Strategist, CEO https://xitter.gq/t.co/MApvDT4Mco ex Yahoo, Oracle. High-performance, Leadership, Story and Tech: how they really work. Patterns of humans + AI work
Singapore, KL, India
Joined April 2009
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Started watching Mindhunter on a friend's recommendation. A few minutes in, a character teaching hostage negotiation says: "To approach a person with 'I am right and you are wrong' assumes you are dealing with a rational mind."
It stopped me cold. Because it is absolutely true.
You don't need a hostage on the line to know the futility of the right-and-wrong approach. In business too, proving that you are right and they are wrong never gets you the result you actually want.
Rightness only settles things on paper and in exams. In life, even when you prove someone wrong, you don’t change their mind, you harden it. They dig in, and hold their grounder tighter than before.
Persuasion lives outside the rational realm. It has far more to do with what makes a person *feel* something: secure, capable, challenged, seen.
However badly we want to believe in objectivity, the thing that tips a decision in real life is never the proof. It's always the underlying feeling.
Hospitals make you notice things that you’d rush past elsewhere. I’ve been in and out of them for the last couple weeks, thanks to a health scare. And somewhere in all that waiting, I started watching.
People handle a hard diagnosis better than waiting for one. It is the not-knowing, the endless online searches, the wishing it away that drains away energy. Once you know, you at least have something to work with.
Optimism has little to do with age or how sick you are. It depends mostly on two things: how easily you accept that life gets hard once in a while, and your resilience in dealing with it.
Hospitals are known for their doctors, but it is the nursing staff, support folks and admin teams, who shape the patient experience. Their empathy or the lack of it makes a huge difference. A hospital that wants to get better should invest more in these teams.
Fitness won’t make you immune, but it will help you deal better. My strength training really paid off: I could tune into my energy, breathe through the pain and trust that hard things would get easier. The mindset made all the difference.
A sense of humor is priceless. I kept bumping into a gentleman, and we got talking. He pointed to his grandson, a twenty-something glued to his phone, and said rather cheerfully, “He is supposed to be my attendant, but I don't think he has much attention left."
I couldn't stop chuckling. Truly, the life and times we live in.
I am better now. Much of it was painful, but some things were amazing: how strong people can be, how care is “felt” through empathy, and how a good laugh can make everything feel lighter.
Cate Blanchett is brilliant and endlessly versatile, from Jasmine to Hela. But this speech is something else altogether.
An award acceptance becomes a spectacular performance. The voice, the sonority, the pauses, the message. Mesmerizing.
What I love most is her point that creativity often starts with doubt. When you are unsure, but you try something new anyway. Maybe even push a boundary.
It speaks to so much beyond the arts too. That confidence isn't only in projecting certainty. It can also be the courage to start with doubt.
I first fell for Slow Horses because it was espionage like I’d never seen before. A brilliant dark comedy, with subversion buried so deep it’d always sneak up on you.
Add to that, Gary Oldman’s gloriously disheveled Jackson Lamb sparring with the cold, unflappable Diana Taverner! Killer combo.
But only this season could I put my finger on why Slow Horses lands so hard.
Anyone can die. At any moment. And you won't see it coming.
Most shows have a deal with the audience. They let you know who's expendable and who isn't.
The leads, the charming ensemble, the likeable ones. They take risks, they get hurt, but they make it.
Slow Horses pulls that rug right from under you. You only realise someone's gone after the scene lands like a punch to the gut. And you sit there, staring.
Beneath the humor and absurdity, it delivers the direct experience of being a spy.
Not war-room talk, but how close death walks beside every one of them. One misstep, one blink, and it's over.
Once you realise this, the opening song, "Strange Game," hits different:
"You made one mistake, you got burned at the stake. You're finished, you're foolish, you failed."
What a show. 🖤
Barsha retweeted
Interesting pattern: AI is both the problem and the fix in two places, cyber security and spam.
Cyber security is the obvious one. Even a few years back, AI did one simple thing for attackers: it fixed their English. The bad spelling and broken grammar that used to give phishing away disappeared. More would-be hackers got through the door.
This week made it clearer. Researchers using AI found vulnerabilities in PHP that stayed undetected for 10 years. The moment the patch shipped, the attacks started.
The good guys found it with AI. The bad guys are now hunting the same way.
The easy answer is more AI in cyber defense. The hard part is getting the CIO buy-in on how it actually works.
Security has always run on one model: name the risks, plan for each. That holds for routine attacks, not the shape-shifting ones.
Now try telling a CIO: "We can't list the risks up front. We'll see them as they come."
Valid approach but a really hard sell. Especially when legacy systems that still run critical things were never built for AI.
Spam is the less obvious one. But we'll soon need AI guards for it too.
Almost half of email spam today is AI generated. You can tell. Cold emails are grammatically correct, and read worse than the old templates.
On social media, reply bots chase “engagement”. Whatever automated engagement is supposed to mean.
Spam is turning from a nuisance into a fog. Rule-based filters won’t be enough. People will want AI that guards their attention across inboxes and feeds.
That’s the loop: AI amplifies the mess. AI cleans it up.
Interesting pattern: AI is both the problem and the fix in two places, cyber security and spam.
Cyber security is the obvious one. Even a few years back, AI did one simple thing for attackers: it fixed their English. The bad spelling and broken grammar that used to give phishing away disappeared. More would-be hackers got through the door.
This week made it clearer. Researchers using AI found vulnerabilities in PHP that stayed undetected for 10 years. The moment the patch shipped, the attacks started.
The good guys found it with AI. The bad guys are now hunting the same way.
The easy answer is more AI in cyber defense. The hard part is getting the CIO buy-in on how it actually works.
Security has always run on one model: name the risks, plan for each. That holds for routine attacks, not the shape-shifting ones.
Now try telling a CIO: "We can't list the risks up front. We'll see them as they come."
Valid approach but a really hard sell. Especially when legacy systems that still run critical things were never built for AI.
Spam is the less obvious one. But we'll soon need AI guards for it too.
Almost half of email spam today is AI generated. You can tell. Cold emails are grammatically correct, and read worse than the old templates.
On social media, reply bots chase “engagement”. Whatever automated engagement is supposed to mean.
Spam is turning from a nuisance into a fog. Rule-based filters won’t be enough. People will want AI that guards their attention across inboxes and feeds.
That’s the loop: AI amplifies the mess. AI cleans it up.
I was about four when my grandfather told me Durga Puja is a “sarbajanin puja”. He was explaining how a puja once reserved for the wealthy had been opened to everyone. He put it simply: “Because the Devi is for all.”
He passed away soon after. His words stayed with me, and their significance grew.
Every Durga Puja, beyond the new clothes, the dhakis and the Hindi hits, I noticed the people.
Many walks of life, sharing one space: courteous, even friendly. A flare-up now and then (and usually between committee members), but rare.
When I moved away from home, and then from India, that social side became harder to hold on to.
What stayed was the memory of the Sandhi Puja. The smoky frankincense, the deep unrelenting chants, the waiting ash gourds, the surge in your veins.
So I began a ritual: to meditate at that hour, wherever I was, however I could.
I contemplate the feminine force decimating injustice. I offer my thanks for all the good and ask for strength for the hard, and pray for those who matter to me.
It became my way of talking to the Devi. My attention is my offering. And I believe she accepts it.
I learnt the word “sarbajanin” at four. But it took me years to understand it also means including all forms of worship.
Because the Devi is for all.
Happy Dussehra, folks.
May the Devi’s power manifest.
Ask anyone how they know a team is strong, and they’ll tell you how well everyone gets along. No disagreements, everyone aligned, people tight with each other.
That's a fallacy hiding in plain sight. Getting along is a social score. It says nothing about whether the team can deliver, or if it even *works as a team*.
A team isn’t a family or a circle of friends. It is a group of people chosen for a specific purpose, because of their skills. Performance is the point.
A team that’s lovely to each other and covers up each other’s misses? Good friends. Bad team.
So measure something else: what does it cost to disagree in a team?
In a strong team, when someone says "I don't think that's right", nobody flinches. No one plays it safe, nobody tiptoes around to avoid offending.
The pushback is read for what it is, someone trying to make the work better, faster or simpler.
It is a score for the mission, not a mark against friendliness.
That only happens when the work, not social standing, sits at the center. Allowing egos to get out of the way.
And here's the surprising part: a team that can disagree easily, without feeling any pressure, ends up getting along well too. Not as a forced prerequisite, but as a natural byproduct.
There should be a word for this. Meeting someone in person for the first time, years after becoming friends online.
Exactly how Rohan and I met on X a few years back, when it was still Twitter. Stayed connected, became friends.
And finally met for “real”, though you'd never know it from how the conversation flowed.
We should all do this more often.
Thank you, @rohanbabu for making it happen! Wonderful to meet in the offline mode :)
Since “being authentic” became a trend, many have taken it as permission to not grow. Even when their “exactly who I am” is damaging their work and their life.
That is not authentic. That is static.
I have met founders who dress up their temper tantrums as authenticity. I have met corporate leaders who call their preference for certain people (and certain races) authenticity.
Being authentic does not mean staying ineffective, partial or damaging. It is not a ticket out of the hard work of growth.
Authenticity is refusing to fake an ideal you haven't reached. Not refusing to aim for it.
The word comes from the Greek "authentes": one who acts on their own authority.
Self-rule. Not self-indulgence.
So tell the real story of your life. Keep tuning it toward the ideal. And share where you are on the journey, with confidence.
Both "who I am now" and "where I am going" matter.
Do that well, and you are being authentic.
When I started my business, I was mentally prepared for a lot of things. But I wasn’t prepared for people calling themselves my “well-wishers” and then going out of their way to make me doubt my endeavour.
The first time it happened, I was shocked. Now, I am mostly amused.
But a few still get to me. The ones who determinedly pursue this agenda without ever having walked my path.
That’s when I remind myself of what Tagore said, "The world suffers most from the disinterested tyranny of its well-wishers."
It always holds me steady, particularly "disinterested tyranny."
Because these well-wishers have nothing to gain from your fear. Some do it out of habit. Some do it to feel better about themselves. As if making you doubt yourself, somehow proves their wisdom.
Times have changed since Tagore. But these well-wishers haven't.
So if you're building something, and hear a lot of discouragement prefaced with "I'm saying this for your own good," you are not imagining it!
And you are not alone.
We all face it. And over time, we learn to find an anchor that keeps us steady on our chosen paths.
Carl Pei's "India is inevitable" is the rare piece that doesn’t cheerlead but deconstructs. Read it if you have a stake in India’s tech ecosystem.
Optimism is only the top layer, the real thing is in the blueprint underneath.
Three things kept drawing me back to it, all week.
1 - Are you engineering the phone or picking it off a catalogue? We all say that R&D matters. Carl gives you 5 questions that expose exactly where you sit on the value chain. Most companies will fail the test, but you could also use it to envision where you want to be.
2 - Ecosystems form around whoever refuses the catalog. Suppliers raise their game only for the company that hands them the next hard problem and invests alongside; not for the ones only negotiating price. This is the whole China story from a different angle.
3 - Manufacturing is one step. IP is the whole staircase. Where the phone is assembled, gets the claps. But Carl raises the real question: where do the brains sit? That's where the majority of the value actually lives, and the part the headlines keep missing.
His thesis: India has the talent, the market, the factories. What's missing are players who generate engineering demand.
That’s the point I keep sitting with.
India’s one real hitch has always been price sensitivity. To “engineer the new” you need deeper funding and a higher price than the market reflexively allows.
Seems daunting, till you contrast it with economies with more money and appetite but far lesser talent and scale.
Suddenly that hitch becomes a much smaller problem.
Read the piece to understand the ecosystem. Then steal the lens for what you build.
link to the original article: xitter.gq/getpeid/status/2101932…
The human spirit is so resilient. And all it takes is someone’s act of quiet determination to remind you of how extraordinary it really is.
I was on my balcony, trying to write in an impossibly busy week. That’s when I noticed him.
A strangely lean man, slightly hunched, running at the gentlest pace, almost a walk.
I was several floors up, so I couldn't see much. But something held me.
He was running such a short loop, just a few meters of ground on one side of a building, back and forth. So slow. And he'd clearly been at it a while.
His leanness seemed to be from illness. The long kind that takes the weight away, and leaves a hunch behind.
Which made his relentless loop even stranger. Why keep going, so slow, so small?
Then I saw it. It was a hot day. He was running in the exact strip of shade the building threw down.
A few meters of shadow, and he was using it.
Not a man running as hard as he could. A man rehabilitating, and running just as much as the shade and his body would allow. But not giving up an inch of either.
I felt lucky to have seen it. Quietly, I wished him luck in his recovery, and smiled at the inspiration life sends our way.
It turns up in the smallest of things, you just have to be looking.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui was once asked about his struggling days in Mumbai. "How did it feel to struggle so much to become an actor?"
He confidently said, "Actor toh main thaa hi, kaam milna baaki thaa”. [“I was already an actor, but I was yet to land a role.”]
That stuck with me. Because he was so on-point.
You don’t become an actor when the role shows up. You become one when you choose the craft, do the work, and then chase the parts.
It may seem like a small distinction, but it decides everything: excellence, focus, resilience, and above all, not quitting.
Read it again today in a Jessica Chastain interview.
Four years from reaching LA to landing a movie, and she worked on being a better actor every single day of them.
Such different people. Same hard-won wisdom.
And it matters to anyone who’s chosen a different path: following an artistic pull, starting a company, picking a rare vocation.
On hard paths, opportunities take their time. If we wait for them to start the work, we can never get great at it.
The real strategy: do the work every day, get a little better. It will compound, and in time, it will pull the opportunities towards you.
I don't think anyone can really get their head around the times we are living in.
Two frontier tech companies are *asking* the government to regulate them.
The government advisors are going, “Why should we do the work you two should be doing, if you actually meant it?”
This is not just a first. It is a twist in the mobius.
Usually companies spend fortunes trying to reduce regulation or deal with it. Nobody asks for more.
And I have definitely never heard a government go “Eh, why should we bother regulating you?”
Let me get this straight: the companies want the leash, the government shrugs and hands it back.
Wild times indeed.
Barsha retweeted
Nobody knows whether AI will end humanity or become its most powerful technology at scale. We are bad at predicting the future, and really good at passionately arguing our theory about it.
Market crashes, wars, Covid: predictions haven’t held up or even armed us well to meet the future.
So, the fierceness of the debate on AI’s predicted impact is, in a way, surprising.
I can think of two reasons.
First, the media frenzy. Understandable, as “AI will end humanity in a decade” writes its own headlines.
Second, a less obvious and more interesting pattern.
We are potentially witnessing a positioning battle between two opposing sets of investors.
One set is long on AI as revolutionary. A sentiment that’s been at play for a while now.
The other set of investors who are long on “regulated AI, in role and adoption”.
For the second set “concern at scale” is a great narrative. Because that ensures tighter government scrutiny on AI, and on multiple levels:
- What is AI allowed to do: what is researched, built, sold
- Who is allowed to play in AI
- Who is allowed to play, at what level
If these changes come to pass, entire industry segments will see-saw.
Regulation is, afterall, one of the strongest competitive weapons in tech.
You change the game, and you change the odds of the ultimate winner. Dramatically.
Nobody knows whether AI will end humanity or become its most powerful technology at scale. We are bad at predicting the future, and really good at passionately arguing our theory about it.
Market crashes, wars, Covid: predictions haven’t held up or even armed us well to meet the future.
So, the fierceness of the debate on AI’s predicted impact is, in a way, surprising.
I can think of two reasons.
First, the media frenzy. Understandable, as “AI will end humanity in a decade” writes its own headlines.
Second, a less obvious and more interesting pattern.
We are potentially witnessing a positioning battle between two opposing sets of investors.
One set is long on AI as revolutionary. A sentiment that’s been at play for a while now.
The other set of investors who are long on “regulated AI, in role and adoption”.
For the second set “concern at scale” is a great narrative. Because that ensures tighter government scrutiny on AI, and on multiple levels:
- What is AI allowed to do: what is researched, built, sold
- Who is allowed to play in AI
- Who is allowed to play, at what level
If these changes come to pass, entire industry segments will see-saw.
Regulation is, afterall, one of the strongest competitive weapons in tech.
You change the game, and you change the odds of the ultimate winner. Dramatically.
David Bowie said, "It's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations."
I was listening to him this evening and thinking how the reverse holds too. That continuously fulfilling other people's expectations is what kills the artist in us.
For the artist to live, we have to give them a voice. Let them experiment, explore.
We start our lives like that, creative by default. But we lose it every time the world pushes us to optimize for something.
Optimizing isn't bad. It's necessary for work that's already known and defined.
But optimize constantly, and exploration gets sidelined.
We keep making safe choices. We stop looking for the new. Instead of figuring out our play, we start competing for the better playbook.
Eventually, most learn only how to replicate and refine, and not how to go from zero-to-one.
The few who refuse this, or find their way back, turn into artists. In whatever they choose to do.
Writing elegant code.
Finding the sweet spot for a product.
Building strategy from emergent data.
Imagining a technology that doesn't exist yet.
An artist isn't only the one who paints or sings or composes.
It's everyone who's honest about their deepest curiosity and willing to follow its call.
