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 …
Author Archives: Atul
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 …
And time goes on
I am currently in my hometown, a remote part of Bihar, and I feel a completely different kind of calmness here. While the world seems to be on fire with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence: billions of dollars in market value being erased overnight, life here moves at a different rhythm. Companies like OpenAI …
against
As a founder, if you have an itch, a vision, and a quest to go against the norms, this journey is for you. It is also filled with pain. All the failures are on you; after all, you are leading this revolution. Time and again, your desperation to win deals and retain employees can create …
change
We are living in a different time. After the internet, AI seems to be the next big thing. It will impact each one of us, in good or bad ways. As a startup founder, I see it as a blessing when it comes to shipping code. The dependency on humans to write code is going …
authentic
We live in a crowded, noisy world. The glamour and desire to be someone or to be like someone have become supreme. We change, sell our souls, or behave unintentionally. We have upgraded our lives with wealth, and real/reel life has merged. Our quest for material wealth and power is killing us from the inside. …
responsibility
As a founder, responsibility is absolute. You don’t get the luxury of blaming employees, investors, competitors, or the market. If the company fails, it fails on you. Period. Ownership is not a title: it is a weight you carry end to end, whether things are going well or falling apart. At the same time, a …
basic
We often forget a basic reality. This civilization wasn’t built by people who followed the flow. It was built by people who felt an internal discomfort: an itch to question what everyone else had already accepted. An itch to go against the tide. An itch to attempt what looked unreasonable, impractical, even foolish at the …
Death
There are moments when a simple thought refuses to leave you alone. What is the meaning of this life, when in the end, we all have to die? We run through so many hoops. We chase money, wealth, recognition, validation. We want to be someone, become something, own something, be called something. And yet, none …
Building the Blocks That Scale a Startup
When a company grows from a four-member team to twenty or thirty people, something fundamental has to change. In the early days, momentum carries everything. Everyone does a bit of everything. Roles are blurry. Energy is raw and instinctive. But as the team grows, that same chaos if left unchecked, it starts becoming a liability …