The Conviction
I'm building a boutique hotel in Bangalore called Books & Beds, built around a single conviction: that a room full of books changes how a person feels about where they are.
Why This
After spending a decade in product, after building remote communities and voice interfaces, I realized the work I actually care about is about how people feel grounded in their environment. Software did that. Remote community platforms did that. But they were both solving for a kind of displacement — helping people feel less alone, less lost.
Books & Beds is about something more direct: creating spaces where people feel the opposite of displaced. Where a room full of thoughtfully chosen books, combined with hospitality that understands the sociology of travel, changes what it feels like to be away from home.
The Design
Each room is designed around books, not as decoration, but as the primary design element. The hotel becomes a library that happens to have rooms. Guests don't just check in — they browse curated collections, find books that speak to them, read in spaces designed for that conversation between books and human attention.
The Business
This is positioned as a boutique hotel for travelers — particularly business travelers and digital nomads who've gotten good at feeling at home anywhere, but secretly miss that sense of rootedness. We're competing not on price but on what makes a stay memorable and restorative.
The Sociology
Travel is displacement. Hotels manage that displacement by making everyone comfortable in the same way. But comfort isn't what travelers actually want. They want recognition of their individuality, combined with a sense of being held in something bigger than themselves. Books do that. A curated collection says: "These ideas matter, and they might matter to you too." That's intimacy at scale.
Currently Under Development
Books & Beds is in development in Bangalore. We're designing the physical spaces, curating the book collections, and building the operational model that makes hospitality secondary to the primary experience: being in a room full of books that changes how you feel about being there.