7 June, 2026.
Starbucks.
Unlike me, lemme start with a rant. What a June I’ve had. And we are not even thru with the first week. Here’s a list.
- Had to scream on a VERY VERY dear friend (PD) because of his teams’ folly. I hate to raise my voice but I cant help it.
- The C4E Village as I know it is dead. But I will resurrect it. I am giving myself till end of the year for it. Back to grind mode. In case I cant till the end of this year, I will stop chasing freedom.
- Meta suspended @c4ein’s insta. And my personal one. And an alt one I used to kill time. Work of the last 10+ years gone. Not that we had a lot there but we did do some effort. I dont think we have the posts saved. Our folly. It sucks to be just a one in a billion where you have no access to decision makers.
- Lost a lot of money in random experiments. Which is ok. As long as I move forward. The top of the pile is Claude ;P
- Played poker like a chump and lost some. But that’s ok. I enjoy being on the table even though I am out of my depth. I wish I had unlimited bankroll to keep playing.
- Lost steam with all the experiments that I was in the middle of with Claude. Must get in the cave and come out with an outcome. I plan to not do anything but limited things with it.
- Wrote a shit screenplay from a great synopsis (56 Hours).
- Got mindfucked by tardiness of businesses I use – Vodafone (inflated and incorrect billing; will port out once am back in Bom), Rentomojo (bad service), Nippon MF (pesky sales calls), Uber (drivers more than the app), Swiggy (have uninstalled it now), my CA (who can’t keep track of simple things). It sucks that in India you pay so much and you get so less. At least be upfront and ask for more. Dont take me for a ride.
- My Uke broke. I had carried it to Pune to show off to Aarya and C. And then somewhere, it broke. 🙁
So that.
But then, like I see glass half full, I think all was bad.
I was in Pune and that meant I got to be in the same room as people I love. In no order, Aarya, Himanshu, AK, C, Krishna, Pradeep. And some more people. And I wanted to be with my people with all my attention and being and and thus I didnt meet anyone apart from my inner circle. So that was good!
Now, on to the review.
Wait. The track of the week. It has to be Bairan. See this…
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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.
As always, in no order…
1/ Pune!
The trip happened after trying to make it happen for a while.
Stayed at Bloom (I always do – sasta, tikaaoo). Just that this time the service was not the best. Must write to their care team.
Spent time at Third Wave. Got tired of it and then took cabs to Starbucks.
We as a group of people made many notes. Need to sit on those and action.
To be honest, I liked the slowness of Pune for a few days. I was in Koregaon Park and it’s definitely more walkable than Mumbai – both in terms of quality of roads and the weather. But then I think I can tolerate it for a few days only. I am glad to be back to Starbucks at Versova.
Also, I think I am done with Mumbai. To be honest, the only thing that holds me back here is my lust for the films business. Once I am over it, I think I will be more mobile. Let’s see when.
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2/ People and my inability to hire them
Thanks to this tweet I spoke to a lot of young people over the last two weeks. A 19-year-old from Haridwar, deeply into tech, even called me cool. A young man from Gujarat will probably do a prototype with me. Someone from Ranchi is excited to talk to us about Yellow. Both goods and bad. And many realisations. Here are some…
- People on twitter live in a delusionary world.
- I am unable to hire great people cos I cant pay them well. Wrote about it on LinkedIn. I will copy paste it here too after this list.
- Unrelated to this twitter induced dopamine rush offered by people, I failed to hire a person who’s non-twitter. I’ve been trying to rizz him for more than 6 months. I’ve spent a LOT of money chasing him. A lot of mental energy. And I couldnt hire. Not because I couldnt show him the vastness but I couldnt inspire him to get out of his comfort zone.
So that. It plain sucks that despite doing so much for so many people, I am unable to get people to be next to me when I need them the most. I am not a vindictive person but I tend to remember who chose to be by my side when I needed them. And who chose a “better” offer. And no, I will repeat. I dont blame them for choosing better. I would probably do the same. But I can’t shake off the feeling that when I need someone or something I find myself standing alone in a corner.
Any how.
Here’s the post that I talked about. I have edited it slightly…
Sanket once told me, “We want to charge top dollar from our clients. We pay top dollar to our people. We offer our people top dollar facilities. And we operate like a top-dollar company.”
I loved it!
And since then, I’ve been reflecting on how I can get there and hire great people. Especially today when a REALLY talented young design person said no to work with me cos I cant pay her well.
This money to talent is one of the pieces of puzzles that I’ve not been able to figure out. There are just three ways to attract great people.
1/ Initial capital.
From friends and family, or your own savings. Or angels.
Use that to build something that works. Thats valueblae.
Show the results to the world.
Raise.
Hire great people.
Great people produce great work.A cycle. Clean.
Obvious once you hear it.PS: You can also offer services to fund your dreams. Nikhil and Gokul did that well to fund CynLr. I tried that for years with C4E but I failed.
2/ Personal brand.
You ship work in public. Over years, your name starts to carry weight. People follow what you build, read what you write, watch what you create. The chance to be in the room with you is worth more than money. People join for who you are, not what you pay. Think of Tanmay Bhat and Kunal Shah. People are willing to pay to be a part of the room they are in!In my case, even though I’ve talked about things in public, I am yet to cross the threshold yet where a talented person says “I need to work with this person, regardless of the pay.”
3/ Mission.
Make the vision so large that smart people trade cash for the chance to matter. Make it into a movement. The kind of thing where someone looks at your company, looks at their current job, and thinks: I will regret not being part of this. Not “this is interesting.” Regret. That is the threshold. Climate. Healthcare. Education at scale. Or a local problem, stated at the right magnitude. Think of what Cockroach Janta Party or Aam Aadmi Party.–
Of course its fair that people seek great value for their time and talent. Plus there’s insane opportunity cost for what they choose to work on. Which is fair as well.
And as a person who values people, its only imperative that I do justice to what people bring to the table. And thus, as an entrepreneur, my job is to solve this problem and find a way. I shall find one. Or make one.
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3/ The Claude playground
This Sunday and the last, took a session on Claude Maxxing. In the one last week, I had Nikunj as the guest speaker. We covered things like emails, autonomous companies, coding, job-hunt automation, marketing plans, and the “Mad Men” ad engine. Nikunj was slow, deliberate, honest. It changed my perception of him. I told him as much that night.
While I took the session I realised that people really dont use Claude (or any other AI tool) to their advantage. I wish I could show them the light.
For me, to be honest, the only thing to lookout for is to get away from mere productivity porn and lifestyle intervention to actual revenue.
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4/ Meta Rug Pull
The largest loss of the week for me has to be Meta’s Rul Pull.
Meta disabled and banned C4E’s Insta handles. And my personal handles. And some others that I made to make life simpler (sg.health, sg.ai etc etc). And the ones I would use to distract myself. Most of these accounts and handles have been around for years. The C4E one has been around for almost 10.
To be honest I dont know why would they do that.
And sad part is that there’s no recourse. It sucks to be an insignificant person. No one wants to listen to you. When you “appeal” to a bot, you are told about Community Standards, account integrity and the usual opaque template. I have uploaded my photos, Aadhar Card, Pan Card, Passport and I dont know what all. I dont think I have given these many documents to even a bank.
And its a big big reminder that rented land is rented land. And there’s nothing you can do stake a claim at it once it’s gone. Maybe its different for famous people. Maybe not. Either way, must work hard to be famous. May be at 43, I cant be famous anymore. Must teach my kids to be famous.
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📷 Photos from the week gone by
Same drill. DM me if you want photos.
I do have a photos that I want to share. This is the screenshot of the homepage of a website that I made way back in 2001!
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📈 Trackers…
Not updating this week.
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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year
In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.
In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…
- Book2
- Human Flag Pole
- Save a million dollars
Book2 — Caravan Serai. No action. But I will ensure that I ship this in the month of June. Watch me.
Human Flag Pole — no action.
Save a million dollars — negative action. Wont get into details.
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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next week?
This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.
So, this year, I want to track the following…
- Health. Sleep, food, movement. Travel week. No routine. No tracking.
- C4E / Work. Pick a thing to apply myself to. Still no single direction. I am terrible late with this. But I think C is making good progress with Yellow and that could emerge to be the thing that I apply myself to.
- Brand SG / Distribution. No large action.
- People. The best part of the week. Pune, the funnel, the intros. Need more weeks like this.
- Book2 / Caravan Serai. Nothing.
- Shauk. Played poker. Lost some. Will work more to become a better poker players.
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🏃➡️ Health
No specific updates. Travel ate the week. The June dumb-phone experiment I committed to in May has not started — it is June 5. I think I will try it from Monday.
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⏲️ Reminders from last few days
Same as last few weeks. Parking this section.
I think I need to find a better tracking system that does this for me.
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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?
People.
The other words for this year have been: Motion, Show, Flow, Excitement, Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime, Flow, Show, Same, Motion.
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So that.
Over and out.
Until next week.
SG
Oh, and this too shall pass.
PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22
PPS: Please do point typos.
PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.