First Principles

Where Part 1 followed the companies, Part 2 is about the person behind them. Picking up from Mukesh Bansal's move from one venture to the next, this half gets into how he finds talent ("work with them for six months"), the mental models he runs his life by, and the beliefs underneath them. He explains why rationally no one should start a company, how he processes every rejection as "no means not now", why he writes three books by simply showing up to a blank page, and how he separated the longevity basics he trusts from the biohacking he no longer does. It ends close to home: loyalty as loyalty to a mission, what he wants for his two children, why parents' expectations matter less than they did, and a life he rates an 8 out of 10. Chapters 0:00 Where we left off 1:46 Finding talent: "work with them for six months" 3:23 The one open-ended question he asks 5:57 Winning vs looking good 8:00 The compounding argument, revisited 9:40 Learning vs winning: drawing the 2x2 11:17 Three books, and the annual look-back 16:18 Making time to think in a full life 18:45 What a chief of staff is actually for 21:27 "No means not now" and other mental models 25:57 How he writes a book 28:30 How health became a throughline 31:24 From ecosystem to the longevity basics 34:29 Why strength training matters after 50 38:08 Why he runs SparX, and the deep-tech turn 44:05 Loyalty to a mission, and the number two 50:35 The Apple teaching model 52:52 Three adjectives, and being "scary" to juniors 55:30 His kids' worldview 57:54 Do parents' expectations still matter? 1:00:12 Weekends, food, and reading now 1:02:17 Rating his life an 8 Quotes [8:44] "I don't know if this rocket thing will work. But if it works, it'll take at least ten years… they said, we are willing to work on it for the rest of our lives." [21:56] "I call this no means not now. That's how I process all the nos in my life." [24:59] "Zomato was started in 2007. They did not pivot into food delivery till 2017." [26:05] "Just show up and stare at a blank page for an hour. Sooner or later you'll start writing." [61:43] "I feel very privileged and very fortunate. So many lucky breaks have worked out for me." Frameworks & mental models No means not now: process every rejection as timing, not a verdict; it protects the ego and the relationship. Long-term patient, short-term aggressive / product is marketing: charge hard daily, give the ten-year game room, and let a product people love do the selling. Horizontal compounding: compound entrepreneurial skill across ventures, not tenure in one sector. Loyalty to a mission: the durable teams are bound to an unfinished job, not to a person; build a number two and give people room. The longevity basics beat biohacking: sleep, eat less, move, strength-train after 50, tend emotional health; the exotic stuff is largely unproven. Credits & sharing This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Mukesh Bansal has founded and left more companies than most people build in a lifetime, and in Part 1 he explains why. He founded Myntra and sold it to Flipkart; he co-founded Cult.fit and turned fitness into a category; and today he runs the AI company Nurix and the Meraki Labs studio. Asked what he is now, he says "a learner", and admits he gets bored the moment a company starts working. Part 1 traces the thesis and the companies: how he allocates his weeks, why he thinks the AI era rewards the hands-on operator over the people-manager, what Nurix and Fermi are, why Myntra's move into fashion was an "adjustment" not a pivot, and the small-town Haridwar upbringing and library habit that set him off. This is Part 1 of 2; Part 2 turns to the person, the mental models, and how he thinks about health, family and success. Chapters 0:00 Welcome and who Mukesh Bansal is 3:15 How First Principles is already connected to him 4:21 "Do you see yourself as an operator, a founder, an investor?" 5:27 Zero-to-one, and where learning stops 9:11 Allocating time across companies 10:34 Why an hour of his time isn't what it was 12:59 The three kinds of professionals in the AI age 14:52 His stack: Claude, Warp, agents overnight 17:58 Founder mode, reversed by AI 20:19 No more waiting for a tech co-founder 23:02 How big Nurix is; and what Fermi is 25:38 The Socratic tutor that won't answer 27:18 Back to Myntra: the fashion category today 31:30 Koyu, Lyskraft and the CRED hypothesis 33:41 Why a venture studio, one company a year 38:18 Rejecting the compounding path 42:57 The near-death at Myntra, and raising with a short runway 45:03 Haridwar, BHEL, and the books that lit the fire 48:15 Pivots as chess "adjustments" 50:48 Conviction vs discovery: betting the megatrend 53:08 The Bay Area years and the return to India Quotes [4:33] "I see myself as a learner… doing one company over a period of time, I get bored." [7:08] "Crisis always comes wrapped with a massive gift, if you are only willing to unpeel the onion." [17:12] "I'm making an even stronger point. If you're only a people manager, watch out." [18:58] "For the first time you can hire something equivalent to human cognition for cents an hour." [48:50] "I use the word adjustment rather than pivot. You come to work every day, you're playing chess." Frameworks & mental models Learner over operator: hand off once a company stops teaching you. Crisis and momentum: cut the bad, double down on the good. The three professionals in the AI age: the hands-on veteran is the one AI turns into a superpower. Adjustment, not pivot: the best move on the board each day; a true "wipe the slate" is just a new company. Bet the megatrend, stay loose on the path. Credits & sharing This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary Part 2 of 2. Part 1 laid out the bet: a fund built only for Indian consumer brands, back when the idea sounded absurd, and the anti-power-law machine Kanwal Singh built to make it work. This half is the person. The near-decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him his love of consumer, the Intel years, and the Paper Boat conviction that taught him to back the founder over the idea. Then the man himself: parents who came to India as refugees from Pakistan, a father who kept collecting degrees while feeding the family, the coach he started seeing in his sixties and what separates coaching from therapy, and how he reads a founder by meeting their family. He turned down twice the money he could have raised. He rates his life a 10. 2 · Chapters 0:00 Part 2 intro 1:22 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all 2:25 Intel Inside, and bringing the inside out 4:22 The Paper Boat conviction: backing the founder 6:38 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good 17:53 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money 20:24 Hiring: read the person, meet the family 27:01 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying 30:39 Three words, and a 100%-locked calendar 33:30 Motivating through the down days 34:51 The coach, and coaching vs therapy 43:40 How he learns, and consumer vs tech founders 51:27 Rating his life a 10, and success redefined 52:47 Cotswolds, golf, and the empty nest refilled3 · Pull-quotes [17:56] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this." [23:55] "You cannot build to sell. You build for sustenance, you build for good." [27:04] "Both my parents were refugees from Pakistan." [51:34] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life) 4 · Frameworks & mental models Founder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse, on the belief that no one survives a decade-long build without one. Build for sustenance, not to sell: the best businesses are bought, not sold; you build for the long run and treat a sale as a business decision along the way. Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, with goodness as the foundation of doing well. Coaching vs therapy: therapy addresses a medical issue; coaching is vulnerability and honesty in a business context, and only works once you have the self-awareness to accept there's a problem. This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary Part 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it. 2 · Chapters 0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro 3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists 10:04 How the fund makes money 11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments 12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions 17:14 Two years as a solo angel 25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model 34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law 36:56 The centre of excellence 45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3 53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first 57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes [0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary." [34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers." [40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard." [54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce." 4 · Frameworks & mental models Anti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier. The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers. India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models. Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive. This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number. Chapters 1:02 With hindsight, what he'd do differently 2:10 “A paisa of every transaction in India” 5:23 First principles: distribution beats product 11:32 The metrics he obsesses over 17:22 Betting on applied AI 29:33 “You can't manage people” 31:45 Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket 42:05 The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO 58:28 The book he forgets — and how he reflects 1:00:50 Rating his life an 8 This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.