Aswath Krishnan

I feel like I have been playing a very long game of tag. I had successfully avoided being tagged for nearly a year. But just when the game is about to end and the winners declared, I got tagged. Ah bummer! I'm talking about the COVID pandemic. I got it in Feb 2021, the 11th(?) month since the official start of the pandemic in the USA.  I'm young and was in good shape when I got it. I'm alive and over the hump now. But the in-between two weeks of COVID was no joke.  "Stay home and protect your grandma", they said. But ironically, we got it from our grandma. To be fair, we weren't airtight otherwise - there were a few other ways and occasions when we could have gotten it. Grandma just happened to be the one. I remember the Sunday morning. We woke up to some loud and frantic conversations from downstairs. I went down to investigate and get my cup of coffee. Grandma, who had stayed at one of our aunts' place, was running a fever. Aunt was also running a fever....

Edtech is an interesting and inspiring space, but very difficult to crack. I say that being familiar with and passionate about the space. I started my career as a teacher, at a new school for entrepreneurs, where our goal was to unbundle a 4 year CS + Business degree into a very practical 1-year entrepreneurship course. Then, a few years down the line, I created a learning app to help people remember what they learn, which led to me joining Quizlet, one of the most popular education apps used by 50M+ students every month and a $1B company, at an early stage.   Founders who want to start an education business are often good students who went to good universities, are really passionate about learning, and want to make education more interesting, exciting, and less broken. That is a wonderful ideal and attitude but often doesn't lead to successful business outcomes. Because for the majority of people, education is much more utilitarian. Education is a means to an end. It is a ne...

Pixar’s Inside Out presents a simple, fun, and somewhat useful model of our brain and personality.  I created this diagram that brings together the various concepts and their relations as described in the movie:

Do you feel pulled in many directions? Do you find it hard to pick between different choices? Do you feel like you want to be at many places and doing many things at once? Do you have a nagging feeling that you are missing out? Of course, why wouldn't you?! The world is like a gigantic Disneyland. There are so many rides, games to play, places to see, things to experience and do,  and people to meet. Unlike our parents or generations before, we are uniquely aware of and regularly bombarded with all these different options through the internet and social media.  Our life spans feel pretty short, relative to all that can be seen and done. It feels as if we have only 15 mins to spend in Disneyland.  So how do we deal with the FOMO and figure out which rides to take? 1) It is OK! You can't do all of it, not even close. No one can. That's by design.  Most other species experience a fraction of what an average human does. Even kings in the past probably experienced a fract...

One of the most favorable outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is the forced experimentation and adoption of remote work. This might be the most significant change in how we work in several decades.  Our lives are summations of what we experience every moment. When you take on some work, whether as an employee or even as an entrepreneur, you sacrifice some freedom around how you live in exchange for compensation.  More specifically, you sacrifice freedoms of what, how, with who, when, and where. 1. Freedom of curiosity (what/how) : to do what you want to and how you want to.  2. Freedom of company (who) : who you work with and spend time with.  3. Freedom of tim e (when) : to do things when you feel like it.  4. Freedom of location (where) : to live and be where you want.  This sacrifice of freedoms is why a lot of people dislike work and look forward to retirement. At its worst, when you lose all these freedoms and don't get compensated, it is slavery. On the...

Our thoughts and words can have a significant impact on ourselves and others. We should use them with intention and caution.  This is because human minds are fickle and easily programmable. Every thought you have in your head can change how you think, act, live, and feel. Everything we say can program each other and societies at large. We can easily fool ourselves and others into bad emotions, actions, and discord.   People and organizations with powerful voices or large audiences can do even more damage We often indulge in peddling nonsense, untruths or half-truths, desires, hyperbole, careless speculation, gossip, mean-spirited or negative talk. This happens in our own heads, in casual conversations with others, at work, on the internet, and in media.     We mostly do this unconsciously, because that's how our minds seem to work by default and that's what we have learned from everyone around us. Sometimes we do it intentionally for fun, to earn social currency...

Jeff Bezos announced that he will be stepping down as CEO of Amazon. What an incredible run he's had as an entrepreneur! From quitting a lucrative job as a trader to starting an online company during the early days of the internet to the world's largest company that spans multiple business lines and geographies. Love him or hate him, there's no denying that he's one of the most accomplished and capable business leaders of our generation.  I have enjoyed and learned a lot from JeffB's shareholder letters and interviews. Here are some of my main lessons:  1) Culture I joke, only half in jest, that all of Amazon's leadership team and tenured employees are Jeff Bezos clones. Jeff Bezos's biggest achievement is not any product that Amazon has built. It is the living, breathing, and evolving high-functioning and entrepreneurial culture that continues to be effective over many decades and even as the company has scaled to over 1 million employees and multiple busin...