A few weeks ago I spent two weeks evaluating a startup. It didn’t convert into something substantial. Company was good. Founders were sharp. It ended because when it came to the numbers, the company put its interests first. And I put mi...
Four things I now make sure I know before committing to any early-stage business engagement. Learned the slow way.
Wrong people keep finding right people. And right people keep finding wrong people. I have been sitting with this for a long time. Two years ago I started working on it directly, building a small behavioural matchmaking experiment of my...
Customer experience didn’t exist.Not talking about a bad one, there was well, none.• Reviews came in across platforms• Social comments were inconsistent• Emails were scattered• Action depended on who noticed whatIf something got flagged,...
The most subjective thing in hiring has somehow become the most decisive filter. Culture fit is everywhere in early-stage hiring. It is in every job description, every debrief, every rejection email that says “we decided to move forward...
At one point, I was directly handling parts of the revenue process, not by design but out of necessity. We had a sales team that was not delivering the outcomes we needed. The effort was there, the activity was there, but nothing transl...
Everything looked fine until we followed the money. That’s where we found a hidden 15% revenue leak.
Most founders hire senior operators before the system is actually ready to absorb them. This post examines why founder-dependent operations don't scale through addition, what gets mistaken for scale-readiness, and what needs to change before a senior hire makes structural sense.
Chief of Staff isn't a career destination - it's a phase role, redundant by design. This post breaks down when the role is actually justified, why experienced operators feel unplaceable in startups, and what the honest exit paths look like.
A bootstrapped agency had systems, dashboards, and defined roles, yet deadlines kept slipping. This call breakdown explains why operational breakdowns at early-stage companies are almost always accountability failures, not tool or process failures.
I used AI video generation to claim a free brownie from a cafe's influencer offer. It technically worked. But the same method means anyone with a photo of you could make you say things you never consented to.
A plain-language breakdown of five roles that often get conflated, covering what each actually does, who they serve, and how they differ in scope, seniority, and strategic weight.
A step-by-step walkthrough of building a targeted cold outreach list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, using a live example of prospecting B2B CXOs in the US for an AI personal branding tool.
A full GTM teardown of how Cult.fit could build a B2B corporate wellness business targeting 12 crores in annual revenue, covering segmentation, package design, sales funnel structure, and ROI metrics.
A persona-driven growth teardown for Zenskar, examining how a SaaS billing platform can tailor its onboarding, messaging, and partnerships differently for solopreneurs and established businesses to drive sustainable growth.
A zero-to-execution growth plan for a creator portfolio platform, covering organic user acquisition, brand onboarding on a lean budget, and fixes for three active gaps in the platform's marketing.
A full content engine breakdown for a founder-focused platform, mapping blog series, video formats, podcast structures, and social media cadences to audience acquisition and engagement goals.
Swiggy spent 28% of its annual marketing budget on IPL 2022 to launch Instamart as a brand. This teardown tracks the actual numbers across installs, active users, churn, and order volume to assess whether the bet paid off.
In 2020, I made the case for LinkedIn to build native post scheduling. Four years later, they shipped it. This is the original product thinking, preserved as-is.
A primary research study examining how subconscious psychological factors shape consumer shopping decisions, and whether decision-making styles and brand thinking differ meaningfully by gender.
A field research study on why a local restaurant made an expensive packaging change despite cost pressure, using customer opinion data to analyse the tradeoff between brand imagery and operational economics.