Divtesh Singh

Building | Prev VC @alteriacap | Brevets & Long Distance Cycling

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@piyushgaarg Iam on

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@Bogzabs96 Pixar

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

No, you don't get it.

He does not have $1 trillion sitting in cash, it is 99% stock in his companies.

To make that wealth liquid would mean selling all that stock which would swiftly destroy *both* the companies (Tesla, SpaceX, others) and the wealth. If he sold it all, he'd end up with maybe $100b max, several hundred thousand people would be out of work, the companies ruined and many of their suppliers also ruined.

Okay, but now Elon has $100b in cash, and can "solve the world's problems".

$100b divided by the world's 8 billion people is $12

If you were in charge, several of the most innovative industrial companies in the world would be destroyed, hundreds of thousands out of work, and space would again close to human civilization for another generation.

But everyone on earth could have one nice meal and you could revel in your altruism.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@MohapatraHemant @MohapatraHemant - the video is that of a litter picker, which serves a different purpose. The photo is that of a mechanical sweeping machine - which serves a different purpose.

The latter has been in use for a decade now in MCD and large ULBs. Litter picker has just come in.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

I think I have seen this story play out.... is the CEO, Micheal Scott?

[PEoperator⚡️ @PEoperator]

I’m on the board of this little PE business where a goofy, bumbling CEO going to get a 5x MOIC.

We bought the business about six years ago.

It was small. A couple million of EBITDA.

Even during diligence, Management was a question mark.

They had been around a long time and done a good job stewarding the business, but they weren’t the guys to take it to the next level.

The business was stagnant and in a sleepy industry.

But we loved the business itself. Sticky customers, annual price increases, and plenty of fragmentation in the industry.

I was more heavily involved early on- advising on basic management and helping the MD think through options.

Eventually he decided it was time for a change at CEO.

So we brought in a guy from a different industry with a similar operating model.

He was definitely an upgrade.

But he never really evolved. Was avoiding hard decisions and was very reactionary.

So we brought in a CFO.

Immediate upgrade to the business. Huge impact. Organization, dialogues sophistication all near immediately upgraded.

Then the PE firm brought in a sales leader from the space. Sales grew.

Then the PE firm led seven add-ons. Great fits- some tuck ins, some adjacent bolt ons.

Multiples started to appreciate. The multiple will roughly double from what we paid. The space got hot.

So this goofy CEO who is constantly two steps forward, one step back, that no one is thrilled with will end up with a great result.

Maybe even a 6x.

Credit to the guy for getting into a good situation.

Who knows what the business could do with a top tier CEO? Maybe it would have grown more, or faster…

But at this point the firm is thinking of exiting and no one wants to make a change this late in the game.

Great value creation story for the firm, no doubt.

Just painful to think about what (maybe) could have been.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@RohanPaliwal7 Hi Rohan,
Thanks for sharing.

I am also currently running multiple systems / SOPs + automation- mostly Google native.

Lets connect - we can exchange notes? Let me know, look forward.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@kushgrwl Try Rahul Jain - Business Coaching India. More dhandha guy, on the onset. But having done the course, despite my fair share of reservations, I can say he is the OG.

Rajeev Talreja is more generic. A few others are there too, but not at the same level.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@iamliamsheridan Benchmark

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@kai_cabero Kai.

Also, @grok give examples of products / services where this method could work?

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@nicktheriot_ Leads

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@lorenzo_pravata Claude

[arnav @arnav_kumar]

Ambition is a double edged sword.

Ambition without courage to do the hard things leads to a frustrated, depressed, angry person.
Who is perpetually feeling trapped and stuck and takes it out on others, especially their loved ones.

Great ambition blooms when it is coupled with great courage.

Courage to do the hard things, courage to walk a different path, courage to fail, courage to be misunderstood, courage to be mocked.

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@jspujji UGC

[Divtesh Singh @DivteshSingh]

@thedennis Prompts

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

There's a physicist at Stanford named Safi Bahcall who modeled this exact principle and the math is wild.

He calls it "phase transitions in human networks." When you're stationary, your probability of a lucky event is limited to your existing surface area: the people you already know, the places you already go, the ideas you've already been exposed to. Your opportunity window is fixed.

When you move, your collision rate with new nodes in a network increases nonlinearly. Double your movement (new conversations, new cities, new projects) and your probability of a serendipitous encounter doesn't double. It roughly quadruples. Because each new node connects you to their entire network, not just to them.

Richard Wiseman ran a 10-year study at the University of Hertfordshire tracking self-described "lucky" and "unlucky" people. The single biggest differentiator wasn't IQ, education, or family money. Lucky people scored significantly higher on one trait: openness to experience. They talked to strangers more, varied their routines more, and said yes to invitations at nearly twice the rate.

The "unlucky" group followed the same routes, ate at the same restaurants, and talked to the same 5 people. Their networks were closed loops. No new inputs, no new collisions.

Luck isn't random. Luck is surface area. And surface area is a function of movement.

The lobster emoji is doing more work than most people realize. Lobsters grow by shedding their shell when it gets too tight. The growth requires a period of total vulnerability. No protection, no armor, soft body exposed to the ocean.

That's the cost of movement nobody posts about. You have to be uncomfortable first. The new shell only hardens after you've already moved.

[Salomé Sibonex @SalomeSibonex]

I refuse to shop at stores with this kind of obnoxious anti-competitive virtue signaling.

Being bad at scaling your business isn't a virtue.

Run a small business because you love the smallness, not because you hate the business people who choose to serve more customers.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

The ability to quickly reset and recover. From a bad interaction. From a bad day. From a missed workout. From a poor decision. You can start over whenever you want. You can't always control what happened, but you can control how long you carry it.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Crab mentality in one tweet. Pull them back into the bucket before anyone can check the numbers.

Raj Sardana, the "billionaire dad" being used to discredit Pronto's founder, moved to America in 1981 with $100 and worked in a college cafeteria. His family lived in government housing in Delhi for 20 years with no heating, no phone, no TV.

And here's the kicker. Raj Sardana, founder of Innova Solutions ($3 billion revenue, 50,000+ employees), has three children documented across multiple profiles: Rajan, Sonia, and Shivani. Not Anjali. "Sardana" is a common Punjabi surname. The same last name doesn't make them family.

Now look at what this tweet ignores about Zepto. Aadit Palicha scored a perfect 45 on the IB diploma (highest possible), dropped out of Stanford, failed with GoPool in 2018, failed again with KiranaKart in 2020, and then launched Zepto in 2021. Today: 1.7 million orders a day, $7 billion valuation, $1.8 billion raised from CalPERS, Y Combinator, and others, IPO filing in progress with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs leading. He's 24. If VCs were just backing his dad's network, they wouldn't have sat through two public failures first.

Pronto's numbers speak for themselves. Anjali Sardana (Georgetown summa cum laude, ex-Bain Capital) scaled from 170 daily bookings to 18,000 in nine months. Customers return within 2 days of their first booking. Bain Capital, General Catalyst, and Epiq Capital put in $40 million because 20% week-over-week growth across 10 cities with a 60-person team is the kind of traction that makes investors move fast. Not a last name.

Question valuations, debate business models, go for it. But "they only got funded because of their parents" when the founder failed publicly twice and still came back to build a $7 billion company? The crabs are just pulling each other back into the bucket.

[Raghava Krishna | రాఘవ కృష్ణ @Anviksiki]

Such an endearing post match conference by Sanju Samson.

He spoke of the inner struggle that everyone has to go through to overcome fear of failure, but few speak of without pretense.

Also the humility to say it could have gone the other way and why faith is important.

There is the Hardik way to double down and not let doubt creep in - looks spectacular when it comes off, ridiculous when it doesn't.

There is the Samson way to wrestle with self doubt, persevere but know yourself well enough to not put on a mask. Feels authentic but can be self limiting.

There is the Virat way - to channel aggression into maniacal discipline and bend the world to write your history.

There is the Sachin way - Master the terrain but remain the servant of the Game to be the GOAT.

Sports is the reminder of the best possibility in us.

There is no one way for all - Only the way to channel your Svabhava towards its potential but realize the larger game is to give it all but not give in or give up but also be content at the end of the day.