The Company I Want To Build

I’ve thought a lot about the fundamentals I’d want to have for one of the next companies I start —

Extreme documentation — I think early-stage startups often complain about how far they can get when they are unrestricted to “build fast and break things” but forcing people to think about the infrastructure they’re building on is extremely important because as you scale, the cost of having to go back in and change something is incredibly high. I can think of quite a few examples where companies chose to “build fast” and took some shortcuts, resulting in a decision that took a significant amount of money, time, and effort to resolve.

In my opinion, the best way for a company to maintain this balance is to run like a hackathon — there are things which the company needs to get done which doesn’t involve much creativity but a company should have frequent, semi-long and high-agency hackathons. The goal is to spend a few days building an MVP and putting it out into the world. If the MVP gets a significant amount of traction, the team should be given the agency and resources to develop it into a complete best-practices-compliant product to be released to the rest of the world.

I’ve always been confused about why People Ops is a separate department in most companies. I’m a subscriber to the paradigm that the role that HR fulfills in most companies can be done by existing individuals in the org. I believe that payroll is intrinsically a finance activity, hiring should be done directly by the manager — if you want to have an extra person under you in the org structure, you should be responsible for making it happen.

I, however, do believe that any org I run should have a strong ratio of admin assistants. The status quo with most tech startups is execs and upper management having their administrative support but none available to people lower in the pecking order. I’m a huge fan of the org model which some finance teams have — teams have a “group” admin support as well as the management each having their resource. I think every team should be allowed to focus on what they do best.

I like the idea of organizations having an incredibly high level of accountability to the level which I believe that the company should have an internal “all hands” documentation of ownership where you can map a single person in the entire org who’s responsible for something. Having this document makes it incredibly easy for an org to get things done.

One of the slightly more controversial experiments which I’d like to try at my next org is going to be an email-only shop. I am of the sincere belief that instant messaging has screwed up productivity and having multiple modes of communication within an org leads to teams spending more time handling stray slack messages rather than doing what they do best. I believe that a combination of a high density of administrative support sprinkled around the org and enforcing certain email best practices can potentially make something like this work.

I want each team to operate like a mini-startup within the larger organization—fully self-sufficient with their own finance, operations, product, and engineering units. This structure empowers teams to move quickly, make decisions autonomously, and stay laser-focused on their goals without the drag of unnecessary dependencies. Meetings should be rare, only convened when essential, and every interaction should be optimized for collaborative work that drives tangible progress. By minimizing bureaucracy and fostering a culture of ownership, each team can innovate and execute with the agility and drive of a lean startup, fully aligned with the broader vision of the company.

I’m a huge fan of in-person work — I think having a good office is an investment each company should make, people shouldn’t be coming into the office before their boss mandates it, they should be coming to work because they feel like they’re getting more done and the office is a great place to work.

Recently in a conversation, a sentiment was articulated wonderfully to me — when you’re working for a company, you’re not being paid for your time, you’re being paid for your alignment. I’m motivated to find people who’re coming to work every day because they’re emotionally invested in what we’re doing rather than those who’re more concerned about clocking out at 5 every day. I want people who are driven by objectives, not time.

Build a culture of respecting initiative. As a kid, I emailed quite a few companies, big and small, asking if they could make an exception and let 15-yo Jai have a premium subscription ‘in exchange for a very long and detailed feedback’. To this day, I can recite the names of each of the founders who honoured my request — I don’t want to work for a company, nor run a company where we don’t pass that on further.

I also like Shopify’s implementation of a VIP policy — alongside focusing on hiring the best people in a certain field, I also think companies should prioritize hiring the best people overall. Having people who’re used to being the best brings in an unparalleled culture as well as just makes things more interesting. I want anyone working with me to be able to come into the office and say, “it’s so fucking cool that I’m working with <an Olympic golds medalist/ a competitive pianist/ etc>”.