Thoughts on productivity tools, and about rethinking them for better outcomes.
If you end up subscribing to the Superhuman email service, you are clearly in the subset of busy people with a lot of emails. One thing busy people have apart from emails is meetings, and to dos. Tonnes of them. So inevitably you think of, what is the superhuman equivalent for to do lists? Or calendars? And that is …
I often tell friends that the single best thing about working in early stage investing is the number of startup decks you get to see daily, each describing a specific vision of the future. People eating meal replacements or renting clothes instead of buying, printing a toy than ordering one, and so on. These ‘postcards from the future’ are not always right. Well, they all clearly can’t be. But that …
Links to recent writings of mine. As usual, they happen on LinkedIn or other publications. My website seems to have become an archives list. That wasn’t the original plan when I started this website nearly a decade ago, though. Sigh!
One morning in October 2017, and I forget the exact date now, I came back from my crossfit workout to see a series of whatsapp messages from Karthik Reddy. Karthik, briefly an ex-boss of mine at The Times of India Group, had gone on to cofound Blume Ventures, a seed fund, which had evolved to emerge as a much-loved and well-regarded player in the Indian startup …
I haven’t been updating this website as frequently as I have hoped to. But those who follow me on twitter or linkedin, would know that I have been writing regularly, with all of it being published on other websites or publishing platforms.
Here are links to some recent writings of mine, in order of recency.
I wrote a post, well over a couple of months back (mid-Feb ’19), on the challenges of becoming a universal app or product in India. The nature of the Indian market meant few startups would attain product-market fit (PMF) across the country. Increasingly, startups would strive to attain PMF in India1 Alpha, India1 or India2.
The article also covered a broad approach to move across different layers of the stack, …
I recently met the founders of a quasi-dating app enabling friend discovery via meeting strangers at events. We passed on them, primarily because while we could see that it had the potential to ‘take off’ in metros, or at least the affluent parts of our metros, we couldn’t see how it would work in India2 i.e., the non-english speaking less affluent India in Tier 2/3 cities, and thus expand to …
This was originally published in The New Indian Express.
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Around 20 years ago, my father, a South Indian working in a South Indian bank, received his obligatory North India posting to Delhi, something he and my mother had been dreading. Those first days in Delhi were incredibly trying, as my parents negotiated with plumbers, electricians, maids, milkmen and every person you interface to set up a home. Each of …
This was originally published in FactorDaily.
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Over the last few years, we have seen a new crop of attention harvesters spreading across Tier 2 and 3 India spurred by cheap smartphones and cheaper bandwidth. These are all mobile apps, some Indian-born such as Sharechat, Clip, and Roposo and some Chinese including Helo, TikTok, Vigo, Bigo, Kwai, and others. But all of them try to fashion an addictive feed …
I have been writing regularly as those of you who follow me on twitter / linkedin are aware, but I have been a tad lazy in not updating this website with the links. So here goes.
For Arre, for their special on India’s 71st Independence Day, I predicted what India would look like in 2089, another 71 years hence. I made three predictions: one each about society, tech & …