Aanya Khandelwal

Aanya KhandelwalOct 13, 2026

LinkedIn has convinced founders that every experience needs to become a lesson. Your startup misses its revenue target? “Failure is the foundation of growth.” Your co-founder disagrees with you? “Leadership is about embracing diverse perspectives.” You get stuck in traffic? “Today, I learnt an important lesson about operational inefficiency.” PLEASE. Sometimes a bad day is just a bad day. But here’s where I think founder storytelling gets interesting. The problem isn’t that founders share lessons. It’s that many founders have genuinely interesting things to say but communicate them in exactly the same way as everyone else. A technical founder might be solving a genuinely difficult problem. A founder might have an unusually insightful view of their industry. Someone might have spent five years learning something their customers desperately need to understand. And then their LinkedIn post begins: “I’m excited to announce…” And I die a little. The opportunity isn’t to turn every founder into an influencer. It’s to help interesting people communicate why their work matters. That’s the kind of storytelling I’m interested in building a business around. Less manufactured thought leadership. More actual thoughts worth leading with.

Aanya KhandelwalOct 12, 2026

At 19, I have decided to diversify my risk exposure. My current portfolio includes: * A university degree. * A startup. * A personal brand. * A business idea. * Several conversations that could become opportunities. * A deeply concerning number of open tabs. My investment thesis is essentially that I refuse to let one institution determine my entire professional future. I’m studying business and economics, spending time around people building interesting things, experimenting with content, and trying to turn my skills into something commercially useful. Do I have a perfectly linear five-year plan? No. Do I have a Notes app full of ideas that could either become businesses or evidence in a future documentary? Absolutely. But I’ve started to realise that you don’t necessarily have to wait until someone gives you a job title to start building valuable skills. ~ You can learn to sell before becoming a salesperson. ~ You can learn distribution before running marketing. ~ You can build relationships before you need a favour. ~ And you can start creating opportunities before you feel entirely qualified to have them. My current strategy is to experiment aggressively, pay attention to what works, and try to make the internet pay for at least some of my university expenses. A very sophisticated investment strategy, if you don’t look too closely. Anyway, welcome to my professional diversification era.

Aanya KhandelwalOct 10, 2026

I just redesigned my Instagram profile. Not because my old one was ugly. Because it wasn’t doing its job. I realised I was building things, exploring startups, going to founder events, experimenting with content and trying to build a career that doesn’t exist yet. And then putting all of that on a profile that didn’t really communicate any of it. So I went back to the drawing board. The question wasn’t “What should my bio say?” It was: What should someone understand about me within five seconds of landing on my profile? I rethought the positioning, the narrative, the content and how everything fits together. Because personal branding isn’t just about making your profile look good. It’s about making your work make sense to someone who has never met you. And if I’m serious about building a career at the intersection of entrepreneurship, technology, media and business, my online presence should probably reflect that. Still experimenting. But this time, with intention. If you’ve built a personal brand or documented your journey in public on Instagram, I’d genuinely love your advice!! Now to see if the positioning actually works. Consider this another experiment in building a career that doesn’t exist yet.