One of my personal goals this year was to read & learn more (books, blogs, newsletters, youtube anything). I have decided to write my weekly learnings and finds here in this space. I am hoping the deadline of publishing one article per weekend will push me to read more throughout the week 😅

Weekly Finds

[Article] How I went from Indie lurker to Indie hacker: As the name suggests, the author takes us through her journey of learning web development and launching her first Indie project.

[Podcast] Enabling 40M passengers | Manish Rathi, Founder RailYatri and IntrCity: In this episode of ‘Founders Unfiltered‘ podcast, Manish Rathi shared his learnings and journey of starting RailYatri and IntrCity. I particularly liked the second half of the podcast where Manish shared his observations on the pain points of bus passengers and how they are fixing it at IntrCity. You can listen to this on the podcast app of your choice, just search for ‘Founders Unfiltered’ podcast.

[Video] YourStory interview with Deepinder Goyal, Founder Zomato: Really good interview. Initially, there were some parts where Deepinder seemed to be exaggerating things a little bit (like getting 3 digit JEE rank after studying 1.5 months) but after that he was very honest throughout the interview (atleast seemed to me that way). There were so many interesting learnings throughout the interview, for example

  • Meeting with Sanjeev Bikhchandani, how he got 1M funding in a 10 mins meeting and how life can change in just 2 mins.
  • His stammering problem: the reason why he doesn’t give many interviews or goes to public events.
  • How he built the culture at Zomato. This one is very debate provoking as we all know about the work-life balance of Zomato, but the same work-life balance and the company culture is deliberately created by Zomato and they want it to be that way.
  • Swiggy vs Zomato; his relationship with money; handling criticism; advice to new startup founders; social responsibilities; and a lot more.

You can watch the interview here: [Part 1] [Part 2]

[Article] On the value of not reaching your goals: We all give too much importance to our goals. So, what happens when we don’t reach them? Is it really that bad or is there a lot of developmental value to be derived from it? What if we DO reach our goal? Does that really change anything? A fleeting happiness, yes, but what after that. The article talks about such things and more.

[Article] Baumol’s cost disease: explains why in a world of rapid technological progress, the cost of labor-intensive services keeps increasing.

[Video] Why are Indians lonely?: Another great content piece by Mohak Mangal. You should subscribe to his youtube channel, if not done already.

What I’m reading this week

I completed ‘Kaali Aurat Ka Khwab‘ by Irshad Kamil this week. The book takes us through Irshad Kamil’s journey from a newbie struggling lyricist to his first Filmfare Award (Kaali Aurat). I really like these kinds of book where we get to know the behind the scene stories of how the pro’s of a particular field create their work. By the way, those who don’t know Irshad Kamil by his name I’m sure you would know him by his works (check out scoopwhoop article on some of his best lyrics).

There were some lines of a poem that I really really liked in this book. Life isn’t always the way we want it to be, but we have to accept it nonetheless.

तुम्हें देखके लगता था ये
तुम हो बने मेरे वास्ते
मिलना ही था हमको मगर
हम न मिले तो ना सही

गम है भी तो रुकना नहीं
जीना तो है झुकना नहीं
ये ज़िन्दगी कोई ख़ुशी
अब न भी दे तो ना सही

I’m still unsure which book to pick next, maybe ‘Gita For Children’ by Roopa Pai or ‘Elements of Style‘ by William Strunk.
Let me know if you have some book recommendations. और अगर आप कोई रिकमेन्डेशन ना भी दो तो ना सही 😜