About this series
On Building
I've been building businesses for over 15 years. Started one that failed, worked at SAP, then spent a decade scaling a B2B platform to 600+ enterprise clients in India, bootstrapped. Along the way, I picked up some opinions about how building actually works... not the Silicon Valley version, but the version where you're selling to Indian enterprises, bootstrapping with constraints, and figuring things out in a market that has its own rules.
These are those notes. On enterprise sales, on hiring, on simplicity, on why most startup advice is American advice, and on what doesn't change no matter what technology is trending.
Enterprise & Product
What I learned building enterprise software at SAP and scaling a B2B platform for 10 years. On product decisions, technical architecture, and the CTO job nobody describes accurately.
Enterprise Software Lesson from SAP
→The biggest thing SAP taught me: enterprise software isn't about user experience. It's about user confidence. Your product needs to feel reliable before it feels beautiful.
Simplicity Is the Ultimate Sophistication
→Every feature we added to Silver Oak had to pass one test: does this make the product simpler to use for the person who really needs it? Most features failed that test.
Are You Building a Feature or Replacing a Budget Line?
→There's a difference between building something that's nice to have and building something that replaces a line item in a CFO's spreadsheet. Only one of those is a real B2B product.
What Nobody Tells You About Being a CTO
→The CTO job in an early-stage startup has almost nothing to do with technology. It's about translating ambiguity into decisions, and decisions into things that actually ship.
Startup & Strategy
Contrarian takes on startup building, market timing, and why most advice is written for a different market than yours.
Most Startup Advice Is American Advice
→Y Combinator playbooks were written for San Francisco. Indian enterprise sales take 6-12 months, procurement is relationship-driven, and your product has to work on 2G. Different game entirely.
Best Practices Are Just Average Practices
→Best practices are what average companies do. If you follow best practices religiously, you will build a perfectly average company. The companies I admire broke from best practices early.
The Bangalore Startup Energy
→There's a specific kind of energy in Bangalore's startup scene. Part hustle, part delusion, part genuine brilliance. After 10 years in it, I have complicated feelings.
Wheels on Suitcases Came After Putting Man on the Moon
→We landed on the moon in 1969. Suitcases with wheels came in 1987. The lesson: the most obvious improvements often take the longest. And timing matters more than the idea.
Don't Listen to the Customers
→Customers will tell you what they want. They will almost never tell you what they need. The gap between those two things is where the best products live.
People & Hiring
On hiring, managing, and the human side of building a team. What nobody tells you about being a manager, and why brilliance beats experience almost every time.
I Have Found It Is Usually Easier to Hire Brilliant People Than Experienced People
→Experienced people know how things were done. Brilliant people figure out how things should be done. In a fast-moving startup, that distinction matters more than a resume.
People Don't Leave Companies, They Leave Bosses. Really?
→The data says people leave managers. My experience says it's more complicated. People also leave cultures, roles that stopped growing them, and companies where their work stopped mattering.
Be the Person Who Can Figure It Out
→The most valuable people I've hired weren't the most credentialed. They were the ones who, when something new and undefined landed on their desk, figured it out. Every time.
I Spent My 20s Trying to Be Perfect
→Perfectionism feels like high standards. Most of the time it's just fear wearing a respectable costume. It took me a decade to understand that shipping imperfect work is better than not shipping at all.
Business Thinking
Timeless principles that hold regardless of what technology is trending. On Mozart, dumb books, and why most AI strategies are just expensive guesses.
The Music Is Not in the Notes
→Mozart said the music isn't in the notes, but in the silence between them. The best business decisions I've made weren't about adding things. They were about what to leave out.
Why Smart People Read Dumb Books
→The most useful business books I've read weren't the celebrated ones. They were the obscure, oddly specific ones. Smart people read widely and without snobbery.
Why Your AI Strategy Might Be Doomed (It's Not the Tech)
→Most AI strategies fail for the same reason most digital transformation projects failed. Companies start with the technology and work backwards to the problem. That's not a strategy. It's a purchase order.
More in ज्ञान (Gyan)
01
10 Years of Mental Health Tech
The scale challenge, the human side, the industry view.
You are here
02
On Building
Enterprise, startups & what I've learned along the way.
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03
On Culture
How to build culture in a team.
Coming soon
04
On AI
How to think about and use AI practically.
Coming soon