Writing

Notes from building.

Building in public: what I'm learning about startups, product, and GTM as I go, including the failures. The older posts are from my open source and early founder days, kept mostly as they were.

Illustration: a stack of software layers, the thin top layers crumbling while the solid base holds

Oct 13, 20267 min

Is software dead? No. The thin layers are.

Everyone is arguing about whether software, or SaaS, is dead. I think we've seen this movie before, with Bitcoin. Here's my take on what actually happens next.

Illustration: a glass workshop with open walls

Oct 1, 20264 min

Building Snezzi in public: lessons from year one

A year into building Snezzi, the lessons that surprised me weren't technical. They were about naming a new category, choosing what to give away, and earning trust with skeptical buyers.

Illustration: a call center headset with a tangled cord and a long paper receipt

Sep 26, 20262 min

Customer service is a choice

Collecting money is instant. Getting a refund takes months. After two frustrating years with Indian telecom providers, here's why I think broken customer service is a system choice, not a staffing problem.

Illustration: small robotic arms quickly assembling app blocks

Jan 20, 20263 min

Building is cheap now. Here's what isn't.

I've built working products in a weekend, and one in 30 minutes. AI made building almost free. It didn't make adoption, judgment, or maintenance any cheaper.

Illustration: small rounded houses connected by strings of warm lights forming a network

Jan 12, 20263 min

What thirteen years of community building gave me

I moved to Ahmedabad knowing almost nobody. One free event in 2013 led to Headstart, GDG Cloud Ahmedabad, and eventually Startup OG. Here's what paying it forward actually paid back.

Illustration: a compass resting on a roadmap next to a tall tower of stacked building blocks

Aug 12, 20254 min

From founder to product manager: lessons from building inside enterprise SaaS

After the acquihire, I spent three years building new products inside Whatfix and Plivo. What changed when I went from founder to PM, and the product lessons I still use.

Illustration: a sturdy boot with a small plant sprouting from it, a few coins beside it

Mar 5, 20254 min

What bootstrapping DataOne and Shoppr taught me

Five years of bootstrapping a data company and a marketing analytics product, condensed into the lessons I still use: first customers, MVPs, hiring, investors, and content.

Illustration: a shopping cart with a hidden price tag peeking out from behind a smiling mask

Feb 28, 20253 min

Dishonesty as a Business Model

We live in a capitalist world, and every man has the right to explore and exploit opportunities.

Illustration: a fork in a road at sunrise with a small green seedling growing at the split

Feb 5, 20255 min

The year I started over

In January 2024 I left my job burned out, posted #OpenToWork in public, and spent a year freelancing and shipping small experiments. Here's what that year looked like from the inside.

Illustration: a laptop with a small rocket rising from a coffee mug beside an office ID badge

Jan 24, 20255 min

How to build your product without quitting your job

Many senior professionals want to build a SaaS product or AI agent but can't afford to quit first. You don't have to. Here's how to de-risk the leap: validate, find paying customers, and build an MVP while you still have a salary.

Illustration: a balance scale with a clock on one side and a small house and a heart on the other

Jan 10, 20251 min

Long hours are a two-way street

When business leaders called for 70 to 90-hour work weeks, I'd seen both sides: as a founder and as an employee. Long hours can work, but only when companies give something back.

Illustration: a small megaphone on a pedestal facing rows of tiny empty chairs

Aug 8, 20245 min

I tried micro-influencers to grow a waitlist. Here's what happened.

To grow the JobReferral waitlist, I hired micro-influencers through a marketplace. It was slow, poorly matched, and underwhelming. Here's the full experiment, why it didn't work, and how I'd run it next time.

Illustration: a phone with a chat bubble turning into a small stack of coins

Jan 17, 20245 min

How a Facebook DM turned into a $40,000 client

In February 2016 I had just left my job, had no portfolio I could show, and sent one message in a Facebook group. Six months later that client had paid for more than $40,000 of work. Here's what actually made it work.

Illustration: an open door with a glowing exit arrow

Jun 1, 20233 min

Navigating Startup Exits: A Founder's Guide to Success

Embarking on the entrepreneurial journey is a thrilling yet challenging path. While statistics indicate that the…

Illustration: dashboard chart tiles snapping together like puzzle pieces

Aug 29, 20224 min

The Future of Product Analytics is No-Code/Low-Code

When it comes to analyzing data, many of us struggle. Working with data is messy in more ways than one can count. And one of the reasons that it’s considered messy is that traditionally most data…

Illustration: two hands shaking above a single narrow bridge over a gap

Feb 15, 20222 min

Before you bet your startup on one partner

Early at DataOne, we put almost everything we had earned into one partnership. It fell apart and we lost that investment. Three lessons I'd give any founder before signing that kind of deal.

Illustration: six small prototype gadgets on a shelf

Jan 29, 20224 min

Six side projects that failed, and what they had in common

Between 2015 and 2018 I started and shut down six side projects. Here's what each one was, why it died, and the patterns I only saw once I lined them up.

Illustration: a teacher's desk with an open notebook, a single puzzle piece and a warm desk lamp

Jul 10, 20203 min

Remembering Prof. Asim Banerjee, the teacher who taught with puzzles

Prof. Asim Banerjee passed away this morning after fighting Covid-19. He shaped thousands of DA-IICT students, including me, with puzzles in the classroom and long conversations outside it. A few memories, and what he taught me.

Illustration: an empty cup slowly being filled with warm glowing light

Jul 2, 20204 min

Feeling void or filling the void?

It’s 4 A.M, and something doesn't let you sleep. And in this state, you stumble upon the story of a founder who is doing…

Illustration: a circular path looping around a small campus building, with a trophy at the start and a rocket at the end

Dec 24, 20183 min

Circle of life: from a student competition at GLS to building a startup on its campus

Seven years ago I travelled to the GLS campus in Ahmedabad as a second-year student for a web designing competition. In 2018 that campus became my startup's home, and I was back in front of its students talking about entrepreneurship.

Illustration: a bunch of colorful balloons tied near a small traffic light

Jan 1, 20181 min

Six sales lessons I learned selling balloons at a traffic signal

On New Year's evening, I joined a friend helping balloon sellers at traffic signals. It turned out to be a surprisingly good lesson in selling.

Illustration: a launch pad made of stacked data cubes with a small rocket lifting off

Aug 10, 20165 min

Presenting DataOne – The Company and The platform

Hello world! I'm feeling extremely delighted to unveil “DataOne – The Company and The Platform”. Background This is…

Illustration: a single winding path carved through soft rolling hills toward a rising sun

Apr 20, 20164 min

Carving your own path

"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." - Elon Musk Struggle Passion…

Illustration: two hands passing a glowing lightbulb

Nov 29, 20152 min

Google Code-in 2015 with Fossasia

Hello all, Today I'm so excited to introduce Google Code-in, a program from Google to make pre-university students aware…

Illustration: a small stage with a microphone and many colorful speech bubbles floating above it

Apr 1, 20156 min

Fossasia 2015 : Experience unveiled

Howdy? It's strange that I am writing another blog post in such a short time. I along with my colleagues…

Illustration: a miniature smart city of rounded buildings connected by glowing lines

Mar 23, 20152 min

Fossasia 2015 - Three days in a smart city with Open Source

A lazy programmer like me needs lots of inspiration to write a whole blog post. Fossasia 2015 happened to be one of…

Illustration: interlocking gears feeding a conveyor belt that launches a small rocket from a server rack

Jun 6, 20144 min

Working as a DevOps Intern @Ishisystems

So it's been so long and I was wondering what should I write? Past few months were full of learning as I was working as…

Illustration: a conference lanyard badge

Apr 17, 20143 min

Fossasia 2014 : Meet, greet and Code!

Today I am gonna tell you about my experience of international open source community meet up. It was Jan 15, when I…

Illustration: building blocks forming a scaffold structure next to a steaming coffee cup

Dec 21, 20132 min

Building Java Framework : The GSoC journey Part-II

After a long break I would like to present the second part of our GSoC 2013 journey for the project MOST. After tackling…

Illustration: a large data block splitting into smaller shards that arrange themselves into a ring of nodes

Oct 16, 20135 min

Tackling the design issue using Cassandra : The GSoC journey Part- I

We often travel across the places and these journeys often teach us valuable lessons which we never want to forget. The…

Illustration: a neat stack of proposal papers with a blueprint sheet

Oct 6, 20131 min

GSoC 2013 project proposal

As I promised in my earlier blog post to share my GSoC proposal, you can see the proposal below. Few points to note…

Illustration: a shiny summer sun medal with a code bracket symbol

Jul 11, 20133 min

Grabbing the tag of GSoCer

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and…

Illustration: a ring of glowing rounded database nodes connected in a circle

Jun 22, 20131 min

Introduction to Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassanrda, simply it is a " massively scalable, decentralized, structured datastore (aka database)". Being an…