We don't deserve Kunal Shah...

The curious case of Kunal Shah and India's merit bias

Good morning! I’m Aryan and I share stories around business, startups and life in a pursuit to figure out the philosophy behind everything. Join 517 curious minds who receive an exclusive piece like this every Sunday in your inbox:

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First of all let’s start with this disclaimer that understanding this will require a mindset shift from your side.

Whenever I talk about some amazing thought Kunal Shah had, some person always comments about CRED’s business model or their cash burn or their app’s usecase.

And I really don’t understand this. Why do we always require something to backup our insights?

This is not the kind of culture we have to build in India.

If Kunal fails with CRED, he’ll have more insights than ever to share about what doesn’t work. And you’ll miss out on so much to learn if you keep valuing him only for his successes and not his thoughts.

This is something I learnt from Prakhar: “Start separating the thought from the person.” Even if you don’t like what he’s doing, you can still learn from him.

Nothing in human history was ever achieved in a linear fashion and sooner we realise this as a nation, the sooner we’ll be set on the path to prosperity.

Information and understanding is the core unit of building something great.

What Kunal does is give out his insights of building an internet company in India — A place where it’s extremely difficult to make people pay for anything online.

The kind of insights he can share are invaluable for everyone who is building or will be involved in building anything.

Now I’m not saying CRED will do well, or it won’t. I’m just saying just because it’s a consumer company, doesn’t mean we should judge it’s founder’s thoughts based on it’s performance.

Truth be told: I don’t resonate with all his thoughts. But you know the magical thing that happens when you separate the thought from the person?

You stop idolising the person. You don’t think everything they say is correct, yet don’t hate them. You think most of what they say is amazing, still not make them Gods.

“India mei log bhagwan banate hain phir khud hi unka visarjan kardete hain” is one of the things he said (at least according to those cringe instagram motivation pages I followed back then 💀)

And this has to be solved. I’m not saying everything will be normal and this country would become developed overnight, but at least it will trigger a mindset shift.

Appreciate the one who failed (not because of lack of trying) and innovation will flow through your country.

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What I learnt this week

There was an incident this week at my startup that made me realise the importance of staying true to your principles.

When we’re young we obey these principles of morality.

When we grow up we’ve seen enough unfairness that it just makes so much more sense to be…well immoral sometimes. “When life is unfair, why aren’t we?”

And I understood one important thing while standing up for my principles and values: That yes, life maybe unfair, but who said it was going to be fair?

Why do we do the right things? Not because we’re scared of some harm done to us, but because we can rest with our own conscience.

For once we have to understand not everything in life has to be transactional. Morality is not transactional!

There is you, and your karm. That’s it!

A philosopher saying this looks interesting, but impractical. An entrepreneur saying this looks like a hoax.

But as idealistic as it sounds, this is something I never want to lose sight of.

I’ve been brought up to be told to be flexible, but not in principles. To be flexible, but not spineless. To have morality, but not just for talk.

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What am I reading?

I’m reading Don’t Shut Up by Prakhar Gupta and Mudit Goyal. Pretty good slow read for it. It’s one of those books that make you read a page in 1 min, and make you wonder for 10.

Just bought Nobody wants to read your sh*t for myself and almost the whole content team at FinFloww to brush up our storytelling. Let’s see how it works.

And I got Kaizen too. Mainly for helping me change my habits and building better ones. A piece on that is also coming very soon so you know what to do:

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And maybe there’s One More Thing!

Two startup guys were joined by a third one this week in an EPIC conversation. Something that you need to sit back, relax and listen to.

We’ve made out podcast raw, uncut, long for a reason. So, that you enjoy the conversation in it’s most purest form, not adulterated by interview style gimmicks or pre-made topics. A random mind-dump to help you, and us relax!

Give it a go:

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What’s coming this week?

A thread on Dating apps and their weird success in India is coming on Monday. On Tuesday I’ll dive deep into the same topic here, in my newsletter.

A thread on Discord and how it accidently invented the future of the internet is coming on Wednesday/Friday

In next Sunday’s newsletter I’m doing a very different kind of analysis of dropping out of college. You’ll love it!