A working notebook
Akshay Singh
Builder, writer and early-stage operator.
I make companies, products, communities and experiments — usually before the playbook exists.
Preface
p. 1
Preface
I’m Akshay.
I’m a builder, writer and early-stage operator.
I’ve spent most of my life making things on the internet — companies, products, communities, experiments, and occasionally businesses that started with very little more than curiosity and a laptop.
I like people who build because they cannot quite leave a problem alone.
Right now, I’m building Socrio — applied AI and new infrastructure for education.
Mostly, this website is a place to keep together things I’m building, ideas I’m thinking through, books I’m reading and notes that are not yet fully formed.
Zero to One
p. 3
Between Zero and One
The most interesting work
sits between zero and one.
I started doing $10 website gigs online when I was 11. By 16, I’d built and exited a small digital marketing agency and a D2C merchandise business.
Since then, I’ve worked mostly with founders at the earliest stages: turning ideas into products, finding growth, building teams, and doing the slightly chaotic work that happens before a playbook exists.
Along the way, I’ve helped two founding teams grow from zero to more than $10M and learned a great deal about how companies actually get built.
0 → 1
Building
p. 9
What I’m Building
What I’m working on now.
I’m currently building Socrio — applied AI and new infrastructure for education.
Education is one focus, not the whole frame. I’m also interested in company building, artificial intelligence, private equity, economic history, cities, architecture, institutions, capital allocation, design, internet culture, and why certain people and organisations repeatedly create things that did not exist before.
Beliefs
p. 15
A Few Things I Believe
01
The most interesting work tends to begin before a playbook exists.
02
Curiosity is a good enough reason to start building.
03
I like people who build because they cannot quite leave a problem alone.
04
Small, risk-free bets can give people room to work on problems that feel personal to them.
05
Technology becomes interesting when it changes the underlying economics of an industry.
06
The people worth backing are often the ones doing the work before their qualifications catch up.
07
I tend to collect interests faster than I can properly study them.
Notes
p. 23
Notes from the Margins
A working index. Things get written here when they stop being obvious.
- 001Learning without a playbookFeb 2026
What the slightly chaotic work between an idea and a company teaches you.6 min · written
- 002Why some people keep buildingMar 2026
On curiosity, unfinished problems and the inability to leave either alone.9 min · written
- 003Strange business modelsApr 2026
A growing collection of businesses that should not work, but do.7 min · written
- 004Small bets on unlikely peopleMay 2026
What risk-free capital can unlock for an early builder.5 min · written
- 005Notes on AI-native organisationsJul 2026
What changes when the organisation, not just its software, is designed around AI.11 min · written
- 006In defence of being unqualifiedAug 2026
Learning things by trying to build them.4 min · written
- 007Things I changed my mind aboutSep 2026
A running list, deliberately unflattering.8 min · in progress
Marginalia
p. 31
Marginalia
Fragments too short to be essays, kept because they were useful at the time.
The playbook usually arrives after the interesting part is over.
clipped from the margins
I like people who build because they cannot quite leave a problem alone.
slipped into the book
Curiosity and a laptop have started a surprising number of things.
passage marked in pencil
I tend to collect interests faster than I can properly study them.
clipped from the margins
Selected Work
p. 37
Selected Work
- NowSocrio — building applied AI and new infrastructure for education.
- BeforeFlylane — product, strategy and company building.
- BeforeThoughtForma — product and operations.
- AlongsideNoCode Weekend — a community that helped more than 3,000 people build and ship ideas.
- Laterlilac.fund — small, risk-free bets on people solving problems that matter personally to them.
Bookshelf
p. 41
On the Bookshelf
Read, mostly, with a pencil in hand.
The Trial
Franz Kafka
Every institution I have worked inside has had a court like this somewhere in it.
The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch
The most optimistic book about problems I know. Explains why I keep building things.
How to Do Nothing
Jenny Odell
Attention is the resource education is actually short of.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
Institutions change paradigm the way science does — reluctantly, and late.
Educated
Tara Westover
What a school can do to a person, and what a person can do with that.
About the Author
p. 47
About the Author
Akshay Singh is a builder, writer and early-stage operator, currently building Socrio in London.
He has spent most of his career helping founders turn ideas into products, find growth, build teams and navigate the work between zero and one.
He co-built NoCode Weekend, which helped more than 3,000 people explore new careers and build ideas, and later started lilac.fund to make small, risk-free bets on early builders.
He likes old books, great hotels, long train journeys, beautiful software, ambitious founders, family businesses, strange business models and walking through unfamiliar cities.
- Currently
- Building Socrio
- Based
- London
- Working across
- Product, growth and company building
- Curious about
- AI, ownership, cities and institutional design
Colophon
p. 59
Colophon
Written and edited in London.
Set on the internet.
First edition, 2026.
Last revised October 2026.
There will be mistakes.
© Akshay Singh
⁂