As I reach the end of this gratitude series, I realize there’s one person I haven’t yet thanked—me. This journey has been anything but easy. There were countless moments of fear, self-doubt, and even despair. Yet here I am, standing at the end of this path, not because everything went perfectly but because I chose to keep going, to face my fears, and to pursue the truth no matter the challenges.
After my Master’s in Public Policy, I found myself working for a consulting company and then helping a startup raise funds, before coming back to India to head their India division. This was the beginning of my exploration of leadership and responsibility. Shortly after, I began my journey of entrepreneurship, launching an inverse incubation model that would later set the foundation for what was to come.
From there, my journey led me to Helpr, which evolved into Heptagon. We were solving labor market frictions, reducing onboarding friction from 7 days to just 14 minutes for India’s largest private employer, who onboarded close to half a million people a year. It was during this time that I was introduced to Bitcoin, thanks to Gaurav. Initially, I didn’t give it much thought, dismissing it as just another finance trend, but that would change very soon.
Gaurav and I went full throttle into the blockchain space. We would meet at coffee shops, devour every book we could find, and dive deep into the technicalities of Bitcoin, blockchain, and the larger implications for labor market frictions. The Gratitude Series started with this period of my life, decoding the Bitcoin whitepaper, questioning the money system, and getting lost in the famous rabbit hole of crypto.
This curiosity led us to think about verification frictions in the labor market, particularly around background verification. We conceived People Chain, a private blockchain network to store and share verification data. The Heptagon founders were kind enough to listen to our idea, and we presented it to the chairman of the parent company, securing $1.5 million in funding. Gaurav and I quit our jobs to pursue this full-time, but as with many ventures, it didn’t pan out exactly as we had hoped. Nevertheless, the lessons were invaluable.
By November 2019, we shifted focus to other forms of friction, specifically validation friction and skill movement. This sparked our experiments with communities—starting with Stop Being Boring, where we hosted an event every single day for 150 days straight. Then came Mad About Growth, focused on growth, wellebing through StrangerSapiens and Quantum Computing India due to my fascination with the potential of quantum computing and its implications for blockchain.
The COVID-19 lockdown forced us into virtual spaces, and our community experiments became even more robust. While many of these efforts started as experiments, they soon revealed the deep connection between community, identity, and well-being.
By December 2020, I conducted my first identity workshop with five of us at my house. We explored hard skills, soft skills, virtues, and values. By early 2021, there were highs and lows as the communities faced slumps. I began writing the first version of the Internet of Value—a book that started as The Internet of Skills. However, by March 2022, many of the community partners were leaving, and the weight of the situation led to deep depression.
In this phase of publishing the initial chapters of The Interne of Value - the depth of this idea weighed down on me. I had to confront my deepest fears—fears about failure, about rejection, about standing up against large entities. I immersed myself in Shambhavi Mahamudra, testosterone-boosting activities like weightlifting, and consistent meditation practices. It wasn’t just about lifting weights; it was about finding the mental strength to keep going when everything felt like it was falling apart.
In late 2022 to 2023, we began creating DAOs for other projects, working with clients like QDAO, Fandora, and Jeevan Buddhi. Around mid-2023, we achieved clarity on how the Internet of Value could be structured as a protocol stack and community venture, with a robust mathematical model solidified in April 2024. By then, the vision had fully taken shape, and the work of building it felt like an unstoppable force.
Now, in September 2024, we are ready to launch two communities—Growth Flow Engineering and House of Bros—and the Internet of Value protocol stack has aligned in ways I could have only dreamed of. What started as an experiment has transformed into a powerful movement, not just for me, but for everyone involved.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to thank myself for having the courage to stick with this vision through thick and thin. There were times when I was on the brink of giving up, questioning whether it was all worth it. But I persisted, I kept pushing, and I faced my fears head-on.
Every book I’ve read, every person in this series, has helped me keep going, but in the end, it was my own decision to continue this journey. Thank you, me, for having the strength to pursue the truth, to fight through the darkest moments, and to bring this vision to life. I am proud of the person I’ve become and the journey I’ve been on.