The Drafts

The AI boom, Carlota Perez, and what happens when the wrapper comes off. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude are converging in capability while thousands of products are built on top of them and own none of the infrastructure underneath. Using economist Carlota Perez's framework for technological revolutions and the 1840s British railway mania as a guide, this episode looks at t...

Paula has a line that comes up more than once in this conversation: I can't create at the pace of the algorithm. This episode is about what that actually means, and what it costs to protect your creativity when the platforms are designed to reward something else entirely. In part two of this conversation, Paula and I get into the influencer dream and why she let it go, what happens when social...

Most people online are doing one of two things: posting cryptically enough that no one can read them too clearly, or building a personal brand polished enough to sell. My guest Paula does neither. She posts as herself, specifically, legibly, nothing held back, and has for years. In this episode, the first ever guest conversation on The Drafts, Paula and I talk about the documentation impulse that&...

After an accidental upgrade on one leg of a trip and a return to economy on the other, Diya runs an unplanned A/B test on herself and unpacks why the airport experience is not poorly designed at all. It is designed extremely well, just not for you. This episode covers Tim Wu's concept of "calculated misery," the 2016 air rage study on physical and situational inequality, Bruce Schneier's "security...

I left my job a month ago with one plan: do less. It's been one month. I have nine projects on the go. Nobody asked me to start any of them. This episode is about what happens when you finally get the freedom you've been craving and realise you have no idea what to do with it. I talk about how hustle culture shaped my ambition and my inability to stop, a question my therapist asked that I...

What happens when the person who taught you to see clearly asks you not to look at them? This episode is about two creator-turned-founders who built massive audiences on expertise and education, then crossed into making products - and how differently they handled it when things went wrong. Linus Tech Tips and the Lipstick Lesbians both had public stumbles on the product development front. One resp...

Nothing on the Internet Lasts (And That's a Decision) Have you ever said "my Instagram" or "my Twitter" without thinking twice? In Episode 11 of The Drafts, Diya breaks down the uncomfortable truth about every social platform you have ever built your life inside: you were never the owner. You were always the tenant. And the landlord can redecorate, sell, or demolish the who...

Have you ever stood in the dark because your "smart" lights lost WiFi? In Episode 10 of The Drafts , Diya breaks down the invisible, frustrating shift in modern technology: You are no longer the user. You are the afterthought. From vacuums that hold your home hostage with forced apps, to TikTok trends that hollow out physical products, to AI chatbots quietly monetizing the loneliness epi...

We celebrate growth like it's a movie makeover montage, but nobody talks about how exhausting it actually is. In this episode, we sit in the "identity lag". That strange, heavy space where you’ve outgrown your old life, your old habits, and your old rooms, but your new reality is still catching up. We are breaking down why transformation feels like grief, how to distinguish between q...

Welcome to The Drafts , a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about something every builder eventually runs into: you talk to your users, you feel validated, you build the thing, and then nobody uses it. Not because your idea was bad. Because the way we're taught to do research is fundamentally broken. You...

Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about perfectionism, but not in the way you might expect. It started with my birthday week. Instead of feeling celebratory, I was stressed, overwhelmed, and feeling like I was falling behind on my goals for Arro Studio. And I kept coming back to one...

Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about AI, but not in the way you might expect. It started with a menu I couldn't read at a Japanese restaurant. The images were AI-generated, glossy, perfect, and completely fake. And once I started noticing, I couldn't stop. What are we actu...

Month 1 wasn't about conquering the market. It was about surviving the cold, the self-doubt, and the silence, and realizing that was enough. This is the Survival Phase. The part nobody posts about. The part that determines whether you make it back or not. In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on what "Founder Mode" actually looked like: contract renewal anxiety, treating...

Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about design, UX, tech entrepreneurship, and the everyday moments that shape how we think and work, with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about why everything feels like an ad now, how emotional manipulation became a marketing strategy, and what it costs us to live in a world where no space is safe from commerce, not even our sleep. Fro...

Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about the myth of the "dream job," the hidden costs of prestige, and why my chaotic government career turned out to be my greatest advantage. What really builds you as a designer, is it the logo on your resume or the problems you've sol...

Episode 02 Description Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this episode, I'm talking about critique, taste, and the wrong metric. Why do bad opinions stick? Why do we chase consensus instead of conviction? And what does a rock band getting roasted by The Guardian have to do with your 9-to-5 design review? You&#...

Welcome to The Drafts, a podcast about building a business while working full-time with honesty, no highlight reels. In this first episode, I'm talking about something that feels almost controversial online: I'm 25, I like stability, and I'm not quitting my job to build my consultancy. You'll hear: ​The WWII war plane story that changed how I think about entrepreneurship ​Why I started building a...