PhD Almanack

PhD stands for Poor, Hungry, Driven. Ten Hong Kong founders on what it actually took.Hong Kong is known for building bankers, not founders. This book profiles ten people who built anyway.Across ten unfiltered conversations, PhD Almanack covers the parts most startup books skip: the month the money ran out, the co-founder who almost quit, the first company started at thirteen, the venture funded by an education loan. One founder brews craft beer from surplus bread. Another built fintech infrastructure across Asia.Each chapter follows a founder through the PhD Matrix, a framework built on three transformations: - Poor becomes Purpose: Constraint as a source of direction rather than limitation.- Hungry becomes Hustle: Turning raw need into repeatable action.- Driven becomes Discipline: What keeps a company alive after motivation runs out.Inside the book: - How ten founders found their first customers with no network and no capital- The specific decisions that separated the companies that survived from the ones that stalled- What early-stage fundraising in Asia actually looks like from the founder's side- Honest accounts of failure, burnout, and the co-founder conversations nobody publishesWritten by Naman Tekriwal, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, PhD Almanack is built for first-time founders, side-hustlers with a spark of an idea, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship who wants to know what building something real costs.Chapters are self-contained, so you can start wherever your own question is.Ten founders. Ten stories. One framework for building your own path.