This one is to a friend who lost touch but still thinks about me

Hi,

I’ll try to be articulate but there is just so much to say. This is my space without a word limit. But tldr if you don’t want to read the full thing: 2025 was wild. I hated it and I loved it. It was a year that brought me back to life.

Where was I at the start of the year?

I had completed 2.5 years at my job at MyMuse and were moving towards completing 3 years. I was working remotely as Head of Business - a role which was still new and exciting. The company was doing great, I was doing okay. I had started to think a lot about life in general and the ambition to start something of my own had started brewing. It was also the time where I had started leaning towards skipping bschool journey altogether. This was big as I had dreamed of attending a prestigious bschool for close to 4 years now.

What objectively changed?

Oh so much. so so much.

I had given myself a deadline to quit my job by June- the month I would have completed 3 years with the organisation. I quit my job in June. Reason: I wasn’t learning anymore, I wasn’t failing enough, and I realised I still had some foolishness in me to take wild risks right now so why not? I asked myself what if the startup I am doing fails and I have to take a pay cut in my next job - would I be okay with that? I am surprised how instant the answer to this was. Yes, I would be okay with the short term setback as I needed to bring back the curiosity and drive in myself, which any other job would not have been able to do.

The journey after quitting my job has been in phases. On paper not much has changed- but it feels like I have explored so much.

June, July: It was night and day to work on something over weekends and then work on it full time. With any safety net you look at things very differently. I needed full time at that point in time. I started working on Littlewise (Development toys brand for kids) and very soon realised that we had no product MOAT. The only MOAT we would build with time would be in marketing. Plan on paper was perfect but I realised this wasn’t the area I would enjoy building in for the long term. Before realising this I had ordered inventory, built website, started marketing. Some of this inventory is still placed in my home and I have to figure out if I wanna sell it and close things down or find some other outcome for it :)

August: Third month of being unemployed- I started thinking to do things in parallel to Littlewise. I thought that trying out multiple things at once will open up probability of one of them to work. Started working on a Meal Tracking App as a growth co founder. Did all sorts of hacky stuff :p got some views and users but none of it matters if you don’t have strong conviction in what you’re building. Conviction is somehow related to gut feeling as well. You can lack it in greatest of ideas. I was also trying out ideas with another friend in parallel and did some idea evaluations and small pilots. The most difficult thing about August wasn’t to stop working on ideas but to stop working with the co founders as both of them were great but our startup vision didn’t align.

September, October: Things started breaking here. I spent 15 days researching on a new idea which I realised wouldn’t work. I was in 4th month of having no job now and I had no co founder and no idea to start with. I was in 4th month and I hadn’t even started my startup journey. So did I regret going down this path? I never regretted trying things out. I owed it to myself to give myself a fair chance. I thought this was a good time to change pace- that I was ready to start working at an organisation again and can always think of ideas and find co founder while working somewhere. I started looking for jobs. I hadn’t applied to jobs in a very long time and was well aware of the gruesome job market. I still had high expectations. The job should be at a high growth company, which has smart people working there, would be great if it were remote, and pays me well. It’s very difficult to not let imposter syndrome kick in while in this cycle- what if I was overvalued in my last role? What if I am not that capable? I still kept on reminding myself- what if I were capable? This was a terrible experience overall. Random ghostings from HR’s and not hearing back from places you were excited about can take a toll. Things started picking up in 4th week of applying where I started getting offers. They didn’t tick all my expectations but were more than halfway there (and paid well so ok i guess). I would still keep on evaluating ideas on the side- almost as if I was looking for a reason to not take up a job. This is when I met Sparsh on Y Combinator co founder matching. We had a strong value and vision alignment. Finding a great co founder who also wanted to work on same ideas and had same goals was the most difficult thing in this process. I am a hopeful person so all I could think of was - what if this works out? It’ll make up for a great team.

November, December: 6th month of unemployment started. I took a decision to let go of the job offers and give entrepreneurship 3 more months. Sparsh and I started exploring and working on ideas together. We worked on an idea for 45 days only for both of us to realise it won’t work. Mid December- we took a new approach. We’ll do sprints and look for focused results instead of going into the macro view of things. Work more talk less. No idea works fully and we just had to find something we both think would work. We started working on a work management platform that lies at the intersection of organisational context ( it takes into account the people aspect and live view of what’s up in your org) and project management. We are 6 days into it and we think it’s a super cool space. We are both very excited to see what 2026 has in cards for this.

What am I proud of?

Working on your startup is the best feeling that you could experience. However, it also brings in the other extreme. Everyday is a new challenge. Everyday brings in a new problem to solve. There is a new failure everyday. It can range from co founder issues to market issues. Any permutation and combination of problems that you can think of, and specially that you can’t think of, will come up. There is just so much that can go wrong. I am proud that I am able to think more about everything that can go right and have remained positive through this entire process. If anything I think this has brought me closer to myself and has made me a better person.

Where did I struggle or stall?

I would say discipline. I’ve had cycles of sleeping at 4pm and waking up at 11pm on some days. It’s wild. I need to work more on being disciplined. Erratic sleeping and eating cycles don’t do any good. It only makes you unproductive as you spend time in trying to fix them.

What did this year teach me about myself?

  • I am stronger than I thought I was and I am more capable than I thought I was

  • I suck at multi tasking. If I am focusing on one thing, I lose focus of everything else.

  • Success>Impact>Money. Although all of them matters. Momentum drives more than anything else.

  • I am happier with non linear trajectory and not knowing what’s next (directionally knowing is ok but still leaving room to let life happen)

  • I regret missed chances more than missed opportunities

  • Career is a part of life. Goal in life is to maximise happiness. Career should also lead to maximising happiness

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” ~ Stephen Fry

The exact Wilde quote to which Fry is referring is this:

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life — but what I will call the artistic life — if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.” ~ Oscar Wilde

—

New posts coming regularly. Subscribe to the RSS feed or check back here.