My 4 Weeks at Network School: Day 1
Chapter 2: Day 1
So we arrived at the hotel. It's a huge 5-star property right in front of a beach.
You walk into the lobby and there's a long line of people welcoming you in green NS t-shirts, and a robot dog saluting each person one by one. That's when you start to get a taste of how tech-first NS really is.
You get your kit and your hotel room key card, and then you head up to your room.
Roommates
I reached the room and met my roommate. The best part? It's completely random, and you somehow end up becoming close friends with them.
Mine was Ryan, a software developer from South Africa. Super jacked. Running 3 monitors and multiple Claude instances in parallel, dictating his tasks all day.
NS Combine
Day 1 we took a quick nap, then got ready for something called NS Combine.
NS Combine is a fitness test that measures all your biomarkers (stamina, strength, the works), so you can see your transformation after the first month. And trust me, it tests you to the absolute limit.
It has all sorts of stations, and your job is to push through each one and give it your best.
Day 1 is also when you see all the jacked guys from around the world and start questioning your own fitness levels. (In a very healthy way.)
The First Dinner
After NS Combine, you head to the 14th-floor terrace dining for dinner.
That's the first meal you have at NS. It's bland, meaty, but extremely healthy.
The best part about NS dinners: you're expected to sit across the table from new people every time. And the networking that comes out of that is unmatched, because nothing about it is transactional. You just talk about yourself and ask about them. NS curates some of the best people in their intake.
Extremely open-minded, ambitious, and from incredibly diverse backgrounds. So you end up making friends from Day 1.
Apply via my referral link — https://ns.com/mehulkapadia/invite — and get a free extra week + priority shortlisting.
Phillipines, Quick Commerce, and UPI
At Day 1 dinner I met two people from the Philippines. One building his AI startup, and one a doctor building his pharmacy company back home.
It was super cool to talk to them about what they were working on, and how different the culture in the Philippines is from India.
I also flexed about quick commerce and UPI in India. They were genuinely shocked to hear how fast quick commerce really is.
That's it for this one. Continuing in the next chapter.
Read Chapter 3 next →