To New Beginnings

"Now bring me that horizon" - Capt. Jack Sparrow

Life update: I quit Google last month to start a new company.

It's been an incredible few years seeing AI go from research projects that barely work to capturing the popular imagination - while still barely working, one might say :) I spent most of the last decade in research and product orgs at Google and Meta, witnessing this progression up close, refining the skill to separate hype from reality, and yet I've been amazed every few months by new model capabilities and their potential to solve real problems facing us.

And while the 23 months since ChatGPT have felt like a whirlwind to everyone in the industry, I'm setting my sights on the next two decades as novel, durably useful applications will undoubtedly emerge after the giddy hype dies down and the foundational layers of the GenAI stack get solidified. It will be a long arduous slog - the Internet/ Cloud/ Mobile waves took decades to fully play out - and we've yet to see the Google/ Amazon/ Apple/ Facebook/ Salesforce/ Uber/ AirBnB level innovations of the GenAI wave materialize.

The beauty of the tech game is that what seems popular and successful today could become a footnote in history, like an AltaVista or Yahoo!. And billions of capital raised may pale against the ingenuity of small, scrappy, mission-driven teams. It's the infinite game and the possibilities are endless 😀

I'll be sharing more over the coming weeks/months - unfettered by any corporate PR policy - including what I’m building, my many learnings from Big Tech, my takes on the playing field today, and where I see defensible opportunities for startups. For now, here's a line from one of my favorite Hindi songs:

"Bavra mann dekhne chala ek sapna"

(The wandering mind set out to follow a dream.)