Season 3

Summary

I have hosted First Principles for four years and 58 episodes, and I have never once stopped to look at it. This episode is me doing that. There is no guest. It runs about fourteen minutes, and it ends with something I need from you.

Season 3 started with Vidit Aatrey of Meesho in April 2025 and ended with Mukesh Bansal in August 2026. A lawyer, a banker, a restaurateur and a venture capitalist were guests on a show I had built for founders. The businesses were trucks, fish, kitchens and bikes. And my questions moved away from fundraising and towards where a person came from and how they decide. Then I go back to seasons 1 and 2, from Kabeer Biswas in August 2022 to Manav Garg in May 2024, and show how the exceptions of season 2 became the categories of season 3.

Season 4 widens the guest list on purpose: musicians, athletes, actors, writers and scientists, alongside the founders you come for. The founders were easy for me to find because they live in my world. The people I want next mostly don't. So I am asking you for help to find them. The survey below is how.

The survey

https://theken.typeform.com/fp-season-4 · five minutes if you tap, eight if you write

I ask nine things, in this order. Describe First Principles to me in your own words. Pick the season 3 conversations you found most interesting (all seventeen are listed, so you don't have to remember). Tell me what you think the bar is for getting invited onto this show today, before I change it. Name who you want as a guest in season 4, and what you would want me to ask them. Tell me whether you would join a small closed group of listeners I can ask for feedback more often. How and where you listen. How much of the archive you have heard, and whether you go back. A question I should start asking every guest. And anything else that would make the show better.

I read every answer. The season 4 guest list is being built from what you send, and I will share the names you mention most in a newsletter edition before the season starts.

Chapters

• Not a regular episode: no guest, and a look back

• Season 3, April 2025 to August 2026: seventeen conversations, Vidit Aatrey to Mukesh Bansal

• The guests: a lawyer, a banker, a restaurateur, a VC

• Trucks, fish, kitchens and bikes: what the businesses were made of

• I had it backwards: the warm-up questions were the real interview

• The thing I have to own: one woman guest in season 3, and she invited herself

• Season 1, August 2022 to July 2023: twenty-two episodes, never missed a fortnight

• Season 2, August 2023 to May 2024: the exceptions that became season 3

• The eleven-month gap, and the two-hour format

• Season 4: what stays, and who else gets invited

• Why I can't find these people alone: the survey

• Thank you, and the archive is open

The seventeen conversations of season 3

Ep 42 Vidit Aatrey, Meesho · Ep 43 Sahil Barua, Delhivery · Ep 44 Manish Sabharwal, Teamlease · Ep 45 Narayan Subramaniam, Ultraviolette · Ep 46 Anand Jain, CleverTap · Ep 47 Rahul Matthan, Trilegal · Ep 48 Deepak Abbot, Indiagold · Ep 49 Aloke Bajpai, Ixigo · Ep 50 Rohit Chennamaneni, Darwinbox · Ep 51 Kalpana Morparia · Ep 52 Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh · Ep 53 Ankit Nagori, Curefoods · Ep 54 Lal Chand Bisu, Kuku FM · Ep 55 Riyaaz Amlani, Impresario · Ep 56 Saahil Goel, Shiprocket · Ep 57 Kanwal Singh, Fireside Ventures · Ep 58 Mukesh Bansal

All seventeen are in the archive. 

This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.
Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.
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