Why "Rotation5"
Four rotations taught us to swim. The fifth, we jumped on our own.
Rotation5 takes its name from PayPal's Technology Leadership Program — four six-month rotations built to forge the company's next generation of leaders. My cofounder Priya Rajendran and I were in the inaugural class of nine.
In April 2017 we gave ourselves a fifth rotation: no cohort, no corporation, no safety net — just a self-imposed six months to build something that mattered. Curiosity gave the start, necessity kept us focused, and the network we'd built kept us afloat.
"We were in the middle of the ocean, and this time, we jumped voluntarily."
That rotation became S'moresUp — and the operating instinct behind everything I've built since. Today I apply that same founder-level judgment to AI-native products, platforms, and teams.