Remove The Brake
A hard week, one good half of football, and a reminder that maybe the whole point is to take the brake off and play your way.
Karan Thoughts I liked enough to let escape.
Notes, half-formed theories, and small things I wanted to remember without making a whole performance out of them.
Latest thought
July 2026 Nobody Else's Problems
I have been building software nobody else will ever use, and ignoring the little voice that asks if it could be a product. The ignoring turns out to be the interesting part.
More thoughts
I'd Take One Fifth The Money
I was building an early customer validation system when I realized I did not really care about the customer I was meant to understand. Maybe the answer is not artist over market, or market over artist, but choosing a customer whose world you actually want to enter.
My Brain Needs A Good Wash
I tried to brainwash myself out of the billionaire chase. Not in a cult way. More like building a tiny belief laundrette for the parts of my mind still waiting for permission to relax.
Who Said Learning Has To Be Boring?
I asked AI to teach me Jung better than most psychologists, then noticed the old desire to be exceptional hiding inside a simple afternoon of curiosity.
It Feels Like Cheating
I made writing for this site so easy it started to feel suspicious. But maybe the cheating is not in using AI. Maybe the cheating is removing the friction between noticing something and leaving a trace of it.
The Big Fucking Monkey Game
On holiday, I tried tearing down every authority figure I had absorbed and ended up with one useful thought: everyone is a monkey playing games.
I Refused The Ritual, Then Invented My Own
I refused to get into a temple purification pond full of fish, then immediately used AI and philosophy to make myself feel better about it.
Very Very Fucking Simple
On holiday, I kept thinking about the learning app and realized the plan might be annoyingly simple: serve 20 to 50 people well, prove the loop, then scale what works.
The Status Game I Still Play
At lunch, I noticed a small status game still running in me: the urge to prove intelligence, taste, depth, and maybe even how little I care about status.
Being Weird Is The Moat
AI is making copying faster, cheaper, and more inevitable. So maybe the moat is not just execution. Maybe it is attention, taste, and a company having a flavour that can only come from the authentic nature of its leadership.
A Permissionless Portfolio Of Playful Rubbish
I thought I was learning AI agents. But after a week of getting my hands dirty, the real thing I noticed was stranger: maybe the business bottleneck is no longer permission, capital, or even me.
I Was Being Cheap With Intelligence
Watching Y Combinator talk about “token maxing” made me realize I was still using AI with a scarcity mindset. If intelligence is becoming abundant, the real bottlenecks are no longer tokens or effort, but aim, taste, review, and iteration.
We Need To Forget How We Worked
The interface for work is shifting from clicking around apps to expressing clear intent into connected systems. If that is true, productivity becomes less about operating software and more about thinking clearly enough to direct it.
Just keep hitting
Learning starts to change when you stop watching from the stands and get back on the court.