In my role as an early stage VC, I often get asked by aspiring founders for my reactions to, and feedback on, their startup ideas. This article is borne out of the learnings from those interactions, and is written to be helpful to any aspiring founder, who is figuring out their startup idea.
For founders who are in the process of honing in on their startup idea, it is worth …
In publishing, interleaved books are those sold with blank pages inserted between printed pages so as to facilitate note-taking. This was a common practice in the 16th and 17th century, but has disappeared now. Thus my term ‘Interleavings’ for my notes and thoughts on the digital texts I enjoyed reading.
Here are my interleavings from the recent past.
In publishing, interleaved books are those sold with blank pages inserted between printed pages so as to facilitate note-taking. They were a common practice in the 16th and 17th century. Here is how an interleaved book with notes by the reader (source) looked like –
Thus my term ‘Interleavings’ for my notes and thoughts on the digital texts I enjoyed reading.
Here are my interleavings from the recent …
I recently completed 10 years in Delhi, India’s capital city. Well, strictly speaking, I have lived the last decade in Noida, a satellite city of Delhi, part of the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR), and tightly integrated with Delhi, and so this will do. Neither me, nor my wife, have roots or relations in Delhi or the wider region. So what am I doing here in Delhi?
Well, we moved …
Finally got to this. Enjoyable breezy read covering the inner workings of running an elite restaurant in New York City, its evolution and rise to top-tier status from its previously middling rank, through a philosophy of giving equal status to service alongside food, and especially through elevating service to outrageous over the top levels through an approach the author terms as ‘unreasonable hospitality’.
What stood out to me was the …
Link to podcast. Link to podcast excerpts i found interesting.
Some of you may recall that Chris wrote a terrific piece a few months back on how founders should think about building AI products. This podcast is in much the same vein though I found it somewhat less useful …
Finally wrapped up a slow read of Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green. Enjoyable book taking a close look at the investing approaches of public market long-only investors such as Mohnish Pabrai, Joel Greenblatt, Howard Marks, Bill Miller, Nick & Zak of Nomad, Charlie Munger and a few lesser known (at least to me) ones such as Tom Gayner, Matthew McLennan, Laura Geritz, Joel Tillinghast etc.
Interesting how their philosophies …
This is a brief review of the essay Making Markets in Time by Abhraham Thomas.
I first heard of Abraham Thomas, from my then IIMA junior Sudhir Sitapati. This was just before Malhar ’97, the Xavier’s college fest. I was in the IIMA team for the Malhar quiz, and Sudhir told me that AT (as Abraham Thomas was called) was a formidable quizzer representing IITB. For some reason Sudhir, …
4 January 2025
1/ Shruti Rajagopalan, who hosts the Ideas of India podcast, did an annual retrospective highlighting the podcasts they did in 2024, with her reflections on it. I like this format which was begun by her celebrated fellow Mercatus podcast host Tyler (link for his retro). Link to my highlights.
What I found interesting
I read 22 books this year, of which three were works of fiction. Now I have kept stats of what I have read over the past two decades; I average 23 books a year, about a quarter of which are fiction. Two goals I have set for myself a few years back is to read more fiction, and read older books. On both counts I failed this year. Far too …
