Nihal Sood

[Vikram Pai @vikpai]

Being a consumer founder in India is hard and lonely.

India D2C is hard mode.

Distribution is broken. CAC is brutal. Customers expect the world.
Consumer founders learn everything the hard way.

So I’m launching @Direct2India 🎙️🇮🇳

A podcast to give my merchants free value from the smartest consumer founders in the country.

Insights that actually move sales and stories that make the journey feel less insane.

When this becomes the go-to channel for India D2C founders, it will naturally funnel more merchants into @referrush so I can help even more brands grow through referrals and word of mouth. .

Direct2India is for the founders building India’s consumer story.

I’m just here to support them. It’s a lot more work. But I love my merchants and I play to dominate 🏆

Please give it a follow and retweet!

[Tanay Kothari @tankots]

we just raised another $25M after 10x'ing our ARR in 5 months. the crazy part is this almost never happened.

17 years ago, I watched Iron Man as a 10-year-old kid in Delhi. that night, I pulled my first all-nighter teaching myself to code. not because I wanted to build apps or make money.

because I wanted to build Jarvis.

my parents gave me 1 hour of screen time per day. so I coded in secret, sleeping every alternate night through middle school and high school. built 50+ apps. got a cease and desist from Google at age 12.

all for this one obsession: making computers understand us like humans do.

fast forward to today:

- we've raised $81M total to build the voice operating system
- growing revenue 40% month-over-month this year
- 70% user retention after one year (unheard of in consumer)
- teams at 270 of the Fortune 500 use Wispr Flow daily

our Series A2 was led by @hanstung at @notablecap (who was an early investor in five companies that made it to $100B valuation like Slack, Tiktok, and Airbnb). we also brought on @StevenBartlett as an investor and partner.

but here's what matters more than the money:

we cracked voice input. not transcription - actual understanding. our users hit "send" in under 0.5 seconds without checking. they trust it blindly. that's never existed before.

in a recent benchmark, Wispr came out as 3-4x more accurate than OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Siri.

and we're just getting started. voice input was step one. now we're building the assistant that actually does things for you.

to my co-founder @SahajGarg6 - there's no one else I'd rather build Jarvis with than my college roommate and closest friend.

to our team pulling all-nighters and shipping magic - you're the reason that 10-year-old kid's dream is becoming real.

we're hiring cracked engineers and growth marketers who want to build the future of human-computer interaction.

the keyboard had a good 150-year run.

time to build what comes next.

PS: like, retweet, and bookmark to get wispr flow for free for 3 months ❤️

— Written with @WisprFlow

[Nikhil Pahwa @nixxin]

Someone at Sony LIV seems to be under immense revenue pressure & making very stupid short term decisions. 1.5 min of ads (2x15 sec+2x30 sec) after every 3 min is unforgivable. On one occasion they repeated an ad in the same sequence.

This leads to 4 things:
1. Paying customers like me who made the mistake of renewing last month won't next year. Twice now I've given up watching highlights because almost 25% of airtime is ads. Every time you start a stream, you're subjected to 3-4 ads.

2. They'll piss off advertisers who won't return. Seeing the same ad 8 times in 10 minutes creates negative perception for viewers.

3. They're creating grounds for justification of advertising regulation in streaming like there was in TV. At some point in time, MIB will do to online advertising what it did to TV ads.

4. They're making it feasible for Ministry of Health to argue that you can insert anti Tobacco ads in the beginning and middle of a show. This is a mess that Amazon has also created. MoH can argue: if you can do it to make money why can't you put public service ads.

Well done Sony LIV, in screwing over the few people who are actually paying for your service.

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@kmr_dilip Nihal (Bangalore)

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@Aazarshad testing

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@DeepGadkari @Rishhari @DeepGadkari Will definitely look into Emiza. We’ve received quotes from Shiprocket, Quickshift (they offer same- and next-day deliveries to metro areas) and Eshopbox. A bit unsure about which one to go forward with but thanks for your advice

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@Rishhari @DeepGadkari @DeepGadkari

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@Rishhari @DeepGadkari If you could suggest which 3PLs to use / not use that would be very helpful

[Abhi Rajput @Abhirajputfit]

Monthly Reminder for Protein and Carbs:

1) Protein data:

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@prajnay_darkins Hey Prajnay, been following you on X! I wanted to reach out and see if we could get on a quick call as per your convenience.

We’re launching a plant-based alternative to paneer and soya chunks in 3 weeks time and wanted to seek your advice on a few things, lmk pls thanks

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@chiragbarjatya Hey Chirag, this won’t be a problem anymore! We’re launching our plant based protein within the next few weeks. Has more protein content than even chicken per serving, it’s clean label and you can use it make whatever you like. Would be great to speak with you

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

YES!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Great summary edit of my conversation with @JoeRogan

[TBG @PhilosophyTBG]

Copenhagen is a lovely city. Great balance of lifestyle, city, ocean, demographics, and food. Ranks in my top 10 in Europe.

[Nihal Sood @Nihalsood21]

@TheFergusonWay @hurshbull9

[RAŽ⛩️ @SS____899]

GOAT FB
No, I’m not mad.
Forget your Cafu’s, Roberto Carlos, Lahm’s and TAA. Nobody comes close to RJ.
He affects the game in ways even a superstar attacker can’t.
Doku had to come off despite playing Reece at 50%.
He’s different, the greatest I’ve ever watched.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

[Post continued]

If you're new dad, this is the playbook for you

If you're anyone else, be this person for someone else

If you're unhappy with your life, find your Madison Square Garden and use the internet to capture hearts and capture carts.

You got this.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

This 88 second video fires me up.

It's a call to all dreamers who want to quit their GARBAGE jobs, retire their MOTHER, eat STEAK instead of ramen and go to sleep PROUD of who they are.

I want every single person on the internet to watch and read this.

The video starts with comedian Andrew Schulz in all his glory sitting on the NYC subway.

He’s watching a video in some crappy comedy club on his way to Madison Square Garden.

Camera zooms in on him:

Jewish comic, porn star mustache, german 1920 hair cut, Frank Sinatra blaring, wearing a Puerto Rican jacket.

It’s weird but it’s perfect and that’s the point.

When they zoom in on his eyes, you can see he’s been through hell and back.

The harsh truth is if you want to win in life, you’re eating more dirt sandwiches than

His dream is the same as every comic’s dream. Play Madison Square Garden one day.

And it’s happening for Andrew.

Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” starts getting louder and louder.

Andrew bangs on a beam on his way up.

Almost breaks his hand. But it doesn’t matter.

Hell yeah. No one can touch me. Life’s for the taking.

He runs up the stairs. Just too excited to walk.

Walking is for losers.

When he touches the steps of MSG, it feels like redemption.

This is heaven on earth and you can’t argue otherwise.

It oozes “I did it”.

It oozes “I was nothing and now I’m something”

It oozes “look at me now” to an ex-gf that broke up with him because he was a “loser and never would get a real job”.

Andrew Shultz is living his American dream, loud and clear.

To me, I never had dreams of playing Madison Square Garden. You’re probably the same.

But here's the raw truth: the internet is where everyone's wildest dreams come to life

But I replace MSG with the internet and some weird niche of it that fascinates you.

I want to watch this every AM.

So, if you make it to the deep end of this post…

1) Define your Madison Square Garden of the internet
2) Own 2024 and beyond

This fires me up. I'm sharing it because maybe it fires you up too..

Reply/like/RT/Bookmark this post so this message gets spread to throughout world.

--
I don't use ChatGPT to write my posts. Follow me @gregisenberg for real, raw, unfiltered stories and posts about startups and internet communities

If you really want to support me, check out my link in bio and sign up.

[Johyan @JohyanCruyff]

In all my years of watching this football club I have never seen anyone more talented or special than this man, Eden Hazard gave me joy that words cannot describe

Every action had meaning, every touch was sublime, every dribble was majestic, he wasn’t just the best Premier League winger I’ve ever seen, but also the best player I’ve ever seen at this football club, some may disagree but nobody would argue he’s one of the best to put on a Chelsea shirt

Every time I watched him I felt like a child who had just discovered their love for the game, when the going got tough he was there to bail us out, when our mood was down his way of playing lifted us up, when we were successful he was the man behind the stings, if people didn’t view the game purely from G/A & saw the game with their eyes there’s no doubt he would be rated much higher, but Chelsea fans know, we know the truth

And so I wish him nothing but happiness in retirement, if Drogba was the king of the bridge then Hazard was the prince, thank you for the wonderful moments you gave us, thank you for signing for the Champions League winners, thank you for it all💙