What am I doing and why

Last updated: 24 December, 2024

"Good work is its own reward."

– Bhagwad Gita

These days, I spend my time doing 3 things:

1/3: Creating software (with lots of help from AI)

I'm creating a SaaS business - Curated Connections with my cofounder and brother Piyush. It is a self-driving community software for creators. We build tools that help creators build a community without worrying about managing one.

Like LinkedIn had a baby with Tinder. And Crossfit. And Luma. Yeah, it's a modern family.

We've got:

Automatic Matchmaking to make meaningful connections between your members
a Directory tool that allows your members to warm email each other
a Challenge tool that helps you gamify your member experience
and a Member-led Events tool so you can empower your members to level up and host events for other creators

Along with this, we recently also created Thread Archive which is a simple tool for Slack communities that want to host an online archive of their community conversations.

Why I'm doing it

I'm just scratching my own itch here. Here's how the story goes:

In my previous life as a community manager and consultant, I noticed that every new member said in their introductions that they were "excited to meet other members". But when I followed up with them a few weeks later, almost no one had met more than 1 other member.

I wanted to fix this. As a fractional community manager, I went looking for tools that could help me automate these member-member connections. But everything that I found was either too clunky or had B2B pricing.

That's when I had the idea to build the tool myself - except I didn't know how to build software. A few months, ChatGPT was just released. Learning to code was finally possible. So I recruited my brother and started working on Curated Connections.

Today, we have raised our ambitions. We want to make the self-driving community platform for creators. Existing community platforms are too complicated. They require hiring expert community consultants, teams of community managers and still struggle to justify any meaningful impact in most members' lives.

We are changing this.

We're not trying to build a big VC business here. Our goal is to an unlock economic engine so we can unleash our creativity. We're here to build beautiful software that helps creators and give it away at no-brainer prices.

2/3: Growing an email list with podcast and courses

I'm also creating educational resources sharing the "magic sauce" of building community business. This includes:

A podcast where I talk to operators of top community businesses and have them share their magic sauce.
Courses where I share the best of those lessons.
A blog distilling the top tips on community building.

Why I'm doing it

This is our best marketing bet.

Last year, I tried the conventional marketing tactics - cold emails, audience building and content repurposing. It was soul sucking!

I didn't become an entrepreneur to do things that would suck my soul and barely add any value to others.I became an entrepreneur to have the creative freedom and build a business my way.

So, I decided to pursue the longer term strategy of "out-teaching your competition".

We create great software, market it by creating great media and have faith in the power of asymmetricity.

3/3: Writing about it along the way

Trying to build your own business doesn't guarantee financial success. What it guarantees is lots of pain, learnings, hot takes, observations and opinions. This website is where I openly share all of those.

Every day, we're learning a new lesson or figuring a creative way of using AI that saves us hours or struggling with a painful problem or make an interesting observation about using Rails to write code. I'll write about all of those here.

My only goal: optimising for truth - not engagement. I want to share as much as possible, with as much honesty as I can muster. Focusing on engagement only gets in the way.

Why I'm doing it

I wasn't a writer. I never aspired to be one.

But then in college, when I was feeling lost, I discovered blogs. These were some really smart people who had written thousands of words freely sharing their hard-earned lessons with no monetary expectations. It saved that lost college kid.

I wrote my first article to contribute to that incredible trend. That's when I discovered the joy of writing. But unfortunately, a few of my early pieces got viral.

They crossed 100k views and I got hooked to the feeling. So, I started chasing numbers, optimising my writing for "bigger reach" and when i didn't get it, I got dismayed. That's when I lost the joy of writing.

I think something similar has happened to the Internet at large in recent years. It has lost that remarkable culture of blogging. People write only to "build an audience" so they can make "passive income" in the future.

But there's so much joy in writing just to share your hard earned lessons. Not to mention how much it can serve the people behind you. This blog is my effort in this direction. (And if you do challenging work, I invite you to write as well).

"Good work is its own reward."

– Bhagwad Gita

About me

I was born in India, outside the city of Kolkata.

But for the most part, I've been able to read the same things and learn from the same people as any 20-year old kid in San Francisco might:

Blogs and tweets allowed me to tap into the thoughts of world leaders.

Podcasts allowed me to be a "fly on the wall" and listen to experts talk amongst themselves.

Kindle gave me access to any book on a whim.

Internet democratized access to information.

AI gave me the ambition to dream bigger.

My life story:

2016-2020: lost college kid era

I was pursuing a bachelor's degree in programming but I realised that I didn't enjoy being a code monkey at some company. This was also the time I discovered writing and wrote my first articles sharing my hard earned lessons from learning to code.

This was also the time when I discovered Deep Learning (the theory that powers today's AI), got super deep into it and realised that it is out of reach for a random entrepreneur.

You can read my writings from this era here.

2020-2022: cushy remote job era

A cold email I sent to the CEO of a startup I admired turned into a dream first job at a dream company. I became the Community Manager for an edtech company before I even knew that such a job existed.

Learnt on the job, got super into community building and learnt the impact a good community can have on the business and the life of a member.

2022-2024: fractional gigs era

After a couple of founders hired me to consult for them on building community, I decided to quit my full-time job and become a consultant. Worked as a fractional Community Manager with the goal of helping companies lay the foundations of their community as their first community hire.

Also did Beginner Maps podcast and Curated Connections as side project.

2024-present: founder mode era

Quit consulting to focus full time on building the SaaS business like I've always wanted. Spend all my time coding, designing, podcasting, writing and doing everything in between. Most days are filled with very fulfilling work and atleast one bout of existential doubt.

If I try to connect the dots looking backwards, I notice a trend in my journey. If entrepreneurship is a spectrum:

being a full-time employee is on one end
selling your services as a freelancer or consultant is in the middle
selling a product is on the other end

I've been an entrepreneur forever, moving towards the product end.

You can reach out to me on [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn or X.