In Japan, before exams or big life changes, parents give their kids a small fabric pouch called an Omamori. It's a lucky charm. You tuck it into your pocket or clip it to your bag and carry it everywhere.
Omamori don't actually do anything. There's no magic inside, just cloth and a piece of paper with a wish on it. But that's not really the point, the point is someone who loves you picked it out and said "carry this with you."
I don't carry an Omamori. I carry my dad. He shows up in the smallest things - standing at my door at midnight without saying a word, never once saying "I told you so" no matter how badly I've messed up, just being there in this quiet way that I didn't fully appreciate until much later.
Today is 11th April. It's his birthday and this felt like the right day to start something I've been putting off for months - a weekly email about what I'm actually building, what's breaking, and the decisions I'm making in real time.
I've been building things since class 6 and breaking them just as fast. My dad watched me partition a hard disk at 11 and name it "Chiku," lock the BIOS, make fake viruses using bash commands I'd copied from the internet. Instead of taking the computer away he just let me keep going. He still doesn't know what any of my products do tbvh. He doesn't need to.
One night in 2023, everything I'd spent 4 years building was falling apart and I was staring at a spreadsheet that made zero sense. He walked in late at night, stood there for a second, didn't say anything, and walked out. That's the kind of person he is.
That thing falling apart was Skillvalley. Cohort-based programs where students built real products from scratch. 4 cohorts, 120+ placements, 5.5 LPA average, 1190+ registrations for the last batch alone capped at 35 per cohort. Students sending me "bhaiya, maine select hogya" was genuinely the best feeling I've had building anything.
But I couldn't figure out how to scale it and eventually I had to shut it down.
If I had to restart SkillValley tomorrow and actually make it work as a business, here's what I'd do differently:
1/ Our cohort only accepted final-year students with intermediate programming skills which killed our entire funnel. A ton of students with real hunger couldn't even register. I'd build separate tracks - beginner and intermediate - so a first-year can start somewhere too.
2/ We only ran web development. Mobile? Desktop? Too bad. That needs to change.
3/ Students had to commit 10+ hours a week alongside college based on zero proof of what the cohort felt like. That's a hard sell. I'd run a free 7-day pilot program so they can experience it first and it feeds my sales pipeline too.
4/ I was personally calling students to join class, submit assignments, follow up on everything. That operational mess ate all the time I should've spent on teaching and growth.
5/ All placements happened through us cold-emailing companies because we never built an alumni network where placed students vouch for the next batch. That's compounding trust I left on the table.
6/ We only marketed through old student communities and college partnerships. No webinars, no showcasing results publicly. I'd run weekly webinars from day one to build the funnel properly.
After I shut everything down, my dad saw me staring at walls for a week. One evening he sat next to me and said "Tu phir bana lega." You'll build again. Didn't try to fix anything, didn't ask what happened, just said those four words and that was enough.
That was my Omamori.
And he was right lol. I'm now building three things after my 9-to-6:
- OpsVora - one branded workspace for agencies that replaces their 5+ scattered tools
- MoreClientsBooked - AI-powered content and growth systems for founders
- AcePMInterviews - PM interview prep built on structured thinking
Currently reading The Portrait of a Secret, The Bhagat Singh Reader, Mother Mary Comes to Me, and Why Nations Fail. I always end up reading wildly different things at the same time and honestly half of them end up influencing my thoughst in ways I don't expect. If that happens you'll hear about it here.
I also made a bet with Akanksha - if I don't publish 50 editions of this newsletter by end of 2026, I owe her a brand new iPhone. She's already looking at colors lol. I refuse to let her win this.
Next Wednesday - a 98-year-old sushi chef in a Ginza subway station and why I said no to 1,155 people. That one deserves its own edition.
If you've ever shut down something you built or are thinking about it right now, reply to this email. I read everything.
Papa, happy birthday. You still don't understand what I'm building and that's completely fine. You stayed and that's all I ever needed. 🙏
- Ayush