Risk Management for the Emotionally Intelligent

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My NoSmalltalk session with Midhun Noble

by Albert Schiller

Talking to entrepreneurs often involves navigating a familiar narrative – the bold leap into the unknown, fueled by passion. But conversations, like systems, reveal more under scrutiny.

My recent discussion with Midhun Noble, founder in the neurodiversity space, offered a less romanticized, more analytical view of this transition, particularly resonant within the Indian context where the gravitational pull towards stable, predictable careers, often government jobs, remains immense.

Inherited Data: The Push and Pull of Family Legacy

Midhun didn't just jump; he calculated the trajectory. His journey wasn't a simple rejection of the old but a complex negotiation between inherited legacies and personal drive. On one side stood his mother, a government employee embodying risk aversion – a direct, understandable reaction, as Midhun deduced, to her own father's volatile entrepreneurial life.

His grandfather, a figure simultaneously fascinating and cautionary, ran businesses ranging from brick-making (claiming his bricks built parts of the Kerala Legislative Assembly) to tea shops, experiencing dizzying highs and crushing lows, often losing everything due to disorganization likely stemming from undiagnosed ADHD. This wasn't just family history; it was Midhun's inherited data set on entrepreneurship – demonstrating both its potential and its significant, tangible risks.  

This backdrop makes Midhun's initial adherence to the expected path – an MBA followed by a government banking job, urged by his mother – logical. Yet, the system couldn't contain him. Within a year, the predictability chafed; he diagnosed the environment as insufficient for his drive. Interestingly, his coping mechanism wasn't outright rebellion (that came earlier in his teens), but system navigation: bypassing middle management to connect directly with senior leaders, identifying them as the true nodes of execution and idea implementation. It was a strategic move, maximizing his impact within a constraining structure, yet the core dissatisfaction remained.

Defining the Threshold: Calculation Over Impulse

The first attempt to break away, combining a business venture with civil service exam preparation, failed the sustainability test. Midhun recounts living below the poverty line, a stark ₹100-a-day existence that forced a pragmatic retreat. This wasn't failure in the dramatic sense, but a data point validating his unreadiness. He returned to the bank.

"We were living on ₹100 in India, which is basically below the poverty line... I did not find it sustainable to like doing it for a year and then I figured I'm not ready for this yet..."  

This is where the calculation becomes explicit. Midhun didn't rely on vague hope. He set a specific, quantifiable threshold: the entrepreneurial venture needed to generate half his current bank salary before he would commit full-time. This "half-paycheck" rule wasn't arbitrary.

It was derived from analyzing monthly expenses and the minimum required income to maintain his existing lifestyle without a drastic step back. It represented a concrete definition of sustainable risk, a financial buffer zone acknowledging the lessons from his grandfather's instability.

He coupled this financial calculation with an operational one: estimating the potential for scaling the business with his full attention versus the limitations imposed by his job. The assumption was that dedicating himself fully would allow him to bridge the remaining income gap relatively quickly.

Navigating Variables: Adaptation and Acceptance

Of course, systems involve external variables. Covid hitting just three months after he finally quit shattered the immediate financial forecast, wiping out even the half-paycheck he'd achieved.

Yet, the underlying calculation, the buffer created by savings and financial prudence (a conscious counter-measure to his acknowledged ADHD-driven impulsivity with money), allowed him to weather this unforeseen system shock.

He adapted, taking on consulting gigs while the core business rebuilt, eventually benefiting from post-Covid tailwinds in the neurodiversity and home-care sectors.

Even now, his parents haven't fully reconciled with his path; their frame of reference struggles to compute a "for-profit venture in the neurodiversity space". Their attempt to create a safety net for him via a commercial property investment speaks volumes about the enduring cultural value placed on tangible, traditional assets over the perceived ephemera of a startup. Midhun accepts this lack of complete understanding as a boundary condition, another variable within his operational system.

Midhun Noble's story provides a valuable counter-narrative to the simplistic "follow your passion" trope. It demonstrates a reasoned, analytical approach to navigating deep-seated cultural expectations and personal ambition. His leap was less a blind jump, more a meticulously plotted exit, cushioned by quantifiable risk assessment and a clear understanding of the required inputs – financial, temporal, and personal – for achieving escape velocity from a secure, yet ultimately unfulfilling, orbit.

It’s a case study not just in entrepreneurship, but in applied systems thinking against a backdrop of familial and cultural pressures.

5 lessons with practical value

What's next?

Midhun Noble isn’t chasing disruption, he’s designing for resilience. In our upcoming May feature of Alba’s NoSmalltalk, we explore how his methodical approach to neurodiversity-led ventures is quietly reshaping India’s care economy. And in the next blog, "Hacking Leadership", Midhun unpacks how neurodiversity isn’t just a lens but an operational variable that can redefine startup leadership from the inside out.