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2025 in review

2026 January

See 2024 in review to see my goals/thoughts for last year.

Some thoughts on 2025

2025 was an eventful year – I became legally married, read 49 books, and grew my org at Ramp to close to 40 engineers before leaving to co-found a new company.

On Ramp

After nearly 2.5 years after returning to Ramp, I left in November 2025. When I started this annual review, I started with this section before realizing I had too much I wanted to write about. I published On leaving Ramp (again) as a standalone post, which I'd recommend reading for anyone curious.

On [redacted]

I left Ramp to co-found a startup with two other folks, and given we're still in stealth, I'll avoid spoiling the surprise. Expect a new post once we launch though, and hopefully after we have a Series A. It's been a breath of fresh air, and completely unlike my experience working on Venue, my first startup.

On reading

I somehow surpassed my 2024 mark of 45 books, and read 49 books in 2025. 2025 was my second year of reading primarily sci-fi & fantasy, and I found myself engrossed in a number of strong series. I found the payoff of later books deeply fulfilling, and enjoyed seeing character growth over a longer period of time.

Without further ado – here are my top reads of last year (unordered):

On friendship

A group of my college friends – Omar, Kevin, Megan, and myself – have had monthly dinners for the last 5 years, and over time it's become one of the most meaningful traditions in my life. It's difficult to make new friends as you get older, and having a constant group to build & share memories with has been a highlight.

To Rochelle

To Rochelle, who always asks when she'll be mentioned on these posts – here's to continuing a happy and healthy life together 🥂

To the many people who've asked me what has changed since getting married – nothing material; I'm skeptical of anyone who claims their relationship has drastically changed because of marriage.

2025 Goals: A review

✅ Try therapy

I attended therapy (had therapy? had a therapist?) weekly for a few months this year, and overall I'm happy I went through the experience. I ultimately stopped because I didn't think it was a valuable enough use of time, and because I realized partway through that I didn't have clear goals that I was looking to accomplish.

On a related note, I had two leadership coaches this year – one by introduction through a family friend, and one through a employer sponsored coach at Ramp. I generally found this experience more insightful than having a therapist, though I suspect that's more of a reflection of my own bias towards work.

❌ Exercise regularly

I had a consistent routine for the first few months of the year after I had some suspicious blood test results. Unfortunately, on a re-test, the results came back fine and I lost motivation shortly thereafter.

2026 Goals

Looking back at prior years, I realize I rarely hit these goals each year. Regardless, we will set some goals again.

Write 10 blog posts

Looking back, writing blog posts was one of my goals in 2020 & 2021, and I didn't accomplish it either year. Here's to hoping 2026 is different.

I'd also like to mention some of my inspirations for getting started with this blog back in 2019, with some of my favorite articles linked:

And some of my recent inspirations:

Series A

No, seriously, we need to raise a Series A. This one's for Ray.