Arjun Verma

Disregarding the impossible!

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@TimDraper Sorry!

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@saniyafatma1278 Congratulations!

[Pearl Agarwal @pearlagarwal7]

The fastest way to lose an investor in a first meeting isn’t by not knowing an answer.

It’s by having an answer to everything.

At pre-seed, there are things neither of us can possibly know yet. So I’d much rather hear, “I don’t know yet, but here’s how I’d figure it out.”

Most investors aren’t looking for certainty. They’re looking at how you think when certainty doesn’t exist.

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@WealthEnrich Getting residency in a low tax jurisdiction, if possible!

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@PBratbyOfficial Arresting observations! Thanks

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@phil_hellmuth Sorry!

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@LnprCapital Irrefutably indispensable!

[Carl Jung Archive @QuoteJung]

this quote from Carl Jung is truly great:

"The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. 1/2

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@LarsonElaineM Sorry!

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Taiwan is a small island with no oil, no iron mines, and no room to waste. It did not become a military superpower. It became something rarer.

The world cannot build its best phones, computers, and AI machines without Taiwanese chips.

The story did not start with TSMC. It started with a choice. In the 1970s Taiwan still lived on cheap assembly. Leaders like Sun Yun suan decided the next climb had to be harder: integrated circuits.

Critics said Taiwan was too poor and had started too late. The government spent the money anyway.

A state lab, ITRI, paid RCA in America for a real technology transfer. Young engineers were sent to US plants to learn design, process, testing, and equipment.

They came home and built a small demo factory. Within months their yield beat the American plant that had taught them. The first products were humble, like chips for electronic watches. The point was mastery, not glory.

Then they built a cluster. Hsinchu Science Park put labs, factories, universities, and suppliers next to each other.

Taiwanese engineers who had worked in Silicon Valley came home. Knowledge moved fast because people sat close.

The master stroke was Morris Chang. He had spent decades at Texas Instruments. He knew Taiwan was weak in chip design and brand marketing, and strong in making things with care.

So in 1987 he founded TSMC as a factory for others. It would not design its own branded chips. It promised never to compete with its customers.

That promise unlocked the industry. Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and many others could invent chips without building a $20 billion plant. TSMC would make them. Trust became the product.

From there Taiwan did the unglamorous work better than anyone. The factories had to be cleaner than a hospital. More chips on each wafer had to work. The lines drawn on silicon had to be finer every few years. Each new generation was smaller and much harder to make.

The island treated a missed wafer as a national failure. That obsession, plus a dense web of tool makers, packagers, and engineers, is why the most advanced chips still run through Taiwan.

A small country becomes indispensable when it picks one hard thing, learns it legally and thoroughly, and then refuses to be sloppy.

Taiwan won by becoming the factory the world is afraid to lose.

[Auren Hoffman @auren]

overheard: "The world is not designed to give you a good life. It's designed to distract you from building one."

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Lee Kuan Yew did not wipe corruption out of the human heart. He made it rare, dangerous, and shameful at every level that mattered. That is different from a magic clean society. It is a system.

He started with himself. When well wishers sent gifts after he took office, he refused them. A gift, he said, is how the rot begins. Ministers and civil servants were put under the same rule. Accept a present and you pay its value or it is taken and sold.

He gave the graft agency real teeth. The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau could look at anyone, including a minister. If a prime minister blocked a probe, the director could go to the President.

Living far above your salary could itself be used as evidence. The law was written so the officers hunting graft had more power than the people they were hunting.

He paid honest people enough to stay honest. Cheap officials steal. Able people were given serious pay so they did not need a suitcase from a contractor. Then he still punished those who took money.

He changed the public story. Schools, campaigns, and newspapers treated the bribe as a stain, not as cleverness. In many countries the big thief is admired. In Singapore he was meant to be ruined.

He also built dull, strict systems. Every file, tender, and audit had to be in order. Civil servants were expected to refuse a bad request, even from someone powerful.

Watching only works if the leader is ready to act against his own team. Lee Kuan Yew was ready.

What he did not do is preach only. He combined example, pay, law, fear, and disgrace. Remove any one of those and the system weakens.

Corruption never really dies. It waits for a weak year and a friend who is too big to touch.

Singapore stayed clean because the men at the top were willing to punish their own. That is the part most countries refuse to do.

[Philip Johnston @PhilipJohnston]

Two months ago I spend 4 days on planes to get this shot of Alpha Centauri (the target of @FermiExplorer) in the Milky Way. This was taken in the Atacama Desert, Chile, the best place in the world to see the Milky Way, on the best day of the year to see it. It was taken by astrophotographer, Alexis Trigo, with a 20-second exposure, July 14th, 2026.

The star I’m pointing to is Alpha Centauri and, in 3 years, we will launch the first spacecraft to travel there! 🚀

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@SudhirN94847744 Thanks! Try to post more such perspectives

[Josiah @josiahjdp]

My sister Hannah gave birth on a Tuesday morning, and by that afternoon my husband Mark and I were already on our way to the hospital with balloons and flowers. It was her first child. Everyone was excited. Nothing about the day felt unusual.

The maternity ward smelled like antiseptic and baby powder. Hannah looked exhausted but happy, her hair pulled back messily, her face pale but glowing in that way new mothers have. She smiled when she saw us.

“Come meet him,” she said proudly.

The nurse wheeled the bassinet closer. I leaned in first. The baby was sleeping, wrapped tightly in a white blanket, his tiny mouth slightly open. He looked peaceful. Normal.

Then Mark stepped closer.

At first, I thought nothing of it. He’s not overly emotional, but he loves babies. I expected a smile. Instead, his entire body stiffened.

He stared at the baby for a few seconds too long.

Then, without a word, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me backward—hard enough that I almost dropped the flowers. Before I could protest, he dragged me into the hallway and pressed the door shut behind us.

“Call the police,” he said under his breath.

I laughed nervously, completely confused. “Mark, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

“Call them. Now,” he said again, his voice shaking.

I finally looked at his face—and that’s when my stomach dropped. Mark had gone pale, the kind of pale you only see when someone’s body is reacting before their brain catches up.

“Why?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”

He swallowed hard. “Didn’t you notice?”

“Notice what?” I snapped, panic rising.

He leaned closer, lowering his voice even more. “That baby is not a newborn.”

My heart skipped. “What are you talking about? Hannah just gave birth this morning.”

Mark shook his head slowly. “I’m an emergency nurse. I see newborns every week. That baby’s umbilical stump is almost healed. That takes at least ten days. And—” His voice cracked slightly. “He has a vaccination scar on his thigh. You don’t give those in the delivery room.”

I felt the hallway tilt. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“There’s more,” he said. “His hospital ID band doesn’t match the mother’s wristband. I checked.”

The blood drained from my face.

Behind us, the door handle rattled slightly—as if someone inside had tried to open it.

Mark tightened his grip on my hand. “Call the police,” he whispered. “Before they move that baby.”

With trembling hands, I pulled out my phone.

And dialed.

[Josiah @josiahjdp]

The dispatcher asked routine questions—location, names, what the emergency was—and I struggled to explain without sounding insane.

“My sister just gave birth,” I said. “But my husband believes the baby isn’t hers. He thinks the baby was switched.”

There was a pause. Then: “Officers are on the way. Stay where you are.”

Mark didn’t let me go back into the room. We stood near the nurses’ station, pretending to scroll our phones while watching everything. Hannah hadn’t come out yet. No nurse had either.

“Could you be wrong?” I whispered, desperation creeping in. “Maybe there’s a medical explanation.”

Mark shook his head. “I want to be wrong. But the signs are textbook. And there’s something else I didn’t say in front of you.”

My chest tightened. “What?”

“That baby has a healed IV mark on his foot,” he said quietly. “Newborns don’t heal that fast.”

Before I could respond, two uniformed officers stepped off the elevator, followed by a woman in a blazer who introduced herself as Detective Laura Kim. Mark explained everything calmly, clinically—like he was giving a report.

Detective Kim listened without interrupting, then nodded once. “We’ll need to speak with hospital staff,” she said. “And we’ll need to verify the infant’s records immediately.”

She asked us to remain outside while officers entered Hannah’s room.

Minutes passed. Each one felt heavier than the last.

Then Hannah came rushing out, panic all over her face. “Why are there police in my room?” she demanded. “What is going on?”

I opened my mouth—but Detective Kim spoke first. “Ma’am, we need to ask you a few questions about your delivery. Please remain calm.”

Hannah looked at me, hurt and confused. “What did you tell them?”

Before I could answer, a nurse hurried over, visibly shaken. “Detective… there’s a problem with the infant’s chart.”

“What kind of problem?” Kim asked.

“The baby assigned to this room,” the nurse said slowly, “was already discharged… eleven days ago.”

Silence slammed into the hallway.

Hannah’s knees buckled, and I caught her just in time. “That’s impossible,” she sobbed. “I felt him move. I gave birth. I heard him cry.”

Detective Kim’s expression darkened. “Then we’re dealing with something very serious.”

Another officer emerged from the room carrying the bassinet paperwork. “The infant’s footprints don’t match the prints taken during delivery,” he said. “Different baby.”

My stomach twisted violently. “So where is Hannah’s baby?”

No one answered right away.

Then the nurse whispered, barely audible, “There was an emergency transfer this morning… another newborn was taken to the NICU. The timing overlaps.”

Hannah screamed.

And Mark closed his eyes, like he’d been afraid of this answer all along.

Detective Kim turned to us. “We’re locking down the ward,” she said. “No one leaves until we know where that baby is.”

Because this wasn’t a mistake.

This was a crime.

The maternity ward went into full lockdown. Security guards blocked exits. Nurses were pulled aside one by one. Charts were seized. Phones confiscated.

Hannah was inconsolable, repeating the same sentence over and over: “They took my baby.”

An hour later, Detective Kim returned with grim confirmation.

“The newborn transferred to the NICU this morning,” she said, “was mislabeled. The infant is biologically unrelated to the parents listed. We believe your sister’s baby was taken shortly after birth.”

My head spun. “Taken by who?”

Kim hesitated. “We don’t know yet. But this isn’t the first time this hospital has been flagged. There’s an ongoing investigation into illegal infant transfers—private adoptions disguised as medical errors.”

Hannah sobbed into my shoulder. “I never agreed to anything. I never signed anything.”

“You didn’t,” Kim said gently. “But someone signed for you.”

[Arjun Verma @arj_lko]

@AJamesMcCarthy Sorry!

[Paul Graham @paulg]

I talked to a founder who was demoralized because all the ideas he could think of could be easily duplicated. I told him to ignore that worry; nearly all startup ideas are like that at first. Their value is the other ideas they lead to.

[Sofia khatun @sofia3973]

YOUR KIDNEYS CAN BE BADLY DAMAGED WITHOUT CAUSING PAIN. THAT IS WHY KIDNEY DISEASE SCARES ME.

You can eat, work and sleep normally while kidney function keeps falling.

Here are 8 foods I would never make a daily habit:

1. SALTED SNACKS

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

“You escape competition through authenticity.”

— Naval Ravikant