Say my name

Old paperwork and exciting new ventures

Man what a weird interlude that was if you’re in an H1B type situation. If you were, then you have my sympathies. I can only imagine the anxiety.

It did remind me of something that happened to me a few years ago. An incident of a visa-adjacent nature.

Some years ago I had to obtain an official document from the British government for residency purposes. And this included submitting, among other things, my Indian passport.

Now my official name as per my Indian passport was “Sidin Sunny”.

Wait what happened to ‘Vadukut’ you ask? The problem was that my dad botched up the paperwork when applying for my passport when I was a baby. In fact I don’t event think he filled in the form. Some local travel agent uncle did all the paperwork and went on a 3-day vacation to Trivandrum to get the passport.

Photo by Kit (formerly ConvertKit) on Unsplash

Not only did above-mentioned middleman not include my family name in the passport, he also totally bungled up one other thing. In my Indian passport I had two first names: “Sidin Sunny”… and no surname or any other name. The guy just put both names in the first name area, left out my family name, and left the surname space blank.

Again, not a huge problem in the general scheme of things.

(Except that some years later my dad decided to include my family name in my school paperwork. So there I am Sidin Sunny Vadukut. Except that at some point he dropped the Sunny. So I became Sidin Vadukut. And then an uncle changed the spelling yet again. So in some other paperwork I am Sidin Vadukkoot.

However this is very useful if you want to work in three companies at the same time.)

Anyway. Back to London. So when I filled in my British paperwork I decided to correct this wrong in my Indian passport. Why not? Why perpetuate a mistake?

I put in Sidin as my First Name, and Sunny as my Surname.

Now I could at least live with nomenclatural respect in the UK.

A few days later I got a letter from Her Majesty’s Government telling me that there was a problem. My Indian passport and the application form did not match. Therefore in order to get my new paperwork I had to send them a letter confirming that my name was as per the new form, and not as per my Indian passport.

Friends, please take a moment to understand what this means. Do you see the problem?

Yes. Very good. Ten points to Gryffindor.

So I had to make and sign and submit an affidavit to the UK government… in which I had to hereby declare that “my name is Sidin Sunny and not Sidin Sunny.”

True story. Sidin Sunny and not Sidin Sunny.

The documents were issued shortly after.

I believe there are broadly two types of countries in the world:

Type A: They ask you, with a very stern voice, for a clear list of documents and then don’t check anything.

Type B: They ask you for a vague set of documents, and then check everything so closely that you will inevitably have to bring more documents.

Anyway, I hope all you H1B guys are doing ok. And your families? Such stress.

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So that brings me to the exciting topic of the day. And the reason why recent updates have been delayed. I am setting up something on my own! Indeed! Yay! Exciting! Mutual high fives and platonic hugs all round.

A few months ago I decided to step away from ongoing professional things, take stock, and decide what to do next. I was itching to do something on my own. And had a whole lot of ideas.

If you know me, you know that I do everything with extremely high levels of childish enthusiasm. So I wanted to choose carefully before ordering 35 portions of enthu cutlet from Ubereats.

I started by rounding up everyone I had worked with for a few years, and asking them for feedback. What was I good at? What did I suck at?

Two things came up as strengths: a drive to deeply understand founders and companies, regardless of industry, and a superb ability to craft internal and external communications for companies.

Very good. So how to merge those two things?

I thought and thought. And then it hit me. Founders, especially those at early stage companies, constantly struggle to get their identity and narrative right. And with all the chaos of just running a company, many of them just kick this can down the road over and over again.

Meanwhile they keep publishing decks, and posts and LinkedIn updates that they… frankly speaking… hate. The other approach is to hire an agency to write your Tweets and Linkedin posts.

Which is good. Distribution is great. But what are you distributing? And why?

And this is how SIDIN was born. Identity + Narrative for Founder led companies. You have a great vision, I help you turn that into a great public voice. And now you don’t have to kick that can down the road. You can pick it up and turn it into can-fident communication.

(There is a lot more to all of this. It is a lot of work. And surprisingly, the average engagement is about 90% listening and 10% writing.)

You can read more on this very simple website. Please spread the word. You guys are literally the first people I am sharing this with. All feedback welcome.

Ok onwards and upwards. Speak soon. Take care. I wish you all clear identity and coherent narrative.