Stoa Digest #26: Digestable?

Or not?

Dec 6, 2021

From the Editorial Room

The seed of the Digest was planted 6 months ago, because we saw our Discord provide answers to problems we hadn’t anticipated.
From what show to watch, music to listen to, or even what Crypto to invest in - there was always something to talk about.

Ever since Cohort 2 joined our Discord, we were very aware of ‘Discord Overwhelm’ being a very real feature of our server.
So it felt only right to document all the wealth of information that was being shared, so those overwhelmed could find it in the Digest - one place.
It started with being a recap of all events that had happened through the week, and a note on them - which ended up being scrapped so our Digest wouldn’t get clipped in mails. Hence were born the Editorials. (Our mails still get clipped though so 😖)

As the Community got larger, we saw a lot of fellows completely unknown to everyone else - giving way to the Fellow Feature.

It started with a look into the kind of personalities our fellows had, and who they were outside of Stoa, but if you’ve been keeping track, that too has had a few iterations. Last week’s having been most recent. Which one have you ended up liking the most?

Fellow Spotlight

Why did you choose to join Stoa?

Something I definitely wanted to learn was the business jargon that most people around me seemed to know. A secondary motivator of course was just the fact that an MBA seemed to be the next step to take when you've done Engineering - so Stoa was the best place for me to receive an initiation into that world of Business as well.

What was the nicest interaction you remember having with a Stoan?

The Goa trip changed so much for me. I recall being intimidated by so many people in my own cohort. Once you met everyone though, it's like the setting of everyone meeting each other for the first time ever, automatically turned us all into human plush toys aka softies. It was like we'd all known each other for years, and not even remotely like it was the first time I was meeting this group of 30+ individuals.

What's something you did with the Community that you didn’t think you would?

In the beginning when we'd joined, one of the things Aditya kept saying was "Be Vulnerable" - to gain value from the Community. It's an unlearning - you don't necessarily walk around being vulnerable in present day society - in fact, a lot of our lives are manicured to look like we know what we're doing. Sharing your vulnerabilities within a setting like Stoa was like opening a door to unlimited learning. The more vulnerable you get, the more you learn.

What are your favourite parts of working in a team (at Stoa)?

Some of the few things that are noticeable about how teams at Stoa work are:

Everyone comes from different backgrounds - it's such a melting pot of people.
It's so competitive, but in a very healthy way, because it's not to win, but to know.
Each individual in the community is knowledgeable about such a vast array of things, that you can find out about almost anything you want to.
Ownership to do things is through the roof.
Stoa allows you to be bold in a way not many other places do.

How do you get out of having a bad mood when it comes to work?

Fitness is my hobby. So now it's where I disappear to when I need to mentally reset and tap out of a situation. It really helps!

What’s something a Stoan is likely to not know about you?

I'm a personal finance junkie. Splitwise is my best friend, I have no others.

Here’s where you’ll find Siyara on Social Media: On LinkedIn / On Twitter

Announcements 📣 📣

🤫🎅🏼 At lunchtime today there was an email sent out to all fellows of Stoa. As the end of the year rolls around, there is a certain jolly man on a sled, who slides down chimneys with presents. Sometimes he doesnt make it to everyone's houses though (since some of us dont even have chimneys*)*, so we thought we'd help him out. Do sign up to surprise someone & spread some cheer!! 🤫🎅🏼
✅ ✍🏼 We've sent you a short, short form to find out if you actually enjoy reading the Digest, or if you have ideas for what we should do differently with it. Please do send in your feedback, because this is a newsletter made for Stoans, so if you're not enjoying it, then it's pretty pointless in it's existence. What changes we can incorporate, we will, happily! ✅ ✍🏼
🦁💂🏼 Everytime Stoans have led our Community interactions they’ve been things that have never been replicable in experience - in other words, B-E-A-UUUTIFUL!
Something we wanted to initiate is for fellows to be able to build the Community Experience out alongside us. If you’re simply someone that enjoys networking, and/or has wanted to host/run events at Stoa - there’s never been a brighter time to 🌟 🌟
Check your 📤 mails for this!
🎓3️⃣ In the whirlwind that has been Diwali, their Goa meetup and then Wedding Season we don’t think Cohort 3 has recovered to know they graduate in 2 weeks! 🎓3️⃣

Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂

6th - Akshay Baskaran

7th - Gunavina Mehta

8th - Aditya Raja

10th - Dileep Sai Krishna, Pravin Kadam

11th - Rashi Hajar, Shaurya Aggarwal

Community Buzz

The Brewers & Their Brews

Shonik & Saumya made quite the resource for absolutely anyone in the job market. Spread it far & wide like fairy dust, because that's what it is!

Saumya Saxena @saxenasaheb

⚡⚡Launch alert ⚡⚡ Remember looking for jobs as a fresher? We were all clueless right. Introducing JobStack: Resources, how-to guides, trackers, and, dashboards to make job hunting easy. We're live on product hunt: Come say Hi! producthunt.com/posts/jobstack Retweet/QT/Comment

producthunt.comJobstack - Job hunting Made easy | Product HuntStructure your job search process: 📈 Personal Resume Builder with 15+ templates 😃 Easy Networking Guides with 3000+ shortlisted profiles ✍🏻 Ready to use Personal CRM for over 16 roles

If you haven't heard, the Prodcast hit some milestones that they found out about on #SpotifyWrapped - find them here

srinidy @srinidyR

Creating content for 527mins to 10K listen is a huge feat!! Huge shoutout to @aishashok14 for curating most of these episodes. The onetime Spotify wrapper really helped us see our growth! We have a special year end wrapper coming along! Stay tuned! 🔥 #SpotifyWrapped

theprodcast @TheProdcastt

Ending the year on a good note for sure! ♥️ Looking forward to everything in store for us, and thanks to our listeners and guests for making TheProdcast’s 2021 success. 🔥 #spotifywrapped2021 #SpotifyWrapped https://t.co/xDavyg644v

This week on Discord: Best Discord Messages This Week

Event announcements

Club Announcements

Between the Lines (the book club) has Antifragile on their reading list for this Month.
If you’d like to be a member of the club, feel free to reach out to Manoj Kumar or Siddharth Ramachandran from C4 on Discord!
Zero to One (the entrepreneurship club) hosted a group of founders that are members of the club themselves, and discussed a few things with them:
- Zeroing-in on a business idea to pursue
- The difficulties they face when leaving a secure job and starting up
- The importance of distribution in a startup
- Navigating through uncertainties and failures
If you’re looking for an invite to the club, feel free to reach out to Rishabh Sonker, Shiva or Ramaswamy R from Cohort 4, on Discord!