Sanjay Krishna

The Kind of Company I Want to Build or Work For

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what the right place for me to work actually looks like. 1_PkBRVCu-nSpudoH_I5dHOA Every time I open Twitter or LinkedIn, I'm bombarded with posts about hustling; people my age working till 2 a.m., living off pizza, romanticizing exhaustion. The first thought that usually hits me is: am I doing something wrong?

Trust me, I've tried hustling. And I'll confidently say this: even though I was putting out value for the company, personally I was only a husk of a person. Weekends were spent cooped up at home, recovering. Monday would arrive and I'd go back again. Hustling started to feel like the only purpose. I started to look forward to the next weekday. I felt like I had achieved a win.

That's when I began questioning what actually matters to me.

This might sound philosophical, but the odds of me being born were incredibly low, probability-wise. I don't know much about what happens after death, so this is the only life I know I get. In that context, some things feel obvious.

My health is important to me. My family is important to me. Friendships. Hanging out with friends. Deep conversations. If and when I have kids in the future, I want to spend time with them. And yes, I want to do impactful work.

I don't want to escape work. I want to do meaningful work, on my own terms. Work that creates real impact and pays me well.

For a long time, I thought this way of thinking was foolish. Because everywhere I looked, hustling was being pushed down my throat.

Reading helped. Let My People Go Surfing was an eye-opener. I went down a rabbit hole after that book and discovered companies that operate very differently β€” quietly, intentionally, unconventionally.

Yvon Chouinard writes:

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won't happen if you compromise away the entire process.

That line resonated with me so hard. He talks about people who pay to get to the top of Everest, without ever actually enjoying or going through the journey.

Somewhere along the way, ambition itself seems to have warped. As DHH puts it very bluntly:

Part of the problem seems to be that nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have to fucking own the universe. It's not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. It's not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them.

Why does everything have to be domination? Why is enough never enough?

My needs in life are different. I want to do net positive to the world. I want to leave the world a little better than I found it. I want to experience nature, learn new things, take care of my body, and live a healthy life in every sense of the word. I don't see why that should be dismissed as utopian. And if those are my priorities, then the kind of company I build or join has to reflect them.

This isn't a rejection of ambition. It's a rejection of shallow ambition.

I am ambitious about building things that last. About depth over speed. About compounding impact over explosive growth that collapses under its own weight. I'm willing to grow slower if it means growing without burning people out. I'm willing to say no to the scale that requires pretending humans are interchangeable. That tradeoff isn't naΓ―ve. It's deliberate.

On exits

This is where the idea of exits starts bothering me. Not exits themselves, but existing only for the sake of exiting.

"No exit strategy" doesn't mean being anti-growth. It means we're not building a company around an exit. The exit isn't the priority or even the concern.

What's better than an exit strategy is a long-term mission the company genuinely cares about. Building something that can outlast its founders. Creating something of real value.

Most companies I see around me feel like animals that are fed and taken care of until they reach peak value and then they're either sold off or eaten by a bigger animal.

Again, the issue isn't exiting. The issue is exiting as the purpose.

Amir from Doist puts it clearly:

It's easy to see why people want an exit: growing startups is incredibly stressful and an exit (especially through an acquisition) is a fast way to end this stress and become wealthy in the process.

To solve the stress factor it's important to focus on building a company and a company culture that's sustainable. For example, not overworking people, not hiring too quickly, not overspending, having flexible vacations, etc. Basically, trying to create a company that promotes employee wellbeing and happiness.

There are companies doing this β€” Doist, Patagonia, Zerodha. And honestly, it makes me happy and relieved knowing that companies like this exist and operate. They have long tenures, deep ownership, and low churn. They prove that you don't need to treat humans like batteries to build a massive business.

I could work there, create impact, and still have a life outside work. That's not accidental. It's because the founders want the same thing.

I don't know if hustle culture extracts more short-term value from people. Maybe it does. But what's the point? There's a line I once read that stuck with me: your kids will be the only ones who remember that you worked late.

If people are well paid, respected, and genuinely happy, why wouldn't they contribute effectively?

Another quote of DHH's I keep coming back to that captures this feeling perfectly:

I wanted a life beyond work. Hobbies, family, and intellectual stimulation and pursuits beyond Hacker News, what the next-next-next JavaScript framework looks like, and how we can optimize our signup funnel.

I wanted to embrace the constraints of a roughly 40-hour work week and feel good about it once it was over. Not constantly thinking I owed someone more of my precious twenties and thirties. I only get those decades once β€” shit if I'm going to sell them to someone for a bigger buck at a later day.

I don't know how else to end this except plainly.

The company I want to build β€” or work for β€” solves a real problem. It trusts its employees. It is ambitious, but not extractive. It optimizes for durability, not domination. It creates a net positive impact. And it thinks in hundred-year timelines.

Maybe that does sound utopian. I'm okay with that.

References and inspirations