April 2025

There’s a strange expectation floating around, especially in India:
That if you build something, you must be that thing.

Start a Sanatani platform?
“Are you a brahmin? Do you do daily puja?”
Found a mental health app?
“Oh, so you must have struggled with depression, right?”
Launch a farming startup?
“Which gaon are you from, bhai?”

This romanticized notion — that the founder must be the ultimate user — is seductive. It flatters our desire for purity, for “authenticity.”
But it also misses the point.

The founder’s job isn’t to be the product.
The founder’s job is to build the product.

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System Builders, Not System Subjects

The founder of Zepto doesn’t need to know how to ride a bike through potholes to ensure your milk arrives on time.
Bhavish from Ola may not be a cabbie — but he understands networks, price signals, and logistics.

Likewise:

1. The founder of Urban Company isn’t a plumber or a beautician.
   They built the backend, not the blow dryer. What they bring is orchestration.
2. Nandan Nilekani didn’t build Aadhaar by verifying identity on the ground himself.
   He created a digital infrastructure that let others do it at scale — securely, rapidly, and affordably.
3. The founders of Duolingo aren’t polyglots of every language on the app.
   They built feedback systems, engagement loops, and gamified flows that make language learning addictive.
4. The creator of Zerodha wasn’t the best stock trader in India.
   But he knew what Indian traders were frustrated by — opaque charges, clunky UIs, lack of trust — and he solved those.
5. Even in cinema: directors aren’t always the best actors, singers, or camera operators.
   They’re conductors — making sure the whole thing works in harmony.

A founder is not the domain expert.
They’re the domain enabler.

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The Founder as a Conduit, Not a Guru

We often mistake the founder for the priest.
But maybe they are more like the temple builder.

The priest performs the ritual.
The founder builds the platform so that millions can perform their own rituals — digitally, physically, communally.

This distinction is vital.

When the Wright brothers built the airplane, they weren’t birds.
When Steve Jobs built the iPhone, he wasn’t a telecom engineer.
They weren’t the product.
They built the conditions for the product to exist.

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The Market Doesn’t Care Who You Are. It Cares What You Do.

Here’s a harsh but liberating truth:
Your users don’t care about your identity.
They care about your delivery.

If your Sanatan app helps a seeker reconnect with their roots, if it makes their puja easier, their pilgrimage safer, their spiritual knowledge richer — they will use it.

They’re not asking for your Kundli.
They’re asking for your product to work.

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Founders as Infrastructure

The best founders don’t center themselves.
They create infrastructure so that others can thrive.

They’re more plumber than poet. More builder than philosopher.

In a world full of personal brands and founder selfies, this is easy to forget. But the real power lies in building something that works, even when you’re not in the room.

Something that aligns with users’ needs, honors the system it represents, and grows bigger than you.

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Closing Thought

If a founder builds a bridge over a river, do you ask if they know how to swim?
If they design a school, do you ask how many exams they’ve topped?

Let’s stop measuring founders by their personal resemblance to the system.
And start measuring them by the clarity of their thought, the care in their execution, and the value of what they make.

Because in the end, it’s not who you are —
It’s what you build that lasts.Why a Founder Builds

The Rungs Between Earth and Everything Else

There’s an old story in Genesis.
A man named Jacob, on the run, falls asleep with a stone for a pillow. He dreams of a ladder reaching from the earth to the heavens. Angels ascend and descend. God stands at the top. When Jacob wakes up, he declares: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

That image—of a ladder between the mundane and the divine—has echoed through centuries. But like all great metaphors, it isn’t just a symbol for the faithful. It’s a blueprint for those seeking meaning.

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The climb

Ladders are simple things. They don’t lift you.
You climb them.
Step by step.

They don’t promise shortcuts or escalator-speed. They demand effort. Focus. Rhythm. One rung at a time.

And unlike a staircase, a ladder feels vulnerable. You’re exposed. The ground feels far. The top feels uncertain. One hand wrong and you slip. But it’s also the most honest structure: transparent, minimal, and direct.

Which makes it the perfect metaphor for ascent—of any kind.

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What are you climbing?

For some, the ladder is spiritual.
For others, it’s intellectual.
For some, it’s career. Or healing. Or love.

The point is not what you call the ladder.
The point is whether you’re climbing one at all.

Most people, when you really look, aren’t climbing anything. They’re just switching ladders at the base. They shop for better-looking ones. Shinier rungs. They wait for elevators. Or worse, they convince themselves there’s nothing worth climbing toward.

But real growth doesn’t happen on the ground. It happens between rungs. In the space where you’re stretched. Where you’re unsure if the next step will hold. Where you hear the angels but haven’t yet reached them.

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Descent is part of it

In Jacob’s dream, angels were going up and down.

We don’t talk enough about that second part.

Descent is not failure. Descent is part of the system. The myth of continuous up is what breaks people.

The real ladder—whether of faith, or mastery, or inner peace—is cyclical. You climb, you descend, you learn, you climb again. Each time, the same rungs. But you bring something new to them. A different self. A clearer intent.

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The ladder is already here

Jacob wakes up and says: “The Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

He thought he was in a random field, fleeing danger. But the ladder was already there. The connection between earth and everything else wasn’t something he had to build—it was something he had to notice.

That’s the part we miss.

Most people are waiting for the right tools. The right mentor. The right sign. But the ladder isn’t out there. It’s in your backyard. It’s in your daily practice. It’s in the thing you quietly care about, but haven’t dared to name sacred.

You don’t need new dreams.
You need to wake up to the ones already under your head.

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So…
Pick a ladder.
Climb it slowly.
Let it shake you.
Let it change you.
And remember—angels go up and down.

In every age, we’ve had factions. Tribes.
The ones who wear blue and the ones who wear red.
Those who cheer for the kings, and those who root for the rebels.

But what happens when every voice is amplified, every opinion is curated, and every room you walk into already agrees with you?

You get an echo chamber.
And when echo chambers calcify, you get tribalism.

That’s where we are today.

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The Anatomy of an Echo

An echo chamber isn’t just a metaphor anymore—it’s an operating system.
You follow who you like. You like who you agree with. The algorithm notices. It doubles down.
And before long, you’re living in a parallel universe where your worldview is the default, and anyone who disagrees is a threat, a troll, or worse—uninformed.

This isn’t just happening on Twitter or TikTok. It’s everywhere.

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The Two Faces of the Same Problem

Legacy media, once the bastion of editorial standards and public accountability, has quietly picked a side.
Most major publications and TV channels now operate with a strong ideological default—a worldview baked into their editorial tone, guest selection, even the headlines they run. It’s no surprise then, that they attract and retain talent who already agree with that worldview. Over time, this self-selection loop creates internal echo chambers—newsrooms where dissent is rare, and deviation is career-limiting. The result? Not just biased coverage, but unconscious consensus. Not propaganda, but a kind of editorial monoculture. And that’s more dangerous—because it feels objective.

New media, in contrast, didn’t start with ideology. It started with incentives. The game was attention.
Attention rewards outrage, novelty, and tribal loyalty. So content creators, chasing engagement, learn quickly: pick a side, build a persona, stay predictable. Creators become brands. And every brand needs consistency.

The audience doesn’t want complexity. They want confirmation.
Many creators, once explorers of ideas, now become guardians of a fixed narrative—lest they lose their followers, their Patreon subscriptions, or their place in the algorithm.

So the echo chamber isn’t just built by followers.
It’s sustained by creators who fear the cost of stepping outside it.

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Tribalism: The Upgrade No One Asked For

Humans crave belonging. That’s fine.
But in the modern media landscape, tribalism isn’t just about shared values—it’s about shared enemies.
It’s not enough to believe in something. You must disbelieve in the other.

And so, the tribe becomes your identity, and the echo chamber becomes your temple.

Disagreement? That’s sacrilege.

We’ve mistaken alignment for truth, and loyalty for integrity. We’ve built communities not around learning, but around defending our priors.
The media—both old and new—didn’t create this instinct.
But they’ve certainly optimized for it.

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Not a Collapse, but a Contortion

It’s tempting to declare that both legacy and new media are falling apart. But collapse isn’t the right word.
They’re contorting—reshaping themselves under pressure. And in the process, becoming something harder to trust.

Legacy media is entrenching.
Faced with declining readership and the illusion of neutrality, many outlets have doubled down on ideological clarity. They know who their audience is—and more importantly, who it isn’t. Nuance is inconvenient. Ambiguity is unprofitable.

New media, on the other hand, is fragmenting.
Everyone with a camera or keyboard is a channel now. But the more voices we allow, the more we seek the familiar. We follow people who sound like us. Content that comforts us.
And in doing so, we build micro-realities, each with its own truths, its own villains, its own gods.

Take the example of climate change:
Watch a prime-time debate on one channel, and it’s a full-blown emergency—fires, floods, collapse imminent.
Scroll through certain influencer reels, and it’s a hoax—a scam by globalists or a distraction from real issues.
Both messages aren’t just reporting reality. They’re tailoring it.
And depending on where you sit, one of them feels true.

They haven’t collapsed.
They’ve multiplied. And in multiplying, they’ve stopped speaking to each other.

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So What Now?

This isn’t a call to return to a golden age of media. That age probably never existed.
It’s a call to become conscious of the way we consume.

If your feed never surprises you, you’re in an echo chamber.
If disagreement makes you angry instead of curious, you’re in a tribe.
If the news only ever confirms what you already believe, you’re not being informed. You’re being entertained.

The antidote isn’t balance for the sake of balance—it’s awareness.
It’s listening with the intent to understand, not to attack.
It’s recognizing that the truth doesn’t need to yell, and the loudest voice is often the least certain.

We don’t need to agree.
But we do need to hear each other.

Until then, we’re all just shouting into our own mirrors, waiting for the echo to say we’re right.

We often call India a dysfunctional country.

The pothole that never gets filled.
The clerk who vanishes at lunch and never returns.
The form that demands your father’s name but not your own consent.

But here’s a thought—what if India isn’t dysfunctional… what if it’s systems-less?

That’s not a softening of the truth. It’s a reframing. Because dysfunction implies a broken machine. Something designed, built, deployed—and then failed.
But what if the machine was never really built?

India didn’t inherit robust systems. It inherited a colonial operating system wired for extraction, not empowerment. And what we call bureaucracy today is often just repurposed colonial plumbing patched with jugaad, corruption, and sheer human improvisation.

When we label this as “dysfunction”, we assume failure of design. But most of the time, there was no design to begin with.

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Why This Distinction Matters

Because you approach a broken machine differently from one that never existed.

If a system is broken, you fix it.
If it never existed, you build it.

When we try to create impact in India—startups, social enterprises, policy interventions—we often assume there’s a functional baseline to plug into. That someone else is taking care of the wiring.
That the data will be there. That the permissions will be rational. That someone, somewhere, is minding the shop.

But when you build with that assumption, the system fails you.
Not because it’s hostile.
Because it’s absent.

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What Happens When You Rely on Nonexistent Systems?

Let’s say you’re building a mental health app for Tier 2 India.
You assume psychiatrists are trackable. That clinic data is reliable. That local NGOs will follow structured SOPs.

But they don’t. They never had to. The default mode is relationship-based, not system-based.
You don’t “plug into the mental health infrastructure.” You build it.

Or consider building an agri-tech platform. You assume cold chains exist, logistics are traceable, farmer land records are digitized.

Wrong.

That’s not dysfunction. That’s vacuum.
You are the system.

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The Real Challenge: Systems as Culture

India runs on social systems, not institutional ones. Kinship, caste, favors, phone calls.
It’s not that Indians are incapable of process—it’s that the incentives for system-thinking were rarely aligned.
Legacy businesses used middlemen, not management systems.
Government offices used power dynamics, not documentation.
Families used control, not contracts.

So, when you introduce a new system—say, a transparent procurement platform or a last-mile distribution model—you’re not just building tech.
You’re challenging culture.
You’re trying to replace something informal but trusted with something formal but unfamiliar.

That’s hard.

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So What Do We Do?

1. Stop Lamenting Dysfunction
   Start mapping what systems don’t exist, and ask: what’s the minimum viable system I can build here?
2. Design for Absence
   Assume zero infrastructure. Design tools that seed new behavior, not just optimize existing ones.
3. Build Visible Proofs
   Show systems working in microcosms. A well-run FPC. A village-level logistics network. A trust-based but trackable health program.
4. Layer Systems Slowly
   Start with people, not platforms. Introduce one structure at a time. Let it take root.
5. Document the New Culture
   Not just the app, the SOP, or the user flow. But the belief system that makes it work.

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The India That Works Is the India We Haven’t Built Yet

India isn’t broken. It’s waiting.

Waiting for builders who don’t expect a foundation, but lay one.
Waiting for entrepreneurs who see the vacuum and say, “Perfect. Now I can build from scratch.”

So the next time you’re tempted to call India dysfunctional, pause.

You might just be standing in a place where no one has built the system yet.
And maybe, just maybe—that’s your job.

There’s a romantic little lie we like to tell ourselves.

That we are who we are.

Fixed.

As if we’re doomed to follow childhood scripts, horoscope blurbs, unhealed wounds, and a few oversized quirks masquerading as fate.

As if our identity is some ancient tree we’ve merely grown into.

Roots too deep to cut.

As if “authenticity” means never changing.

As if the child who dreamed, or the teenager who rebelled, or the twenty-something who tried and failed… still has a vote on what the thirty-something adult should do now.

But here’s the trouble with that story:

The version of you that got here—into the job you don’t love, into the relationship that drains you, into the finances that leave you gasping for air, into the habits that numb rather than nourish—

That version of you is not the one who will get you out.

Nietzsche said it as an invitation: Become who you are.

Not who you were. Not who they expect you to be.

Who you really are—underneath the deadwood.

And that means death.

Little deaths, every day.

Old beliefs must be buried.

Outdated dreams must be mourned.

Expectations—yours, theirs, society’s—must be burned at the altar of becoming.

There’s a reason most people in their 30s feel stuck.

They carry the past like a legacy instead of a draft.

They treat “this is how I’ve always been” as a personality trait instead of a design flaw.

Jordan Peterson calls it pruning the deadwood.

A quiet violence you must do to yourself.

Not because you’re broken. But because you’re outdated.

And yet, we cling.

To the dream that didn’t pan out.

To the friend group we’ve outgrown.

To the version of us that once made sense in a different context.

We romanticize the stuckness.

We forget: the real work is not in looking back with regret or forward with anxiety.

It’s in looking within—with a knife.

Not to harm.

But to cut away what no longer fits.

And sometimes, you don’t need a knife—you need a match.

Not to destroy yourself.

But to cremate what’s already dead.

So you can become the person who can lead you out of the mess.

Because the one who got you here…

Can’t get you there.

And that’s not sad.

That’s freedom.

But even freedom comes at a cost—

You will have to face the grief of letting go of who you thought you were.

(Read our follow up post on this theme- Carrying Fire Forward)

This Is the Best Time to Be Alive. So Why Are We All Miserable?

We live longer than kings once did. We travel across continents in hours, not months. We swipe right to find love, click a button to summon dinner, and summon strangers to drive us wherever we want. We carry libraries in our pockets, edit our faces in real time, and outsource memory to machines. We treat boredom like a bug to be patched.

Groceries arrive without us stepping outside. We speak to glowing rectangles and call it connection. Entire careers are built on pixels and likes. We’ve delegated thinking to search engines, emotions to algorithms, and validation to strangers on the internet.

Plagues are now fought with mRNA and machine learning. And war? For most of us, it’s something we scroll past—tragic, yes, but distant. Rarely something we run from.

We are the most connected, entertained, informed, and comfortable generation in human history.

And yet…

Unhappiness might be the only thing we’ve scaled faster.

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The Great Illusion

We bought into a lie.

That happiness is something you can buy, stream, or manifest. That if you just hustle hard enough, post consistently enough, optimize long enough, you’ll finally feel whole.

But happiness, it turns out, is a byproduct. Not a goal. Viktor Frankl said it clearly: “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

We turned the pursuit of pleasure into a substitute for purpose. And we called it success.

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Social Media, Mirror Mirror

Our tools are no longer tools. They’ve become the architects of our identity.

We used to compare ourselves to neighbors. Now we compare ourselves to the highlight reels of the internet’s top 0.1%. Creators, influencers, billionaires, crypto bros, wellness gurus. Everyone is selling something. Most of all, themselves.

So we feel behind. Behind in life, behind in looks, behind in purpose.

We internalize this as failure. And we reach for the one solution we’ve been conditioned to believe works: buy more. Scroll more. Work harder. Post more. Perform more.

More is the new meaning.

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When Meaning Left the Room

Frankl saw it coming.

When people stop believing in something larger than themselves, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

And modern life has handed us a buffet of anything:
Fame without service.
Consumption without contribution.
Comfort without challenge.
Validation without connection.
Influence without integrity.

But meaning doesn’t come from ease. It comes from effort. From saying: “This matters. I will carry it. Even if it breaks me.”

We’ve confused safety for salvation.

We’ve forgotten that the most fulfilled humans in history weren’t the most comfortable. They were the most devoted. The ones who suffered well. Who turned pain into poetry, loss into leadership, fear into fuel.

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The Existential Vacuum

Call it what you want—burnout, boredom, the slow ache of “meh.” Frankl had a better term: the existential vacuum. That hollow hum beneath all the noise. When life is full but not fulfilling. Loud but not meaningful.

You can’t fill that vacuum with dopamine.

You fill it by asking better questions.

Not “How can I be happy?”
But “What is worth suffering for?”

Not “What should I do with my life?”
But “What does life expect of me?”

Not “What can I get?”
But “What am I here to give?”

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The Quiet Rebellion

There is a rebellion, but it won’t trend.

It’s the quiet work of choosing meaning over metrics.
Of unplugging from the attention economy to pay attention to your soul.
Of creating instead of performing.
Of going deep instead of going viral.

It’s choosing to build something real in a world addicted to the unreal.

It’s saying: “I will not be defined by how comfortable I am. I will be defined by what I carry.”

Because yes, this may be the best time to be alive.

But it’s also the easiest time to be asleep.

And waking up—truly waking up—might be the most radical act of all.

Two purebred labradors.
Same breed. Similar lineage. Practically identical DNA.

One eats bananas like it’s his calling in life.
The other looks at a banana like it’s an existential mistake.

How does that happen?

You can replicate the blueprint.
You can control the environment.
And still—different choices, different behaviors, different beings.

It’s easy to forget how much variation exists beneath apparent sameness.
We like patterns. We want predictability.
But living things, unlike machines, come with subtlety. With agency.

Even identical twins—those supposed human photocopies—grow up into people with distinct fears, different humor, unique dreams. One becomes a pilot. One writes novels. One loves the city, the other the silence of forests. All that from the same starting point.

So what’s going on?

Maybe the formula is incomplete.
Maybe we’re not just nature + nurture.
Maybe there’s a third element—call it randomness, call it spirit, call it soul—that adds unpredictability to the equation.

A sort of divine dice roll baked into existence.
Not chaos. Just uniqueness.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe the universe isn’t trying to mass-produce consistency.
Maybe it’s running experiments. Millions of them.
Tweaking variables.
Watching what happens when one dog eats the banana and one does not.

It makes you wonder:
How much of who we are was planned?
And how much just emerged?

Because if two labradors—born to sniff, fetch, and follow—can diverge on something as simple as fruit…
What does that say about people?

Maybe your weird taste, your odd instinct, your quiet refusal to follow the crowd—maybe those aren’t bugs in the system.

Maybe they’re the point.