First Principles

Mukesh Bansal has founded and left more companies than most people build in a lifetime, and in Part 1 he explains why. He founded Myntra and sold it to Flipkart; he co-founded Cult.fit and turned fitness into a category; and today he runs the AI company Nurix and the Meraki Labs studio. Asked what he is now, he says "a learner", and admits he gets bored the moment a company starts working. Part 1 traces the thesis and the companies: how he allocates his weeks, why he thinks the AI era rewards the hands-on operator over the people-manager, what Nurix and Fermi are, why Myntra's move into fashion was an "adjustment" not a pivot, and the small-town Haridwar upbringing and library habit that set him off. This is Part 1 of 2; Part 2 turns to the person, the mental models, and how he thinks about health, family and success.
Chapters
0:00  Welcome and who Mukesh Bansal is
3:15  How First Principles is already connected to him
4:21  "Do you see yourself as an operator, a founder, an investor?"
5:27  Zero-to-one, and where learning stops
9:11  Allocating time across companies
10:34  Why an hour of his time isn't what it was
12:59  The three kinds of professionals in the AI age
14:52  His stack: Claude, Warp, agents overnight
17:58  Founder mode, reversed by AI
20:19  No more waiting for a tech co-founder
23:02  How big Nurix is; and what Fermi is
25:38  The Socratic tutor that won't answer
27:18  Back to Myntra: the fashion category today
31:30  Koyu, Lyskraft and the CRED hypothesis
33:41  Why a venture studio, one company a year
38:18  Rejecting the compounding path
42:57  The near-death at Myntra, and raising with a short runway
45:03  Haridwar, BHEL, and the books that lit the fire
48:15  Pivots as chess "adjustments"
50:48  Conviction vs discovery: betting the megatrend
53:08  The Bay Area years and the return to India
Quotes
[4:33] "I see myself as a learner… doing one company over a period of time, I get bored."
[7:08] "Crisis always comes wrapped with a massive gift, if you are only willing to unpeel the onion."
[17:12] "I'm making an even stronger point. If you're only a people manager, watch out."
[18:58] "For the first time you can hire something equivalent to human cognition for cents an hour."
[48:50] "I use the word adjustment rather than pivot. You come to work every day, you're playing chess."
Frameworks & mental models
Learner over operator: hand off once a company stops teaching you.

Crisis and momentum: cut the bad, double down on the good.

The three professionals in the AI age: the hands-on veteran is the one AI turns into a superpower.

Adjustment, not pivot: the best move on the board each day; a true "wipe the slate" is just a new company.

Bet the megatrend, stay loose on the path.

Credits & sharing
This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary

Part 2 of 2. Part 1 laid out the bet: a fund built only for Indian consumer brands, back when the idea sounded absurd, and the anti-power-law machine Kanwal Singh built to make it work. This half is the person. The near-decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him his love of consumer, the Intel years, and the Paper Boat conviction that taught him to back the founder over the idea. Then the man himself: parents who came to India as refugees from Pakistan, a father who kept collecting degrees while feeding the family, the coach he started seeing in his sixties and what separates coaching from therapy, and how he reads a founder by meeting their family. He turned down twice the money he could have raised. He rates his life a 10.
2 · Chapters

0:00 Part 2 intro
1:22 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all
2:25 Intel Inside, and bringing the inside out
4:22 The Paper Boat conviction: backing the founder
6:38 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good
17:53 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money
20:24 Hiring: read the person, meet the family
27:01 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying
30:39 Three words, and a 100%-locked calendar
33:30 Motivating through the down days
34:51 The coach, and coaching vs therapy
43:40 How he learns, and consumer vs tech founders
51:27 Rating his life a 10, and success redefined
52:47 Cotswolds, golf, and the empty nest refilled3 · Pull-quotes

[17:56] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this."

[23:55] "You cannot build to sell. You build for sustenance, you build for good."

[27:04] "Both my parents were refugees from Pakistan."

[51:34] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life)

4 · Frameworks & mental models

Founder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse, on the belief that no one survives a decade-long build without one.

Build for sustenance, not to sell: the best businesses are bought, not sold; you build for the long run and treat a sale as a business decision along the way.

Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, with goodness as the foundation of doing well.

Coaching vs therapy: therapy addresses a medical issue; coaching is vulnerability and honesty in a business context, and only works once you have the self-awareness to accept there's a problem.

This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary

Part 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it.
2 · Chapters

0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro
3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists
10:04 How the fund makes money
11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments
12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions
17:14 Two years as a solo angel
25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model
34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law
36:56 The centre of excellence
45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3
53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first
57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes

[0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary."

[34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers."

[40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard."

[54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce."

4 · Frameworks & mental models

Anti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier.

The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers.

India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models.

Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive.

This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number.

Chapters

1:02  With hindsight, what he'd do differently
2:10  “A paisa of every transaction in India”
5:23  First principles: distribution beats product
11:32  The metrics he obsesses over
17:22  Betting on applied AI
29:33  “You can't manage people”
31:45  Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket
42:05  The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO
58:28  The book he forgets — and how he reflects
1:00:50  Rating his life an 8
This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Part 1 of 2. Most people date Shiprocket to 2017; in truth it was born in 2011, and the road there runs through two companies called KartRocket and Craftly. Saahil Goel walks Rohin through the build: Rs 15 lakh of their own money, nearly not being hired by their own first engineers, the hard lesson that in India you sell outcomes not software, an investor ultimatum to take $4 million or nothing, and by the end, just how much capital it's taken to get from that first office to the edge of a public listing. Part 2 gets into how he actually thinks.

Chapters

0:00  The company that started in 2011, not 2017
4:01  KartRocket: building an agency to learn the market
6:09  Bootstrapped on Rs 15 lakh
9:02  Why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software
17:58  “Take $4 million or nothing”
22:38  How Shiprocket was born
27:06  What Shiprocket actually is — and how it makes money
37:58  The IPO, and the state of the business
44:19  Quick commerce without owning a truck
48:42  From Delhi to a US career — and back
55:59  Lessons from failed fundraises
1:04:23  How much they've raised
This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.