Hey, I'm Tejas.

For the last decade and a half, I've been obsessed with a single idea: the design determines the way something works. Design isn't decoration. Taste isn't a luxury. They're the competitive advantage.

The story so far

The 2020s

Founder at — an AI-native presentation tool. Think Cursor, but for slides. The thesis is simple: how you present something matters as much as what you're presenting. You bring the thinking, Chronicle handles the design.

led one of the largest seed rounds of its time, and we brought on stellar angels from Google, Slack, Stripe, and Atlassian. People who understand that taste at the product level is what separates tools people tolerate from tools people love. We've since grown the team to 20 across San Francisco, Australia, and India, and the next chapter of Chronicle is taking shape.

On GTM and product, I'm obsessed with the first 60 seconds of a user's experience. They need to feel the difference immediately — enough to place Chronicle in their workflow so that the next time a high-stakes deck comes up, it's the first tool they reach for. Not a marginal improvement. A over whatever they were using. Onboarding isn't bells and whistles. It's proving what's possible with their own inputs, in real time.

Our obsession with the initial experience showed up in the results. We went viral on Twitter with our , then again with . We hit on Product Hunt, competing against thousands of products across every category like Notion, Cursor and Lovable.

On the side, I'm constantly tinkering on hobby projects. I played competitive football for 20 years — watched it at every level, flew to Russia for the — and I've slowly traded the pitch for the pavement. I ran my first half marathon in Oakland, got hooked, and now I'm building to track everything the way I wish existing tools did.

Same story with coffee. What started as a casual habit turned into an obsession that's taken me through cafes in over 40 countries, always searching for the perfect flat white. I started logging and rating every spot, and eventually that turned into this — a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood guide to every spot worth knowing in the city.

The mid-2010s

Before Chronicle, I was in Singapore at , building the retail and e-commerce experience for luxury brands in Southeast Asia. The team was ex-McKinsey, the stakes were real, and how you framed a recommendation often determined whether it got funded or killed.

Before Singapore, three years in , working directly with the APAC CEO across US and APAC geographies. Brand and positioning weren't side conversations — they were the core of business strategy. The lesson that stuck: how something is packaged changes how it's received, whether you're selling to a boardroom or to a consumer.

Somewhere in this stretch, my turned into something more hands-on. I've always brought people together around a table — it's been my move in every city I've lived in. Eventually I designed my own: , a custom card pack. When you care about how things look and feel, even game night becomes a design project.

The early 2010s

Then came , where I did a bachelor's in Computational Physics. Simulations and mathematical models by day. Typography, layout, and color theory by night — entirely self-taught. Two worlds that had no reason to overlap. But that intersection — analytical rigour meets visual instinct — turned out to be the foundation for everything.

At 16, I turned that instinct into my first business — an online platform selling . The jerseys were the same as everyone else's. The store wasn't. It looked better, and people bought from me because of it. Same product, better packaging. First proof of concept for an idea I'd test for the next fifteen years: taste is leverage.

The 2000s

The instinct showed up early. I collected and and spent more time redrawing them than trading them — studying colours, layouts, the weight of a good illustration. I in 10th grade, which opened doors. But the thing that shaped me most was the habit of looking closely.

What I Believe

Taste is leverage. In a world drowning in AI-generated everything, the ability to discern what's actually good compounds faster than any technical skill.

Distribution beats product. The best product rarely wins. The best-distributed product usually does. Build something great, then make it impossible to ignore.

Ship, then steer. You learn more from one week of real users than a month of internal debate. Velocity is a feature.

Do hard things on purpose. Run farther than you think you can. Raise harder than feels comfortable. The misogi mindset — one defining challenge per year — reshapes your sense of what's possible.

Media

Connect

Find me on X, LinkedIn, or say hello at tejas@tejgw.com.