Sasikumar Srinivasan

[Lewis 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @WaldronLewis]

Elon Musk literally sat down for a 45-minute talk with Y Combinator that explains how to build world-changing companies better than any business school on earth. This is the advice he gave a room full of young founders:

1. Don't try to build something great. Try to build something useful.

Everyone obsesses over greatness. Musk says that's the wrong target. "I didn't originally think I would build something great. I wanted to try to build something useful. I didn't think I would build anything particularly great. Seemed unlikely, but I wanted to at least try." Aim for useful first. Greatness, if it comes, is a byproduct.

2. When you can't get in the front door, build your own door.

Before Musk started his first company, he tried to get a job at Netscape. "I sent my resume into Netscape and nobody responded. I tried hanging out in the lobby to see if I could bump into someone, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. So I'm like, this is ridiculous, I'll just write software myself." He didn't set out to be a founder. He became one because no one would hire him.

3. He slept in the office and showered at the YMCA.

The origin of his first company was not glamorous. "We couldn't even afford a place to stay. The office was 500 bucks a month, so we just slept in the office and showered at the YMCA." He couldn't afford proper internet either, so he drilled a hole through the office floor and ran a cable to the internet provider downstairs. That was the founder of the future richest man on earth.

4. Keep the chips on the table.

When Musk sold his first company, he received a $20 million cheque. His bank balance went from $10,000 to $20 million overnight. Most people would have stopped. He put almost all of it straight back into his next company. "I kept the chips on the table." He did the same thing decades later, over and over. He hates money sitting idle. Money is fuel for the next mission.

5. Start with the mission, then work backwards to make it a business.

Musk didn't start SpaceX to make money. He went on the NASA website to find out when humans were going to Mars, and there was no plan. So he decided to build one. "There had been no prior example of a rocket startup succeeding. A small chance of success is better than no chance of success." The mission came first. The business model came later.

6. He started SpaceX expecting to fail.

He is brutally honest about the odds. "SpaceX started in mid-2002 expecting to fail. Probably 90% chance of failing. When recruiting people, I said, we're probably going to die, but small chance we might not die." The first three launches failed. The fourth one worked with no money left. "If the fourth launch hadn't worked, it would have been curtains. We made it by the skin of our teeth."

7. Break every problem down to physics.

This is the core of how Musk thinks. "First principles means break things down to the fundamental elements that are most likely to be true, then reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy." His example is rockets. Everyone priced them based on what old rockets cost. Musk asked what a rocket is actually made of, priced the raw metals, and found the materials were only 1-2% of the historical price. The rest was inefficiency he could attack.

8. When told something takes 24 months, break it down and do it in six.

Last year xAI needed a giant computer to train its AI. Suppliers said it would take 18 to 24 months. "It's like, well, we need to get that done in six months or we won't be competitive." So he broke it into parts. Needed a building, so he found an old factory. Needed power, so he rented generators. Needed cooling, so he rented a quarter of America's mobile cooling capacity. He slept in the data centre and ran cabling himself. It got done.

9. Watch your ego-to-ability ratio.

Musk's single sharpest piece of advice for young founders is about staying honest with yourself. "A major failure mode is when your ego-to-ability ratio gets too high. Then you break the feedback loop to reality." Keep the ego small, internalise responsibility for everything, and stay ruthlessly connected to what's actually true. "You want to close the loop on reality hard. That's a super big deal."

10. Chase work, not glory.

His closing philosophy ties it all together. "It's so hard to be useful. The area under the curve of total utility is how useful you've been to your fellow human beings times how many people. If you aspire to do true work, your probability of success is much higher. Don't aspire to glory, aspire to work."

He was ridiculed for years. The press called him "internet guy attempting to build a rocket company." He agreed it sounded absurd. He did it anyway, because a small chance of doing something useful beat no chance at all.

Here's the thing though....

Musk became the most followed founder alive because everything he does happens in public. The launches, the failures, the talks like this one. The companies made him powerful. The personal brand made his every word travel around the world before he finishes saying it.

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https://t.co/UoXuYlkBQq

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

As of this year, about 50% of Tamil Nadu school students study in government schools. This percentage has dropped considerably because the government schools have gotten worse. Often even poor rural parents borrow money to send their children to private schools when they can, because of the deterioration in government schools.

One key problem is the corruption in government school recruitment, which has been a long standing open secret and the going rate I am told is about one year of salary paid in advance.

I studied in free schools funded by the government (aided school) so I want to make the system stronger.
We are happy to run our free private schools, and we will expand them further, but we need to make our government schools much stronger.

We still have many dedicated teachers in government schools. We have to strengthen them. A good place to start is to end the corruption in school teacher recruitment.

The infrastructure of government schools is good in some places, not so good in others. But fixing that comes next, only after fixing recruitment.

Our poorest communities need strong free schools. Thank you 🙏 @CMOTamilnadu

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

The economic and demographic effects of corruption.

Cost of land in our urban areas is far higher than what our GDP per capita would dictate. The ratio of land value to per capita GDP is probably higher in India than anywhere else. As an example, land prices in Chennai or Bengaluru rival that of cities like New York which has a vastly higher per capita GDP.

The key reason?

First, vast sums of political corruption money is parked in real estate. This raises real estate prices and high real estate prices affect everything downstream.

Second, corruption in building approvals and the like - the famous DTCP - raises construction costs, on top of already higher real estate costs.

Third, corruption in private school regulatory compliance enforcement raises school fees.

Fourth, corruption in private hospital regulatory compliance enforcement raises health care costs.

Fifth, household goods need sales outlets and those pay higher rents due to high real estate prices and construction costs.

So housing, education, healthcare and household goods - all of these now cost higher.

As a direct consequence, the economic burden on the average person gets worse. Young people, facing all these costs, postpone marriage, and postpone children or have fewer children.

That directly affects our demographics.

While this issue exists in many parts of India, Tamil Nadu, being the most urbanized of the bigger states, is particularly hit hard.

So corruption is becoming an existential threat to our society.

If you worry about the super-low birth rate in Tamil Nadu, way below replacement, understand that corruption raising our cost of living is one of the major causes, not the only cause, but a big one in our context.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Restoring ground water levels is very vital for our nation. We care about that deeply at Zoho.

This work is good to do during a dry year, as the current year is shaping up to be.

We have taken up lake restoration projects in Tanjavur and Pudukottai districts, spread over 1200 acres, in partnership with local NGOs.

We have started the work in Tanjavur district and will start in Pudukottai district in 1-2 weeks. We want to complete these before the next monsoon arrives.

1. Aavanam Lake - 123 Acre - Tanjavur District

2. Kayavor Lake - 114.41 Acre - Tanjavur District

3. Periyanayagiamman - 383 Acre - Tanjavur District

4. Neduvasal Lake - 133 Acre - Pudukkottai District

5. Aalangudi Lake - 148 Acre - Pudukkottai District

6. Paravakottai Lake -47.36 Acre - Pudukkottai District

7. Visalur Lake - 246.87 Acre - Pudukkottai District

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Very proud moment for Zoho signing the MoU with the Indian Army.

We are deepening our R&D commitment.

Jai Hind 🫡

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

On behalf of our hard working employees of Zoho, I want to thank our beloved Prime Minister Modi-ji for mentioning us in his speech yesterday.

Sir, you inspire us to work harder, reach higher.

Bharat Mata ki Jai 🙏

@narendramodi

[Zoho @Zoho]

We’re grateful to the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, for acknowledging our commitment and hard work. We remain committed to making businesses across the world work better. 🙏

[Sadhguru @SadhguruJV]

Congratulations to the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Thiru C Joseph Vijay. Our very best wishes to the incoming administration in fulfilling the aspirations of the citizens of this wonderful state. -Sg @TVKVijayHQ

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

My best wishes to Chief Minister Thiru C Joseph Vijay Avl and the new government. May Tamil Nadu flourish under your leadership and contribute to making our nation stronger🙏

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

In Tamil Nadu, the BJP being in power at the centre has been used by essentially all the parties to demonize them. The DMK made "attack Modi" as their only plank. EdappadiDMK (that is the correct name) would have done the same thing if the Congress had switched over to them. In Tamil, we call this பூச்சாண்டி காட்டுதல் - like my grandmother would tell me as a kid "that tree next to the pond has a ghost that will catch you, so don't go near it" to keep me away from swimming in the pond! Modi is their favorite பூச்சாண்டி.

So when someone parrots the line "we want to keep the BJP out of Tamil Nadu", they are saying "we don't want competition for our cozy duopoly", not some deep principle. The BJP has been in alliance in AP and Pondicherry and those states are doing fine, they are making excellent progress. Yet TN is supposedly "different".

The "difference" was the BJP getting into alliance with these same parties (EDMK or DMK) that want to openly or secretly suppress them in TN.

What is the way ahead? Find good youthful passionate leadership that are willing to fight the good fight long term. Focus on building up the party from the grassroots. Ignore all the பூச்சாண்டி business. Do not align with anyone who claims "TN is different". TN is Bharat. We have to fight this subterranean separatism.

Annamalai was making progress but he needed a lot more time. He was creating a genuine political movement, he invited youth to be active in politics and he had massive engagement.

I would have volunteered for this assignment too (I love building up from zero!) but I am neck deep in tech and Bharat needs deep tech. So not in this life time. To be very clear, I will state my political views (my right to free speech) but I will not be in active politics.

I hope all our educated citizens do engage in this political debate and express their opinions, but let us all do it RESPECTFULLY.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

The numbers don't seem to add up. Whatever government is cobbled together is likely to be unstable with various pulls and pressures. Tamil Nadu deserves better.

President's rule with fresh elections may be the best course, this time with a very strict "no cash for votes" enforcement. Then we will see who has the real mandate.

I think the @TVKVijayHQ will come back with a super majority and if the DMK-AIADMK want to stop that, let them fight together. The BJP should fight alone, even if it leads to zero seats, time for a fresh start for the BJP in TN.

Let the people decide afresh.

[Venkat G @IndusFarmer]

As I lived in US for decades, I can understand this is not for everyone. In this birth most of us aspire to fulfill our materialistic desires and America's materialism is unmatched for that. At some point, the emptiness will hit us hard and we will start exploring the purpose of life. If we are rooted in our bharathiya values, we will quickly realize - only way out for peace is to give back.

Writer Jeyamohan who travelled around US and interacted with many Tamilians families for decades (with his literature and historical background) advises that "moving to India is not for everyone. If you decide to go back to India, don't expect to get anything. As long as your move is to give back, then yours will be successful" This advice of course a decade ago shaped our family to an extend that our move has been successful and serving our purpose in life. This is not a cakewalk, don't have to say.

Please note I am neither an entrepreneur running a profitable company in India nor got huge asset from ancestors that I no longer required to work to fulfill economic obligations of our kids and our life. I have passion in natural farming and I will have to continue work to fund this farming activities in addition to our family needs and children. My original plan of retiring and only farming was not a practical one, I learned by experience.

Our life in India in a farm with 600 sqft house gave us a lot of confidence and shed our longing for $. This played huge part in our success.

Don't hate Bharat for fear. Please check if your fear is driving your views against this letter. Bharatha maatha will embrace you and bless you for enriched, fulfilled life.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

This is great advice, as quoted by Venkat G from Tamil writer Jayamohan: "moving to India is not for everyone. If you decide to go back to India, don't expect to get anything. As long as your move is to give back, then yours will be successful"

I work daily with a small engineering team, much of it based in Tenkasi. We work on hard problems in compilers and programmer tooling, and AI needs such tooling for it to produce useful correct code. We are making good progress and my young team is highly motivated and they keep me on my toes.

Yesterday after work, I spent two hours in a nearby Amman Kovil's summer festival (Chittirai Vizha) where we sponsor a feast. I will join the feast today.

I work on difficult technical problems and celebrate rural life. Truly grateful to be alive today🙏

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

I voted in my village in Tenkasi. Felt a surge of pride in our nation. Bharat Mata Ki Jai 🙏

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Here is what I tell our software engineers on how to thrive in the AI era: be very good domain experts. Programming skills are the foundation (and we definitely don't want to lose them) but deep domain knowledge is what customers pay for, along with reliability, security, support and compliance.

The productivity gains from AI are still hotly debated: we definitely get to a working prototype much faster but a finished product has a lot more to it and not all the stages can be sped up by AI.

That is why I advise our technical teams to not obsess about programmer productivity as a metric but focus on how we can offer a far better experience to customers using AI.

There is a lot of needless or incidental complexity in software that can be eliminated by AI.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Those were the days

[Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72]

Dear @narendramodi. Every nation has images of greats on its currency - Darwin, Austen, Dickens, Faraday, in the case of UK. Only we have Mahatma Gandhi and no one else. Can't understand this stubbornness.

We demand others - Raman, Dinkar, Ramanujan, Bose, Vivekananda, Kalam.

[K.Annamalai @annamalai_k]

Under our Hon PM Thiru @narendramodi avl’s visionary leadership and our Railway Minister Thiru @AshwiniVaishnaw avl’s able guidance, TN’s annual rail allocation has jumped from ₹879 Crores (per year average between the years 2009-14) to ₹7,611 Crores (2026-27) – a 9 fold historic rise.

₹35,701 Crores worth of rail works are currently underway, transforming tracks, stations and safety infrastructure across our state.

77 stations are being modernised under Amrit Station Scheme at an outlay of ₹3,147 Crores; works are already completed in 18 key stations including Chidambaram, Srirangam, Tiruvannamalai and Pollachi.

9 Vande Bharat and 9 Amrit Bharat services, 1,350 km new tracks since 2014, 97% electrification, 769 flyovers and the recently announced Chennai–Hyderabad & Chennai–Bengaluru high speed rail corridors are redefining connectivity for TN.

On behalf of the people of TN, we are grateful to our Hon PM and Hon Railway Minister for these unprecedented railway development works that are transforming our state’s connectivity and future.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

A few random notes from claude coding quite a bit last few weeks.

Coding workflow. Given the latest lift in LLM coding capability, like many others I rapidly went from about 80% manual+autocomplete coding and 20% agents in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in December. i.e. I really am mostly programming in English now, a bit sheepishly telling the LLM what code to write... in words. It hurts the ego a bit but the power to operate over software in large "code actions" is just too net useful, especially once you adapt to it, configure it, learn to use it, and wrap your head around what it can and cannot do. This is easily the biggest change to my basic coding workflow in ~2 decades of programming and it happened over the course of a few weeks. I'd expect something similar to be happening to well into double digit percent of engineers out there, while the awareness of it in the general population feels well into low single digit percent.

IDEs/agent swarms/fallability. Both the "no need for IDE anymore" hype and the "agent swarm" hype is imo too much for right now. The models definitely still make mistakes and if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side. The mistakes have changed a lot - they are not simple syntax errors anymore, they are subtle conceptual errors that a slightly sloppy, hasty junior dev might do. The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic. Things get better in plan mode, but there is some need for a lightweight inline plan mode. They also really like to overcomplicate code and APIs, they bloat abstractions, they don't clean up dead code after themselves, etc. They will implement an inefficient, bloated, brittle construction over 1000 lines of code and it's up to you to be like "umm couldn't you just do this instead?" and they will be like "of course!" and immediately cut it down to 100 lines. They still sometimes change/remove comments and code they don't like or don't sufficiently understand as side effects, even if it is orthogonal to the task at hand. All of this happens despite a few simple attempts to fix it via instructions in CLAUDE . md. Despite all these issues, it is still a net huge improvement and it's very difficult to imagine going back to manual coding. TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits.

Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch an agent relentlessly work at something. They never get tired, they never get demoralized, they just keep going and trying things where a person would have given up long ago to fight another day. It's a "feel the AGI" moment to watch it struggle with something for a long time just to come out victorious 30 minutes later. You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work and that with LLMs in hand it has been dramatically increased.

Speedups. It's not clear how to measure the "speedup" of LLM assistance. Certainly I feel net way faster at what I was going to do, but the main effect is that I do a lot more than I was going to do because 1) I can code up all kinds of things that just wouldn't have been worth coding before and 2) I can approach code that I couldn't work on before because of knowledge/skill issue. So certainly it's speedup, but it's possibly a lot more an expansion.

Leverage. LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals and this is where most of the "feel the AGI" magic is to be found. Don't tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go. Get it to write tests first and then pass them. Put it in the loop with a browser MCP. Write the naive algorithm that is very likely correct first, then ask it to optimize it while preserving correctness. Change your approach from imperative to declarative to get the agents looping longer and gain leverage.

Fun. I didn't anticipate that with agents programming feels *more* fun because a lot of the fill in the blanks drudgery is removed and what remains is the creative part. I also feel less blocked/stuck (which is not fun) and I experience a lot more courage because there's almost always a way to work hand in hand with it to make some positive progress. I have seen the opposite sentiment from other people too; LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building.

Atrophy. I've already noticed that I am slowly starting to atrophy my ability to write code manually. Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain. Largely due to all the little mostly syntactic details involved in programming, you can review code just fine even if you struggle to write it.

Slopacolypse. I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. We're also going to see a lot more AI hype productivity theater (is that even possible?), on the side of actual, real improvements.

Questions. A few of the questions on my mind:
- What happens to the "10X engineer" - the ratio of productivity between the mean and the max engineer? It's quite possible that this grows *a lot*.
- Armed with LLMs, do generalists increasingly outperform specialists? LLMs are a lot better at fill in the blanks (the micro) than grand strategy (the macro).
- What does LLM coding feel like in the future? Is it like playing StarCraft? Playing Factorio? Playing music?
- How much of society is bottlenecked by digital knowledge work?

TLDR Where does this leave us? LLM agent capabilities (Claude & Codex especially) have crossed some kind of threshold of coherence around December 2025 and caused a phase shift in software engineering and closely related. The intelligence part suddenly feels quite a bit ahead of all the rest of it - integrations (tools, knowledge), the necessity for new organizational workflows, processes, diffusion more generally. 2026 is going to be a high energy year as the industry metabolizes the new capability.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

I suggest the term "AI-assisted Code Engineering" with ACE as the acronym instead of "vibe-coding".

We must have solid engineering discipline and ACE is the maturation of the tools and techniques.

It does not eliminate all software engineers but enables experienced engineers who ACE well to be much more productive.

It is also going to reshape our industry but that is a separate topic.