I was 22. Told my parents I wanted an MBA. Actually wanted to make films. Left Deloitte in March, came home to Dehradun, and COVID hit the same week. Like the universe had been waiting for me to finally make a move before pulling the rug. Every plan I had, gone. But the internet still worked, and I could draw, and people needed things designed. So I started freelancing as a digital illustrator from my childhood bedroom. Not the dream. But it was mine.

I sent 200 cold messages a day for over a month. The silence was deafening. Then it broke. All at once, like a dam. More work than I could handle alone. Three months later, a local IT company disbanded and I absorbed their developers. Overnight, we went from me-and-a-laptop to a design AND development studio. Called it number23, because it's my favourite number. Cleared top MBA colleges that year too. Said no. This was the path. I could feel it.

The year everything expanded. Renamed the studio to DappaSol. Dapper for design, dappa for dApps, sol for solutions. Bought my first car, named her Kafoori. Moved out of my parents' house. Auditioned for a musical on a whim and somehow got the lead. Played Aladdin on stage, and it's still one of the most alive I've ever felt. Bali, Dubai, Goa, all around India. Big projects started finding me purely through word of mouth. Ended the year roadtripping Rajasthan with the boys, windows down, playlist on, nobody talking because nobody needed to.

Turning 25 hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. Not a crisis. More like a clearing. I locked in. Did our biggest year in revenue. Rode 800 km on a Royal Enfield. Manali to Baralacha La and back in a single day. Cried on the bike and didn't care. Met the love of my life on Twitter. Our first date was a 10-day trip to Shillong. Bathed in glacial water, played cricket with villagers, and I knew. Bought my first house. Went solo to Europe. Chased northern lights in Iceland and the night I stopped chasing, the sky went green for hours. Pivoted into AI as Web3 dried up. The year I learned that the plan is there is no plan.

Finally bought the camera I'd been dreaming about. A Fujifilm XT5. Used it twice. Classic. Watched Ed Sheeran live with the boys I'd been listening to his songs with for over a decade. Sang every word. Work was relentless in the best way. Thick and fast, the kind that makes you forget to eat. And then my nephew was born. I held him once and something shifted. Everything I cared about was still there, it just rearranged itself. Got LASIK. Can see now. Literally and otherwise.

Watched Coldplay with my best buddies. Got a concert hangover so bad I swore off concerts unless it's The Lumineers, Damien Rice, or Arctic Monkeys. Manifesting. My childhood best friend got married. Seeing him up there, I felt time move. Went to Gulmarg to snowboard, fell 140 times, got back up 140 times. Bought a drone, flew it over Dal Lake, dropped it straight in. Gone. Girlfriend gifted me a Virat Kohli signed bat. Stared at it for twenty minutes. Finally cut the hair I'd been growing since 2020. Dad retired. Opened a physical office. Bought a bike. And somewhere in the middle of all of it. AI agents clicked. Not as a trend. As an obsession. Started automating everything I could. Workflows, content pipelines, client reporting. Couldn't stop. Still can't.

Just turned 28. Girlfriend bought me a drone for my birthday. Because I dropped the last one in Dal Lake and she thought that was funny enough to reward. But the real story of 2026 so far is AI. I'm obsessed. Agents, automation, OpenClaw. I'm building with all of it. Writing a daily newsletter about what's happening at the frontier. Automating my workflows, my content, my life. Every morning I wake up and there's something new that changes how I think about building. The tools are moving faster than I can ship, and I'm shipping pretty fast. Still writing at 3 AM. Still listening to The Lumineers on repeat. But now there are agents running while I sleep. If you're reading this. We should probably talk.