A few months ago someone asked me if I had "manifested" Frappe's success. That got me thinking. The Frappe that exists today in its richness and complexity, is hard to comprehend. So to think that I had any clue, even three years ago, about what Frappe would look like would be foolish to imagine. This means that I have no clue what shape will Frappe take three years from now. I started off as a barely literate entrepreneur and a maybe decent software programmer almost two decades ago. I had no clue about things like people and customers and business and cash flows. I was fascinated by software products and loved programming (as it used to be called back then, not “writing code”) and assumed the business will magically appear around it.

Once we got a primitive product (ERPNext) out of the box, I used to spend probably two thirds of my time programming and the rest “solving problems”, like hiring, mentoring and talking to users. I think I used to be pretty good at programming, so I had some “taste” in identifying good programmers (the code just magically flows from their finger tips) but I was terrible at identifying people for other roles. I used to just identify an overall responsibility - like Umair was good at customer support and Prakash was good at admin and then let them do their thing, with the hope things don’t escalate to me. On the other side, I was constantly inspired by stories of software entrepreneurs making it big in the Silicon Valley and I used to constantly share these stories with the team whenever I got the chance.

Since I found these stories very inspiring, I assumed everyone would. I was quite liberal with sharing equity and job titles (maybe too much) for anyone who was interested. But this just my rosy eyed view of the world. Most people did not give a damn about this. They had their own personal journeys and problems. Many just wanted to get paid on time and would do whatever it took. Occasionally we would get engineers who would be genuinely kicked by their work - whether it was designing or making things, and they would be the engine that took Frappe to the next level. These engineers usually reached out to us, instead of we head-hunting them - so it was quite random.

Whenever we had a talented engineer at Frappe, I could instantly get a sense of their skills and boundaries, and was able to constantly “throw” challenging projects at them. And more often than not, they would “run” with it. I found reviews and meetings very boring, so every time they did something that did not match my taste, I would instantly convert it into a “teaching moment”. “Don’t use abbreviations in code”, “Convert this large function into a class”, “There should be only one primary button on a page”, “Altering the aspect ratio of something is a crime against humanity” and so on. This was not documented anywhere, just tribal knowledge that I shared whenever I saw something that felt wrong to me. Since I am generally “lazy” and hate monitoring other people, the only way I figured it would be sustainable was if people understood the WHY. Slowly this is how we built a culture of programming and building products at Frappe.

We would also go out and critique or deconstruct other products, specially Apple ones (we spent an entire day drooling over the iPhone when it was launched). I also built taste for minimal design (maybe living in cluttered Mumbai, it felt like an ideal choice) and had an eye for design systems as well. Somehow through me and the other “good” engineers, people started picking up ideas and executing them. Over time, as I moved into a full time mentorship role, I kept my “teacher” mindset alive. My goal was not to give answers to people, but to help them think through the answers themselves.

There were also many instances where I did not hire well, and folks I hired did not have the right skills for it, no matter how hard they tried. Often I tried to change their roles in the hope they find something that helps them thrive. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it did not. Not everyone is destined to deliver in every team. This leads to a vicious cycle of low confidence and fear of failure for that person. In these cases, after careful deliberation and enough attempts, it is best to separate.

Through years of experience, I understood that the “fuel” to mentoring someone was to help people find their own inner and authentic fire. Any effort in mentoring someone who does not feel motivated is wasted. So I then figured my goal was to help people "activate” themselves by helping them find their own fire. It meant taking genuine interest in everyone as a person and not just a colleague. It meant not pushing them into something because of my goals, but trying to help them build their own sense of agency. This way of working felt a lot less antagonistic and I got the unexpected benefit of understanding the world through so many perspectives.

In a recent interview by the legendary George R. R. Martin (one of my personal favourites), he mentioned that there are two types of writers, architects and gardeners. Architects have a clear vision of the book they are writing and have it all planned out. Gardeners on another hand plant different elements and then let the plants have their own individuality. Slowly the plot then reveals itself. While everyone is a little bit of both, people are usually on one side of the spectrum (anyone who has read GRRM will know he is a gardener). I think it is the same with leadership. There is the architect variety and the gardener variety. I am very much on the gardener side of the spectrum. Every person who joined Frappe has help make it what it is today and Frappe is the joint “manifestation” of all of us. My role was always about treating each individual differently, and making sure the right elements were there to help them blossom.

My entire journey has been about making sure that what I think is right (or wrong), is known to people who I work with. And then with consent and dialogue, trying to align the values. It has kind of worked. It is a slow process and there are no guarantees, but when it works, it exceeds any expectation I would have had as an “architect”.