Stoa Digest #02: What kept you bored this week?
If you like doing something, keep doing it consistently.
Highlight of the Week
Dedication 🤝 Curiosity
Last Sunday we had Mastermind Marketer, Sairam Krishnan, come talk to us about his experience working on projects with Freshworks and Wingify before finally settling in a marketing role with Accel.
Going to safely admit that it was thoroughly enjoyed by all our fellows, so if you missed it, you can find a recording of it 📹 here.
Let’s Rewind: Last Week at Stoa 📆
Everyone of our fellows now knows the changes we'll be enforcing with regard to the Program Schedule, July onwards. BIG MOVES. 🏋🏽
TL;DR We're revamping our program structure based on our learnings + feedback from Cohort 02, to deliver an effective learning experience, better outcomes & build a stellar community during your journey at Stoa School.
Combined Marketing Assignment Review by Aditya & Raj
Aditya & Raj found that there was much to be learnt from your peers when it came to the Marketing Assignments last week, so we indulged in some synchronous assignment feedback for our Cohort 2 fellows.
Business Landscape in the Middle East
Anurag Srivastava, ex-Delhiite, current Omani, ran our first session by a Cohort 3 fellow on the Business boom in the Middle East. It was on how their economies are expanding beyond their dependence on crude oil. Something to remember from this discussion was, the Middle East has deep pockets, so we can expect pretty big investments into Tech & the obvious onset of the startup boom in these countries. Brace yourselves!
Forging Relationships within Stoa
And outside, don’t worry! 🪢
Cohort 3 starts soon, and they're trying to figure out ways to interact with the rest of their cohort before we have Orientation, which is in July.
So, we’re leaving them a curation of some questions they can use to break the ice with their fellow fellows.
Cohort 2 & Alum, If you have better ones - do leave them in the comments!!
Pro tip: If you want to make this as friendly as possible, use the doc, highlight your interesting questions, and then let your partner pick theirs.
This will make it tonnes easier to find common topics of interest & conversation.
Before we go, though, we'll leave you with this:
It's only awkward in the beginning because you dont know of interests/commonalities that are shared by both parties.
Once you find one particular interest, or a bunch of them, expect flowing conversation and the forging of a friendship!
Announcements 📢
Community
For those of you that are new to Discord, especially Stoa's - Akshay completely understands your pain point, and created a bot that'll save all your bookmarked posts to a Notion doc, so you never have to go scroll-hunting again. It's called UniMarker, and all you have to do to activate it, is:
Use the "🦄" emoji on a message on Discord, and then it’ll work it’s magic!!
Glow Ups ✨
🥳 Nihal & Abhinav led Apna's PR effort from the front, landing them a cool billboard in Times Square for their Series B raise, this past week!! 🥳
🥳 This last week, Akshay's bot also got noticed by Balaji, and was selected as one of the best, winning him $100USD from the man himself!! 🥳
🥳 Rahul Ranganathan is joining as APM at Flashprep! 🥳
Bro, treat? 🎂
Manvendra Singh Rathore - 23rd June
Siddharth Rao - 27th June
Feel free to slide into their DMs, shout them out, and just make them feel special on their birthdays, this Wednesday & Sunday, respectively!!
Community Buzz 🐝
Another week, another list of curations from our blazing ☄️ Discord server.
Chintan is experimenting with a No-code project using Webflow & Figma. He's given himself 21-25 days to complete it, but would like an Accountability Buddy who checks-in with him once a week.
Aniruddha, helped build a No-code app using WEM-APAC, for Vaccination Drives being handled by one of the biggest hospital chains in India - he didn't divulge more details, but you can ask him.
Akshay asked for a guide on using Emojis to improve engagement, and Vikrant and Anshul, really sent some great tips!! 😎☄️🤩
An example of finding commonalities: Vikrant sending us this article on Potata chips that Rahul had a Snackie Story on.
Twitter Gang! 🚀🚀🚀
You already know Sairam came to talk to us on Sunday, Purvi summarised it for us all, here. 🐦
Tanay documents his ideas here on teaching the young to handle their finances.
Have you been looking for super impactful quotes? Lucky you, Ishika to the Rescue with Rumi!! 👁
Linking-In:
Rengarajan still going strong on LinkedIn. ✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼
Mathew wrote about how Design intersects with Writing. 👨🏻💻
Been looking to learn about Crypto? Well, we're lucky we have direct access to Vikrant, but you'll find him giving away free advice on it here.
Animesh has been sending his thoughts out into the world. 🧠🌏
For Stoans by Stoans ✍🏼📚⏯
Books:
What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell, a recommendation from Vikrant
A thread ranging a number of books.
Watchtime 🎥
Ryan Reynolds, the man behind 'The Vasectomy' - is a great marketer, here's more proof.
For those of you that don't know how Match & him are related, he recently joined the board of Match - the online dating giant that owns Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge AND Match.Sameer recommends you go watch Mr. Amanna making his way around the city eating the best food in Bangalore here.
Cricket fans - something for you.
As per the recommendation received from Ishan, "for the right Saturday vibes"
'Luru represent: Hanumankind and Parimal Shais about the best food combo ever from Vikrant.
Weekend Binges:
In The Heights - Shonik has a way you can watch it.
Tweets to engage with:
Julian Shapiro writes about how building the first few fans of your brand will be your best Marketing tactic.
Sameer found us, in his own words, a complete goldmine on Branding.
Here, Mario Gabriele, broke down the key takeaways he found from Stripe's highly inspiring keynote.
Dickie Bush has become a leader in writing, giving away some of the best writing values ever.
A productivity framework that someone actually uses.
Blogs & Resources:
Contra ran a survey with over 10,000 freelancers to determine the future of work.
In Paul Graham's apt words, "Arguing online is only incidentally addictive."
Been thinking of pre-IPO buying & selling of shares? Well, Pratyush to the rescue!
Second position-ers are rare braggers, except in this case.
A blog on Voice & Tone, right after Branding Week from Mailchimp.
Bernard Arnault's lessons on running a business.
LiveStreaming Ecommerce? Here's how it works.
Here's a substack explaining the cryptocurrency that's 'Made in India'.
Meme Wars 🥲
The Meme Wars were quite active this week, actually.
This week’s shiny new winner of Best Meme goes to …………
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
Ayush Thakrar
You should remember which his meme was, we think.
To end, we’ll leave you with this:
See you next Monday!
Keep reacting, keep sharing, keep posting, keep learning!