Hello. I'm Shashwat.

I started composing small poems when I was six. By sixteen I knew the only thing I wanted to do with my life was write books that would be remembered.

Then I did what a bright Indian kid is supposed to do. I cleared the IIT-JEE and went to study engineering at one of India's top colleges. A trip to Boston to debate at Harvard Model United Nations brought something that had been simmering for years to a boil. I came home and dropped out to write a novel. I was twenty.

Writing

It took three years. Timothy's Book of Stories came out in 2016, self-published on Amazon, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done — until I launched it, and learned that books don't sell just because they're good. So I learned marketing: two years of Reddit AMAs, Quora, Twitter and every trick I could find, before I knew that was a job.

Building

When the sales didn't come, I pivoted. With my then-girlfriend, now wife, I co-founded Mike's Hotdogs, bringing international street food to India. COVID closed it. I don't regret a minute of it.

Crypto

Then I became the marketing person inside tech startups — three times a CMO in crypto, at startups that together raised more than $50 million. The last was NFT3, backed by Animoca Brands, where we launched in a bear market and still signed up half a million users. It put me on stages around the world.

Now

A decade on, I've learned a good deal on how the world works, and I've come back to the thing I left college for. I'm writing again: essays on ambition, books, markets and tennis — the things I actually think — and The Book of Novak, a chapter at a time.

If any of it is for you, subscribe. Or write to me. I read everything.

Love,
Shashwat