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Every book about entrepreneurship talks about sacrifice in the abstract. Few are willing to describe it in the specific, quiet, domestic detail that Capt. Shaji Kumar does in Built Not Given. Chapter 3 opens not with a strategy lesson but with a Diwali week in October 2003 — the one week all of India empties out — when he found himself alone in his office on a Saturday evening, his entire…

There’s an old story about Birbal, the wisest man in Emperor Akbar’s court, that Capt. Shaji Kumar returns to in Built Not Given — and it’s become one of the most useful ideas in the whole book for anyone stuck in the “long middle” of building something. A man is challenged to stand all night in freezing water. He survives by fixing his eyes on a candle burning far in the distance. When he…

For the founder who was told to wait their turn. There’s a version of the founder story everyone tells: the idea, the risk, the breakthrough, the exit. It’s a good story. It’s also not the one that matters most. The one that matters most is the middle — the long stretch with no name, where you’re too far in to quit and too far out to see the end. I spent years there. Multiple times. There were…

Why quitting today may be the most profitable decision you ever make. Every smoker knows smoking is harmful. Every cigarette packet says it.Doctors say it.Family members say it.Governments spend millions on campaigns saying it. Yet millions continue to smoke. Why? Because smoking is rarely about nicotine alone. It becomes a habit.A routine.A stress reliever.A companion during loneliness.A…

The Mahabharata is often described as the greatest epic ever written. Most people read it as a story of kingdoms, dynasties, politics, war, loyalty and betrayal. I see something more. I see the Mahabharata as the story of every human mind. Its greatest battlefield is not Kurukshetra. It is the battlefield within us. Every single day, we fight invisible wars. Between discipline and temptation.…

There comes a point in every person’s life when excuses begin to lose their meaning. You can continue blaming the economy, your employer, your background, your age, your qualifications, or your circumstances. Many of those reasons may even be valid. Life has never promised a level playing field. But at some point, one question refuses to go away. What are you going to do about it? That single…

Field notes for first-generation founders — building calm, judgment, and momentum when everything’s on the line. Pressure Was Never the Problem Picture the founder at 11 p.m. Payroll runs in nine hours. The number in the account doesn’t cover it. He opens the same spreadsheet for the fourth time, as if the figures might have changed since the third. They haven’t. Here’s what’s actually…

Are we outsourcing the very faculty that built AI in the first place? There was a time, not so very long ago, when intelligence was not artificial. It was simply a human being, thinking. We solved problems by watching, reasoning, remembering, and imagining our way toward an answer. We argued and debated. We questioned, experimented, failed, and went back to try again. The process was slow and…

⏳ TIME IS NOT THE THIEF. You are — and a liar too, every time you say “I just don’t have the time.”. You have a full 24 hours. That’s 1,440 minutes. Every single day — the same 1,440 handed to every CEO, every monk, every living being on this Planet. You’re not short of time. You’re just not managing it the way you could and SHOULD. Want to solve the riddle of where your hours actually…

Most people fail an interview before they ever answer a question. For 38 years, I was the person on the other side of the interview table. I’ve watched deserving people lose roles they should have won — not for lack of ability, but because no one ever told them how the decision is really made. So I wrote it down. Seven things that quietly decide senior-level hires, from someone who used to…