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Stoa Digest #62: Life is easy.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy, not stressed depressed lemon zest!

Aug 29, 2022

It’s been a while since we Spotlit one of our fellows, so we had an incredible conversation with Rahul Maurya of Cohort 7.

🔦 Fellow Spotlight 🔦

How did you enter the startup ecosystem and met your co-founder?

I was prepping for JEE and I tanked it twice, so I took a gap year post my 12th board and it’s not very easy to take a break. I wanted to do something, so I joined this very young company that was started just a few months prior to my joining them. That was my introduction to work life. My journey goes back to my college days when I started my first job even before I started my first semester. I spent two and a half years in this company while pursuing my college. And then in my last year of college, I saw an internship in a newspaper and ended up applying for it. It was in Delhi University where there is a special unit called Design Innovation Center where they just started the center for Design Fellows to come and build products. I was hired as an intern and that’s where I met my co-founder.
We had a common mentor and that’s how we were introduced. My co-founder reached out to me one day and said, “we are building a website and you are good in design, you have been recommended by the mentor, and can you join us”. I liked designing and was looking for more internships so I joined them. After a few months, I came on board that company as a co-founder. More like he found his co-founder XD.
This is how I went into the startup world. But even before I joined the startup, I used to build websites. I was passionate about building websites. I used to create websites on my own. I created a website for students to download study material.

Rahul’s Pro-tip: Use these tools to make your Website design aesthetic- Sublime Text and Freepik.

What's your take on creator economy?

The creator economy in itself is a very broad term nowadays. It's a buzzword in a sense. If you create anything and put it over the internet, you become a content creator, a creator.
My journey in creator economy started when I started this app called CaptionPlus. This was a very basic idea back in 2018. Since the internet was all about photos then, I too went ahead with an idea for it. Every time you would upload photos on Instagram and you would search for captions, ask your friends for their captions, suggestions, etc. That’s where I came in, an app that would take your photo, put an algorithm and find that context, and find the suitable caption. A very contextual caption. This was my entry point into the creator economy

Who is a creator in the creator economy?

I think, a creator is someone or anyone who comes up with original ideas, and original content, and puts it out there not just for the money, but just for the passion for creation and for the benefit of the people at large. So if your motive is just to impart value through something you have created, then you are a creator.

What’s something Stoans are unlikely to know about you?

Something not a lot of people knows about me unless they stalk me is that I do a lot of poetry. I love writing Hindi poetry and usually, Instagram is my place for it.

P.S~ Go stalk him but let us make it easier for you: Rahul’s Poetry

What did you enjoy most about Stoa?

I have been following Stoa for a very very long time. I was about to apply for C4 but I somehow changed my mind. Then, I was all set to apply for C5 but missed the application submission deadline. Then I got into C6 but due to certain circumstances, deferred it to C7 and finally, here I am. So it has been a long journey of multiple steps. Stoa has been very beneficial for me in many ways. I joined Stoa because even though I had been in the startup space, it felt like something was missing. I don’t come from a business background and that was the crunch I was facing. Wanted to learn business fundamentals and meet a lot of new people from different backgrounds.

You’ll find Rahul here on Socials:

LinkedIn, Twitter

🐝 Community Buzz 🐝

Here’s to our winners from last week’s Quiz Night! The energy with which C8 was welcomed for their first Community Night was LIT!🔥

Congratulations Kunal, Aditi, Prerna, Pushkar, Akshay, and Kabir! Team synergy, hats off! 🙌🏻

Kudos to Tanzeel and Zoeb from C6 for putting the Zoom room on fire!🔥

FunDay on a SunDay in Mumbai really gave the community a huge blow of FOMO XD. With C8 folk’s first offline community meetup and mingling session, the bowling arena hit a new time record of fun and crazy memories.

Thanks to Kanika and Jigar from C6 for organizing this! 🥳

🍩 Community Drop 🍩

Launch your NFT & web3 Journey | 100% off for Stoans 🧑‍💻

‍asset.money is a portfolio tracking and asset management platform for NFT assets helping you aggregate dispersed collectible digital assets (a.k.a NFT) into a single place.

They offered an exclusive 100% off for all Stoans for three months. Use the personalized page and onboard your web3 ship.

Personalized Partnership Page: https://www.asset.money/partners/stoa

Coupon Code: ASSETXSTOA - 100% off on Asset Money Collector Plan Monthly Plan for 3 Months

🔥🔥 Community Sneak Peak 🔥🔥

Kaksha Session with Manoj and Abhishek (from C5) on Startup Valuations. So get your notebook and pen ready to enter into a world of startups and VCs on 2nd September, 8 PM onwards. To all startup founders, your next pitch is gonna be 10X more powerful post the session, we assure you!🔥

⏯ For Stoans by Stoans⏯

This week, our C7 folks have shared their vibe with y’all! Get hooked on it and max grateful to all C7 folks to set the week’s mood right!

😹👀Something to crack you up👀😹

Hasta la vista, fam!🥂

Stoa Digest