Happy Diwali

To all readers of this newsletter, a very Happy Diwali to you and along with that a big thank you to all of you for being here.

This is my second Diwali newsletter, which means this little recruiting gig has survived to see another day and none of this would have been possible without you all. And I am doubly grateful not just for surviving but for the work - I absolutely love helping startups build their teams and I find it extremely meaningful to put deserving talent in the teams that will unlock new levels of mastery in them.

Last Diwali I wrote about gratitude and saadhna - about giving thanks for the wealth we've already been given and responding to those gifts by becoming better at our craft. This year, I want to talk about what I've learned about scaling mastery. Year one was about proving the model works. Year two has been about understanding its limits - not to accept them, but to transcend them intelligently. I've learned that great service doesn't scale by just working harder or longer. It scales by building systems that amplify what you do best while automating what can be automated.

So here's what I'm building: Agentic recruiting systems that handle the mechanical heavy lifting - search, outreach, scheduling - leaving me free to focus on the one thing that actually matters and that agents genuinely can't do: recognizing talent. This is my saadhna right now. Learning to use AI as leverage in the truest sense. I already have an MCP that can search for candidates and it works beautifully. I haven't rolled it out broadly yet because I wanted to prove to myself first that I could use these tools to increase quality, not just quantity. If you're interested in trying it, let me know and I'll prepare it for a broader release.

My goal for next Diwali's newsletter is simple: serve meaningfully more clients and candidates without diluting quality. That's the puzzle I'm solving.

The alternative is hiring, and I'll get there eventually. But right now I want to push the limits of what's possible with agentic automation first. The question how far can one person go with AI? is just too interesting not to answer. That said, if you know someone who loves tech and is exceptional with people, I'd love to speak with them. Good tech recruiters who actually know their game are rarer than the engineers they're searching for.

For candidates, this means you'll see more variety in roles over the coming months as I scale - different specializations, different stages, different types of companies. For clients, it means I'm building the capacity to work with more of you without compromising on the deep engagement that makes this work meaningful.

Last year I wrote about gratitude for the gifts we've been given - the open source tools, the programming languages, the operating systems. This year I'm grateful for the new gift: AI that can extend our capabilities if we're willing to master it seriously. The people who treat these tools as shortcuts will get shortcut results. The people who approach them as a craft to be mastered will create something extraordinary.

I remain very bullish on Indian companies and Indian engineers building amazing things for the world. And I'm having a lot of fun helping y'all do this.
Have a great Diwali vacation so we can really kick ass in the new year.