Sandeep Dhall
I've written two books, sit ten-day silent meditation retreats, and spend my days investing in and building small businesses — through SMB Capital Partners and Bridge Digital. This is my personal site: who I am, and how I think. The firms have their own homes at smbcapitalpartners.com and bridge.digital.
In 2017 I was a Global Manager at a two-billion-dollar company. I read a book that made me decide I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing work that mattered to me — and, if I'm being honest about the size of it, work that helped 50 million people before I'm done. I know how that sounds. I'm telling you because it's true and writing it down keeps me honest.
A few months later I got fired.
I've come to think of it as the universe agreeing with the decision before I'd worked up the nerve to act on it. The years since have included ten ideas I actually pursued. Two of them worked. Two books. A meditation practice that's reshaped how I work. And eventually SMB Capital Partners, the firm I run today.
More recently I co-founded Bridge Digital with a longtime collaborator — we put senior engineers and AI specialists inside growing businesses, and we do custom AI projects. Different shape, same itch as the firm: help good small businesses get better, faster. That one lives at bridge.digital.
I live in Austin with my wife Ashu and our daughter Shambavi. I'm originally from India — by way of Canada and the Bay Area.
— Sandeep
I've written two. Both came out of frustrations I couldn't shake.
Guide for Aspiring Immigrant
For the immigrant who feels stuck — the engineer driving a taxi, the professor working security, the senior manager ringing up groceries. I wanted to do for immigrants what Tony Robbins does for everyone else: hand them a mindset and a set of tools and say here, this is how you stop being a victim of the situation. I didn't reach the audience I hoped for, but the book exists, and the people who've read it have told me it helped. That's enough.
Family Driven Business 4.0 and Beyond
Written with a co-author, for multigenerational family businesses — the kind that are the backbone of economies like India's, run by grandfathers, fathers, and uncles, where the younger generation gets handed a role inside the existing business instead of the room to start something of their own. I'd watched too many of these businesses get flattened by competitors that didn't exist five years earlier. The book lays out four stages a family business moves through, and what it actually takes to get from 2.0 (stuck doing what your parents did) to 4.0 (the kind of business that disrupts its own market instead of waiting to get disrupted).
Twice in my life I've sat a ten-day silent meditation retreat. No phone. No email. No pen. No books. No eye contact. A hundred hours of noble silence. You live like a semi-monk in a small room. Lunch at noon is the last meal of the day; the rest is meditation.
I started in 2018. I keep going back because I haven't found anything else that does what it does — strips away the noise enough that I can hear what I actually think. Those two retreats are easily among the most important experiences of my life.
Tim Ferriss sits these. Yuval Noah Harari sits these. Jack Dorsey too, apparently. They're part of why I started. They're not why I keep going.
Books
I've written two. Both came out of frustrations I couldn't shake. Both are on Amazon.
Guide for Aspiring Immigrant
For the immigrant who arrived with a degree, a career, and a plan — and found none of them translated.
I wrote this book for the engineer driving a taxi. The professor working security. The senior manager ringing up groceries at the supermarket. There is nothing wrong with any of those jobs. There is something wrong with the fact that the person doing them used to do something else and feels stuck.
By most estimates, more than eighty percent of immigrants never reach their full potential in their new country. Some of that is real discrimination. A lot of it isn't. A lot of it is a mindset problem — bitterness about a system that doesn't recognize a degree, frustration at a credit score that doesn't exist yet, the slow grind of being treated like a beginner when you arrived as an expert. I've watched people give a decade of their lives to that bitterness.
I wanted to do for immigrants what Tony Robbins does for everyone else: hand them a mindset and a set of tools and say here, this is how you stop being a victim of the situation. I didn't reach the audience I hoped for. The book exists. The people who've read it have told me it helped. That's enough.
It covers the foundational stuff — building the right mindset, understanding the sources of negative influence in your own head, finding your transferable skills, learning how to network in a culture where the rules are different. It's not a shortcut. There aren't any shortcuts. But it's a map.
Buy on AmazonFamily Driven Business 4.0 and Beyond
For the multigenerational family business that's about to get flattened by a competitor that didn't exist five years ago.
I wrote this with a co-author for the family businesses I grew up around — the ones that are the backbone of economies like India's. Run by grandfathers, fathers, and uncles. Children and grandchildren handed roles inside the existing business instead of the room to start something of their own. Fourteen-hour days. No time to look up.
The book lays out four stages a family business moves through:
- 1.0 — Happy-go-lucky. Making enough to pay the bills this month. No strategy. Hope as a business plan.
- 2.0 — Stuck in tradition. Profitable, busy, doing things the way the family has always done them. Why fix it if it ain't broke? The answer, of course, is that you don't notice when it starts breaking.
- 3.0 — Building systems. The first foundational shift. Less reliance on individual personalities, more on processes that can run themselves. Slow at first. Painful for families used to running everything by gut.
- 4.0 — Exponential. A business designed to disrupt its own market instead of waiting to be disrupted. The younger generation given real responsibility. The older generation evolved into mentors. Business decisions made on data, not on which uncle spoke the loudest.
Most of the businesses I see in this category are at 2.0 and don't know it. That's the danger. The book is for the family that wants to make the climb, written with respect for what they've already built and honesty about what it's going to take.
Buy on Amazon