july 2026
I don’t think I’ve written a piece longer than a hundred words without using GenAI for at least three years. I also think that I’ve not written any piece (in the last three years) that is a hundred percent my work — everything in college had some degree of external direction or control. So this is going to be a little project of my own.
Every week I will (try my best to) come back here and write about what’s been on my mind (for the last week) in a way that may be helpful for the thirteen people who end up subscribing and inevitably forgetting about their email being in a directory I glare at five times a week. Enough about what this is and why I am doing it. Here’s a little bit about myself:
I’m Joshua Gupta. Some people call me Josh, some j-oh-shua, my late great-grandmother called me चौंतुआ ( pronounced tʃɔntuə) ,and my freshman year roommates call me Goop. I’m originally from Bhopal, India, a small town (by Indian standards) in central India. The only thing my city’s apparently known for is bad food and a terrible (world’s worst, even) industrial disaster from forty years ago. I hope I can change that in the next few years (or decades). I was born eighteen-something years ago to parents, and a much larger family, that loves me beyond measure.
I wrapped up high-school in Bhopal and graduated with a group of friends I love dearly. Once that was out of the way, I headed to Harvard University in the fall, where I just wrapped up my first year. My first year was quite eventful. I never thought I’d belong amongst a group of arguably the smartest kids in the world. Every other person I knew had done something insane — 2x IMO medalist, cured cancer (literally), or founded a startup worth millions. For a normal kid from Bhopal with no notable achievements of such scale, this was quite overwhelming. Nevertheless, I never felt not-welcome. I made friends I imagine attending my marriage (with a girl I also met there!), became a “frat-boy,” took somewhat challenging classes, turned into a finance-bro and back, travelled to places on a whim, obtained a DJ board I have not yet learned how to use, and a multitude more things than I can remember.
Perhaps, the most memorable part of my first-year was the last week of it. Come April, having had the profound realization that my life was worth more than slaving away for a Goldman Sachs internship, I decided that it was time to build something. In lieu of every great friendship coming to a point where you’re forced to start a business together, I joined hands with a friend, brother even, to start a startup. Idea to execution took two weeks and we started eye-ing the big boys of the San Francisco venture ecosystem hoping someone would trust two dudes who had no idea what they were doing with half a million dollars to build something that changes the world.
Lo and behold, someone flew us out to San Francisco to meet with them a day before my economics final. A 12 hour round trip, a cloudy afternoon in the bay-area, a rejected fundraising proposal, and a significantly compromised immune system later, I landed back in Boston 7 hours before my final, which was followed by another the day after. I think I was on a long-haul flight every day of that week. I feel stupid for thinking that was crazy now that I know my travel plans for the next 8 weeks.
I had already arranged myself a fallback well in advance in case I couldn’t have a SF summer building a startup — and as such, found myself in Mumbai working an internship at a VC fund. Funnily enough, I was working on the side of the table I had been despising for not giving me money for the last few weeks. Regardless, I expected to be here for about 10 weeks before making my way back to Boston for college. Regardless, life had other plans and it seems that I’ll be leaving the city of dreams a lot earlier than I had anticipated. In 2 weeks, I land back in the greatest country in the world because someone finally trusted the two teenagers who had no idea what they were doing.
This Monday is the start of the last week of my internship I had begun thinking I’d have a while before leaving. Hopefully, this Monday is also the last Monday I have to spend working any internship whatsoever. Hopefully, this Monday is one I look back at years in the future wondering about how significant and insignificant it was at the same time.
Mumbai treated me well for the time it held me but it seems I have to say goodbye earlier than expected.
Monday after today, I’ll be back home. Monday after that, I’ll be back in my second home.
I wonder about the sheer quantity of worries I give to the people I hold dear to me. I wonder if they find the unpredictability of my life as amusing as I do.
I enjoy not knowing what my next step is. I enjoy it because I know that no matter what the step is, it’ll be in the right direction.
I’ll see you guys next week. Or I might not. I might see you before Monday. Who knows? I don’t.