I joined Amit Varma on his acclaimed The Seen & The Unseen podcast to talk about venture valuations, the VC playbook, the evolving media sector, my productivity hacks + stack, and lots more.
It is long podcast (Amit’s signature style) but certainly the most interesting + important one I have done. Do give it a listen! Link below. (The wonderful illustration that appears on the Seen Unseen page is by …
In this long essay, in fact my longest ever at ~7k words, I set out the evolution of the Indian startup ecosystem, or ‘Indus Valley’, as well as the distinct set of hacks and business models that have evolved to help Indian startups win, which I term as the Indus Valley playbook.
The essay has three sections
I heard from a friend who is attending the present batch at ISB Mohali that they have all moved to campus. Classes had begun in May’20 but were online. So, this is the surprise; he tells me that classes are still online (at least for a bit). But they are all staying on campus now, and hence all the interactions are in person, socially distanced or not I dont know. …
What if liquor and other sin goods had to be purchased with a different currency called B(ad) Rupee?
Similarly the government could depute other goods – some not desirable (say imports) or those that cause environmental damage or have negative consequences, such as fuel – to be purchased solely via B rupees.
There could be a small tax or fee to convert A rupees (or rupees; those to be spent …
TL;DR: There are 3 core jobs of a founder-CEO in a Series A+ startup. They are prioritization, hiring and fundraising; in that order. Communicating, meetings or reviews which is how the founder-CEO spends her time, are only enablers of the above jobs. They should not be confused with the 3 core jobs. The article below unpacks these 3 jobs at length. As always feedback and criticism welcome, and I would …
A quick post, led by the relentless pileup of ‘reading for work’ articles and podcasts, on a new role / career option waiting to be created.
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It is common for CEOs / CXOs in Indian or international companies to have assistants / secretaries who do scheduling + travel bookings largely along with some office management or personal chores. They are typically many paid anywhere from 5 to 10% of …
This is a long post. Microsoft Word puts it at 4,542 words! Possibly the longest I have written. It explores a diversity of ideas and themes: a moniker called MERIT colleges to replace the inelegant IIT / IIM we use to earmark an elite college in India, the emergence of two parallel tracks of merit, a national consciousness that elite Indians share, and finally their privilege blindness. I hope you …
I recently appeared the the 100x Entrepreneur podcast. It is a well-known one in the Indian startup world.
As you can see in the tweet, …
I have often puzzled over the relative ‘effort to create’ vs ‘time to consume’ ratios of podcasts vs an essay.
A 1,500-2000 word essay takes me nothing less than 6-8 hrs to create + publish, sometimes more if it needs background research etc. It take the reader 10-15 mins or so to consume it. Let us say, on average it takes 8 hrs to create and 15mins to consume. So …
I recently came across the concepts of clock time and calendar time in an essay by Patrick McKenzie (@patio11 on twitter).
Clock time is the actual time it takes for you to do an action (send a mail, draft an article and hit publish, code a change and set up an A/B test etc.). Calendar time is the period in which the impact / consequences / results of the above …
