Stoa Digest #41: Here we go 🚀

Come with me, there's a world out there that we should see!

Mar 28, 2022

Last week we celebrated our Fourth Cohort graduating, and in the next few weeks we start onboarding our Seventh Cohort.

Stoa & Stoa’s Community is turning into a large & bustling city-centre, so in an attempt to make it slightly smoother for you to find a couple things, we’re going to launch a few changes.

Starting next week, we’re going to split up the Digest into two bits.
One including the Editorial, Spotlight & Announcements that will still go out every Monday.
And the other will be a weekly roll-up of all the recommendations on our Discord and all the activity taking place on it.

Why?
For now, the Digest gets a bit long, and it very, very often gets clipped, which ruins the experience for our fellows. So, we thought this might do both aspects of it justice.

The other big change is on Discord. Not to give away too much, but we’ll be changing a few things around on Discord, obviously we’ll send you additional details before we do - so keep your eyes peeled. 👀

And last but not the least, we’re switching around a few things on the community events front too, you will receive additional announcements for this in the next few days!

If you have suggestions, we have a channel for you to drop them into - do feel free!

Fellow Spotlight

How did you find out about Stoa?

It was all actually very well-timed.
After a long time, I’d restarted using my twitter and I’d found out about Stoa cause of Raj’s announcement of Cohort 1 back then.
This was when Raj had tweeted out about how MBAs were not very financially affordable for everyone - which obviously caught my eye back then.
But more than that, there was an alum from Cohort 2 that I just so happened to be following who was also a really good friend from college. He tweeted out one of his infamous notes after their inaugural with Gagan Biyani - and that’s when it caught my eye. That was Varun Pimplé from Cohort 2, and because he was a really good friend - the first thing I did was obviously give him a ring. He indulged all my questions and explained everything that was going on within Stoa, and that’s what prompted me to apply for Cohort 3.

Back then, I obviously asked, “So what do I get out of this?” and his main response to me was, “You’ve just gotta trust the process”

What do you remember standing out to you about Stoa before you joined?

“I remember that back then, someone from Cohort 2 had retweeted out this image where everyone was talking in the background. That was a screenshot of the Amphi - and the topic was Cred, which was quite intriguing to me, because we were still right in the middle of Covid. So to think that there were groups of people who would get together to talk about things like Cred - that was a revelation to me.
I won’t ever really forget when I got our Discord invites for the first time, and the moment I joined Discord it was an intense sensory overload. Like, every message or thread felt like it was a conversation I was not a part of. To make matters worse, I’d work US time zones, so by the time I'd caught up to what was happening, it was way past over, so I never really contributed or anything.
Back then I gave myself a lot of grief for being super conventional and comparing myself to everyone else in the Community, but then once I started talking to people is when I realised, ‘Okay, it’s not that bad, you’re not that far behind. Everyone seemed to be going through similar things.’”

What’s something you learnt about yourself at Stoa?

“When coaching was going on I discovered that I undersold myself a lot, and my peers from Cohort 3 as well, made it very clear in telling me to not do it. So that’s something I try to not do, that Stoa left me definitely impacted me with.”

After doing Cohort 3, obviously I used to get a lot of questions about, ‘What does Stoa do for you?’

“But my best answer to that has always been -
‘It does what you want it to do for you’.
Something I realised because of how hectic life used to get for me, because I’d finish work at 4am and then have to wake up at 9am for Case Weekends - was that if you don’t interact outside of learning weekends & community nights with other people within the Community, then you’re missing out on a key ingredient of the Stoa experience.
‘If you dont put yourself out there, and make yourself uncomfortable, you cannot expect to be seen, or spoken to, or spoken about.
I’ve always been huge on lurking at Stoa, I'm a huge lurker, the time zone differences didnt help either - but if it wasn't Community Nights or Discord, I made sure to be at the Meetups”.

What's something you enjoy doing that people wouldn’t know about?

“I thoroughly enjoy listening to people’s stories, it really energises me.
Mostly because either I can draw parallels from them or be introduced to something very interesting I likely wouldn't have known before.
I love it when people sprinkle their stories with the most mundane details, it gives you so much more to go on, so I try and pay enough attention to draw those additional details out of someone telling their story.”

What do you think you took away from Stoa?

“I think my biggest unlearning was just how to start things. Under normal circumstances, you think of researching something, and having all your facts & data ready before you start.
Stoa sort of taught me to not wait for things to happen, but to make them happen, which essentially translates into, at some point you’re going to have to stop researching and start doing.
Only when you start doing do you learn to iterate and improve, but without starting at all, you stand fairly low chances of success.”

You’ll find Reehan here on Socials:

LinkedIn, Twitter

Announcements

Tomorrow night we host a Game Night for the Community, do drop by if you’d like some healthy competition and in the bargain want to just take a break from the bustle of work and the week just having started - this’ll be your little break from everything going on.
This Thursday we have Praveen Dorna, joining us to talk about his Founder’s journey at a Fireside Chat with the Community. If you’re a founder yourself, looking to be one, or just want to learn more about what the journey of a founder is like - there’s never been a better place!

AND

On Friday we have Aditya Kaushik taking over the Stoa Radio to walk you down the memory lane of English Classics from the 70s to the 90s.
He is still recovering from his Swimathon and looking for a co-host, though.
So if you’re inclined to also host a Listening Session(LBTL) and like this week’s theme - do get in touch with Nicaia or him!