Thinking on Thinking

MachPhy Solutions uses Advanced Thermal Material to transform the economics around cooling -- a revolution for many industries. As they kick off their fundraise, Divya and Kahran break down the strengths and areas for improvement in their investor deck. Curious about how the deck stands today or the details of the fundraise? Get in touch at https://machphy.com/

And DM us to be featured in a future podcast -- artifacts or interview!

Divya and Kahran look at the design, messaging, and user experience of Cranberry.Fit's website, the company co-founded and run by our guest from Season 4, Aditi Dimri. We explore the emotional aspects of marketing related to PMS, the importance of community, and how to build trust with users while balancing clinical and caring communication.

Divya interviews Anuki on leadership, working with the development and corporate sectors and leading people to understanding through communication. Anuki talks about leveraging the public discourse, balancing clients while achieve advocacy goals, and how Anuki looks to build a leading creative agency in Sri Lanka.

In this first video episode, Kahran and Divya break down the deck that Smiqql recently used for their acquisition, looking at what the different parts of the deck are doing and places they could be more successful.

In this new running series, we invite listeners to submit artifacts (decks, websites, pitches, etc.) and we love to unpack them on a future episode to [email protected].

Divya and Kahran discuss externalizing motivation and particularly externalizing parts of the hard parts of the creative process, and speak of embodied versus cognitive thinking. And the difference between finding resonance and liking something.

Mentions include: the book I'm Very Into You, which is correspondence between two artists, Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark, the early 2010s TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert and Plato's allegory of the cave.

Divya and Kahran talk about how culture influences your expectations of absurdist elements in storytelling (and success, ofc) , using the discussion with Remy Siu about 1000xResist as a basis for the conversation.

Internally consistent and logic are often prioritized by western authors unlike studios like Studio Ghibli. This comes from Enlightenment era thinking that has really engrained itself in western culture. Shout outs given to devised theatre, Kathak, workshops with Srikanth Chicu Reddy.

We also workshop Divya's resistance to ephemerality in art, and how new creative methods can lead to new results. Oh, and Kahran may someday do drag.

Remy Siu, Creative Director of 1000xResist, speaks with Divya about the how questions -- how they made such an incredible game that breaks so many molds, how Remy came to run a game studio with a background in composition and dance, how to exist as a performing artists in today, in Vancouver, in Canada, and to an extent in the world, and how to create art across mediums, transposing the lessons from life to new places, to achieve new results and forms.

They talk about devised theater and how the experience in performance art helped the team at sunset visitor to make a game that is deeply emotionally meaningful and uses patterns and systems not used often in games.

You can find Remy on

https://x.com/RemySiu

https://bsky.app/profile/remysiu.com

And you can find 1000xresist and the studio on

https://www.sunsetvisitor.studio/

Kahran shares stories of his grandfather, SSH Rehman, former director of ITC Limited and leader of ITC Hotels, Divya discusses quality years and Bryan Johnson, Also featured: the graphic novel Sandman, success in academic vs success in life. And there is more unpacking of Pradeep Singh's chasing of success and "big hairy audacious goals."

Can you find a sense of purpose without pursuing success?

In a fireside chat format, Kahran shares with Divya his surprise that his father, Pradeep, had never felt successful, as Pradeep shared in our last episode, and Kahran and Divya articulate some of the emulate-able parts of Pradeep's approach to life, along with the nature of the often revised definitions of success and being successful.

What happens after you build a successful company, make a fortune, and achieve the goals you set out to achieve? What is success in the afterwards?

In a conversation spanning success, purpose, motivation and satisfaction, Divya interviews Pradeep Singh, the founder and former CEO of Aditi Technologies, Talisma & Vidyanext / Pengala. Pradeep also was the first product manager of Microsoft Excel, and part of the team that grew Microsoft in its decade-long (~1986-1995) domination and explosive growth post-IPO.

Pradeep is also co-host Kahran Singh's father.