Anthropic onboarding day: Michael Scott introducing Karpathy like he just signed Wemby in free agency.

4 thoughts on early-stage hiring: 1/ If an engineer is trying to pick between a pre Series-B company and a BigCo/BigLab --> stop talking to them immediately. They are clearly not ready for a startup. 2/ If someone isn't willing to take a 70% cash paycut (relative to BigCo/BigLab) --> stop talking to them immediately. They will be unhappy/stressed. 3/ You learn a lot about a candidate during the negotiation/closing process. Do not be afraid to walk away if you get new information. 4/ Startups have zero work-life balance. If you are not willing to put in the hours, you are not in the right headspace to grind.

30 India consumer app insights : > India drove ~20% of global gen-AI downloads in 2025, but only ~1% of AI app IAP revenue. > Gen-AI app downloads in India jumped from 198M in 2024 to 602M in 2025. > The first mass AI habit is image creation, editing, avatars, filters, and shareable content. > Digital astrology users are 60.3% women. > 63% of female astrology users are under 30. > Nearly 70% of women’s astrology consultations are about marriage or relationships. > Where Is My Train got 50% of installs through Bluetooth sharing inside trains. > Instamart had one condom pack in every 127 orders in 2025. > Condom orders on Instamart spiked 24% in September 2025. > FRND recorded 285M conversations and 418M minutes of voice-led companionship in 2025. > 92% of FRND engagement came from outside Tier 1 regions. > 95% of FRND’s new users came from non-metro and remote regions. > FRND users sent 974M virtual gifts in 2025. Rose and chai were the most popular. > FRND’s longest call was 1,247 minutes. > India became the world’s #1 short-drama download market with 21.07M installs in one month. > Short-drama plots are fantasy fulfilment in 60 seconds. Billionaire romance, revenge marriage, hidden heirs, sudden status jumps. > Kuku TV reportedly skews 90% male. > 9 of Kuku TV’s top 10 shows were translated, not Indian originals. > Swiggy food-on-train orders grew 380% YoY in 2025. > Fintech lenders served 23.3M consumers as of Dec 2024. > 61% of fintech borrowers were under 30. > 24% of fintech borrowers were rural. > Vama doubled operating revenue to ₹19.5 crore in FY25 by selling e-pujas, e-darshans, and astrology consultations. > As of June 2025, Sri Mandir had ~3.5M MAUs and ~55% six-month retention. > Nearly 20% of Sri Mandir’s revenue came from the Indian diaspora. > Seekho reportedly had 12 creators produce most of its library. > Instamart had 4 milk packets ordered every second in 2025. > Instamart peak ordering hours are 7-11 AM and 4-7 PM. > Gold orders on Instamart grew 400% on Dhanteras 2025. Indian consumers adopt fast, pay late, borrow young, date through voice, watch fantasy, gift digitally, shop privately, and turn offline rituals into app categories.

Career advice: Stay long enough to have an impact I’m seeing many folks who exhibit the following pattern: - Do a role for 12-18 months - Change roles - Repeat They are “job optimizers”, constantly on the lookout for something better, almost from the moment they land in a new role. The purpose of their current role is to help them find their next role. If this is you, stop. Take a breath. Embrace your current role. In fact, fall in love with it. Throw yourself into learning, building and having impact. You need at least 3-4 years at a company to have real impact. Have impact with measurable outcomes, and the next role will take care of itself. If you do great work at a good company, word will get out and you will never need to look for a job again. Plus, the joy and satisfaction of having meaningful impact is reward in and of itself. Frank Slootman offers a few other reasons why employers see too many short-tenured jobs as a red flag.

People are capable of far more than they think, on far shorter timelines. Problems expand to fill the time you give them.

Building for Bharat means building for trust, language and real connections A candid conversation by our founders @_bpst and @hvchhangani with @outlookbusiness what it took us to get there - youtube.com/watch?v=jNrqttK0…

People ask me how has AI changed the design process? Just look at @tryramp Product Designer job description

starting a consumer company is basically opting into pain as a lifestyle. you need this weird, almost contradictory stack which is taste timing, future intuition present execution, & culture fluency product rigor. most ppl have like… one of these. maybe two if they’re lucky. oh the worst thing is that there’s no clean feedback loop. ain’t no tidy dashboards telling you you’re right. it’s mostly vibes, weak signals, & ridiculously delayed validation if it comes at all (kinda like being in a toxic situationship). you’re effectively betting on something that doesn’t fully exist yet, using instincts you can’t quite articulate, in a market that will happily ignore you until it suddenly doesn’t. this is one of the most asymmetric games you can play but also one of the least coherent while you’re in it. i think of it as playing a video game in hall of fame difficulty with no tutorial & half the UI missing.

peeps of bangalore, can you tell which water softening setup have you installed for chores - bathing, washing machine, dishwasher etc. ? is there sth foolproof available ?

Escape competition through authenticity

Online safety can’t be an afterthought. Platforms need to build for trust. With our #SurakshitConversations campaign, we’re reinforcing a simple belief: Safety isn’t a feature. It’s the foundation. Read more: impactonnet.com/more-from-im…

I am going to have nightmares from that stare.

Too much fun making this 🤣 Though on a serious note, this is exactly why AI needs full context of your life and strong memory. Without it, it can’t actually help you.

even with a plethora of social apps, loneliness is surging across the world. next billion users are looking for safe digital third spaces to talk to others in their indic languages, build communities and for interaction entertainment, rooted in empathy interact group, which is at the forefront of this category, is building a house of apps - intelligent and inclusive, making diverse types of interactions easier for every user @hvchhangani @_frndapp @nsrnk6 thanks to @Aish_19_Anand & @CNBCTV18News for telling our story

I once again repeat this. India needs to fix its air quality ASAP. This should be our top priority. We do that and the average quality of life in our country will get a giant boost. I get we are a growing economy and infrastructure projects will create issues. But most of the pollution in our cities (50 %) is because of poor road infrastructure. So let us cut the crap and fix that. You want more and more Indians to come back and live here then give them better cities. Honestly the corruption has reduced because of digitisation. I can say that as a person who lives outside India for 5 and half months yearly. But we need to digitize even more. I hope policy makers inside and outside the government realise this and work towards it together.