Capt. Shaji Kumar

Tag: book-reviews

  • The Birbal Strategy: Why Your Dream Doesn’t Need to Warm You Yet

    There’s an old story about Birbal, the wisest man in Emperor Akbar’s court, that Capt. Shaji Kumar returns to in Built Not Given — and it’s become one of the most useful ideas in the whole book for anyone stuck in the “long middle” of building something.

    A man is challenged to stand all night in freezing water. He survives by fixing his eyes on a candle burning far in the distance. When he claims his reward, he’s told he cheated — he “drew warmth” from the flame, so the challenge doesn’t count. Birbal, hearing the absurdity of this, makes his point by trying to cook dinner over a candle held far away. Obviously, it doesn’t cook anything.

    "What mattered in that story was not the physical warmth of the candle. It was the psychological warmth of hope. The candle had not heated the man's body. It had sustained his mind. And that is what distant goals often do in life. They do not immediately change your circumstances. But they help you endure them."

    Kumar started his business in 1998 — before India had a “startup ecosystem,” before accelerators or angel networks or the reassuring TED-talk narrative that failure is just a step toward success. There was no community of founders telling him the hard years were normal.

    "There was only the work, the market, and the long, largely silent middle — the years between the beginning and any visible result."

    This is the part of entrepreneurship (or any long, worthwhile undertaking) that doesn’t get talked about enough: the stretch where the goal is real to you but invisible to everyone else, including your bank balance. Kumar’s point is that this isn’t a design flaw — it’s the actual shape of the thing.

    "For years, your dream may appear too far away to be useful in any practical sense. It may not pay your bills immediately. It may not impress people. It may not even reassure your own family. But if it remains alive in your mind—steady, visible, and meaningful—it can do something even more important: it can keep you going."

    He’s especially sharp on the modern trap of expecting speed:

    "We live in an age that celebrates speed, fast growth, fast funding, fast fame, faster exits and fast money which in many cases does disappear just as fast. And because of that, many people now enter entrepreneurship carrying a dangerously distorted expectation: that business is merely a shortcut to wealth. That illusion has ruined more dreams than failure itself."

    His answer isn’t grit-as-a-slogan — it’s something more specific: start small, but start with a why strong enough to survive contact with difficulty.

    "If your 'why' is weak, your perseverance will collapse the moment life becomes difficult. And life will become difficult. That is not pessimism. That is simply the reality of enterprise."

    And on the inevitability of mistakes along the way:

    "The only real danger is not in making mistakes. It is in allowing mistakes to weaken your resolve. Because if approached correctly, every mistake can become fuel."

    The chapter closes on what might be the book’s clearest thesis statement:

    "Do not allow the distance of the light to discourage you... Hope with direction. And that is far more powerful than optimism without substance. Because entrepreneurship is not won in one brilliant moment. It is won: in the long middle. In the waiting. In the uncertainty. In the years when nothing looks spectacular but everything important is quietly being built."

    If you’re in your own long middle right now — whatever you’re building — this is worth returning to. The candle doesn’t have to warm you today. It just has to still be burning.

    This is the second in a series of posts drawing from Built Not Given by Capt. Shaji Kumar. Grab a copy to read the rest of the chapter — including how to handle the crisis that inevitably arrives once the light finally gets closer.

    Where to get it

    Built, Not Given is published wide — deliberately, so you can read it however suits you best, on whatever platform you already trust:

    Pick whichever is easiest for you. They all lead to the same book.

    Beyond the book

    Built, Not Given sits alongside my other books and the work I do now coaching founders through their own version of this middle, under the Clarity Under Pressure™ banner. If you want to see the rest — other titles, writing, or how to work with me directly — everything’s at www.shajikumar.com.

    If you read it, I’d genuinely like to know what landed. Reply, comment, or leave a review wherever you bought it — for a book this new, that’s the thing that helps it find the next reader who needs it.