I’m writing this from a 5-star hotel room on an island in Malaysia.

There’s a gym downstairs I haven’t consistently used. There’s a piano I just discovered. There’s a breakfast buffet on the first floor that I didn’t know existed for two days, because I was too embarrassed to ask anyone and kept going to the wrong floor.

I’m 23. I have 275K followers on Instagram. I’ve done brand deals with Google, Notion, Apple, Warp and what not. I’ve built five companies, some alive, some barely breathing. I’m a TEDx speaker, a 3x Kaggle Expert, and I’m an AI researcher by profession. On paper, I am what LinkedIn would call “a young leader making waves.”

In reality, I took my first sip of beer four days ago, hated it, and went to sleep feeling like I understood absolutely nothing about being a man.

So. Welcome to Tensor on Substack. This is going to be different from anything I’ve ever published. Because for the first time, I’m going to tell you the truth.

Here’s what the internet knows about me

I’m Tensor Boy. I make AI and tech content. I break down how machine learning works, why your startup’s architecture is wrong, and how to think about building in an age where most people are just consuming. I’ve been doing this for years. At my peak, 275K people trusted me enough to hit follow.

Here’s what the internet doesn’t know

I’ve had clinical depression for over five years. I have C-PTSD from things I’m still learning how to name. I’ve lost roughly ₹1.3 lakh to people I trusted, not because I’m stupid, but because I used to believe people more than facts.

I went silent on content for weeks. Not because I was “building in private.” Because I couldn’t get out of bed. My editors, two of them, sat idle while I stared at scripts I had already written, already approved, already rehearsed. I couldn’t press record.

275K became 263K. The algorithm doesn’t care about your mental health. It just knows you stopped showing up.

Right now, I’m eleven days into a 30-day residency at Network School in Forest City, Malaysia. I came here because I was running out of reasons to stay where I was. Not geographically. Psychologically.

Build something, burn out, disappear, hate yourself for disappearing, force a comeback, burn out harder. Repeat.

The classic high-functioning depression cycle, where everyone thinks you’re crushing it because you shipped a feature last week, but they don’t see that you slept 14 hours yesterday and the feature was written in a manic middle-of-the-night window powered by self-loathing and Red Bull.

I packed a Sony A6700 I barely know how to use, 14 scripts I’d pre-approved for Tensor Boy, a suitcase full of ambition, and flew to an island where I knew nobody.

Three days on an island

Day 1: I missed breakfast, accidentally walked into the wrong floor, and won a chess match against a robot whose hands physically moved the pieces. I’ll count that as a metaphor.

Day 3: I found out the actual breakfast buffet had crazy food and things I’d never seen in my life, maybe the most exotic breakfast I’d ever seen. I stood in front of that buffet and genuinely thought: I feel poor. Not financially. Experientially. I have never been in a room like this.

Day 11: I’m writing this. I still haven’t launched the content series I planned. My nails are still slightly red from Holi. And I just had my first beer, hated it with every cell in my body, and confirmed what I always suspected: I don’t need substances. I need structure.

But I’m done pretending that’s all I am.

This Substack is where the full picture lives. The tech, yes. But also the psychology. The business reality of being a 23-year-old running multiple ventures with no safety net. The actual numbers, not the curated ones. The mental health dimension that every founder talks about in Twitter threads but nobody puts in their newsletter because it might scare away sponsors.

Here’s what you’ll get

The Build Log: What I’m actually building, the real technical decisions, the things that broke or the code I wrote at random that somehow worked. Cevi AI (healthcare company), Test33 (content system), and the stuff that might become something or might become a lesson.

The Raw Files: Essays like this one. The unfiltered version. The breakfast buffet moments, the 2 AM thoughts on an island. This is where I write like I talk, messy, words thrown in when professional stuff doesn’t cut it, no corporate tone, no “10 lessons I learned” format.

The Signal: AI and tech analysis when something genuinely matters. Not weekly hot takes. Not “OpenAI just announced X, here’s my prediction.” Only when I have something real to say.

No schedule. No “every Tuesday at 9 AM” promise I’ll break in two weeks. I’ll write when I have something worth your time. If that’s twice a week, great. If it’s once every ten days, that’s what it is. I’d rather send you one thing that changes how you think than four things that fill your inbox.

What I won’t tell you

I’m not going to motivate you. You know why? Because motivation is a scam that lasts exactly as long as the Instagram reel that delivered it. 45 seconds. Maybe 60 if the hook was good.

What I will tell you is this: I’m sitting in a hotel room on an island, 21 days left, with a camera I barely know how to use, a company that’s 90% built, a content engine that’s sputtering back to life, and the first honest thing I’ve written in months open on my laptop.

I don’t know if this newsletter will be big. I don’t know if the content will “pop,” or if I’ll learn the piano, or if I’ll finally fix my sleep.

But I know something shifted when I stopped trying to be the person my metrics said I should be and started being honest about the person I actually am. A kid from Etawah who somehow ended up in a 5-star breakfast buffet, not knowing what half the food was, and deciding to eat it anyway.

That’s the whole philosophy. Eat the thing you don’t recognize. Go to the floor you haven’t been to. Shoot the video even when your face is red from Holi and your confidence is at 40%.

You don’t need to be ready. You need to be hungry.

So here’s my promise: I will never waste your inbox. Every single thing I send will be something I’d want to receive. If it’s not worth your 5 minutes, I won’t hit publish.

And if you made it to the end of this, reply. One line. Tell me what you’re building, what you’re stuck on, or just say hey. I read everything. I reply to more than you’d think.

Just remember, the best stories aren’t the ones with perfect beginnings. They’re the ones that start with someone being lost enough to finally be honest.

See you soon,

Manav