Building With Soul

Business will become more mystical

My father, the late, great Rashmi Thakrar, who passed away too, too soon, believed that “for something to truly succeed, it must have a little poetry at the heart of it.” This idea steers us in perhaps every single one of our endeavours.

Ten years ago, the industry’s identity was largely defined by thousands of young millennials who wanted to “change the world,” and the handful of large technology companies attempting to attract that talent. Discussions of material abundance, of connecting humanity, and of every sci-fi moonshot on our path to Star Trekkian utopia were not only... See more

Moral clarity creates market opportunities. Notion thrives by enhancing users' ability to organize their thoughts rather than maximizing time-in-app—its block-based architecture prioritizes user control and flexibility. Substack focuses on helping writers build direct relationships with readers instead of ad-driven revenue—writers own their... See more

If you consider yourself a technologist, here’s your imperative: build things that are unabashedly, beautifully tangled into all else in life — people and relationships, politics, emotion and pain, understanding or the lack thereof, being alone, being together, homesickness, adventure, victory, loss. Build things that come alive, and drag... See more

Things should be costly (either in materials or the effort we put in) because it proves love and sacrifice went into it — for the benefit of all.

We lost our soul and growth was slow and I failed to raise a Series A investment round and Ebay.

If you know to look, you can feel the difference between software crafted with care for its users and systems of vacuous tradition that just happen to be good at producing the vapid fodder of convenience.