(Note: I solemnly swear this letter was not generated by AI.)
Dear Friend of Without,
My last letter ended on a loss:
“I had to terminate a former waste picker whom we had hired, trained and who had worked with us for a couple of years. This was the first termination that was not for a dramatic cause (such as alcohol abuse or death threats). This was because of continued underperformance despite multiple warnings.
And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Because it was going to hit her hard. And it did.
A week after we let her go, her ex-husband passed away. Her current partner stopped giving her attention, perhaps because she was no longer earning. She’s finding it hard to get a different job.”
There’s an unfortunate second part to this story.
Seven days before our launch (the most “important” day so far in Without’s life), her current partner showed up at The Cradle.
I was on the first floor chatting with the Science team, when I heard loud voices from below.
I peered through the window to see this bulky man in a white shirt yelling at Ram Kaka, our security guard, in language as threatening as it was colourful. It seemed like his goal was to make a scene, and he was succeeding.
He looked up and saw me through the window and yelled: “You’re the owner, right? Come here, I want to talk to you.”
So, the good boy that I am, I went down to talk to him.
His wrath unfurled.
“How could you do this to her after calling her the ‘mother’ of Without?”
“I will put flags of rebellion on your walls. I can make sure you’re destroyed.”
He was especially angry at one of our colleagues, where there had been some confusion around a loan. “I will break you, I will kill you,” he said, decorated in the nastiest curses and slurs that would impress even the most foul-mouthed New Yorkers.
He was relentless, and he had also started getting physically – pushing, irking, inciting.
By now, 10-15 of us from the team had gathered around him.
It had become clear that the goal of this man was to incite violence – to make us make a mistake so he could hold us hostage. At one point, he entered 112 on his phone, threatening to call the police, waiting for one of us to do something stupid. He even found a target – a fiery 22-year-old who he thought he could push over the edge.
He got close.
But the team stood strong. We pulled away those who were reaching their breaking point, appeasing the man in as non-violent a way as we could in this hot mess that was rapidly hitting its boiling point. But we didn’t fall for his trap. And an hour or so later, he walked away.
We filed a police complaint and re-examined our safety measures and CCTV installations, aiming to minimise further damage. I spoke to my wise lawyer-uncle about it, and he wisely said, “This is common in industrial areas. Desperation leads to desperate measures.”
It shook me, though. Everything felt so fragile.
I went home that night with a pit in my stomach, questioning things I had rarely questioned before.
That night, I received messages from many members of the team saying, “We’re here, don’t worry.” Then suddenly, everything felt stronger.
In some magical way, it seems to have brought the team closer together, when it could have easily torn us apart or scared some away.
This is why we do the work we do.
There seem to be degrees of anti-fragility developing at Without, and this isn’t the only incident that’s showing those buds.
And I wept, wondering how some losses turn into weird sorts of wins.
*****
6 days later, T-1 from the most “important” day in Without’s life (and mine), I couldn’t fall asleep easily.
In the last couple of weeks, the team had pushed way more than I imagined, largely unsolicited, to make sure Launch Day would be as magical as we all wanted it to be.
I remember coming at 830 am one morning to find AJ still there from the night before – go home AJ!
So much so that I wondered if it was too much? In the grand scheme of things, how important is just this one day? It’s symbolic at best.
I was wrong.
The day happened, and it was more important and wondrous than I could have imagined.
After five years of blood, sweat and toil, we launched a first-of-a-kind demonstration plant ethically recycling all ‘unrecyclable’ post-consumer plastics and textiles – no burning, no greenwashing and built to scale.
Yes, the day was symbolic, but it was also a day for the whole team to proudly show the world and their loved ones all the details and nuances of what we were doing and why.
Friends, family, vendors, suppliers, investors, funders, customers and believers literally from all over the world showed up.
Every part of the Cradle had a secret worth exploring, and the team basked in the pride of the work we were doing, sharing with a dimension of care that even I couldn’t imagine.
We even had a celebrity in the mix. Dia embraced us at Without like one of our own. She absorbed and shared, didn’t say no to a single photo and hugged my mother twice. I was chatting with her bodyguard at one point, and he said, “None of the other celebrities I work with is as down-to-earth as her.”
When everyone had left, the team ran onto the stage and started dancing. Because what else is the use of an empty stage?
We have been flooding our socials with sights and sounds from this day, and even dropped a new hero video about our work. I’ll let you consume that there.
What we haven’t been flooding our socials with is the team retreat we had right after. Thanks to a grant from the Global Good Fund, I could treat the team to a fancy retreat.
Initially, I was a bit worried – we are a close team, but very different. We have people coming from fancy bungalows and the worst slums, so how were we going to blend? What would be the agenda?
I had left all the planning to Amish, our Chief of Staff and the Founder’s Office, and I wasn’t allowed to make any final decisions.
I don’t know what I was worried about.
The team had so much friggin’ fun (too much perhaps). There was enough blending and way too many shenanigans that brought the team only closer together, or at least I think so, you can ask Amish more about that.
There was one moment that I think will stay with me. I’m still not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a thing.
On one of the nights, I wanted to take the team out for drinks. Some people do drink, some people don’t, and some people come from a background where alcohol abuse has wrecked their families. For example, the Founder’s Office rages, so much so that it reminds me of my days of “work-hard-play-hard” in New York.
Happy Hours aren’t criminal, right? But it’s weird how it feels like the current zeitgeist says that the rich can drink and the poor shouldn’t.
That night, though, everyone who wanted to have a drink, could. It might seem like a small, potentially unnecessary thing, but there was equality that night.
An equality that cannot be really measured by numbers. An equality where it really didn’t matter where you came from or what you did, where it was okay to just have a drink together.
*****
If you’ve made it so far, you probably think everything is so Goddamn rosy, Anish, isn’t it?
It’s not.
Yes, we’ve had a good quarter, but the plant we launched still has a few key gaps we need to fill. We still have a LOT to figure out when it comes to manufacturing and improving the consistency of our material.
And most importantly, we still have to figure out if we can monetise the waste to the extent that it can sustain and scale the impact we want to create. We have a path, but we don’t know if it’ll actually pan out.
We’ve made a lot of noise and that’s great, but that also brings with it more eyeballs – a lot of encouraging eyeballs, but a lot of sceptical ones as well, and rightfully so.
So, yes, the next five months are the most crucial.
And just as I write that, I can hear Ambarish* say, “The next five months will always be the most crucial, just don’t forget to go to the gym.”
Yes, I am getting a little fat.
Cheers,
Anish
*Ambarish is a key investor, advisor at Without, and my dear uncle, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to make the progress we have so far.
