In a recent conversation with a friend about world-view, left vs right, individualism vs collective, right or wrong, good or evil, moral duty of a human being vs moral duty of society and views on social justice, equality, race and immigration, I had an important realization. Most of someone’s core philosophy can be understood by their answers to these two fundamental question.

Everything in the world moves in cycles - things go up, things come down. Civilizations rise, civilizations decline. Market goes up, market goes down. Corporations gave successes, they have failures. People oscillate between happiness and sadness.

There are few unique things about these cycles

Tim Ferris become famous by writing the 4-hour work week and GaryVee has become popularizing hustle porn.

Both share some attributes - specifically the desire to live a life of passion. For Tim, passion lies in enjoying all aspects of life while finding hacks to spend the least amount of time “working” dedicated to earning money. For GaryVee passion lies in building a large business and dedicating every waking hour in service of that.

I have reads 100s of books, tons of biographies, met some very successful people and answer is still elusive. Individuals can claim grit, hard work, luck etc. but nothing really conclusively answers the question.

The reason I say we don’t have a deterministic answer is because any deterministic answer will have to meet the following criteria

I love life, I love lots of things about living - music, dancing, running, biking, writing, building things, building companies, traveling, waking up everyday so god damn happy to be alive, optimistically sure that pursuing my dreams is the only true north, I love humans, I love unabashed optimism, naked ambition and i love capitalism. I also possess the ability to love multiple humans and I need a relationship that supports that, I need a life that supports that.

As a society the outcomes that we praise, seek and validate are solutions. We like the solutions that win, we love big outcomes. So most people when chasing success are chasing ideas for a solution that can capture the world. I have found the opposite is required in order to build something. In order to create something wonderfully unique we must fall in love with the problem

The signals are changing. In 1900, 90% of the jobs were physical in nature and by 2100, almost 90% of the jobs will be cerebral in nature. Physical qualities which signal intelligence, mental health, creativity and fun will gain more traction than rugged looks and big muscles. The definition of fit is changing from physical health to overall mental and physical health.

There are three buckets of team members while building a company.

1-6s: They are clearly below par. These are obvious under-performers in the company or team, easily identifiable, easy for most people in the team to agree that their performance brings the team down

To my 11yr old self, the utility of money was simple - any $ you gave me, I would calculate the amount of chocolates, crisps and sodas I could buy. That was what money could buy, that was material happiness.

When I first heard the term “mental health” years ago, I was young, brash and probably too confident of myself. I remember thinking it was for weak people who could not cope up with harshness of the reality.

But over the years, I have started looking at world class champions, entrepreneurs and people who seem to push through unusual odds and I noticed how strong their mental resolve was.

The social signaling and currency is going through a dramatic change. We have gone from baby boomers establishing social status via material wealth and objects to millennials using experiences sprayed across social media to establish social credentialing. Gen Zs are changing the paradigm…..

Specific knowledge is something you learn and knowledge you cannot be trained for. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Become the best in the world at what you do (your specific knowledge) and keep redefining what you do until this is true.

Exploring what is mine, and hopefully it makes you think what is yours.

5 years ago, last week of October 2015, I landed in USA for the sixth time. Soon, I would make this country my home and work towards creating a new life.

If I wanted to succeed long-term in this country, I needed a network of people who can enable that. I needed relationships. I needed a team. You don’t succeed alone.

Compounding is a very powerful concept, easier to understand with a money example. $1 on day 1st of July, doubling it every day of the month vs $100 million - if given an option, one should chose the former. That $1 a day doubling for just one month is $1billion+.

This is easy to understand, but I find compounding has an incredibly profound impact on two other aspects of your life.

The personal computer revolution started in 1980s, and took 30 years to reach 1.5 billion units worldwide. The smartphones boom started in 2007/08 and it took almost 10 years to reach ~3 billion smart-phone users in the world.

Phone and computers are limited by number of people. Sensors are not and there are more things than people.

For purpose of this writing success is narrowly defined as the pursuit of wealth and influence over capital, labour, technology or ideology - the drivers of modern day capitalism.

In this narrow scope of success, I have found few fundamentals to hold true and few things which enable the pursuit of aforementioned success.

Those two words sum up a lot about human nature and opportunities. We are either fighting for survival or defending it, or we are reaching a little higher to rise up in whatever endeavor one might be perusing. We seldom can do both simultaneously.

When you are rock climbing, you clip the quickdraws to bolt before going any higher. You ensure survival and then you go higher.

Decision Making is like sex, everybody engages in it but most people don’t take the time to read about it or learn it methodically. This results in sloppy decision making.

We make decisions everyday, but every-time we have a critical decision - a job prospect, a life partner prospect, a decision to move countries or cities - we start from the ground up, we think about what we truly want, make pros and cons and discuss with our trusted and loved ones. This is an extremely sub-optimal way of decision making

Andy Rachleff in his famous class at Stanford “Aligning Start-ups with their market” teaches that a common misconception is that technology disrupts markets or companies, but it is not technology, but business models that disrupt markets and companies. Technology is merely an enabler of this new business, a new method to create and capture value.

We all have to make this choice. We have to make it few times in our life. This is my attempt to synthesis broad frameworks I have learnt from Andy Rachleff (Benchmark, Wealthfront) and Eric Schmidt (Google). This has helped me, and I hope the same for you.