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’, and the emergence of the Indus Valley playbook — a distinct set of hacks and business models that help startups win in the unique Indian market.
I have been thinking of writing this essay for a while now. Many of the individual elements of the …
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 …
In this rather extended essay (~4,500 words), I suggest the term MERIT (Metro-based / Residential, English-speaking, All-India intake, Tough to get into) Colleges as a moniker to replace the IIT / IIM tag we use for elite Indian colleges.
I then use MERIT as a framework to explore facets of privilege in India – national consciousness, rise of subjective merit, and finally blindness to our own privilege.
I tried to …
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 …
Naman Sarawagi commented recently.
More people would benefit if anyone could pay to get an internship where they like. I really mean the intern paying to get an internship, just like they pay for college. https://t.co/SnMpowRmHM
— Naman Sarawagi (@NamanSr) July 26, 2020
Twitter erupted saying how dare you think of unpaid internships.
I reacted to one post on this topic with this.
…Thought it was a well-argued thread