Anand standing on a table with his MacBook in his hand at an office
© Rikkert Harink

About

Anand Chowdhary is a creative technologist and entrepreneur.

Anand Chowdhary is an engineer, designer, and entrepreneur from New Delhi, India. He lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with his wife Sukriti Kapoor(external link), and is the co-founder & CTO of Pabio, an interior design and rent-to-own furniture company.

As an engineer, he's focused on web standards and the JavaScript ecosystem. As a designer, he specializes in user interfaces, branding, and design systems. And as a serial entrepreneur, he's built, scaled, and advised several technology-focused startups around the world.

He is also an open source contributor, awarded by GitHub as a GitHub Star (2021–2023), and was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 (Asia 2018) and in Het Financieele Dagblad's list of most-innovative entrepreneurs and professionals in the Netherlands.

From time to time, he speaks at events and writes articles about entrepreneurship and technology. He has been featured in publications like TechCrunch, Forbes, The Next Web, Hindustan Times, and CSS Tricks(external link).

Startups

  • FirstQuadrant(external link), co-founder, CTO, CPO, 2023–present

    AI sales platform for inbound, outbound, and nurturing sales

  • Pabio, co-founder & CTO, 2020–2023

    Rent-to-own furniture in Europe with personalized interior design

  • Oswald Labs, co-founder & CEO, 2016–2020

    Accessibility technology for the next billion Internet users

  • Melangebox, co-founder & CTO, 2017–2020

    Sustainable, high-quality, and affordable fashion for India

  • Class Rebels, co-founder & CEO, 2014–2016

    Collaborative e-learning platform for CBSE K-12

  • PickQuick, co-founder & CTO, 2012–2013

    Buy, sell, or swap university books safely online and on campus

This is a guide on how to work with me, inspired by the READMEs of Quinn Slack and fellow YC founders Tim Glaser and Sid Sijbrandij.

Pronounciation

/ɑnʌnð t͡ʃŏɖʱɹi/ (similar to Aah-nun’d Cho-dree).

About me

I made my first website and published it to the web when I was ten years old. Since then, I’ve moved on from Dreamweaver and Photoshop to the JavaScript ecosystem and web standards. I’m from New Delhi and currently live in and work remotely from Groningen, after previously living in Enschede and briefly the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m also an advisor to early-stage startups and open source contributor. Before Pabio, I co-founded accessibility technology company Oswald Labs (scaled to 5k+ users with enterprise & government customers) and fashion ecommerce retailer Melangebox (zero to $250k revenue in one year).

Quirks

  • When in long meetings, I tend to get distracted and often find myself ⌘+↹-ing to a different window (I used to previously catch myself using my phone, so I keep it away from me now). I’m working on this but please call me out if you notice I’m not paying attention.
  • I typically work long hours, so you might receive an email or Slack message from me at unholy hours; you don’t have to read or reply immediately if you’re not working, and I don’t expect you to work at the same times.
  • I’m still learning how to transition from designer/developer/hacker/etc. to manager, so you’ll likely have to bare with my lack of discipline when it comes to important managerial responsibilities like setting up projects well in advance and providing useful feedback.
  • I tend to think and talk fast, so I might jump in while someone is still talking and try to finish their thought. This is also something I’m working on, so if you say “Let me finish”, it’ll make me feel like I’m a prick and make me much more conscious of this.
  • My co-founder Carlo told me that I am “very good at things [I] want to do, and so bad at things I don’t want to do”. I want to do a better job at tasks that are important, but those I’m not particular excited about.

More to be added!

What I value & how you can help me

  • Keeping things in the open: Just like this README, I keep my OKRs, life and health data, and everything else I can, public. If it’s not public, it’s shared internally with the team (e.g., my calendar, Pabio finance details, and life updates). I value transparency, even in the little things like posting in Slack channels rather than direct messages.
  • Feed me back: I piked this incredibly useful habit up from my co-founder Carlo — asking for feedback. If we have a one-on-one meeting, I highly value receiving feedback on how I can improve personally, do my job better, or help you do your job better.

How I can help you

More to be added!

License

This text is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).