How to Make Accurate Life Decisions - w/ Utpal

Welcome to the Ready, Set, Do podcast, where we discuss journeys of not experts who are just two steps ahead of us. I'm Nauman Pandey, a note for the not expert, and in this episode I'm joined by Utpal Nadigar. My discussion today with Utpal offers a unique take on decision making for anyone that's ever considered how different their life might have been if they had made alternate choices. Utpal is a co-founder at Digger, which is a UK and Bay Area based startup.

But perhaps more notably, he is a lifelong cricket fanatic, having played semi-professionally in India, and he continues to play club cricket in the UK as of May 2024. He is also the co-founder of the cricket revolution, which is a product for cricketers to leverage to get better at this sport. A single striking theme underlines Utpal's remarkable life journey so far. His belief that when making an important life decision, the outcome that guarantees the most fun is in fact the right option.

Before you immediately discard that as a terrible take, keep it just a moment. I'd like you to really consider your own life journey thus far, and think of how many times the option that guaranteed the most fun was not in fact the easiest option. We discuss how Utpal combined the not star of his life, his passion for cricket, with his amazing ability to just do things to forge out such an incredible life journey for himself.

Doing justice to my show title and the spirit of just jumping in and doing things, we go over what it takes to make it as a professional cricketer, at least ways out of India, living, conducting research and playing cricket in the UK. And finally, spearheading the growth of an international tech startup. We see how time and time again, Utpal was able to apply his rule for optimizing for fun, with pretty decent results.

While recording this episode, I couldn't help but think back to Steve Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech from 2005, where he said quote, "You cannot connect the dots You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever," end quote. I found that every single step of Utpal's journey potentially gives insight on how one can apply the optimized for fun rule to their own life decisions.

For what it's worth, I think it is at least an interesting thought experiment to conduct on our own journeys thus far. In keeping with our theme of learning from somebody that's just two steps ahead instead of an expert, I'd like to emphasize that it is not lost in me that the generalizations I'm making are broad at their best and ill-advised at their worst. Having said that, my goal is merely to highlight that there is a possibility that answers to seemingly infinite philosophical questions like how to make life decisions accurately. Can in fact be as simple as just optimize for fun?

So now, without further ado, my conversation with Utpal, welcome. Let's jump into things, let's talk about cricket, and I know it's been probably the not-star of your life in terms of the one thing that you've been passionate about throughout your journey, which we will be unpacking shortly. Can you talk us through what about cricket interest you so much and what about it makes you just love it so much that it just refuses to go away from being a key part of your life? This reminds me of a very, very funny story, right?

Very early on, right, when I was a kid in 2004, I think it was when Seivark's Court is That was the first ever series that I watched, and I didn't know how cricket worked. I didn't know the innings and what innings meant and I got myself a book like a new book and I asked my dad, you know, how things work, you know, what's the second innings? You know, does the fourth innings mean four innings or does it mean two each and that sort of stuff?

When my dad sort of explained the game to me that day, he actually tried a little bit before, but he was unsuccessful because well, I hadn't taken on, you know, I was very, I was disinterested. Well, 2004, like seven years old and like six, seven years old, really, really wanted, I was looking for cool stuff to do, right? Like you have a lot of free time and looking for cool stuff to do. Was Seivark bad and like never stopped watching and being in love with the game. So that's where it started, I guess, and just stuck on.

I guess maybe I just found it and it's just been the most important thing in my life ever So I think that's really interesting because you say that it was Seivark that made you take notice of the game. So most people, almost kids that I played cricket with were all about batting in our Bowling was just something you did when you didn't have to bat and to get to that point where you did have to bat again, but it does sound like you who kind of went the other I started out as a batsman, by the way, like you're 10 or like 10th grade in India. I want to be a batsman.

I grew a lot in that period, like in terms of not like in my career and stuff, but like I just became really tall, suddenly I was, I grew like I think six inches or something over a period of say three years or quite slightly lower. I just couldn't bat as well anymore, but even if I didn't try hard, I was bowling better I was told to lean in into whatever I did better and the coaches and I've been going to like, I started going to cricket coaching in like year eight or whatever, seriously, year seven year eight, before that I used to go to summer camp and stuff and like seven standard eight, standard nine standard was batsman focused on bowling a little bit and then on just bowling caught on just because of how tall I became.

I actually, yeah, that's the first that I'm hearing of that is like, you started off as So I guess talk us through that stage where you were really, you know, considering cricket as a professional career option, and you know, what that was like, what what goes into the training required, at least to make it at a semi pro level. Can you can you walk us through that phase of your life where you were considering to make it your professional career like from my under 16 days, still my under 23 days.

So that's safe from 10 standard till year four of engineering. I was really, really looking to play cricket, that's six years, right? Yeah, six, seven years, six, seven years of my life. I think it's about 16 to 20 to 23. That's what that's the timeframe. Nothing else mattered in my life. Like, obviously I did a lot of other things, you know, wrote my 10th boards to wrote my 12th boards, got it to my engineering college and like studied engineering and everything.

But in my head, all that mattered was I had to play for India. That was the only sort of north style in my head at that point. Otherwise, what's happening was just on autopilot, like, yeah, have, have a type of thing. But I guess it takes a lot out of you and it requires you to do that one thing and one And I think that's a realization that's happened to me a lot later than it should have. Well, I guess I don't know if it's for the good or for the bad, but like it requires, I realized over those six years that, you know, how important and the conditioning is, how important sleep is, how important being at the right place at the right time is.

And the thing is, I'm not talking about luck here, I'm talking about presenting myself in places that I need to be more often than what I presented myself, like maybe going and showing up at specific places to bowl or, you know, if there's a particular tournament, instead of, I don't know, doing something else actually showing up there and doing that Yeah, I think just to break it down, I guess it takes a lot. And I think a lot of people who were my peers were really successful right now.

If I look at what I did and what they did different, I guess what they did different was the fact that for them as well, nothing else mattered. But then the priority stack was that cricket cricket cricket and then something else to me was cricket and then something else and then something else. So there are different components of cricket, if that makes sense, there's cricket, actual skill, cricket, standard conditioning, cricket, nutrition, cricket and a bunch of other stuff, Like there's so many other factors and like, yeah, I think that's, they take most boxes And then that's why they're as successful as they are.

And I was barely taking one box, I guess, if you look back and I think that's, that's That's what it took. And that's what it still takes probably more right now. Yeah, to put it in perspective until the last year of my engineering, I just played cricket and, and, and wanted to go pro played at a decent level. I wouldn't say I didn't. I played at first division level in, in, in Bangalore, which is, which is really good.

You know, bold to some of the best teams that come to play to come to play in, in Bangalore. So, and traveled around to play cricket with the university, like when Sri Lanka worked I don't remember that. Yeah, so I have zero regrets, just the fact that just an introspective sort of thought process saying that, you know, that maybe my path in life would have been different. Again, I know that, that's something that we will be exploring through our conversation, where essentially it's your entire journey so far sounds like this really has just been a exercise of, you know, just connecting the dots backwards.

That's referencing the Steve Jobs speech at convocation speech, where he, you know, where he was like, you can only connect the dots backwards on that same team. Would you say that, perhaps if you hadn't enrolled in electronics engineering, which is what you studied, you might have had a better shot or, or not really. You know, there, there was a point right after engineering, right, where I worked really There was this one year where I worked really hard on, on my skill.

And right after when, when things, when COVID hit, I think we may hit on it later on when, when we talk about what I did after engineering and stuff, but I'm just referencing this because there was a point in time there where I kept thinking about this, where, you know, you know, had I done this, would it have been better, had I done that, would it have been But then my conclusion at the end of it was like, there are like, obviously going to be a hundred different parts that I could have taken, but I took this one and I'm just dealing the cards that I've been dealt with type of thing.

Like, I'm just going to go ahead and move forward based on where I stand today. But I guess, yes, that's, that's true. I guess a lot of people, engineering is requires four or five boxes of its own, like if cricket has four or five boxes engineering has four or five boxes of its own, right, barely taking a box each, maybe I didn't do any favors to myself. But I am not in a very bad place today, according to me either. So that's, that's how I think about it.

I guess doing the right thing that I find at that point in time again, the most fun thing and the right thing at that point in time, I've done. Basically, my parents wanted me to study a little more, like they, they wanted safety. It's obvious, like they, they care for me, right, like they want me to do well in life and they want me to just be well settled and that sort of thing. And for them, it was like, they lent more towards the study and focus on that.

Make no mistake, they supported me in whatever I wanted to do, but like, yeah, their, their obvious preference was towards something that, you know, gets me a good career in a good life, a fair guarantee of a good career in a good life. And that is, for sure, without an important, you know, safety net for you to stand on your feet, which, you know, it really sounds like you have. So a couple of call-ups, I really like what you said about, you've always wanted to do the most fun thing that you can at any given point of your life, because I know, analysis will know through our conversation exactly what you mean by that.

So talk us through that, that year after graduating from your undergrad, where you were, you know, just full-time prepping, practicing, getting better at cricket. And then it sounds like COVID came around and kind of foiled your plans in some way. What was, what was that like? So 2019 was playing, did one cricket in Bangalore for a very, very, very good club. The club side was packed. Like they were 15 really good cricketers. And I was getting as much opportunity that I wanted.

So I spoke to the captain asking him about my chances right after my engineering. So I told him like, look, is there a chance for me to make it this year? And he said, unfortunately, no. And I think he did me a favor there. Because I said, okay, cool, if that's the case, I'm not going to show up for the rest That's what I told him. Very, like he's still a very close friend of mine, we chat and everything. But that's what I told him.

Look, I don't think I can show up to the rest of the games if I cannot get to play because I need to make a life for a living, because well, my engineering is done. I need to do something in my life. So I'm going to do something else. And that's something else at that point, I had only two things that I did really well. I used to work out a lot because obviously I wanted to be a fast bowler with, you know, that we used to do a bowler fast for a bit. And obviously I wanted to get strong to do that. And I played cricket.

So these were the only two things that I did in really well. So I thought of going to one of the best standing conditioning facilities in Bangalore at the time, and then saying, look, I've been training here for a while. And I have this time right now where I want to train for the off season and get ready for the next year. Would you accept me as an intern because I wouldn't have anything else to do for the And they were like, cool, because they needed somebody to do some work, right? Like, obviously there's a lot of work in a gym, right?

Like, there's generating leads, there's also taking classes and there's programming and different things require different sort of skills. But like, there are a bunch of people that they always need and there's always hands And obviously they chose me as one of the persons to keep hands on deck. And at that point, I was interning during the day at the gym, working out again during the day, playing cricket for the rest.

So basically I joined a really, really, really good academy in Bangalore, you know, paid per session, you know, told him what my goals are. I said, look, my goal right now is to make it to the under 23 Karnataka side next year. And then, you know, I want to move forward. Here are the problems that I have with bowling, here are the problems that are not getting Like, this is why I'm not getting noticed. I want to fix these things. And he said, cool. And he really, really helped me genuinely.

I think that's the best I've ever bold over those nine months. That's the fittest I've ever been. That's the most I've ever lifted that period. Like, I look back and I'm like, wow, I was, I look at my pictures, you know, Google photos, I'm like, man, I was, because there's nothing else I was doing in working out, bowling and And interning at that gym. And obviously that I took really seriously as well, wrote an exam called the certified stand-in conditioning specialist exam.

And the eventual goal was like, okay, I'll play cricket and I'll also start a gym. That was my sort of fair plan in my head. That's, that's my goal. Like, that's my way of goal, but like, that's my goal. But then in the March, in March, Covid hit, right? Like, and there was so much uncertainty, right? Like, what next and like, how, where do we move everything? And yeah, well, that's where I guess that block of training sort of abruptly ended, so So, and after that point, did you decide to get certified as, as a trainer or did you completely stop cricket or were you still kind of on the fringes, kind of, you know, hushing it out, seeing what, what might happen, keeping your options open or I guess how did you approach that uncertainty that you referenced just now? Oh, I got certified in December, but hit in March.

So I was already working with a few more clients and training them during the day as a coach, as a fitness coach and again, playing for the rest of the day. Well, yeah, how I approached that time was like, yeah, I continued doing these online sessions for cricketers and whatnot at that point, but like, yeah, there was, there was not really much else I could do from a cricket playing perspective, but interesting stories at that point is when Kunal and I started talking, Kunal is, is, you know, a really close friend I know I'm just randomly bringing up a random name into this, but we played together for a few years and then we got together and, you know, started building stuff for cricketers slowly during COVID.

So basically what happened was that we started talking and saying, look, there are so many of these cricketers who have faced problems that we have faced and there's nothing else we can do right now because well, I can't play. He had thought of starting coaching because he just stepped off like step back from playing active cricket and he was like looking at what to do next and that type of thing. And they're like, okay, cool. Let's try and build something for cricket.

So that's where I think subconsciously or certainly I think I sort of realized that maybe making it big in India would is not as predictable, obviously, because there's uncertainty right Also, there's a lot of hurdles that I love to clear after this uncertainty passes and I don't even know how long this uncertainty is going to be for that those two points sort of came in my head and like, okay, cool, let's try and build something for cricketers.

And I obviously still had this goal of trying to start a gym eventually, right? But then Kunal did something very interesting. He said, whatever we do should not hold us into a location. And in hindsight, that's an excellent sort of point that he made, right? Like, otherwise, I would probably be owning a couple of gyms in my career. Generally, if Kunal hadn't told me that that day, I was like, my point to him was after COVID, let's create this thing where cricketers come and train every day, like, let's create this place where cricketers come and work out every day. He's like, why do you want to do that? Like, everything's online.

Let's do something, you know, digital, that's what his thought process was. And that's all it was. But like, I think that's, that insight helped so much that we started talking to cricketers and thinking about what to build. And I guess that's where cricket revolution seed started. So cricket revolution was what I was working on in that period. So that sounds like it was your first foray into actually building something out. So you referenced that you were yourself a cricketer.

So you had a great insight, or, you know, you could empathize with what cricketers needed at the time and, you know, the way that they needed to deliver to them. So I guess I'm curious about what a typical program look like. So say I'm a person, you know, signing up or reaching out for help or coaching. And I'll be like, hey, I'm a bowler, say I'm, you know, whatever hitting 130 kilometers for our and want to get to like 140, 145. So I get on a call with you and then what happens? Yeah, it's interesting. Again, this has a back story as well.

So you know, when I told you that I was juggling cricket and engineering, there were four boxes that I was talking about, right, that cricket I think I'm going to reference that here because like those four boxes is what we came to do, essentially. I'm saying four because now I have the benefit of hindsight. But like there, it was straining conditioning, kill nutrition and mindset. So basically, what any cricketer could do was again, this was what we drafted based on the resources that we had started sketching and stuff.

There were two ways in which what we were building could be used. One was directly by teams where teams already had coaches and then they could use a portal where they would interface with their players and two was directly by the players where the players could, you know, start using the tool where, well, if they wanted anything from skill-related stuff where they could upload their videos and get feedback from a PCR coach.

If they had, you know, any mindset-related stuff, they could track their mood from time to time to see what causes fluctuation. They could journal and they could meditate, you know, and they could track what their Like they could track calories of what they're eating every day. In hindsight, again, we were trying to do calm plus, plus my fitness path, pal plus, you know, there's a bunch of other, you know, tools like four or five tools together, one particular product.

And like for complete noobs who have never built anything in their life and who couldn't quote at the time, you know, thinking about like, and at that point, it was like the more the merrier, right? Like the more the better, right? Because as wide of a net as possible, like don't leave anything on the table. It's a classic new mistake, by the way, like it's a classic new mistake. I would make that mistake again if I did not know stuff that I know today.

Looking back, obviously cricket evolution still exists and people still interface with the product and the way they use it is different, but it still exists. Looking back, I think initially if we had done one thing really well, we could have probably been more successful than what we are doing, that's, that's how I think about it. That's a very interesting insight, and I guess around this time, and I only really know this for a listen, because me and Opel have followed each other on social media for a while.

But you were really good and, you know, like you were sharing a lot of content around cricket, like really niche content around like a slight little angle of change on your wrist can make you swing the wall and such, and like you were really, you know, putting yourself out there and really being the brand of cricket revolution. What was that like, and recently we've had a guest on this podcast that spoke explicitly about building a personal brand online, but their approach was more via LinkedIn.

So I'm just trying to explore what, how different that is if you do that via Instagram, which is what you were doing. So what was that whole experience like and what were you trying to get out of that essentially? Again, again, this again has a backstory. So each question has a backstory and it moves me further away. It's just, it makes it so much more concrete. So, so again, fast forward, you know, we spoke at the March, fast forward to September. I now had an admitted love bra.

I realized, you know, I, I started applying to uni slowly saying, you know, I need to do something in life. Yeah, I'm building this, but like, can I do anything that cricket related sport related that, that may help me in life. So signed up for something called a masters in sport buying mechanics at love bra, which is supposed to be the best sport in the world has the best sport incubation center for all of us, not of strainables will sport and sports tech products. And I was like, cool.

Let me go because there's nothing that I could do in India at that point. I think from March 2020 to like September 21, there was not much in India happening, like there was stuff happening, but it was all indoors and like, obviously, first way or second way, there was a lot of, you know, stuff that couldn't be done in India. So I was like, okay, let me just go to the UK. And at that point in love bra, we started leading a lot of fast bowling papers as a part of our ways, you know, what are the four kinematics factors that help improve ball and lead speed.

And it's super interesting to me, given how much of a cricket nerd I am, right? Because this is just me nodding out on the stuff that I love the most and, and programmatically, How do force plates work, you know, like a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't have thought about cricket in that sense at all had I not done that course, those videos that I created on Instagram at that point were just me, it was just me reading those papers and trying to create as concise a format of it and then put it out mostly for my own consumption because I was, I was making it as concise as possible and trying to understand it a little better, but also it was on brand for cricket revolutions.

Okay, but that was not your primary goal, it sounds like you were really just doing it all to disseminate that knowledge that you are dealing and that you were really passionate I have a purpose as to why I was doing it. It just seemed cool. There were a lot of views that it was getting. It was, it was like dopamine inducing also like, you know, like one of them actually crossed like a million, like something like that where I think I spoke about the corridor of uncertain people, where that's when he's neither playing forward or back when I first was bowling and that one just blew up, it probably is because of the visual that I had taken from chance to put a decent amount of work into those, I do remember you had like the green screen action going on and you had all of your colorful visuals and slow mo's it was really well produced

and sounded like, or it looked like I mean to say, well produced as in like Instagram had a green screen feature, I used to create these videos and then just do it, I didn't use any editing tool except Instagram itself. And the goal though was just, it felt good that I was getting that attention from the right kind of people like attention from cricketers in that sense felt really good at that point because we were building something for cricketers, I was doing something cricket trying to get attention to cricketers. Yeah, it just felt good.

And I think for that period, I generally tell a lot of people I was studying cricket. I was building stuff on top of cricket. I was playing cricket because I started playing cricket in the UK at that point. So literally my entire life reward on cricket and I think looking back that is genuinely the best time of my life that I've ever had. Yeah, so without getting philosophical, yeah, that's, that's what I was, the goal was not to get, build a personal brand to be honest.

The goal was to get as many people interested in cricket evolution as possible and also because I was enjoying the attention. Yeah, I'm just, just, you know, just for the thrill of it, so I'm sorry. And I really, I want to call out just how happy and how glowed up your face became just so when you were like, that was the happiest period of my life. And it's so, so nice to, you know, hear you say that and as you recount that experience because yeah, it really does sound like, you know, you were really thriving back in the day, not that you aren't anymore. But so let's talk about love rough.

My first question is, how long did it take you before you realized that it's pronounced Yeah, when, you know, even now, if I, if somebody reads love bro back in India, they say love Yeah, I would have said love borrow or something. Well, I, I think I went in February, March of just before COVID hit in India, I was going to these uni fails in Bangalore and I went to the higher thing on MG Road and I met somebody from love bro and they said love bro. That's when I started saying love bro.

I was like, I really want to get into love bro whatever I do, you know, I said some variant of how it would be a concert and then when then they said no, this is how They didn't actually say it, but they spoke about love bro and I just got on. I guess that's how that's how I started saying love bro. And then I guess on a more serious note though, you, you referenced that it's one of the best. If not, I think you said the best, you know, sports biomechanics institute in the world. So was it competitive? It must have been like, what was the process? Like I'm so curious. I actually know nothing about this field.

So did you have to submit like proof of research or like what was that whole thing like for It's a very interesting thing, right? Like they looked at people who are at the intersection of engineering and sport. Especially for sports biomechanics, they needed. And I fit right in, interestingly, people who had some sort of an engineering background because there was a bit fair amount of programming involved in trying to process the data that you'll be collecting during the research you'll be doing.

Also, people with sport and sport related backgrounds, either certification or something that you have done in sport that could aid the course or professionally or semi-professionally, Not just as an athlete, even like say you had a certification. So at that point, I had a certification for standard conditioning, but I also had played. So that actually aided my application, but I guess just having played will not help, Because it's a course where you're doing research and not playing as much, unless it the sports quotas eat, I guess.

It was more mostly the certification in standard conditioning plus the fact that I was an engineer and plus what I think I also propose, what my research project would have been. In hindsight, it was very naive. I didn't know how the course would be structured and stuff, but I guess they thought it was ambitious and interesting and thought of giving me a chance. It is pretty common to do because I see a lot of people in India right now applying different courses in Luffborough and keep getting denied because their backgrounds don't match.

Either they're too technical and not very sporty or they're too sporty and not very technical. So there's this middle ground that I fit into at that point, I guess, and that's what got So what was your experience like suddenly finding yourself in a new country, studying or researching in a way that I think you hadn't been exposed to before at that time. And then the third facet of that is playing cricket in a new country.

Because even though the sport is the same, I'm sure from the little I know about cricket, it must have been a completely different experience. Not just because of the pitches and such, but you know, really the weather, the type of So can you break those three down for a little bit? All the cricket that I played until I started playing cricket in the UK was very serious Like if I don't do well on a day, I used to come back home and cry or feel very upset and not cry, but like feel a little upset and take it.

I still take it personally though, like I still, you know, really feel upset and like take it personally, but like it's a lot less riding on my shoulders in terms of cricket But yeah, you know, in after the first few months, I think four or five months met with a really nice club called Cropston and as that overseas, started playing cricket there. Really, really enjoyed my game there because well, two, three things that are different in England versus India.

The conditions obviously a lot more overcast, wickets are a lot greener. All games are played on proper turf wickets is a, most grounds have a slope. Once downhill and one is uphill, the ball is a lot darker. It's called the Duke's ball. We play with SD balls in India and in professional cricket, Duke's balls are used in the, you know, share a cup of balls are used, but like I had never played with Duke's balls. So all of this was an extremely, extremely interesting experience. Now I played three or four seasons. I mean, my fourth season. And is this club cricket? So what, what like league or how does this work? It is organized by the ECB. I play something called the Premier League.

It's called the, so the county's handling that about six or seven Premier Leagues across the UK, which are feeders to county clubs. Well, you do well in Premier League. You get picked for second class and first class cricket. So I play in Leicestershire. I still continue to play in Leicestershire, although I've moved to London after my masters, So that's how it's structured. And is it every week or every month across the year or how, what's the, like. It's a summer sport. It's a summer sport because it's cricket. So it's every Saturday from mid April to mid September.

That's when Premier League cricket's played 22 games, especially in Leicester. It differs some, some place have 14 teams, some place 11 teams, some, some Premier League The league that I play has 22 games, 11 home and 11 away. I mean, the open away structure is also different. In the UK versus India, by the way, like traveling with your team, I was doing two of these. It doesn't like you just show up at the opponent's ground. Well, yeah, that's what I meant. But it's in travel.

Because you're maybe in, I don't know, Brighton or something. So that's like the. Inside of Leicestershire though, it's a less because it's the same county I see. So you're inside the same county and it's probably like a 30 minute drive away. Each of those around. And then do all the like players, family and friends, makers, spectacle out of it. It's insanely good. And there's a lot of affinity to one's club like there are a lot of people who are retired who are really passionate about the club. The passionate about the club and the game.

Well, they were the heart of their sleeve in the sense that like if they're close games that are lost, people who don't play are really upset. How could we lose to this particular team, right? You know, how haven't we beaten this team? Why are we, you know, if you're in a losing streak, for example, right? Like somebody will show up and each ground has a bar, a very nice bar area with, you know, drinks on tap and like, yeah, like it's really nice. And culturally that's a difference as well in India.

Well, cricket is almost like it's a lot more mechanical, mechanical in a good sense though. Well, it's like as room for errors, I think is what you're trying to say in India. Yes, I guess, yeah, but yeah, culturally it helped me personally because well, I had sort of thought, okay, maybe that's the end of my cricket in Korea. It's not that I'm playing professionally, but I'm playing a very high level cricket, which gives me stuff to do. So I think that was the highlight of my masters, I guess.

And in terms of the academics itself, what are looking back, maybe one or two main core ideas that you took out of that, those couple of years that, you know, were the most impact ful in terms of the things you learned, whether or not it can be applied to cricket or just, you know, about sports biomechanics in general, but really trying to, you know, boil that ocean of what you studied in two years into, you know, one or two drops.

And I know that's a very loaded question, but I would appreciate any insight there. I think personally, for me, it was getting comfortable with writing code. It's a key transferable skill that I think I appreciate a lot. Although there was a lot of programming involved in my undergrad, I was very bad at it, right? Like I could write code on sheets of paper and get away with, you know, passing my exams And that's how a lot of people did as well.

But what I realized here during my masters was that actually writing good code helps, and also like getting comfortable with programming in general, I think that's why it happened For a lot of people, it's in year 10, 11, 12, in school. For me, it was a little bit delayed. Secondly, I think it also taught me how sort of it does not need to be, so again, coming Like the skills that I gained in my masters sort of helped me in, in, in getting cricket evolution in a better shape, but like there was nothing business or startup related that was taught in the course and there was nothing biomechanics related in my product that I was building, but it sort of helped each other, but mostly the course helping the, the product rather than the other way around.

So what I'm trying to say is another transferable sort of, you know, insight from there is that you need not be related on face value, but it could still help absolutely not be related on face value, but it could still help. So think, yeah, that's, these are the two things that I guess are my biggest takeaways Yeah, it always sounds like you learned how to apply, you know, apply yourself to stuff that's maybe or may not be directly, directly related to cricket itself.

So with that, I guess once you finished or you graduated, what was the road ahead from Because I'm sure there was still a decent amount of uncertainty because, you know, again, you're in a new country, not entirely sure whether you want to stay there or go back to India. I know there was probably like a store NBA degree somewhere in there, and then you ended up staying, I guess. So I'm curious to, you know, hear about your journey after graduating from your master's.

Well, my master's finished in the, in September of 2021, I think, yeah, three years now. And finished and then well, I was looking for things to do. And on one day while scrolling Twitter, I realized that there's this thing, which is an MBA bootcamp that a lot of people are recommending, a lot of people who I looked up to were recommending. So I was like, what is this? Let me just talk to one of the founders. So I set up a call and spoke to them with a bunch of others on that call.

And I realized that, look, this is something that I would be interested in. And it was mostly stuff around how businesses are built, what, what, how do you get your first users, you know, what factors are needed in defining your ideal customer persona. That sort of stuff, right? Like, which I hadn't learned in any thing that I had done before. I had done my master's manually at least, and I thought it was interesting. So ended up doing it.

It was about six months of rigorous, I think on the weekend, we had like eight to 10 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. And during the week, we had cases that case studies that we had to do, and I may be jumbling the format a little bit, but, you know, but it was very, very rigorous in the sense that I learned a lot of stuff that makes businesses successful, which I hadn't learned before. It could be in terms of how sales works, how negotiation works, how do the, how do venture scale businesses, what is venture scale, and how do venture scale businesses exist, how do they raise money, you know, how to get your first few customers.

All of these questions, I was super interested in the answers off, but I didn't know how to, you know, get the hands. And one good thing about that bootcamp was that they invited people from a lot of real Each weekend, there was somebody from Craig coming or somebody from, you know, a VC coming and speaking about how that stuff works. One weekend, there was a, there was an actual person who was a CFO or finance person coming through and explaining how accounting in early stages work and how accounting in large scale That's incredible. It was really good. And I recommend it.

I don't know how the course is now, but if it is still the same, I would recommend it. What is it called? Again, how would one look up, look this up if they were interested? It's called Stour School. I think they changed to us. And it's founded by a few of my friends now, Baj, Tunkolinkar, Aditya Kulkarni and a bunch But if you, if you Google Stour School, I think you should. And I'll be also sure to drop that link in the show notes for this, for this episode.

And then so basically, but when you were doing all of this, you, did you have an ulterior Like you wanted to make yourself more hireable, more employable in the UK, maybe or in India. Or was it really actually just, you know, to upskill yourself and not, you know, necessarily from an employment point of view? Well, at that point it was to just learn what it would take to build a successful business. I was tinkering with credit revolution, even then we had started building the app along So at that point, it was very, very sort of biased towards how do we get more users to How do we make it more, you know, interesting for, for users to use? How do we make, how do we grow adoption? That sort of thing.

So those were the sort of, that is what I wanted to extract from the course and apply But there were a lot of lessons as well, right? Like, why something may not work, right? Why is something in career revolution not working, or how, how, how, how product management Like, because well, again, my insight is on surface level, I'm, I'm flying this straight I'm not a product manager. I've never been, you know, an actual product manager in a large organization.

But how product management works, I can probably tell because of the fact that I've built products myself alongside people have collaborated with, and I've also learned a bit about it in store. So there's a bunch of other insights like this that again, eventually ending up in, in, in us acquiring the first few users of cricket revolution at that point. But then the, the actual cricket revolution idea sort of, sort of also evolved in that period where we realized that a product being, building a product iteratively requires those iteration cycles and that does not happen with an agency, right?

You define scope and then they, they sort of level and then that's it. And like, we needed that iterative process and we didn't have that capability internally, but what we did have was let's say the ability to coach craters. So we are like, okay, cool. Let's continue coaching cricketers. Let's continue coaching cricketers and let's scale the business that way. But that meant that I had to look for other things to do as well, because well, I, I decided to continue to stay in the UK. So I started looking for things to do. And now it's not a particular agenda, right?

Like, I was like, okay, eventually I want to start something up. That was my head, obviously always in my head, you know, from a while, ever since cricket revolution started, like, I really liked having built something of my own or with a, with a bunch of people that I like working with. So I was like, cool, let me, let me look at what exists in the, in the UK market. But the interesting part was that I was looking at roles which were business and business adjacent, let's say, again, product management, which was very hot back then, or a founders associate or chief of staff or whichever role that helps me learn as much as possible from a business, which is in the early stages that I can apply to whatever I want to start eventually Well, at that point, I stumbled on different roles.

But the interesting bit was that the competition that I was competing against were like people who were graduating from water, Cambridge, LBS, Imperial, these are like literal pedigree Yeah, I mean, it's as good as it gets, you know, UK at least, maybe the US has like obviously better names, but like, right, in the UK or in the, on the side of the Atlantic in general, I guess they, they are as good as, as it gets. So well, I, I lined up a couple of interviews for, for, for founders associates and, and, and stuff like that.

So I think I was competing against these folks and I realized that, well, I needed to deliver on one USB, okay, well, that's what I tried doing and that was mostly in terms of trying to land as many founders associate, associate roles as possible. That's when I met Igor and Mo, who will just quick, just, just a quick, sorry to for the But what goes into a founders associate position, like what are the skillsets that somebody needs to excel at that position?

Well, I think the founders associate is something, is a role that you would do to sort of shadow the founder initially, and I think it's very case specific. It's very company specific to shadow the founder to sort of take from them whatever they don't need to be doing, so that they do the best at what they need to do. It's not, you're not an executive assistant in the sense that they need to outsource everything You are a founders associate in the sense that you have the capability, you're a chief Doing things, right, right.

Or also understanding what needs to be done without being told that these things need For example, it could be, let's say, a bunch of outbound that the founder is doing on LinkedIn that you could do yourself and the founder could probably speak to them. And then, you know, the founder could be doing something else in that time. I'm just giving one small example, totally. There are specific instances, I think this is what a founders associate is.

Obviously, different companies come up with different descriptions, but it is people who can understand whoever they're an associate to, to a degree where they can understand what can be delegated and delegated themselves, and can be given the ownership to have that delegation capability within them, if that makes sense. That's very succinct. No, that makes total sense. I'm going to continue about how you came up to be co-founder at Digger. Well, first, an employee, I guess.

So it was very interesting in hindsight, yeah, co-founder now, but met Igor and Mo from They were looking for a founders associate, ended up applying to that founders associate And it was very interesting. So the first time I spoke to Igor was like, there was a role available. And then he messaged me on LinkedIn at 1145. I don't think even we've discussed this, by the way, just remember this story. He messaged me at 1145 in the night and said, hey, are you open to a chat? Thanks for applying. Are you open to chat? 1145 in the night, mind you. And I said, cool right now. And he's like, yeah, cool. And he's like, this is outrageously inappropriate.

We can do one day if you want, but it would be, I'm sort of looking for people right now. And then he told me about the company, what they were trying to do. And at that point, Igor was trying to build a Heroku top, like UI on top of AWS to simplify And I was like, cool. I'd be happy to contribute in whichever way possible. He was like, we're looking for somebody to handle Bizop, sales, marketing, and growth, because the team entirely consists of engineering folks who are deeply technical, nerdy, geeky, very deep into the problem.

But we need somebody to grow whatever we're building as well. That was the sort of JD, essentially. And you had applied just online for this position. Just like 10 or 15 minutes before that. I had applied like with LinkedIn, easy applied just 10 or 15 minutes before that. And yeah, I received that message. And then on Monday, I met them at VWork, right? Like immediately like two days in, I met them at VWork. And it was very interesting where the interview went very, very well.

But it was not an interview as much as it was a conversation initially. On Monday, by the way, the good part of our ticker is that we've moved really fast and we've iterated really fast. On Monday, the job description was different. On Friday, it was, it was found as associate. On Monday, it was growth engineer. But again, it primarily was engineering growth for whatever exists as a product. And met them extremely, extremely interested in what they were doing, super passionate about the problem, super passionate about hiring the best team.

We'll spoke about a few growth ideas in terms of what Digger could do to get the first few users, get some paying customers and that. They already had four or five paying customers by then. And well, they gave me an offer and I took it as founders associate slash growth engineer Fast forward, I guess, I'm going to just expedite the story a bit. The company continued to grow. We had a few pivots over the next couple of years.

And I think in February, 2023, we pivoted to something which was the open source alternative to Terraform Cloud because the product surface area was this broad and then we started shrinking And here also, there's an experience, right? There's looking back at cricket revolutions app that we were building. We were building too many things at the same time. And I think even at Digger initially, we were doing the same thing.

We're solving multiple problems where, you know, we were taking on secret management. We were taking on CI/CD for Terraform. We were taking on, you know, containerization of whichever repo people had to upload. So I guess we were solving like five or six problems and we realized there were multiple points of failure again. Same realization that I had a cricket revolution like a year or two later, but now in a venture back company with multiple engineers and resources on hand, which was interesting because iteration was much faster looking back at, you know, at cricket revolution comparing here iteration And for that comparison to, I guess, make, you know, land even better.

Can you really dumb it down for us what Digger exactly does, like, pretend at five, yeah, what exactly does Digger, what problem does it solve? So Digger's current, Digger, what it does today after four pivots is it does CI/CD for So essentially CI/CD is continuous integration, continuous deployment. And it does it for Terraform, which is infrastructure support. So essentially that's what Digger does. If you want me to put it in a sentence.

I guess that's the simplest way to put it, I guess in February of 2023, we pivoted to this We iteratively got. So in the first few months, got a lot of stars, got a lot of attention on YouTube, got a lot of retention from, from influencers in this Terraform sphere and just continued to lean in towards that. And in October, I was offered to be one of the co-founders because of a certain, because if you aren't on the changes that needed to happen at Digger and I accepted it and, and ever since then have been the co-founder of Digger and so on. So you went from growth engineer to co-founder? It's pretty incredible, man. How does that, how does that make you feel? Not much changes in terms of what I do though. Day to day is pretty similar. I still handle growth. I still handle business development.

I still do whatever it takes to get new users to start using Digger and retain them after they start using Digger and try to get new paying customers. So this is what I do, did back then, this is what I do right now as well. Some added responsibility obviously because it's more, more at stake or more at stake. Obviously, I think it was not much has changed other than the fact that I have a lot of gratitude that they had trust in me to be one of the co-founders and I obviously took it as soon as they asked for it. That's, that's the change that has happened. And then I know you've been traveling a lot of late.

So what's your first time or I guess maybe I know you've been there a few times now, but what was your first time in Bay Area like because I know for somebody that's so into tech, it's really, you know, the Mecca of where you want to be. I think, well, I had zero exposure to the US, let alone Bay Area before that's true. And, and going to the Bay Area really, really opened my mind and I think that to be honest, if anybody's building a venture scale company, access to customers and access to capital is the most in the Bay Area period. Nobody can debate it regardless of whatever people say. And that's what my opinion is. And that is a realization that I had, right?

I went there, I went there for a hackathon as well, like I, I participated in the hackathon just to see the vibe of how, like how hackers just interact. I have seen a few hacker houses in the UK in London have been to a few AI thinkers meet up, you know, I've been to a few hackathons. I've seen Silicon Valley. I have was Silicon Valley. I think we washed it together back in the day. It's probably dead. But I, I knew how the Bay Area worked, like in terms of how, how nerds build stuff that people want and grow it to a scale of, you know, ginormous scales, like while seeing it in person, I think I just was super inspired to be honest and yeah, I'm super bullish on the fact that we have access to it and that we can go there whenever we want and get access

Also, a lot of bigger users right now are based there, not just the Bay Area but in large So yeah, I guess TLDR would be that access to customers, access to capital is excellent. Talent is insanely good and ambitious ambition is genuinely infectious in that, in that zone. I don't know there's something about it, to be honest. That's what, that's what my realization was after going there. That's, that's so true. I did want to close out with a couple questions.

The first being, I guess what the, what is the future look like for you from this point was like, where do you envision digger going, like, I guess just maybe even more. So like, where does your life go from here at this point? Well, at this point, I think in my, in my head, I'm constantly solving two problems. Personally, it is to help cook it as much as possible professionally, it is to get bigger. It's so interesting that you have it separate between personal and professional. It makes a lot of sense. So I think it's not something that I've been exposed to.

That's what I'm supposed to get on my, on every Saturday, right? And I think for my sanity, I, I need to continue to plate. I need to continue to help cook it as I need to. And the only way that I'll do it is if I'm charging people for it, like, that's my motivator at the end of the day. And that's what we've continued to do, like, how to make fast bowlers the strongest possible that they can be so that we produce as many fast bowlers as possible.

And I am subject number one because I want to test my programs myself. I want to bowl ourselves. I, I take my speed going to the nets every time I go to the nets and see what's improving, That, that's personally professionally, I think, I think building digger to a stage where it's default to life first, and then on to, you know, the, the de facto tool for people to use for terraforma or open tofu automation, there are no numbers in my mind or anything. I guess it's more. I wasn't necessarily looking for a number on that.

And I, and I guess to close it out, my last question would be, if, if there were to be one theme that, you know, that you've found that your life trajectory has followed so far, that is not cricket because obviously cricket is the theme right there. It's like a no brainer for anybody that listened to this conversation outside of cricket. What is the one theme that, you know, has been consistent for you throughout? And that has helped you in your journey and just really the massively incremental jumps that you've made in your journey.

I think I said this already and like, I'm a guys who loves having fun and I just did whatever was the most fun at each time, and I don't even think I've done the right thing. Like I probably have done the right thing in hindsight because there are multiple right And I think, I think I did one of the right things and it was because I wanted to have fun at that point. And I think continuously it's been, yeah, if not cricket, then it's doing the most fun thing possible at that point, which is incidentally helped become the right thing in hindsight, but hopefully it's right going forward as well.

That's what I, I, yeah, I just love your ability to, you know, answer such a little bit of a loaded question in, you know, such a simple nonchalant way, but I'm still in a way that makes so much sense because, yeah, you're right, you did say that before and clearly your every step of your journey has revolved around, okay, what's the most fun outcome And clearly it's worked out. The right thing to do is almost like the right thing to do for you is almost always the most fun thing to do for you because well, it's right because if it isn't then, well, yeah, I mean, sometimes I guess those decisions can be a bit more nuanced than that because you know, it's like, absolutely, it's objective as well, right?

Like I know people who use frameworks and stuff and still get there and it's amazing for them, But like personally, this is, this is how I think about it, I guess. Once again, thanks so much to, well, today for taking the time and speaking with us and for all that you do for cricket, as well as all the birding cricketers out there helping We continue to do that. And I hope to see you continue to excel and grow in your professional career as well. Thank you for having me.

That brings us to the end of episode eight of the Ready Set Do podcast. I trust that you found both pulse walkthroughs of his decision-making process at various points in his life journey, entertaining as well as insightful. If you enjoyed this discussion, the simplest way to support my podcast is by subscribing to my YouTube channel and leaving me up to a five-star rating on Spotify below the like Please feel free to comment any suggestions, feedback or nominate any guests for the podcast.

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