Hi, I'm Abhi ChatterjeeHi,I'mAbhiChatterjee.And this isAndthisisThalesThales.

It doesn't look likeItdoesn'tlooklikea straight lineastraightline.

1. 0101

   Watching

   I'm an immigrant. My parents moved us to the U.S. when I was a kid, and both of them used entrepreneurship to try to change where our family stood. My dad took on multiple jobs and ran businesses, and I was next to him. My mom moved us to New Orleans to start a business. In India, my grandfather was a business owner and a professor.

   Between two countries I went to eleven schools. Nothing stayed still for long, so I learned to read new situations fast.

2. 0202

   Learning the machine

   Then I met a mentor who saw what I could actually do. Through him I learned how software gets built and why so many people come to this country to build it.

   I started as a junior project manager, translating what a client wanted into something an engineer could build. Then I was closing deals, shaping product, learning the limits of engineering and how to talk about them honestly, and running payroll for engineering teams.

3. 0303

   Building

   From there I became a partner, and we built companies together: EMR software and encryption tools. We sold two of them.

   Then I built on my own. Supplement brands, physical products, CNC-machined products. I built a lot of apps that didn't work. They were tuition.

4. 0404

   Operating

   2017 to 2018

   I started ANC Management Co: e-commerce, drop shipping, and consulting. I led a distributed team of 30 people and grew it past $1M in annual revenue, without outside funding.

5. 0505

   Seeing 400 companies

   At Silicon Valley Launchpad I spoke with around 400 companies. I learned the difference between a small business and a venture, what makes a team work, and which patterns the successful ones shared. Then I applied it to myself.

6. 0606

   Food

   My family has worked in restaurants since the 1990s, so I've watched restaurant economics up close for most of my life. When I saw delivery platforms taking as much as 40% of every order, it didn't look like a fact of life. It looked like a structural problem.

   That became Famished. We put a team together, raised initial capital, partnered with the City of Glendale, and built the product, the design, and the go-to-market ourselves.

7. 0707

   The studio

   Animyst AI is where all of it comes together: a venture studio with an applied AI arm and an arm for building ventures with partners. Famished is one of them. Svarna is another.

It was always one thing, repeated.Itwasalwaysonething,repeated.I've never stopped learning and giving my bestI'veneverstoppedlearningandgivingmybestwithout being attached to the resultswithoutbeingattachedtotheresults.