems. These are problems that people are actively google searching for or complaining to others about. Some examples of valuable problems from companies I have worked at: losing weight (Noom), getting to/from the airport (Lyft), passing a school test or interviews (Quizlet), satisfying energy efficiency requirements (Opower), buying anything conveniently and quickly (Amazon), and tools to make a living (Microsoft).   (2)  Underserved   = there is no good alternative. Customers dislike available options. My belief is that there are tons of problems that are underserved. But if you only look at a very high level, you will think there aren't many. You find more underserv...

In spiritual practice, enlightenment refers to the experience of seeing the light by unlocking a deep, revealing insight about your reality.  Enlightenment also actually lightens your life and how you interact with the world by eliminating unnecessary burdens of cravings and aversions that you carry and by increasing your equanimity, ease, and love. 

Wayfair announced their 3rd or 4th big round of recent layoffs last week. The CEO's email explained how they are trying to "right size" the organization in the face of a tough economic situation. Simply put, their online furniture retail business isn't panning out to be as large of an opportunity as they were hoping it to be and they are now painfully rolling back. They aren’t alone - there have been over 300,000 layoffs in tech since last year. Many startups have dropped to a fraction of their previous values or shut down completely.  2015 to 2021 was a hype cycle of irrational exuberance in tech. We had seen huge successes from the previous wave of internet and mobile startups, like Facebook. Every startup and founder imagined they could also 10 or 100x their business. VCs and their LPs were willing to invest millions at extraordinary valuations, blinded by FOMO and free money. There’s smart risk and there’s stupid greed. Startups could sell $10 bills for $9, and s...

Tinkering is simply working on projects we enjoy or are curious about. It could be a home improvement project, a newsletter, hosting events, a piece of art, or a software tool. You do what you want, the way you want. You may take pride in showing it, but you aren't doing it for others. And you certainly are not expecting to earn from it. It's mostly for your own pleasure; for the joy and energy of doing and creating. Entrepreneurship is aimed at creating a sustainable business. You have to deliver solutions that customers want, in the way they want. You need to do a lot of external exploration, test, and pivot often to find the right idea. Even then, you can't just create; you need to do a bunch of extraneous work like marketing, customer calls, research, hiring, pricing, budgeting, fundraising, invoicing, taxes, etc. There's also a lot of uncertainty, pressure to succeed, ups and downs. Entrepreneurship can have fun aspects, but it will also have a lot of not-so-fun ...

I try to pay more attention when ideas keep coming back. They highlight something important and usually add more depth.   Day before yesterday, I was running in a sub-zero weather after an intense weight training session, and a familiar idea “ Embrace doing hard things ” resurfaced.  I’m new to athleticism and this isn’t normal. The exercise was tough! Breathing in the freezing air was hard. I was losing feeling in my fingers and toes. And my legs were still screaming from the deadlifts.  But I felt alive, strong, and joyful! More so than I did sitting on my couch inside my house and scrolling on my phone an hour before.  The traditional wisdom is to pursue comfort and safety to enjoy a good life. And that’s what we have done. Now, at least in rich societies, we have incredibly predictable and cushy lives. But mental health has surprisingly declined, not improved, in this transition.  Without regular exposure to controllable stress, we aren’t building our physic...

Culture, simplistically, is a derivation of what we believe and how we think and act, which in turn are derivations of the information we are exposed to. In the past, information was limited by geography to a large extent. Local newspapers, leaders, and intellectuals. With the Internet, it is not. You can have different information exposures and consequently, different cultures, between neighbors. You can find polarization within a street, rather than just between states, countries, or continents.  This has interesting implications for governance, which is still geography-based. Governance, which is simplistically what strategy and policies should we collectively follow, largely derives from culture. If culture is no longer geographic, how can we govern geographically? While this is short-term problematic, I think it is long-term positive as it unlocks a degree of freedom for people - to align themselves with whichever belief and culture they prefer. We still exist in the physical ...

I don’t know if many billionaires will read this blog, but this is still an important principle for the rest of us too.  Almost every game in life - sports, business, career, academia, family and friendship, hobbies - is played in levels. For example, in car racing, you have to compete in your school clubs, then inter-school, then regional, then F4, F3, F2, and then finally F1.  Seems reasonable, but most of us want to jump to the final level right away. We regularly see inspiring and glamours videos of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Sam Altman, so we also want to aim high and start a space or AI company. We don’t want to work on a silly job or start a small business; we just want to change the world doing something way more important and shinier! But what we don’t see as often is that these folks only got where they are because they worked through many lower levels of less glamorous jobs and business for decades. Elon Musk built and sold 3 businesses before he could start SpaceX. ...

I'm realizing that a large percentage of my bad days start with bad sleep.  I wake up tired. I try to get more sleep, so wake up late and skip my morning ritual of puttering around slowly and planning the day. I'm more irritable, more anxious, and less lucid. I eat more junk food. I skip exercise. I'm on my phone more. I have more restless energy and thoughts. I stay up late and can't sleep. The cycle repeats.  If you are caught in this cycle, your main priority should be to get out of it by getting a good night's rest. Drop everything else that you can and dedicate most of the evening to just that. Put away your phone, exercise go for a walk, have a light dinner, and dim the lights. Have night-time tea, magnesium, or melatonin. Go to bed earlier than usual. If you can't sleep, meditate or listen to relaxing music.   

I have written about how peace and joy are in our control. Peace comes from acceptance of reality, and joy comes from appreciation and celebration of reality. So both are technically in our mind's control, I concluded, annoyingly.  But it isn't that simple. We are human and emotional, and life throws things at us, so it is very natural and inevitable that our peace and joy get upset. If we stay upset over multiple days, we spiral into what I call a "funk", where our upset mind makes itself even more upset. Getting into funk sucks. It means losing several days or even weeks of peace and joy and is hard to get out of because your mind is compromised.  Why do we get into a funk Here are some of the main reasons why I get into a funk:  1) Overthink things out of our control Something in the past (what-ifs and only-ifs), or something that someone else did, or some bad luck or random event upsets us. We then obsess about it and our minds tend to become negative.  We exper...

I grew up in the 1990s in a bustling city in India. The country was mostly poor, but everyone, through a few rich friends, media, or travel, knew there was a better life - one where you don't have to worry about the basics and can even indulge in luxuries. Every person aspired and craved for that better life - if not for them, at least for their kids.  For middle-class kids like me, a hopeful but difficult path emerged. If you study hard, get better test scores than everyone else, and get admission to top colleges, you either get a good career, or even better, you get to pursue a life abroad. This is the path to not only wealth, but also to being celebrated and liked by your friends, relatives, teachers, and community. Some of us took this seriously. The achiever virus was etched into our brains - keep working hard and keep progressing - to more prestigious institutions and more lucrative opportunities. We did it, over and over again. And the more we did it, the more the virus mult...

"The modern devil is cheap dopamine" - Naval Ravikant Throughout history, each generation has been ensnared by a distinct addiction. Alcohol, tobacco, and processed foods trace a familiar arc: celebrated innovations morph into pervasive vices. Initially hailed for their pleasurable effects, these substances soon trigger a race to enhance their potency and availability. This cycle of desire and overindulgence, fueled by profit-driven peddlers and consumers alike, inevitably collides with the limitations of human biology, leading to widespread harm before an eventual and slow course correction. The Dance of Pleasure and Pain

I enjoyed all three of them this week :) Cooking is remarkably more efficient when done in bulk. Cooking for 6 people or for a week isn’t that much harder than cooking for 2 or for a single meal. This is because the bulk of cooking involves “fixed cost” activities - researching the recipe, buying ingredients, combining them, and cleaning up - that don’t vary much with quantity.  Cooking and eating are essential, universal, and time-consuming. So I’m a fan of companies and inventions that leverage this efficiency of “cooking in bulk” but also preserve the affordability, freshness, and satisfaction of homemade food. Typically they achieve this by doing 80% of the cooking and leaving the last 20% to the consumer. Packaged foods and food delivered from restaurants are too close to 100% and have the downsides of being too expensive, unhealthy, or stale.  Tea bags are perfect. 

Every few weeks, I stumble upon yet another think piece warning against starting B2C software businesses. The argument often boils down to this: B2C is a financial black hole—a worse gamble than a lottery ticket. Even Y Combinator, the quintessential startup breeding ground, seems to have shifted its focus toward B2B, a trend that many see as a reflection of market realities. But let’s pause here. Doesn’t this advice feel... odd? Take a look around your home. Most of what you own—your clothes, gadgets, kitchenware, and maybe even that Peloton collecting dust—are B2C products. Your credit card bill? It’s dominated by B2C expenses: groceries, subscriptions, travel, and entertainment. If consumers are spending so much, why is B2C suddenly considered an entrepreneurial minefield? Let’s unpack this. The Real Scope of B2C Success First, the anti-B2C sentiment overwhelmingly targets software startups , not physical products or services. And even within software, it tends to exclude "hybr...

The CEO of Coinbase shared this advice to pre-PM fit startup founders and it really resonated:  https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_/status/1738905209093468459 Low certainty pursuits and decisions, like your life purpose or philosophy, career or startup idea to pursue, who’d be an ideal life partner, where would you like to live, etc. are often the most impactful and the most challenging aspects of our lives.  They are unique in the sense you don’t have enough information to make a rational choice. The options and their outcomes are unknowns. So we can get stuck in analysis-paralysis trying to figure them out intellectually. But that doesn’t solve the core problem - the lack of information and certainty. The way to get more information is to act - go explore, ask around, and try things out. Keep an open mind, your cycles fast and, learn from them.  The best way to see through the fog is to take a few steps forward into the unknown. 

  I applied for a grant this year and the granters shared that 90% of the applications were submitted just 2 days before the deadline!  This isn't uncommon. The majority of people are deadline-driven. We do a chore whenever it's urgent and absolutely necessary (unless it's a recurring habit or routine). This is why creating urgency and setting a deadline is key for your own personal endeavors and when you expect others to do something. But our brains aren't that easy to trick. They know when a deadline is fake. So you need to make it as real and consequential as possible.  This is why retailers have limited-time offers and sales - to force a buying decision or miss out on a great offer. This is why it's important to set a target response date whether you are fundraising or hiring someone. This is why you are more likely to succeed if you sign up for half marathons or business targets.  Deadlines convert something that's only important to something urgent and imp...

A recent survey showed that more than half of Americans hate their jobs. Probably another 30% feel pretty neutral about them. r/antiwork is one of the largest communities in Reddit and growing. So many people are looking to retire early (or FIRE). The common complaints against work are the lack of a decent pay and benefits, potential for growth, work-life balance, meaning, respect, etc. Many people also justifiably think they can’t have a good life like their parents did despite working a job. There’s a pent up negativity against evil and heartless corporates and middle managers that treat workers as expendable resources.  Maybe work was always seen as a necessary evil, but it seems like the relationship has become more negative in the last few decades. It feels like the capitalistic machinery has taken a wrong turn. Perhaps attitudes have also changed to want more leisure and comfort for less work, thanks to the unrealistic lifestyles popularized on the internet and the Cambrian e...

Dobby, the lovable elf in Harry Potter, is often filled with so much self-loathing that it’s hard to watch. You want to hug him and reassure him that he’s okay and he’s loved. It’s even harder because Dobby isn’t just a fictional character in a made-up magical world. Dobby is very real - we all have one within us.  Our inner Dobby is often our meanest boss, negligent carer, and harshest critic. Inner Dobby is often upset or unhappy with us. Inner Dobby never thinks we are good enough. Inner Dobby never thinks we deserve a break.  I want to hug mine and everyone else’s inner Dobby, and reassure them with this short poem - 

The popular wisdom is to learn from failures.  And I agree, you should. We are going to make a number of mistakes, especially if we pursue unpaved paths and risky ventures. Without bold risks and mistakes, we as humanity will not stand where we are. So being open to risk, mistakes and learning from them is crucial. Mistakes are also humbling - they force us to take a pause and reflect, whereas success can breed ego and complacency. But I’d posit there’s more learning in successes. Take a founder who has attempted 4 failed businesses vs a founder who has 1 successful business. Who do you think has more valuable knowledge? I’d argue that the second founder knows at least one way to succeed and can replicate that. But the first founder can avoid a few ways to fail they have learned and has probably built up resilience to failures, but they are still left with hundreds of other ways to fail. They still don’t know a single path to success. There’s a tongue in cheek wisdom - “Most happy ...

If you think the Buddha is a religious leader and Buddhism is a religion, you are somewhat mistaken.  Buddha was the first prolific DIY psychologist. He spent years observing his own mind, experimenting, and coming up with astute observations and techniques to alleviate suffering and increase joy.  According to the Buddha, the root of all unhappiness is just one thing - "tanha". You can think of it as the quick grabby feeling that arises when we just can't accept a situation and when there’s disharmony between reality and our (mostly subconscious) selves. It manifests in many forms - fear, craving, anger, desire, worry, etc.  I think of tanha as “mental clenching" arising from “knots” or sore spots. Similar to muscular knots or kinks in a hose, they prevent the natural flow of movement and life. Almost every person in the world is knotting and clenching thousands of times every day in different ways. Reducing the knotting may be the most powerful lever to improve our...

A few years ago, two different friends of mine started startups with nearly the same idea - a coaching/mentorship marketplace for professionals. They had similar backgrounds and teams. Their products also were functionally identical. One friend has shuttered the business, and the other seems to be growing strong. How did that happen? The friend who's still in the game was heavily focused on building a social following and community. She did multiple LinkedIn posts a week, attended events, met people 1:1, and hosted events. Eventually, she developed a community of over 50,000 professionals. She knew the community was the heart of the business and started with a community-first approach. She was also good at it and enjoyed doing it. The other friend was simply focused on building the software product. He was also more introverted and didn't enjoy posting publicly or organizing communities.  A lot of tech founders make the critical mistake of assuming that building a startup means...

I have used this product called Mudwtr for a few months.  Mudwtr is a powdered mix of supplements like Lion’s mane, Reishi, Turmeric, etc. Most people have probably not heard of these or are convinced about their benefits. But Mudwtr didn’t position their product as a wellness supplement or nootropic. That’d appeal to an enthusiastic but very small market of body and mind hackers.  Instead, they did something brilliant. They mixed masala chai (tea) with it and positioned it as a coffee alternative. They started talking about how this is better than a coffee, instead of trying to sell people on wellness benefits of taking dried mushroom supplements.  It’s much more familiar and easier to understand. It’s an easier purchase decision to try a different coffee vs taking a mushroom supplement. It fits into their current lifestyle. 75% of the world drinks coffee - so suddenly their target market is 100x! Nearly the same product, but with much more effective positioning.  L...

This paragraph from Ayn Rand's "Philosophy - who needs it?" speech and especially the remark on the nature of the subconscious resonated with me. "A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown." The subconscious mind is quick, intuitive, and emotional. The conscious mind is deliberate, logical, rational, and unemotiona...

This is a trick question. Most of you would say no; definitely not even the smartest chimp. Then I’d say - aha! relative to the scope and complexity of the universe, humans aren’t that much smarter than chimps. So humans can’t decipher the universe either!  It's a humbling and eventually comforting thought. We pride ourselves on being the most intelligent species on Earth, yet when it comes to the scale of the universe's mysteries, are we that much more enlightened than our chimp cousins?

I have long been interested in the mind. Why wouldn’t everyone be?! Everything we perceive as life is through the mind. So much so that you can even hypothesize that the entire universe is conjured within the mind, rather than the other way around.  The mind remains a mystery to us. But luckily, we don’t need to fully understand how something works to be able to operate it sufficiently well. Anyone who drives a car, browses the internet, uses a microwave, or relies on gravity to stay put would agree. We have discovered several techniques to alter this black box of mind to be more pleasant and effective.  This is my semi-organized brain dump of some of those across 3 broad realms - 

I still remember the phone call 14 years later, so it clearly meant a lot to me. In my final year of college in Singapore, I was selected to interview with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) . BCG Singapore was known to be extremely selective - interviewing only a handful of people every year and hiring maybe 1 or 2. So the pressure was on and I spent every ounce of my energy in the next 1-2 weeks preparing for the interview. I also bought and borrowed some nice clothes and got a haircut to look presentable. The interview day arrived. I was nervous but as prepared as I could be. I did okay, but I knew I hadn't really nailed it. A couple of days later, I got a phone call. It was one of the partners who had interviewed me. He shared the bad news quickly - I didn't receive the job offer. He also explained that he was the dissenting partner, so he was calling to explain his decision. He talked through the case study (it was about a small airport trying to grow profitable), highlighted t...

It's been a few weeks since I published my first book - The 5-Step Job Search . I feel happy about the milestone and how the book has been received. But I have to admit that I also feel conflicted about writing a book on the topic of job searching. I was confident it was needed and would be helpful - that isn't the problem. I feel conflicted because it's a band-aid to succeed in an inherently broken system that I have come to despise, despite being reasonably good at it. I'd much rather prefer if we can fix the system. I'd much rather prefer if we made the system perfectly meritocratic so that everyone can just focus on being good at their jobs and be magically placed in the right job for them, rather than spending even an ounce of energy in learning to be good at this bizarre skill of job searching.

"Be healthy" is a misleading and unhelpful slogan and goal.  Most young or middle-aged people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s enjoy "good enough" health. So being healthy isn't a very inspiring or urgent call to action. It's a low bar that they have already hit.   The health issues start in their 50s and beyond.  Fitness, as measured by strength, speed, flexibility, or endurance, is a much better goal because most people would agree they aren't fit enough and fitness is actually a leading indicator of long-term health.

In poker, there’s a concept called selective aggression to maximize your winnings - be conservative when you have an okay hand but get aggressive whenever you have a good one.  A few years back, I got a good hand in my career. I was doing really well in the job and had also developed a good rhythm and reputation. I was also getting paid over 3X what I had ever made before, with a path to more raises and promotions.  But instead of doubling down, I decided to roll the die again and take up another opportunity that seemed interesting. Turns out I didn’t roll sixes this time.  The lesson is that life is always going to be a game of chance. When you hit a winner, double down. Explore and extract.  This is true for business as well. It’s extremely hard to find a Product-Marlet fit, but when you do, go all-in and extract as much as possible, rather than exploring another P-M fit. This is also true in investing, relationships, hobbies, or habits. 

I published my first book last week, and I’m very happy about the milestone and how it’s been received so far.  The process has made me more familiar with the Amazon Kindle bookstore. I’m suddenly aware there are tons of books published and many of them seem quite promising. But despite that most never really take off in a big way.  This has made me realize that the secret to success isn’t doing just one hard thing. Writing a book is hard! It takes a ton of motivation, resilience, domain knowledge, writing skills, and creativity. But clearly, just doing that one hard thing isn’t enough.  But if you combine that one hard thing with another hard thing, you dramatically increase your chances. If you do a tour promoting your book, run a marketing campaign, or if you have already earned a reputation in your domain, your book suddenly rises above all others.  The reason is simple - there are 7 billion people in the world and we have a pretty efficient market. For any singl...

I have been splitting my time between a part-time PM role and starting my own company. In both, I realized breakthroughs and progress happen because of one main underlying character trait.  Obsession.  Obsession about the domain.  Obsession about the customer and problem.  Obsession about the goals and strategy.  Obsession about the current product and business.  Obsession about execution details.  Obsession about delivery. Obsession about feedback and results. Obsession about learning and improving.  Obsession with the craft of PM and product development. When you are obsessed, there's a constant thread in your brain that's always obsessing about all these factors. You are also constantly researching, learning, tinkering, discussing, ideating, and iterating.  Obsession, when combined with curiosity, knowledge, intellect, and collaboration , leads to clarity, evolution of ideas, elegant simplifications, breakthroughs, and getting all the deta...

We can all agree that it would kinda suck to exist alone in the universe. Adversity with friends is better than success or comfort alone.  Hear it from Shaq: “I live in a 30 thousand square foot house by myself. You don’t think I know I messed up?” I appreciate whatever transpired to get us to this moment in reality because it brought us together, with each other, capable of problem-solving, empathy, kindness, togetherness, play, and love.  We can make lives better for each other - less suffering, more enjoyable, and more meaningful. In fact, that may be the only way to do it.  The ego is often the root of most unhappiness. When we focus on just the I, just ourselves, we suffer. The I is a small, transient, fickle, greedy, and fearful illusion.  When we focus beyond us - our loved ones, our society, all of humanity, all of everything - we feel limitless and we thrive. Be it your personal life or your career/business, expand your focus beyond yourself. 

This Zinda Banda track from the new Bollywood blockbuster, "Jawan," has taken over my playlist recently. It's not just Anirudh's peppy music or Shah Rukh Khan's swag.  What truly speaks to me is the lyrical essence of the song, which has crystallized a powerful epiphany I've had in recent months. A realization that serves as a clarion call whenever I find myself teetering on the edge of self-doubt or an important decision in my startup or life journey. *** Banda Ho To Zinda Ho! If you're alive, truly live! Banda Zinda Ho To Zinda Nazar Haana Zaroori Hai! To be alive, it’s necessary to have a lively vision.  A few months ago, I took the plunge into entrepreneurship, leaving behind the relative stability of a 9-to-5 job. It was a leap of faith into a realm filled with uncertainties and risks. Entrepreneurs, you'll get me when I say the looming specter of failure has often kept me awake at night, pondering whether it's time to pack it up and return to...