Appspiration

T he most inspiring thing I read this morning: Shaq has been fixing/refurbishing basketball courts for 30 years because he knows they help kids a lot. Economic Times 30-Jul-2025 The story showed how playing on one of those courts probably gave Daniels, who grew up in the city, a big chance. He got good enough to play in the NBA. Later, something cool happened: he and Shaq became teammates on the Boston Celtics! Now, Shaq and Daniels are working together to fix up another court where Daniels lives. It's amazing to see how playing on a court as a kid can change your life, lead to surprising friendships, and make you want to help other kids too.

Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast episode Think Bigger & Innovate from ' The Psychology Podcast ' featuring "some" Columbia business professor. Half way through the episode I learn that the guest professor is a blind person! She is Dr Sheena Iyengar! According to Wikipedia, " As a child, she was diagnosed with a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease of retinal degeneration. By the age of nine, she could no longer read . By the age of sixteen, she was completely blind, although able to perceive light.  She remains blind as an adult. In 1992, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She then earned her Ph.D . in Social Psychology from Stanford University in 1997 " If she can do it, why can't we? #Inspiration #Resilence #NeverGiveUp #WhatsYourExcuse

This week, I take a break from writing about my own entrepreneurship journey. Instead, here is an inspiring journey of Ragunathan Pattabiraman, founder of kuyil.org ,  who quit his full time job to help his musician brother make apps for Carnatic music lovers! Ragu found his niche in Carnatic music and went on to develop 3 apps along with his brother. All together, the apps now have ~200,000 downloads, and all organically! I sent some questions to Ragu via email and he kindly replied with in-depth answers talking about his family and journey. Sit back and get inspired! Asim: What was your motivation to develop these Apps ? Ragu: My main motivation was to build something for my brother. He is a musician who studied carnatic music. He is also my favourite composer (You can listen to his old album   here ). I was working at a software company. We are all one joint family. Financially we were fine and there was no pressure on him to earn. I was very clear not to pressurize ...