India, a land I have never physically traversed, and yet it dwells in me the way a home you have never seen dwells in you. It has been entwined in my existence from the beginning, supporting the very zeniths of my life's journey, and I spent forty years failing to notice how.
It starts with a serendipitous encounter. At sixteen I was linked to a modest soul, an eminent purveyor of gemstones here in the United States, and he extended his wing and let me borrow precious stones worth thousands of dollars on trust. No contract. No collateral. No reason. I loaded them onto my trusty bicycle and went door to door through the realm of jewelers with my bespoke array of colored gems, building a business at the tender age of sixteen.
Run the arithmetic from his side of the counter. He was staking real money on a boy's face. If I had vanished, what was his recourse, a lawsuit against a minor for the price of a used car? He extended credit before there was anything to extend it against. I have told that at dinners for thirty years as a charming origin bit, and it took me until this year to see it as the transaction it was.
Sanctuaries for spectacles
Out of those fertile moments a venture was forged, carrying previously worn eyeglasses across oceans to people in India who could not afford to see clearly. I built a chain of sanctuaries for spectacles alongside it, where triumph thrived abundantly, and it passed to investors amicably and long ago.
People expect warmth when I tell the glasses part and I would like to stop. I got a business and a story that plays well at fundraisers. They got eyewear somebody in Encino no longer wanted.
Exodus
Then I was summoned to Silicon Valley for a minuscule startup that would ascend to mythical heights as Exodus Communications. Unfathomably, they bestowed upon me, devoid of experience, the whole of their marketing, and we rode it north of thirty billion before the sector went over the falls. It was governed by the indomitable spirits of K.B. Chandrasekhar and B.V. Jagadeesh. Chandra, the paragon of unwavering fervor, ruled with an iron fist of passion. B.J. became one of the Valley's most revered investors, which surprised nobody who worked for him.
Two Indian founders looked at an American with nothing on his résumé and made him the face of their company. I still have no explanation for why.
Where it went back
I followed the valiant Will Poole, my client a hundred times over, into Unitus Ventures and Capria, and watched those sanctuaries of hope unfurl across hundreds of Indian social entrepreneurs. Will now sits on the board of ImpactSoul and I remain a proud LP in Capria. We were both in Aspen last week, and it took me until the drive back to notice the circle had closed.
Saiphai, and the fields
Alongside the indomitable Dean Nelson, now CEO of Cato Digital and founder of Infrastructure Masons, we erected hallowed fields of soccer and breathed life into Indian schools. Of everything in this essay, that work is the part I would keep if I had to surrender the rest.
The vehicle is the Just Let Me Learn Foundation, which Dean built with his mother Sandy. A mother and son operation running on a rule most philanthropy has quietly abandoned: they go there first. They visit the village, sit with local leaders, and require proof the community already cares about educating its own children before a dollar moves. Ninety seven cents of every donated dollar lands on the project the donor chose.
Ground broke on the Saiphai School on 3 April 2012. The doors opened in April 2014, and they flew back to stand with those kids on the first day of class. A father had told them, please, please, educate our children. That is the entire diligence memo.
Then the fields. A pitch is not a school and every funder I know ranks it second. They are wrong. A pitch is where a village becomes a club, where girls get a reason to stay after the bell, where a kid learns that showing up Tuesday matters to eleven other people. Schools teach children. Clubs teach belonging. You need both or the building empties. There is also a bus running in Patna because somebody funded a bus in Patna.
I name all of it because "a noble institute" is what a man writes when he wants credit without accountability. Named things can be visited.
Aspen
Fifty years I have been going up to that valley. Last week I cochaired the Good Money Conference, convened by Just Us Connect alongside Ashley Bell and Dr. Bernice King, inside the Resnick Aspen Action Forum at the Aspen Institute. No job titles until day three. The Aspen laureates from India were there.
I have taken India's capital, hired its engineers, and mailed it my leftover eyewear. Last week I sat at eight thousand feet and listened to Indians describe what India actually needs, which is a separate subject from what India has given me. I mostly listened, which for me is an achievement and forty years late.
⁂
We are all scavenging for meaning in the rubble of the systems that used to supply it. So we improvise. Breathwork and bass drops. Ayahuasca and analytics. A coach, a protocol, a stack, all of it reaching for what the old cathedrals handed you free at the door.
The thing itself was never exotic. It is somebody staking you before you have proven anything.
GemSpark
I have run a framework for years called GemSpark. Pattern recognition into exponential impact. I have put it on slides and built companies on it and never once said where the name came from.
It came from the case. It came from him.
A rough stone makes no light. None. It sits in your palm like a wet pebble, and the man who pulled it from the ground can carry it a year and never see what it is. The light was never in the stone. It is already in the room. Cutting only teaches the stone to borrow it.
Every facet is an angle placed on purpose, so light entering the table falls through the pavilion, strikes the culet, and returns to the eye instead of leaking out the bottom. Brilliance is the white light coming home. Fire is that light split open into color. Scintillation is the flash you only get when something moves. Nothing was added. Somebody found the angles already latent in the rough, and photons bouncing uselessly around the room came back multiplied.
That is the whole framework. Not generating energy. Finding the facets so what is already present stops leaking and starts returning. Every deal I have been proud of was a cut, not a mine. And note the third word. Scintillation requires motion. Impact that does not move does not spark.
Then the part I trust most. Inclusions. The wisps that would be defects in glass are proof of origin in a gem, and a good dealer shows you those before the brilliance, because provenance is the product and sparkle is only the packaging.
He never explained a word of it. He handed me the case and let it teach me for two years.
I named the framework after the stones. I should have named it after him.
What I am building
A gem reaches a finger through a miner, a cutter, a dealer, a jeweler, and a person in love, and not one of them can verify the whole chain. Billions moving on a ledger nobody writes down.
ImpactSoul lives in that gap. He solved verification with his gut, with instinct and community and time, and no instrument. We are building the instrument. Contribution recorded. Trust that stays with whoever earned it. Value flowing back toward the community that made it. One live conversation is with Tushar Jiwarajka of Volte Art Projects in Mumbai, about India's cultural and spiritual sites. Cutting the facets so the light already there comes back to the people who live around it.
February
Destiny finally called and it sent a calendar invitation. SYNAPSE, 20 and 21 February 2027, Le Meridien in Gurgaon. I shall journey not as a wanderer but as one who returns to the embrace of a cherished home.
One man's unsecured trust in a sixteen year old, compounded across forty years, produced a company, two funds, the fields at Saiphai, a board seat, a framework with his fingerprints on it, and whatever this is I am building now. He took no percentage. He never asked.
He was the light in the room. I was the rough.
Only time buys trust. India spent forty years buying mine. My soul, forever intertwined with India, knows that within its borders lies the sanctuary where my spirit may find solace.
In February I start paying it back in person.