Sunil Suri

2022 ANNUAL REVIEW

Sunil Suri
2022 ANNUAL REVIEW

About six months ago, I was chatting to an American friend I’d not seen in a couple of years. “So let me get this right: you’ve moved into a house where you’re living with your best friend, you’ve met someone and you’ve launched a startup that you're passionate about, and there isn’t some sort of family crisis?”

I found myself blurting out something affirmatively. It’s etched in my memory because I felt pretty good. Don’t get me wrong, I normally feel pretty good. But at this moment, I felt more existentially surer footed than I had for a few years. 2022 felt like it was shaping up to be a defining year.

But only three months later, everything changed due to family circumstances. I was no longer able to be a co-founder of my new-ish startup. I moved back to my hometown, a familiar echo of what happened during Covid-19. And I began the process of joining my family business. 

Mike Tyson famously quipped, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Well I’d been punched in the mouth. It’s why this “annual” review is half a year late. The end of 2022 and the start of 2023 was not a period for reflection for me. It was one of intense reaction and action.

The challenges are not over and in fact, in the days and weeks before I’ve written these very words, they have multiplied. In certain moments, we are called to support those we love. So while I’ve had to make sacrifices - where I live, what I do - I wouldn’t change any of my decisions.

THINGS TO CELEBRATE

1. Co-founding a green jobs startup, greenworkx

During fundraising for our pre-seed, one investor remarked that he was getting “tingly feelings” listening to our team story, while another hinted that it was almost too good to be true. The thing is: it was magic.

I’d met Richard on the first night of a venture capital programme a few years ago called Included VC. Discovering our shared interests, pretty much from that moment on, we’d set our eyes on working together. And I’d worked with Mat, my other co-founder, at a UK charity, where we shared frustrations about the status quo of the workings of social impact and endlessly debated alternative futures. A chance meeting with Mat in June where he mentioned doing something focused on green jobs led me to introduce him to Richard. Not long after we made our very own Granita pact, with all three of us leaving our jobs soon after.

I couldn’t have picked two better co-founders. Hungry, values-driven and simply brilliant in complementary and challenging ways. It also ticked other boxes: it’s a problem I care about, albeit one that I hadn’t fully recognised I could make a contribution to. And while the scale of the problem is daunting, this equated to a massive opportunity.

Despite it being a briefer experience than I’d hoped, I’m proud of what we achieved in those months and know that in bringing together Richard and Mat, I’ve helped build the foundations of something that is urgently needed. While I’m not a co-founder today, I remain an advisor and will be supporting greenworkx, Richard, Mat and the rest of the team however I can.

Postscript: we finally closed our pre-seed round, which you can read about here.

2. Walking away from greenworkx to support my family

I made the decision to step down from greenworkx almost immediately after I found out a family member was ill. It was simultaneously the hardest and easiest decision of my life. greenworkx felt like the coming together of the people, problem and purpose that I’d been searching for. I woke up excited to get to work. But once I weighed my personal ambitions and hopes against the needs of someone I care about, it felt like a no brainer.

Following that decision, I found myself waging medical warfare, seeking to unlock treatment options that would change the low odds of survival that we’d been given, while also taking tentative steps to join my family business in a deeper capacity than previously.

In choosing to leave greenworkx, I’ve found myself wrestling with my ego albeit through the rear view mirror (and the occasional LinkedIn message from someone I admire to chat about greenworkx).

Someone who knows me well remarked that every time I’ve seemed to be on the cusp of doing something for myself in the past six years, it has been interrupted by unforeseen events. There is a truth in that. But I continue to take comfort in the writings of David Brooks and his writings on the difference between resume and eulogy virtues:

The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

While my so-called resume virtues may be fitful, I’m proud of my service to others.

OPEN QUESTIONS

How do you make sense of suffering? In the past six years, one in three members of my close family have passed away or faced a critical illness. I’ve been intimately involved in the deaths of four people including my brother. It has been non-stop. An illness. A death. One after the other.

You can, however difficult, I think kind of make sense of one or two of these events in isolation. But when there are multiple occurrences in the same extended family, the capacity of the human mind’s ability to make sense of things is stretched. The elastic band snaps.

Obviously there are genetic and environmental factors, but there is a certain point where even science loses its explanatory power. I’ve heard too many doctors say they don’t know why something is happening.

My mother believes in karma, the idea that our actions in previous lives determine our fate in this one. Another friend jokes that we’ve been cursed. Another family member has suggested maybe we were only to be together for a short time because like a comet, together our whole family was a brilliant time-limited burst of energy and joy.

I’ve often made the case that the loss of two uncles and my own brother have traumatized other family members to the point they have experienced their own illnesses. The body keeps the score. In a sense, the suffering is connected. It is the same suffering. Like dominos, we keep falling backwards one after the other.

But I don’t know anymore.

Before my brother passed, he often said: it is what it is. When he said it, it sounded brave. He was accepting his fate with dignity. The words themselves suggest that searching for meaning in such events is futile.

Since he passed, I’ve heard the phrase with increasing frequency. For a long while after, the acceptance in those words has become eclipsed by resignation, even fatalism.

But there is wisdom in those words.

It is what it is. The suffering just is. There is no point asking why we suffer. The suffering itself is the question. It asks the sufferer and those who love them who they are.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Can I make my mark on the business my father made? What does it mean to do that? With greenworkx, I found meaning in my work because of the explicit social purpose of what I was doing. I was also going on this journey with friends and a team made up of talented individuals who were all-in on our unproven startup because they were also mission-aligned.

Joining my family business has meant I need to figure out what motivates me all over again without peers of a similar age and outlook by my side.

Fortunately, the former is starting to come into view for me, with three challenges capturing my attention:

First, navigating what I’m repeatedly told is one of the toughest business environments for bricks and mortar businesses, whether that be because of rising interest rates, energy costs or changing consumer behaviour. Better to join in a difficult environment, where there is less room for complacency and a greater will to reimagine everything from first principles in the search for greater profits. 

Second, creating developments that contribute to a greater sense of community. Travelling around the UK, I never fail to be struck by the repetitive sight of hollowed out high streets, defined by an excess of charity and betting shops, as well as the same anchor tenants. Civic pride may seem like an abstract concept, but in many of the places I visit, it seems to be absent – quite understandably given the deficit of investment. Joining a business, which has at its heart, an independent cinema chain, means there is scope to be part of the answer to how we might create new civic spaces.

Third, playing a role in helping to define the future of the cinema industry as it continues to be disrupted by technology. In the UK, a number of cinemas will close in the months and years to come. This does not mean there is not a future for the sector. New relationships with the studios and streaming giants will need to be forged. For some of them, there is still an equilibrium to reach between making money at the box office and via subscriptions to their platforms. It’s also about diversifying how space is used so that there is not an over dependence on cinema box office returns. The latter is nothing new, but now I’m in the driving seat to develop and test new concepts.

In terms of my focus, it’s likely that the first will take up most of my time for the remainder of 2023. When it comes to the second and third challenges, which are connected, it’s about putting in place some of the foundations to build on in the near future.

THINGS TO IMPROVE

  • Become a morning person again. I’m not using the earlier hours as effectively as I have done in the past.

  • Stop watching streaming services outside of series I know I actually want to watch.

  • Just enjoy things like reading knowing that you’ll likely forget most of what you learnt. It doesn’t make it any less worthwhile.

  • Read more fiction.

  • Try more nights out without drinking.

  • Reply to people on time. I’ve had a lot going on, but there are a few people who I’ve owed a response much faster than I have.

  • Don’t reflect too much on whether therapy is helping or not – even if it just serves as an outlet to vent, it is valuable.

REFLECTING ON 2022 GOALS

1. Improve Twitter reply game and publish 12 long threads on Twitter (n/A)

2. Re-launch newsletter, freshly squeezed (Published x1)

3. Publish x2 long-form essays (topics inc. death, love & relationships (N/A)

4. Get to/maintain target weight and improve rotator cuff, wrist and ankle functionality - as well breathing (A -)

  • Exercise x5 p/w including x1 F45 class and x1 yoga class

  • Go off-grid for at least one weekend per quarter

  • Build a daily routine that includes rotator cuff and wrist strengthening exercises, foot and ankle work programme and Breathwork exercises.

5. Improve my Web3 skills, understanding & networks by playing key role in a DAO (N/A)

6. Invest 10% monthly income in crypto and startups and save 25% (N/A)

I didn’t fully achieve any of my goals in 2022.

The only exception were my health goals.

I did some form of exercise on 152 days of the year (40%). Even then though I didn’t build the foundations I hoped (foot and ankle work and yoga practice).

So what happened?

 Challenges:

  • Six seemed achievable, but with everything else going on in my life, there were too many.

  • A lot of my goals were focused on online activities, a continuation of where I had expended my energies during Covid-19, a period when I was more isolated from my life in London. These conditions decisively changed in 2022. I had a real hunger to see my friends and do things IRL. It meant these goals were neglected.

  • I was a copycat. I invested my time in things that people I thought were interesting had invested in. But I didn’t find them as interesting or accessible once I went deeper (see Web3 and DAOs).

  • Aside from my health-focused habits, I lacked discipline.

  • I made choices like starting greenworkx that necessitated intense focus.

  • Despite building a habits-based system, I didn’t fully let go of goal setting. In some ways I set myself up for failure. What should have been enjoyable gradually became burdensome.

To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal— if you reach it at all — feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game. … If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. … Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.

Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Overall, my systems to Get Stuff Done broke down in 2022 for the first time since I put them into place in 2019. They served their purpose in terms of helping me get back on my feet after some of the toughest moments of my life.

Going forward, I’m simplifying my system, renewing my focus on habits, and explicitly removing a focus on goals, instead opting for a focus on areas.

PLANS FOR THE SECOND HALF OF 2023

With new responsibilities related to my family business, I’m going to keep it super simple.

I’m also going to lean into the power of compounding. Rather than aim to do a large amount of something every day or week or commit to a course (which I have a poor record of completing), which then gets crowded out by other commitments, I’m going to do a little every day.

I’m also going to build on habits I’ve implemented in these past six months.

So here goes:

Health

Learning

  • Spend 15 minutes per day learning.

  • Things I’ll look at include:

    • Finance and accounting

    • Property development

    • ChatGPT

    • New entertainment concepts.

Writing

One of my ambitions is to write a book based on my recent encounters with loss. I don’t want to commit to that this year, but I will prioritize reading books touching on this them. I’m undecided, but I may capture what I read and my reflections in a Google Doc.

If I do have the time and energy to write, I may write an essay. Potential topics include what it’s actually like to join a family business. There isn’t much around on the latter as far as I can see – perhaps because these people are scared of being accused of being nepo babies.

MEMORIES

Favourite Music

This was the year I rediscovered Spotify, but being busy has got in the way of discovering music of late:

Favourite Video

Favourite Travel

  • The road trip to Lake Turkana was a special one. 20+ people in a ridiculous convoy.

Favourite Meal

  • The Waterside Inn with Ed, Gabe and Abigail on April 17th 2022.