Hello

Cool, you found my little corner on the web. Its a little silent here, though isn’t it?

I am an entrepreneur building my own niche on the web. I am probably not going to be talking about the nice in these pages. Watch my LinkedIn for better updates on that front.

A while back I listened to a Joe Rogan Experience episode on youtube. He was talking to Naval Ravikant. Now, I am not a fanboi of any sort. But the episode struck many chords with me. All my life - well, mostly from when I was about 16 - I have wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t have a reason for that thinking back then. And I couldn’t have spelt the word correctly. I lived with my parents in sub-urban Chennai. Now, Chennai is already very big (almost the size of Singapore) and sub-urban Chennai is right outside it. So you can imagine how far that had to be. Growing up, we didn’t know startups or that you could have your own businesses. The only business we knew was that of the grocery store or the baker around the corner. Not very elegant, now. And clearly not the kind of entrepreneurship I was imagining.

My career is a curious set of choices. That is to say, I follow whatever is the most curious to me rather that what pays me the best. My definition of an interesting thing is something just outside my comfort zone. I’ve learnt and tried comic sketching, basic pottery. I practice scratch art and mandala paintings as a form of relaxation. I have a small hydroponic garden with an interesting variety of flowering and vegetable plants. I love baking - cakes and cupcakes mostly. These are all things that require me to focus and understand things that I don’t already know. And I learn something new in every session. That’s not all, though. I write quite a bit and have half a dozen tech projects to explore ideas I cannot get to at work.

I read a bit. A work of fiction I read recently is “The three body problem” by Cixin Liu and most recent work of non-fiction I read is “The Practice” by Seth Godin. My favorite podcasts are “This week in tech” with Leo Laporte, “How I built this” with Guy Raz, “The infinite monkey cage” from BBC Radio, “Revisionist Hisotry” by Malcolm Gladwell, and “You are not so smart” by David McRaney. My favourite Youtube Channels are “Dry Bar Comedy” and “Evam Standup Tamasha”. Left to myself, I’ll spend all my evenings listening to standups from across the globe.

There are a few things I believe are absolute truth: this moment and death, perhaps. Most other things seem variant or negotiable. I am apolitical and consciously avoid political topics and ideologies. I believe we need to shape the society we live in, but we should also remain flexible about what we want to shape it into. After all, our truths and beliefs won’t be the truths and beliefs of our kids.

Lastly, am a careful realist. For most cases, I’ll pass off as pessimist. I generally tend to take the stand that no one in the room is taking. And I do have an uncanny ability to reason and argue on all sides of the coin. I don’t try to be agreeable and I don’t give a lot of importance to fitting in.

Wish list

  • Startup, duh.
  • Live for a year or two in each of these cities: New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Mumbai, Berlin. Not in any particular order.
  • Teach fundamental sciences to kids: teach kids to learn, to explore and to be curious again.
  • Meet, grab a cup of coffee (or tea) and get a selfie with
    • Seth Godin
    • Malcolm Gladwell
    • Naval Ravikant
    • Ratan Tata
    • Sir John Cleese (acutally, all the pythons)
    • Jerry Seinfeld
    • DHH
    • Elon Musk
    • Anand Mahindra
  • Meet a few of my Twitterati that I admire and respect. I expect this is more achievable.
    • @warikoo
    • @nitro_idiot
    • @noufalibrahim
    • @dnene
    • @FreakShreek
    • @skeptichacker
    • @unixbigot
  • Hop on a time-machine, remembering the towel, go back in time to meet Douglas Adams.
  • Write a book.
  • Make one other person’s life better.