Sid Gangal

About

I’m Sid Gangal. I spent seven years building a company, sold it in my late twenties and then had to figure out what to do with myself.

This site is where I write about the three things I’ve learned compound: building products, growing wealth, and optimizing health.

Build - Why I Write About Startups

In my final year at IIT Mandi, while everyone sat for placements, I submitted a pitch to a startup competition. I didn’t win. But something clicked.

I started Solar Labs with co-founders I’d met through college festivals and the placement cell (one of whom had actually fired me from my campus job). We were four people in a 3BHK, sometimes slept in the co-working space surrounded by pizza boxes, and spent 1.5 years building a product before we had anything to sell.

Our first real enterprise deal came from a Tata Power executive who remembered a pitch we’d given four years earlier - when we had no product, just slides and conviction. He remembered us because we kept showing up.

Many years later, we exited to a US company. By the time I had left, we were in multi million revenue and had thousands of solar installers who trusted us with their business.

The startup had become my identity. I was the company and the company was me. The decision to sell was logical - what took us seven years, I could now do in three with this experience. Initially I had decided no - and flown to the acquirer to respectfully say no. But I ended up saying yes and doing the deal. Logic triumphed over emotions.

Now I’m building again. Building companies, building yourself, helping people, just building stuff.

What I believe about building:

Invest - Why I Write About Markets

After the exit, I had capital and needed to put it to work.

It was early 2022. Markets were at all-time highs. There was euphoria everywhere. I had a strange discomfort handing my money to mutual fund managers or dumping it into an index. Everything felt overvalued. Everyone had read about 2008 and the Covid crash was very recent, so I decided to just do nothing.

I put everything in fixed deposits and spent a year studying.

I watched the market while everyone else was buying. I also made mistakes - invested in near ATHs in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a startup right after getting my payout. All of it went down within months. The startup I invested in went belly up.

But that patience with the rest of my capital saved me.

When markets crashed in late 2022 and early 2023, I deployed. India and US markets. Those investments did well—15% alpha over the indexes in very safe companies.

I’m competitive. I wanted to beat the market. I had met enough people who were doing so, and I felt I could learn with time and as I went through the market cycles myself.

And I wanted to understand what I owned. Public markets are regulated, transparent, liquid. You can see the products, read the financials, form your own thesis. If you’re right on your fundamental thesis, you make money. If you’re wrong, you get out. I put all the cash in technology as that’s what I knew and could form my best thesis on.

Current focus (2025/2026):

What I believe about investing:

Thrive - Why I Write About Health

I was always the fit kid. Football, basketball, cricket through school. College basketball and football teams. Sports was my thing.

Then I started a company.

For seven years, I paid zero attention to my health. I was so fit when I started that my past took care of me - until it didn’t.

Sometime when I was 28, I got a full body checkup. The results were a wake-up call:

On a typical Indian vegetarian diet, I realized I had starved my body of protein for years. The inflammation was oxidizing me from the inside. That’s what really ages you.

Within a year, I brought my hsCRP under 0.5.

I started reading. Peter Attia on why exercise is the most powerful intervention against chronic disease. David Sinclair’s story about his father - old, declining, then started NAD+ and focused nutrition, and suddenly he’s hiking with the grandkids with a whole new lease on life. Bryan Johnson’s “crazy experiment” that’s actually not that crazy when you look at the science.

I want to live to 100-120. I don’t know if that’s a realistic number but I think it could be as medical science advances and AI accelerates. But more important than the number, whatever that number ends up being, I want to live those years well -walking, traveling, doing things, not restricted to a bed. The goal is maximum healthspan, not just lifespan.

What one should focus on:

The Compounding Philosophy

These three pillars reinforce each other.

Building gives you capital. Capital buys time. Time lets you invest in health. Health gives you energy to build more.

Connect

You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. I usually reply to messages within a week, feel free to follow up if I’ve not replied.