What Inspires A Brand.
8-year-old Shagun's obsession with Barbie. The Making of the Eras Tour. And why the companies we remember understand culture, not just code.
The earliest I remember understanding the concept of a brand was when I was 8. It showed up in my obsession for Barbie dolls over any other doll. It showed up when I first flipped through Autocar magazine (2002) and felt awed by a Lamborghini. Why I always picked Enid Blyton to re-read even though I enjoyed so many other authors.
Obviously, 8-year-old me wasn’t looking at it from the lens of business or product, but recognizing preference for one thing over another made me very aware of how things made me feel.
(And those who’ve known me for decades know that I have very big feelings about the most mundane things in life. It’s my secret weapon.)
Which is where and how I fell in love with anything that would evoke feelings—whether it was fashion, design, movies, music, ads, art, television, books, writing. I got lost in all kinds of worlds that connected with something within me in ways inexplicable. The more I felt inward, the more I realized people around me experienced the same for other things.
As I grew older and came closer to understanding what a career is, the underlying manifestation of wanting to do things that made people feel continued to stay alive. And today, as I build in technology, I carry that same desire—layered with sensibilities on business, people, industries (…and increasing shareholder value!)
I’ve been watching the Making of the Eras Tour this week, which inspired me to write this piece. The world of being a creative has always inspired the business sensibility in me, because brands are the business of feelings.
I have a deep respect and appreciation for the entire universe Taylor Swift has created on things that go beyond her music. You don’t even have to be a Swiftie to recognize the genius behind her empire and the rolling impact everything she does has.
She’s so deliberate about tracking what lands. She doesn’t just perform. She builds micro-stories and context from every era. She picks cultural moments depending on which country she’s playing in. She synthesizes fan reactions. It’s calculated artistry that comes from SO much data and social listening.
Watching the making of is a masterclass in business, a great founder, and an incredible brand that will definitely stand the test of time.
We live in an age where technology is driving so many of our decisions, and our jobs are intertwining with our passions in a way like never before. You could wake up one morning and decide to build a business, and AI will get you 70% there.
In a world where we all can and are becoming founders, what are we doing about how we’re remembered?
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about—as these companies grow, these founders are not stuck at the ‘making’ stage; they’re stuck at the ‘mattering’ point. And mattering requires something most people think they can skip: understanding culture. Culture, as infrastructure.
You might be building a CRM, but your users are people who listen to Charli XCX, who have opinions about A24 films, who feel something when they see a certain shade of purple.
Even the most utilitarian software lives inside a cultural moment. The companies that understand this—that track what’s resonating, what’s shifting, what their audience is paying attention to—build brands that feel alive. And the ones that don’t are just another tool in a sea of tools.
This is where brand intelligence comes in. Brand intelligence—the synthesized understanding of culture, taste, and preference that compounds over time. Not brand guidelines nor aesthetics.
It’s what made 8-year-old Shagun pick Barbie. What makes someone choose between Slack or Discord. The accumulated context about why things resonate is our gateway to bringing delight and nuance to our businesses and products.
Intelligence is taste, with a side of pattern recognition, decision-making matrices, data and trend maps, human behavior analysis, and understanding the brain of an ecosystem. AI cannot replace taste, but it CAN synthesize the rest.
And that’s exactly what I intend to spend the next many years of my life building.
Engram is my attempt at solving this: a brand intelligence platform that captures taste, synthesizes culture, and compounds context over time—so it doesn't disappear when people leave.
I spent the first decade of my career learning everything I could about art, design, brands, and business. The next decade is going to be dedicated to building technology around that learning.
So the next set of businesses selling CRM to people who were once Barbie-collecting 8-year-olds will know what delights to add to their product experience, even if just for unserious kicks!