The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 4)

In the Spring of 2020, as we were each trying to understand the pandemic, the six of us started doing Zoom calls regularly. In addition, we were sharing a lot of notes that each of us  unearthed. Science. Politics. History. Anthropology. We looked everywhere for clues.

Politics, in particular, was a highly contentious subject. Dominique, Vinita and I are centrists. Naren and Pierluigi are conservatives. Our ideas clashed. Especially around the caricature figure of Donald Trump, against the backdrop of post-truth America, conservatives have had a difficult case to defend. The Republican party has become a poodle on leash, led astray by an aspiring fascist.

At first, Dominique and I resisted getting drawn into political discussions. Naren wanted to discuss politics. Enrica wanted to discuss politics. Naren refused no for an answer.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 3)

Yesterday, as I cried in Dominique’s arms, he said, gently, Naren was a father figure for you.

Naren was a father figure for a lot of people in the industry.

What he was to me was more than that.

Naren was my friend.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 2)

Naren and I met in 2010. My Vision India 2020 book had just come out. We were invited to be on a panel together at Stanford. The Indian startup story was just starting to find some traction in Silicon Valley.

The Indian startup story, by the way, is different from the Indian entrepreneur story. Indian entrepreneurs, by this time, had already found acceptance in Silicon Valley. TiE played a major role in legitimizing us. Naren played an active role in that effort. Naren and Vinita each founded a technology company, took it public, and were flag bearers of a talented, highly entrepreneurial diaspora that would go on to change the technology industry for good. Shantanu Narayen, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Parag Agarwal are each milestones in that continuum of success.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 1)

Naren died.

Suddenly.

My pear tree

still has some golden leaves.

Rain drips disbelief.

It can’t be.

It is.

These are the only lines I could come up with on Sunday afternoon.

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I am.

My friend Betsy Corcoran, also my former editor at Forbes, came to one of my roundtables this year to discuss EdTech. She’s also the founder of EdSurge.

She read this poem that I have chosen to close the year with, and wish you happy holidays.

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
Written by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark
After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.

Be safe as Omicron rages.

Yours, Sramana

Tech Workers are NOT Quitting. They are Starting Up.

Two articles this week attempt to demystify the myth.

In The Economist, the phenomenon is explained thus:

The term is elastic, but in essence it makes the proposition that the pandemic has provoked a cultural shift in which workers reassess their priorities. People in low-status jobs will no longer put up with bad pay or poor conditions, while white-collar types scoff at the idea of working long hours. Some people have become lazier or feel more entitled; others want to try something new, or desire money less because they have come to appreciate the joys of a simpler life. This is, supposedly, leading to a tsunami of resignations and dropouts. There is just one catch: the theory has little hard evidence to support it.

How to Teach Technology Entrepreneurship Using the 1Mby1M Methodology and Case Studies: Philosophy and Vision

Entrepreneurship is not a career. It is a way of life.

For me, this journey began as a graduate student at MIT in 1994. The world watched Netscape go public that spring, and the Internet swept over us like a virus. As I wrote my Masters thesis, I also wrote my first business plan. We were, as a generation, shaping the Internet during those early years, and, my degree in hand, I was ready to jump into the unknown – from then on really, I have been jumping into unknowns at every turn.

How to Build and Monetize a Technology Entrepreneurship Blog: Workshop

On November 4, 2021, we ran a Workshop on How to Build Communities of Entrepreneurs EVERYWHERE: