MANORATHA

In 2023, I faced a set of choices – to bootstrap a company in the AI/ML space that would focus broadly on misinformation/deception (think deep fakes, AI based phishing, viral misinformation) or to retire early to spend time with my parents who are almost 90 years old.

They have a rich life in India and while they enjoyed coming to the US, they had always resisted the idea of migrating away from India. Given their age, it was harder for them to travel every year and when I visited, it was harder to leave each time.

It wasn’t a very hard decision to make. Doing yet another startup while tempting would not add as much to my life. I was fortunate to have the means to make that decision – not everyone does. So my wife and I moved to India in December 2023 where we make our home with my parents. My mother still runs the kitchen, they still drive on occasion and both retain a zest for culture, travel and life that I can only hope to emulate as I grow older.

So far I’ve resisted the urge to plunge into work full-time (some tempting invitations to run incubators, join startups, etc) and it has been an interesting shift to say the least. I continue to mentor startups and help the odd startup from Skydeck at UC Berkeley and am on some VC/Hedge Fund type advisory boards.

I’ve been able to spend more time reading, working on toy design and am slowly learning to introduce myself in “future tense” rather than “past tense”. “I am an aspiring automata/toy designer” vs. “I was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.”.