Letters from our founder
The whole story, one letter at a time.
Every quarter since October 2020, our founder Anish Malpani has written to friends of Without®: what we built, what broke, and the people who made it happen. No spin, and no press-release voice.
- 23 letters so far
- Every quarter since October 2020
- About two hours of reading, end to end
Anish MalpaniFounder, writing to you since 2020
01 · The latest
The newest letter, and what is in it.
Letter 23The Conversational Nature Of Reality
Ramya Tai and Samta Tai, who came to Without® through hardship, stand up at the quarterly team lunch to retell why it exists.
02 · New here?
Three letters to read first.
How it began, what formal work changes for one person, and a hard moment told straight.
We Have A Scientist
Where it began: a search for a science co-founder and plans to set up in Pune.
Read letter 1Patience Is Mostly A Virtue, Right?
One letter on a letterhead fixes a bank account, and shows what formalising work really means.
Read letter 8A Loss
An honest account of a colleague the team could not keep, and the mistakes they owned.
Read letter 13So, we move forward, learning and reflecting along the way, hoping we get more things right than wrong, knowing that we’ll never really know.
Anish, in Letter 19: Spheres and Machines, July 2025
03 · Every letter
All 23 letters, newest first.
Pick a year, or search for a word, a name or a letter number.
Showing 23 of 23 letters
Letter 23: The Conversational Nature Of Reality
Ramya Tai and Samta Tai, who came to Without® through hardship, stand up at the quarterly team lunch to retell why it exists.
PeopleLetter 22: Yanks & Yarns
Virgin-grade yarn spun from the worst textile waste, the first steps of Foundation Without®, and a return to the US after six years.
TextilesLetter 21: Wild Wild 2026
Night shifts, patio tiles from the worst waste, a founder learning to be the bad guy, and Jayshree Tai’s promise: let the orders come.
The teamLetter 20: Launches, Losses and Wins
A threatening visit a week before launch draws the team closer, and Launch Day and a team retreat show what they have built together.
Launch DayLetter 19: Spheres and Machines
A colleague’s flash of insight becomes the Sphericality Index, the demo plant’s machines finally arrive, and a hard parting asks where fairness lies.
SphericalityLetter 18: Engines Humming
An engineer’s 12-page case for an ‘Excellent’ rating opens a letter on open salaries, team spirit and a science team in full swing.
TransparencyLetter 17: Our First-Ever Impact Report And The Cradle
Syeda’s first day, and why Without®’s first impact report argues for depth over scale, as the team moves into The Cradle.
The CradleLetter 16: Balls In The Air
Sita steps up as a leader, the whole team rallies to ship a Diwali order in eight days, and women optimisers ask for jeans.
LeadershipLetter 15: An Important Juncture
A money lender’s threat and a two-day insurance claim put a quarter of building in perspective, as VerdiFLX gets its name.
BuildingLetter 14: The Gap
The quiet low after Shark Tank, when perception raced ahead of reality, and a quarter of festivals, TV and fashion week.
SpotlightLetter 13: A Loss
The story of Ritu, a young colleague the team tried too hard to keep, and what losing her taught them about good intentions.
Hard timesLetter 12: A Dreamy Scary Trip
Blueprints for a first pilot plant, eight former waste-pickers now formalised, and why health insurance also means showing people how to use it.
Pilot plantLetter 11: Finding Signal In The Noise
Amid the noise after launch, sunglasses reach the women who collected the waste, and beta sales fund scholarships for waste-pickers’ children.
ImpactLetter 10: And We Launch
The world’s first recycled sunglasses from chip packets launch under the new Without® brand, with the case for making everything in-house.
LaunchLetter 9: The Long And Short Of It
A first look at the prototype: sunglasses made from chip packets, built fully in-house, as two waste-pickers sign their first-ever contracts.
First productLetter 8: Patience Is Mostly A Virtue, Right?
How one letter on company letterhead fixed Jayashri’s bank account, and why the company amended its founding documents to bind itself to impact.
DignityLetter 7: Progress, But Not There Yet
Why chip packets are so hard to recycle, and how the team reached a truly 90% recycled material and its first patent-pending process.
ScienceLetter 6: A Numbers Game
The team misses its year-end deadline, says so plainly, and tallies its first year in numbers, from 760 experiments to Tommy the dog.
NumbersLetter 5: Humans, Machines & Control
Two new colleagues join the lab and a long-delayed extruder, named Ashoka, finally arrives, prompting reflections on control, delay and honest pitching.
MachinesLetter 4: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Power cuts force a lab move, a colleague leaves, and the team sets a hard year-end deadline for its first prototype.
SetbacksLetter 3: Strange Times
Written during India’s second Covid wave: a polycotton breakthrough, a process scaled from one gram to one kilogram, and honest doubts about the odds.
LockdownLetter 2: It’s Lab Time!
With both co-founders finally in Pune, the team picks three kinds of plastic waste to tackle and celebrates a first at-home separation experiment.
First labLetter 1: We Have A Scientist
How a call for a science co-founder drew over 500 applications and ended with Jitu joining as co-founding Chief Scientist.
BeginningsNo letter matches that yet.
The first letters went out as Ashaya, our name before Without®, so a few of their links still point to the old site.
04 · Get the next one
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- About four a year, one each quarter
- Written by Anish, the wins and the losses
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