What is 🤷🏽♂️ Not My Problem?
Food Waste, Plastic Pollution, e-commerce waste problem, water crisis- it’s easy to dismiss them as someone else’s problem. It’s easy to tell ourselves that someone else is taking care of this. But who is this ‘someone else’? And where are they?
🤷🏽♂️Not My Problem is an effort to shine a spotlight on these startups and founders who are solving these problems in their own ways.
Every week, I share stories of startups across the world that are tirelessly working on solving it.
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I see. And Who’s writing this?
It’s great to have you here! This is Naman and I’ve been writing this newsletter every week for the past 2+ years.
The journey behind this started towards the end of 2019. I was about to finish my MBA and was looking for a job post that. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next but I knew what I didn’t want to do- I didn’t feel I was a great fit for banking or consulting jobs.
And having spent some time working for startups pre-MBA, I knew I couldn’t go back to working with a bigger organization.
Nothing against people working there but I knew those were not for me…
The Not-To-Do list kept on getting longer and I eventually figured out that I wanted to work with startups that cared- cared for the state of the planet, society, and humanity.
By the time I figured this out, COVID had hit (early 2020) and most of the startups had stopped hiring.
But in this process, I discovered a lot of startups that cared. And I wanted to share their stories with the world. Spoke to around 50 startup founders in this space and converted that into a podcast series.
And through these conversations, I started understanding the climate change space- the problems and the solutions that are being built.
I went through a myriad of emotions- anger, grief, and hopelessness topped the list. I even had a phase where I became a purist and thought individual actions matter a lot.
But as I got deeper into the space, I tried to adopt a more balanced take towards it- started going easy on myself(and my closed ones), accepted that we need systemic changes to make an impact, and realized that a lot of people cared about this and are doing impactful work in this space.
🤷🏽♂️Not My Problem is an effort to shine a spotlight on such startups and individuals. And we all can help them by being their customers, employees, investors, or just cheerleaders.
I am hopeful that all of these brilliant solutions would come together one day and bring a meaningful change.
If you’d like me to cover your story, you could submit it here
Here’s what some of the readers have to say about this-
I love reading Naman's newsletter. I find it very informative, I learn a lot about new startups that are leading the way in transforming our economy to preserve our Planet, I love the "good news” section and the global perspective of the newsletter. It energizes me and gives me hope. - Bernard Louvat
Naman, I will tell you that I have had many LinkedIn friends thank me for following you because they have now found your newsletter and can access interesting new companies that are dedicated to helping the planet. Keep up the great work! You discover some really interesting things! - Jorie Wisnefski
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