Stoa Digest #12: It's been a long weekend,
Without you my friend.
Highlight of the Week
The Bangalore fellows have been planning their meet-up for the last whole month, so I think we can all collectively sigh when we say, “FINALLY, THEY MET UP!!!”
If you haven’t been keeping track of the meet-ups channel on our server at all, it was like watching a Bollywood movie plot of friends trying to plan their Goa trip.
Initially there were multiple ideas on where to go, but then Tayyab asked for recommendations to try in the city, and that was it - he(and all of us) must’ve got about 50+ golden recommendations that day itself.
That thread is a complete goldmine.
Then in TRUE, ‘Luru fashion, one distinguished individual brought up needing to have beer at the meet-up, and obviously nobody disagreed, and so they continued to deliberate for another two weeks on where it is they should go.
It was completely opportune that Bangalore standalone, ‘The Permit Room’ was also closing this weekend, so it seemed like the best spot for a meet-up of foodies!
The Delhi meet-up was spurred around one major factor: Mr. Visahan requesting he would like it to be held post his arrival, for the first time, in the vicinity of his college campus, since he started college.
His wishes were granted, because it was also completely coincidental that this was also a weekend Saumya was to travel down on work & brought Shivam down with him from Kanpur as well.
On his way managing to convince Abhay & Ujwal to come for the meet-up, and it was also just happenstance that two Maharashtra natives - Ishaan & Mira were also in town for it as well.
What are the chances even - quite a serendipitous meet-up we’d say! Wouldn’t you?
Where do you think we’ll see the next meet-up now?
Let’s Rewind: Last Week at Stoa 📆
We didn’t have enough space to include all the goodness of last week’s sessions in last week’s Digest, so here is one more from then.
If you’ve ever wondered about
“What a Sales Mindset is” - this one was for you.
Anand Subramaniam had a session with our fellows, explaining many concepts that provide insight into the mind of a salesperson.
One of which was: “You win, only when your customer wins, and vice-versa.”
Always come to a sales conversation - but also absolutely any conversation - having done your research, but also knowing how to hold a conversation with the person you are speaking to.
If you’re a fellow in the Community right now, we strongly recommend checking out the recording of this session, you will find immense value in it, whether you are even remotely interested in a sales background, or not.
Career Wednesdays w/ Tanmaya Jain from InFeedo
Tanmaya brought his most energetic self to a Career Wednesday with us, and gave us some brilliant insight into being a founder for an analytics based SaaS company.
Fresh out of college, he was looking for a product he could develop & work on - only to find hordes of people complaining about working at their jobs on a Monday morning, and it pained him for this to be such a universal problem, also while seeming solvable.
This prompted Tanmaya to sit down with hundreds of Heads of HR to understand what their problems were, so he could help solve them better.
Eventually, his research in the space, resulted in the solution of an AI chatbot to help combat employee engagement, satisfaction & idea-boarding on a larger scale.
Their explanation & pitch for InFeedo even gathered them multiple points of interest on India’s version of Shark Tank - ‘The Vault’.
InFeedo & their team has been hustling to improve the HR landscape for a couple years now, and their persistence is clear proof of how good something can be if you catch a wave early enough & work hard to swim with it.
Their tenacity even opened a door for them at YC in 2020.
A small takeaway from his session with us: Something to remember if you’re a manager, is that your biggest sign of disengagement is silence - which also implies indifference, especially if the performance of your employees/team is also dipping. This is what you should be remedying to fix, ultimately.
Communicating with Gravitas
If you didn’t get to attend Thursday’s session, it pains us to say that you missed a really good one.
Bharat Babbar, theatre aficionado, instructor, behavioural consultant & communicatively-skilled artisan came and ran a workshop for us on communicating to make a difference & leave a mark.
Here’s an exercise we remember from his session: stand in front of a mirror & smile your BIGGEST smile at yourself, and then tell yourself, “I had a fantastic day”.
Now give yourself about 3s and change your expression to one of deep frowning, and tell yourself the same 5 words, “I had a fantastic day”.
Which felt better? The former, yeah?
Notice how you accept & then react to your emotions, because they matter more than you think. How you present yourself in any situation is strongly reflective of what you’re thinking of & about, at that point in time.
If you have to walk into an interview, you want to feel confident, so holding yourself inwards, closed up & hunched over is definitely not presenting that individual to your interviewer, instead - stand tall, speak confidently and look them in the eye like you have no reason to back down.
You have only one life, and there will only ever be one individual you, own it the best way you can!
Announcements 🗣
Another month has come & is now very soon drawing to an end.
There is a cohort coming to a close, but we won’t name-call, to save them the reality check.
If you haven’t got in touch with other fellows in your cohort, there has never been a better time than now.You should hopefully not be having much trouble with. “I dont know what to have a conversation with them about”. Not anymore, at least.
Throw yourself into the deep-end, we guarantee you will swim well in a world of fellows that have just been through 6m of a shared experience with you.BUT - if you still would like some help, check out Edition 2 for the Conversation Starter questions we’d created a while ago, for you guys to use!
Over the last week you’ve probably seen a fair few names pop up on the server, and that’s because our fellows from Cohort 4 have started dropping in.
We changed it up a little bit this time, so you’ll find their introductions on Circle, but it works exactly the same way - hype them up to build out your network.You’re also guaranteed to find some extremely cool fellows coming in, so go have a 👀
Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂
Yasaswy Challa - Aug 31st, Tuesday
Ashitaa Jha - Sep 1, Wednesday
Suraj Desai - Sep 2, Thursday
Community Buzz 🐝
For Stoans by Stoans ✍🏼📚⏯
Books 📚
Choose Yourself - A book on remaining sane, much needed during the pandemic.
Ready Player One - comes highly recommended by Shonik & Pranav
Watchtime 🎥
How do you sell your best ideas? Get better at it here
We seem to have a couple NBA fans in the house. Whose a Jrue Holiday fan here?
Blogs & Resources 🤓
Weekend Binges 🍿🥤
There was also much chatter about Manga & Anime that you can find here.
Meme Wars 🥲
This week’s shiny new winner of Best Meme goes to …………
Chintan Bhavishi!!
He may not have any meet-ups close-by yet, but he does have fomo, and also delivered quite the caption for his meme.
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
“Fellow living in tier-3 city open meetup channel:”
Wow! Loved reading this one 🤩