This is about 13.5k words long! Feel free to print or download it to your Remarkable / Kindle Scribe / iPad for easier reading.
About this essay: This is the first chapter of a book I am writing on Product Market Fit or PMF. This chapter, Understanding PMF, starts out by setting context for why PMF matters to early stage startups. It then lays out a definition for …
What I read and found interesting this month, along with my thoughts on them.
The above is the result of the prompt “For these episode links (shared), can you extract their cover art and article covers, and give me a mock layout of their cover art with their titles for use as a composite LinkedIn banner that unifies these diverse podcast and article covers. Do not invent anything that is …
What I read and found interesting of late. For those curious abt the title, the word ‘Interleavings’ comes from 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 …
This is a transcript of an AMA I did on 7 May ‘25, for the SeedToScale team (part of Accel India, runs seedtoscale.com). It was themed around unpacking the Indus Valley Report 2025 but it did go beyond the same. I have edited it mildly to make it more readable. If you see SPW, remember it stands for Sajith Pai’s Words. I have used SPW wherever I have added …
What I read and found interesting of late. The title ‘Interleavings’ comes from 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 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. 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 …
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 …
TL;DR: PMF or Product-Market Fit is not a singular fit, but in fact two sequential fits. First, you need to achieve Product to Problem Fit or PPF (where you validate that your solution is able to address problems for a set of customers), and then you need to achieve (Go-to-Market) Motion to Market Fit, or MMF (where you can reliably, affordably, acquire lookalikes of the above customers to build a …