makeover

We are carrying a mask: an artificial version of ourselves, pretending to act as others expect. We play roles in different settings: with peers, parents, and partners. In short, we have built a unique mental model of stimulus and response.

Everyone appears to be doing great: on social media, in their professional lives among friends, and in their love lives. It’s as if everyone is carrying a personal scorecard.

The sad part of this fakeness is that, over time, people begin to mirror each other. In the short run, it may open doors and provide a false sense of ego. In the long run, it becomes your alter ego: you forget how to live as yourself and instead become a full-time actor wearing a mask.

The world is constantly pushing everyone to become a robot with a cosmetic makeover.

Itch

People say hiring is a tough exercise. We’ve been lucky—we never really faced that problem. Maybe it’s because we’ve always been clear: we hire people who are genuinely willing to work with us and believe in our long-term vision at Taghash.

It’s been 9 years, yet it still feels like day zero. The cycle of hiring, people leaving, and even coming back continues—we’ve had 2–3 folks leave and later rejoin. As a founder, the sooner you accept this reality, the sooner you can focus on the bigger picture.

Seeing some of my earliest hires leave after a few years was painful—I’ll be honest. At the time, it felt like a personal failure. But over time, I’ve matured and learned to see it differently.

With the rise of AI, the hiring equation itself is changing. We’re no longer just chasing 10x engineers, designers, or product managers—because a lot of that leverage is now augmented by AI. What matters more is having a rigorous process, an intelligent operator, and, most importantly, the right attitude.

Our team is shipping faster than ever. And no, we’re not even using Claude like many others are.

The times are changing. The ones who will survive are those who stay pragmatic and open to adapting to the new normal.

In the end, what matters most is simple: they need to have an itch.

Defect

We live in a world where someone, long ago, set the rules. They defined what is good, bad, or ugly. What is considered a defect? If your profession is not part of a designated boundary, you do not exist. You are a defect.

People called Van Gogh a defect. The same was true of what many thought about Beethoven or Marie Curie.

Social parameters and their narrow width have killed many unimaginable inventions and explorations. We are told from early days to be good, with a list of bad things to avoid. Judgment has been predefined and determined by those who are no longer alive. This gospel has been spread in building this civilization, where everyone is running to find something, only to realize how lost they are.

The defect is not in a few, but in society itself, with its rigid rules. The fear of guilt and failure overrides courage and the will to go against the odds.

We are all suffering, sitting in cubicles, overburdened with loans, and planning our next vacation or what to post on social media for likes.

Slow

We are living in the era of AI, where everything is moving at an incredible pace. My customers and friends constantly tell me to ship faster. At times, I feel FOMO seeing young founders in their 20s claiming to have built in months what I’ve been working on for nearly a decade:Taghash, now 9 years and counting.

At its core, I believe the AI era has accelerated the pace of shipping. At the same time, it has introduced new layers of complexity. If we blindly let LLMs generate code without guardrails, we risk undoing years of hard work.

Throughout the history of civilization, many such waves have come and gone. What has endured is the determination to keep going, to not give up, and the ability to adapt like a stream of water, flowing through plains, mountains, and uneven terrain.

We are slow starters, but we are learning to swim with confidence so we don’t drown. We may be slow, but our eyes are open, and we have the ambition to go all in.

industrialised

Is automation killing authenticity? From pre-mixed gravy to cloud kitchen. We are becoming a mass market consumer. There is no real taste left. You order a gravy, and it will have a bucket load of cream or a sugary tomato blend taste. 

The same goes for any other drinks. Most restaurants sell packaged juice as “juice.” The recent encounter I had was with restaurants selling kombucha under the disguise of kokum syrup and water. 

We are entering into an era where our food taste will be industrialised in no time.

Winners

We live in a world where opinions are often seen as a cure for misery, and social media has amplified this trend even further. Any nameless account will post anything about anyone and anything. 

Building a successful startup requires a winner’s mindset. It starts with radical optimism and self-belief: a level of becoming obsessed and delusional. 

Every minute as a founder, you are engulfed in rejection, failures, and opinions from the world. If we see the history of all inventions, we will realise how everything was built: from aeroplanes, bulbs, AC motors, and many others. 

The journey as a founder is your alone. You have to live with a default positive, even when the world around you is crumbling in personal life. So hang in there and enjoy the ride. 

Bonus

We forget our roots. We leave the skin we were born with. With age, we transform. We are living in an uncertain era where we can go bust at any moment. There is no guarantee for anything. 

Some of us get worried and stressed about accepting this reality. This has happened in the past, and philosophers like Seneca have written extensively about it in books such as “On Shortness of Life”. 

The sooner we realise that we have a life in bonus: relationship and wealth, the more empathetic we will become towards the world. Everything around us is temporary, and we are here for a short period of time.  

Lowballing

The price of being nice in business is that people will take you for granted. This should not shake your core fundamentals. This is an arm-twisting technique that has existed for a long time and has been practiced by many in trade.

The sooner you realise that your niceness is seen as weakness, the sooner you will change your course of action. We live in an uncertain world with things changing rapidly across technology, work, and society: a world where everyone has an opinion. You have to stay very focused on what to take and what not to take.

People tell you that in business you have to be nice to everyone. I say otherwise. There will be people you will not like, and people who will not like you. You have to stay away from them. These are the people who will try to make you feel small. You don’t have to engage with such people or sell your soul.

Dilemma

We live in a world where underdogs live, thrive, and flourish silently. It acts as a double-edged sword on the path to progress. Our capitalist society often succumbs to the bazooka-like force of marketing. “Fake it till you make it” gets more limelight, and people form opinions just by the looks of things.

With technological advancements, we have entered into increasingly shallow relationships. Success is now measured by the number of likes, comments, and friends on social media. It is no longer about real connections.