Ishita Singh

Engineer-turned-Strategist • Prev: @ey_parthenon @microsoft • Speaking my heart out here Always up for stories and travel itineraries🧳 LA 📍

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Time for a 🧵
I've started documenting some lessons from my experience at the workplace.

Not sure how long this will go on, or how frequent I'll be, but I'll just give it a shot.

Writing in public is powerful. I hope this adds value to somebody out there. ❤️

[A thread]👇

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

From 'one day' to 'Day 1' @Microsoft ❤️

#LifeatMicrosoft

[Haimantika Mitra @HaimantikaM]

I think I can finally use my bachelor’s degree!

Hardware is cool again!! Along with building this app, also planning a cool hardware meetup soon with @ashwinexe @nitropumaa @yashrajnayak @khushiSharma_22 and @knowShubhangi 🤓

[Haimantika Mitra @HaimantikaM]

Built a mobile agent (especially for my mom and grandmom) that understands different local Indian languages, execute actions for you while explaining how to do it.

Uses @SarvamAI for voice (impressed by how good it is)

Inspired by @FarzaTV’s Clicky.

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

@BhosalePratim @RiversidedotFM Have you tried Canva?

[Haimantika Mitra @HaimantikaM]

Why so much hate for hyrox? For a change, it’s great to see people care so much for their fitness and invest money in things that will matter in the long-term (health is wealth, LITERALLY). This is the movement we needed in India (read up about Indian pot belly, and so many other health concerns that we as Indians face because we do not exercise enough and eat well)

I have seen people train for hyrox and I can tell you that people who were “mid” there are 10x more fit than most of us.

And investing 9000 rupees for fitness isn’t a lot, when there are people taking worse financial decisions for things that wouldn’t even last 5 years.

[Gabriel Jarrosson @GJarrosson]

Harshita Arora (@aroraharshita33) just became a General Partner at Y Combinator, making her the youngest in the accelerator’s history. She’s 25 years old, which is young enough that most VCs her age are still grinding as associates, hoping to make principal in five years if they’re lucky.

She also dropped out of school at 15, which is the kind of detail that would normally disqualify you from every traditional path to venture capital.

Between dropping out and becoming a partner... she discovered coding at 13, built a crypto portfolio tracker at 16 that Apple featured in the App Store, got it acquired, and won India’s Bal Shakti Puraskar (one of the country’s highest honors for young achievers).

Then she got an O-1 visa, moved to SF, and applied to YC with her co-founder.

Their idea got killed by Covid three weeks into the batch. They had zero background in trucking, zero background in payments, but had a dead startup with 3 months left to figure something out.

So Harshita spent weeks visiting truck stops across California, talking to drivers, watching how they paid for fuel, and realizing that the entire payments infrastructure for trucking was totally broken. Ancient systems, hidden fees, rampant fraud, still running on technology from the 1990s despite moving billions of dollars.

She built AtoB to fix it. Stripe for Trucking. A modern fuel card with transparent pricing, instant payouts, and financial tools that don’t feel like punishment.

Today AtoB is a Series C company serving over 30,000 fleets across the US, processing millions in payments daily, and building the financial infrastructure that the backbone of the economy actually deserves.

Now she’s a YC partner at 25, which is absurd when you consider that most VCs spend a decade climbing the ladder at banks or consulting firms, collecting the right credentials, and Harshita skipped the entire ladder and built a $700M company instead.

Credentials stop mattering when you build something that works, and this is one of the embodying principles of YC, so it is great to have seen her so active this last year in supporting YC batches as visiting partner, and now a GP.

Maybe as batches skew younger (like my post yesterday) partners will too...

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

In the race of being able to afford everything we want, we are losing the ability to afford time, for and from, the people we want to enjoy it all with!

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

AI can do this. AI can do that.

Just because it’s “done” doesn’t mean it’s right! 🥲

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Found a pair of good old em dashes while reading an old book — realised I had missed them :’)

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Just pay the California taxes bro

[Aarti @Aartiutwani]

just pay the california taxes bro

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

BEST EVER COMPETITIVE RESPONSE 😂

https://t.co/dRBJYKalBk

[Sudeepa Kolli @i_sudeepa]

make money. make enough that you can walk away from bad managers, bad countries, and bad relationships without asking anyone for permission

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

What’s stopping @WhatsApp from launching Notes in Group Chats?

[Sugandha @sugandhanisa]

who came up with the concept of coffee chats we need to have a chat (not a coffee)

[Haimantika Mitra @HaimantikaM]

https://t.co/05BJOwATNo

[Pratim🥑 @BhosalePratim]

Young people who have recently ( in the last 5 years) moved out of their house and are living away from their retired parents, how did you help your parents (especially your mother, who chose to stay at home to focus on your well-being and raise you) settle into a life without kids?

Especially for moms, the change and the empty house get depressing. And it isn’t easy to quickly build a new routine, new hobbies, or make a new friend circle.

Keeping yourself busy gets difficult. Filling the void of having kids around you or spending your days thinking about their routine and life is very challenging.

It’s like focusing on building a product and startup for 18 years, giving it your everything, and then one day you just don’t need to go to work. And you’re expected to find a new idea to work on. Right away or eventually.

What are some sustainable ways to slowly build a new life that is easy to embrace rather than the feeling of being forced to be ok with it?

I feel like we have communities for sports, food, work, arts, motherhood, and fatherhood but not much support for this stage in a person’s life.

Where people going through the same change in their life can come together and help each other find new hobbies, new interests and build new healthy routines.

I know this is part and parcel of life, but it shouldn't have to be challenging when we have some many tools for all other phases and challenges in life

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Vecna is coming…

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

This is such a creative thread omg!!!

[Chip Huyen @chipro]

Sam!!!

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Some serious community building and leadership lessons 💯

[Dhairya Ostwal @dhairyaostwal]

Want to share a journey with all of you maybe in a series of tweets...

Coming soon!

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Once a while, look up

[Ishita Singh @ishitasinghhere]

Oh the joy of doing challenging things!