Host
One night in the ER gave me a very dumb kind of clarity: I was scared, sure, but I was more annoyed that I still had not started the podcast I kept talking about. (Not my finest moment. Definitely an honest one.)
Ready Set Do came out of that night. I wanted a show about the ugly beginning, the part where someone is making a career change, moving to a new country, launching a side project, or building online for the first time and nobody can hide behind a polished success story yet.
I host the show between Chicago and India. The guests have included engineers tied to SpaceX and Microsoft, recruiters with Amazon and TikTok on the resume, founders building AI startups, creators who started from zero, and international students figuring out OPT, H-1B, and the next move.
If you want my canonical home on the internet, start at namanpandey.me. This page is the Ready Set Do version of that story.
About Naman
I care less about the polished postgame speech. I care about the part where someone is still paying for the choice they made six months ago and can tell you what it actually felt like.
Every episode is another crack at the same question: what does it take to begin before you feel ready?
Founders, engineers, recruiters, artists, guides, and people you would never see in the same room somehow end up here.
Other podcasts, other rooms, same obsession with the first move.
What I keep coming back to
Recent activity
If Google or a human lands here and wonders what I have been doing lately, this is the cleanest answer.
Episode 112
Shriya left India for Germany to do a master's in Human-Computer Interaction. Zero — not "discounted," actually free.) If you've been stress-googling "masters abroad" at 2am, stuck in the loop most Indian students hit after a , this is the conversation you needed.
Open episodeEpisode 111
That's the number that should not work. Most people would look at Alisha Gupta's Instagram and assume she's stuck.
Open episodeEpisode 110
Most people treat LinkedIn like a résumé site. Daniel Greenberg thinks that is exactly why they stay invisible.
Open episodeEpisode 109
You spend a few weekends building a small web app to track garbage piles in your city. You wake up to 250,000 users and your local government quietly using your tool to clean the streets.
Open episodeEpisode 107
Two years ago, Anas lost his full-time UK job. He went back to Upwork — the platform he'd already used to make over $80K while studying — and within months landed an 18-month Swedish contract that generated over $5M in client revenue.
Open episodeEpisode 106
Here's the uncomfortable thing nobody at career services will tell you: "I use Claude every day" stopped being a resume line about six months ago. The people hiring at Amazon, Google, and the frontier AI labs already assume you do.
Open episodeInvite Naman
I made a page for this so neither of us has to improvise the basics in DMs. It covers what I talk about, what fits this show, and where to reach me.
Around the internet
Different app, same show. Pick the one you already open without thinking.
Podcast
If you just want to listen, start here.
Open appearancePodcast
Same show. Different app. No grand speech needed.
Open appearanceVideo
This is where the faces, clips, and full conversations live.
Open appearanceProfile
This is where I think out loud in public.
Open appearancePlaylist
If you already live inside YouTube, this is the easy button.
Open appearanceNaman goes on other podcasts too
You should not have to scroll half a mile to find this. Here is the short version, and the full trail lives on its own page.
Podcast appearance
This one gets into the double life a lot of ambitious people know too well: the day job paying the bills, the other thing pulling at you after hours, and what happens when you stop treating that second life like a hobby you have to apologize for.
Open appearancePodcast appearance
Aakash and I got into the messier side of AI product work, how PMs think when the tools keep changing under their feet, and why most people still overcomplicate the first move.
Open appearanceWhat keeps coming up