Devanshi J.

Devanshi J.Sep 7, 2026

There were never enough chairs. My room at HEC Paris was 19 m², built for 1 person, and I kept trying to fit 10 or 20 people into it anyway. Eventually I stopped treating the lack of seating as a problem. People sat on the carpet, borrowed chairs from neighbours, leaned against the bed. Everybody can sit on the floor. A lot of this came from the HEC Paris German Society's Running Dinners, which I discovered embarrassingly late and then never missed. You sign up with a co-host, eat 3 courses in 3 different rooms, and meet a different group of people at every stop. I hosted almost all of mine with one of my closest friends, Beatrice Merlo. What I loved most wasn’t really the cooking. It was knowing someone well enough to help other people know them faster. If somebody said something and I knew Beatrice had the perfect story, I could bring her into it. Sometimes I’d realise two people had something weirdly specific in common before they did. The question in my head was often: how do I make these people feel like they’ve known my friend for longer than twenty minutes? Somewhere along the way, I also became much more opinionated about what it means to be a good guest. Ask questions. Talk to somebody you don’t already know. Tell your host if you’re bringing someone extra. Contribute something to the room other than your physical presence. It made me think a lot about how everyone wants a village, but very few people talk about the work of being a good villager. And then, almost comically, my feed started filling up with posts about the “IRL connection economy”: founder dinners, supper clubs, nightlife, community, companies whose entire thesis is that getting the right people into a room matters. Which I completely believe. But I also don’t want to rewrite my year backwards and pretend Beatrice and I were secretly doing community-led GTM in Building A. There was no KPI attached to the tiramisu. We just really liked having people over. And apparently, while we were trying to figure out whether another person could physically fit on my carpet, an entire industry was deciding that getting the right people into a room was valuable. And if you’re starting at HEC Paris this year: do the Running Dinner from the first edition. Don’t discover it in your second semester like I did. #substack #IRL #economy #GTM HEC Paris Masters

Devanshi J.Oct 8, 2026

Startups want the best engineers. But how far are you willing to look? I came across 19 early-stage startups hiring for 27 roles today. 9 of those roles have “founding” in the title and that stood out to me. When you're a team of 2–10 people, your first few engineers aren't just there to write code, they're helping decide what gets built, how it gets built, and sometimes whether the company gets anywhere at all. A few interesting opportunities: AgentMail (YC S25) - Founding Product Engineer, San Francisco Manifest - Founding Design Engineer, London Bonnie - AI Engineer, Amsterdam Capsa AI - Senior AI Engineer, Full Stack & Backend Engineers, London Intergrid - AI Engineer, Helsinki Heres what surprised me: of the 19 companies, only 1 explicitly mentions remote work. I understand why founders want their first hires nearby. You're moving fast, figuring things out together, and trusting a handful of people with an enormous amount of responsibility. But I've worked with engineers across different countries, and I've seen how little someones location can tell you about their ability to build. If you're hiring someone who could shape the future of your company, why narrow the search before you've even seen what they're capable of? The best engineer for your startup might not live anywhere near it. Found these through playmakers.dev October 8 startup hiring roundup. Full list in the comments! #StartupHiring #FoundingEngineer #RemoteHiring

Devanshi J.Oct 16, 2026

I think ambitious people are a little too good at keeping score. Who stayed late. Who missed a deadline. Who ended up doing the thing someone else was supposed to do. And the annoying part is, sometimes we’re right. At my HEC Paris graduation, Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux, the founders of Big Mamma Group and sunday, told us they hadn't argued in 13 years. I've seen people disagree more intensely about where to have dinner!! Victor explained that Tigrane doesn't spend his time wondering whether Victor has done enough for him. Whether he's delivered on everything he promised. Whether he's pulling his weight. Instead, he asks himself a different question. “How can I make him proud?” And Victor tries to do the same. I've been thinking about this particularly in the context of startups and ambitious teams. We work long hours, care deeply about the outcome, and have approximately seventeen things that were supposed to be finished yesterday. Of course, we measure contribution - we need to know who's delivering, who's taking ownership, who's moving fast enough. But somewhere along the way, a missed deadline becomes evidence that someone doesn't care. A disagreement becomes evidence that they aren't on your side. And everyone ends up keeping a slightly different account of what everyone else owes them but nobody has the complete ledger. I spent 3 years in consulting; I'm very comfortable with a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, people are not particularly good at being reconciled. What I loved about Victor and Tigrane's story was the possibility of holding someone to a very high standard while still believing they want the best for you. Two people who can disagree, disappoint each other, and still assume they're on the same side. I would quite like to spend less of my life collecting evidence. #startups #leadership