Letter To Shareholders 2024

Why do I write these letters? 

I write them because the best way to understand change is to write it down. To examine it.

I write them because this is an exercise in honesty – with you, and with myself.

I write them because you’ve given me your time, and the least I can do is to share what that gift has built.

In theater, when one act ends, actors step into hidden spaces. These spaces, or “wings”, flank the stage. Here, actors change costumes, character, and conduct.

I view life in acts of a play. Each act has its own story. But this year, I was in the wings, as I started business school. The MBA, I've learned, is about Moving Between Acts.

This letter is about finding clarity in that space. It’s about how stepping back has helped me see further ahead.

This letter, then, is about three things:

• What changed?
• What mattered?
• What’s next?

What comes next is the story of my year in the wings.

Vamos.

I.

This is still only the beginning.

My personal growth is accelerating, and the MBA transition has exceeded every expectation across three dimensions: social, emotional, entrepreneurial. 

It has been a spikey year; there were months where nothing happened, and weeks where months happened. January to June was a quiet period, punctuated by some spikes; July to December was compressed with many.

II.

The social acceleration that followed was remarkable, and taught me unexpected lessons about human connection. As I traveled, I cultivated a different perspective on the enterprise of relationship-building.

Consider this: 300 students on 35 yachts sailing across the Adriatic. Yacht Week in Croatia took away the gift-wrapping off people, for when you’re sharing a 50-foot vessel for seven days with someone, there’s no hiding who you are. And that is socially useful because it builds authentic, vulnerable shared context.

Colombia followed, with another 300 folks touring Medellín, Cartagena, and Bogotá. Here, I discovered the paradox of social scale: As the group grew larger, authentic connections became both more valuable yet more elusive. Despite sharing the same itinerary, we instinctively formed smaller circles - four people at a local café in Medellín, six exploring street art in Bogotá, fifteen taking dance lessons in Cartagena.

What made Colombia different from Yacht Week was choice. On boats, you're with your crew. In Colombia, the large group created a different social dynamic - one where you had to actively choose between depth or breadth, intimacy or inclusion.

Japan brought focus. Thirty of us traveled to Tokyo and Kyoto with Dr. Michele Gelfand, studying culture. The theme for our ‘Global Study Trip’ was how culture shapes innovation, and my one key insight was how culture doesn't just influence business – it is the business.

A hundred-year-old Kimono family business in Kyoto taught me how tradition and innovation can coexist without conflict, that it wasn't about choosing between old and new, but understanding how they reinforce each other.

Meeting the CEO of a Japanese spirits company taught me how to think about decisions in decades, not quarters. The question: As alcohol culture evolves globally, what is the new role of a spirits company? The answer wasn't in market expansion or new product lines, but accentuating the fundamental role of alcohol in building human connection.

Each interaction – from a tea ceremony to touring a VC firm – showed how Japanese business culture approaches time, trust, and transformation differently.

Denmark and Faroe Islands were an intentional escape. Three of us spent Thanksgiving hiking through fog, bonding over food, assimilating all that we'd learned so far.

While travel helps you cultivate a different perspective, the practical utility of these trips was to peel back layers of understanding about how people work together. For when you spend enough time with people in new contexts, you see past their guards, their personas. You see who they are when they’re real, when they're not performing, when they’re them.

So, this wasn't just travel; it was an experiment in building personal connection at scale, pushing far beyond Dunbar's number of 150 meaningful relationships. The result: I entered uncharted territory into expanding my social bandwidth.

For Stanford Business is socially intense. Each day brought its own rhythm: coffee chats that turned into deep discussions about purpose, walks that became exercises in creativity, dinners that changed vulnerability into intimacy. This created deep and fulfilling conversations, ones that I’ll cherish for decades.

I’ve built a solid community that continues to grow.

A flywheel, if you will.

III.

Serendipity, I’ve learned, is a function of people and environment. When people collide with each other in high-growth environments, magic happens.

The Bay Area is one such environment: It brings together people, ambition, and growth. This environment creates magic, both internal and external.

Start with internal magic.

The question is not between nature or nurture; it’s about building nature through nurture. We are pattern-matching apes. When placed in an environment where patterns are audacious or even delusional, we imitate patterns, language, and behavior. Then one day we realize it’s not imitation anymore – it's who we’ve become.

Imitation precedes transformation.

I’ve seen how my thinking has changed. The me who arrived on campus in September thought in increments; the me writing this letter thinks in step functions. The scale of my thinking has shifted so gradually that I’ve barely noticed it happening until now. And this has happened because the size of the room creates the size of your ambitions.

An environment is also a mirror. My environment was a high-resolution mirror. As I was surrounded by exceptional people, I started seeing myself with newfound clarity. Through others’ eyes, I saw my own patterns emerge. Friends pointed out things I did instinctively – creating shared contexts, bringing people together, executing across domains.

And while the dust is not fully off the mirror, I see my own silhouette emerge.

Take external magic.

I delivered a TALK, a 30-minute intimate and vulnerable presentation of one’s life story, to my classmates. This was transformative because it helped me embrace my most-unapologetic, authentic self, without packaging.

In vulnerability, I found strength. I realized that it's one thing to know your story; it's another to own it publicly.

The TALK led to something unexpected. A founder in the audience saw something in me and offered me the CEO role at his early-stage startup. The offer caught me off-guard. I had assumed building a business was about strategy, finance, and operations. But it was about thought-process, values, and character, something that the founder saw through my TALK.

This was a revelation. What mattered wasn't what I thought would matter. The skills that build great companies aren't just found in case studies – they're found in how you move through, interact with, and operate in the world.

But the most magical thing was the 2024 Stanford GSB India trip, for which 28 of my classmates signed up. At first, I thought the main challenge would be organizing the trip itself, its logistics and complexities. It wasn’t. The real test was in carrying the responsibility I felt toward 28 people who placed their trust in me.

Five cities. Ten days. Twenty-five experiences. Leading this trip taught me things about myself that no classroom could. And it was an experience I will continue to cherish.

IV.

2024 taught me the paradox of intentionality.

I had massive social overwhelm, evidenced by my delayed text responses and fatigue with celebratory events. I learned how time is truly short, and that calendaring things was the most-efficient way to bridge intent with action.

I was constantly journaling until school started; this is when I was buried under a deluge of “so-much-is-going-on”, that I had little time to reflect, pause, and redirect my gyroscope. In my 2023 letter, I wrote:

2023 was the year I oriented internally: I overturned on my internal criteria and created my own coordinate system in which I benchmarked my performance. You may argue that some of the things are not worth pursuing, but it’s not the thing that matters; it’s the pursuit.

For happiness is in pursuit. 

My 2023 gyroscope spun harder in 2024’s stronger winds. But this wasn't failure - it was evolution. Sometimes the map must be abandoned to truly explore the territory. But I plan to be better at this in 2025.

I also worked with fingerspitzengefühl, a German word which translates to “finger tips feeling”, meaning intuitive flair or instinct. I plan to further hone this in 2025.

I was more intentional with my fitness and calisthenics regimen. Some highlights:

• New Deadlift PR: 180 lbs
• New Pull-ups PR: 30 across 4 sets
• Calisthenics: ‘Skin the Cat’
• Calisthenics: 8-second freehold handstand

V.

I was more thoughtful in 2024.

Rather than ask myself ‘How do I build the best business’, I asked myself: “How do I design the ideal life?” But soon I figured this question rests on another riddle: What makes up the ideal life?

I don’t know, but I’m looking.

Figuring out what I want, and what is worth wanting, have been two of the hardest questions I’ve been unable to answer.

Last year, I also asked myself: Where do I want to live, who do I want to be with, and what do I want to do.

Again, I don’t know, and I’m still looking, but the vision is clearer.

VI.

2024 was the year of profound understanding.

The greatest insight emerged not from any single moment, but from experiences throughout the year: Building is indeed rare, valuable, and satisfying. But the fundamental truth is this: It is people who build things. Not processes, not systems, not strategies. People.

People matter most. And the MBA is, in effect, not a ‘Masters in Business Administration’, but ‘Masters in People Excellence’.

Like a craftsman who realizes the workshop itself doesn't create masterpieces, I learned that true leverage in any endeavor comes from understanding people who inhabit it. The ability to work with people – to understand their drives, fears, ambitions, and potential – is the meta-skill that unlocks all others.

My commitment in writing these letters was to be accountable to you and myself. Today, I write this letter to share my progress and to thank you for your time.

The year gone by was fulfilling and novel. I’m grateful for every opportunity, adversity, and serendipity that life has sent my way.

VII.

As 2025 approaches, my intention crystallizes with new clarity.

I plan to live the year with a thematic set of undertakings, so I can grow across the dimensions that matter most, in the ways that matter most.

I plan to double-down on my generalist skillset; this is an ambiguous question but I hope to concretize it into distilled, actionable items.

Finally, I plan to be more intentional with my intellectual and creative pursuits, as I create my identity. 

What is yet to come is the story I plan to write.

To levity, love, laughter, life,

Abhinav