Last week, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. I watched the headlines roll in from my laptop, sitting in our Colivs office in Singapore, running numbers on a spreadsheet that had nothing to do with trillions.
I am going to be honest with you. Something shifted in me when I saw that number. Not jealousy exactly — something more uncomfortable than that. It was a quiet question that I have been trying to ignore for years: Am I thinking too small?
"The hardest thing about being a founder is not the risk. It is knowing how to measure yourself against a world that keeps raising the bar."
I spent about three hours in that discomfort. I looked at our businesses. I looked at what we have built since 2013. A co-living company that has housed hundreds of people who needed a clean, honest place to stay. An agro business that is giving Tamil Nadu farmers a direct line to Singapore families. A software product helping small businesses manage their money without hiring a CFO.
None of it is a trillion dollars. None of it will ever be. And I had to sit with whether that was okay.
The coconut farm answer
Here is what I came back to. My grandfather owned a small coconut farm in Tamil Nadu. He did not scale it. He did not raise funding. He grew coconuts, sold them fairly, and built a life that his family is still grateful for fifty years later. No one called him a visionary. No one wrote articles about his disruption of the coconut market.
But every person who bought from him got exactly what they paid for. Every worker on his farm was treated with dignity. Every deal he made, he honoured.
That is the standard I want to be measured against. Not a trillion dollars. Not the cover of Forbes. Did the people who did business with me walk away better off? Did I do what I said I would do?
I think the real trap for founders — especially in 2026 — is comparing the right metric (are we building something genuinely valuable?) to the wrong measurement (how big is the number?). Elon's trillion is a real thing. It represents real scale. But it is not the only way to measure a life in business.
I am going to keep growing Adobha. But I am going to do it at the pace the businesses deserve — not the pace that impresses people who read TechCrunch.
Some days the coconut farm is exactly the right answer.