SOP 2026-27

SOP-2026-27

Setting the context

We have a practice of writing SOPs (Statement of Purpose) at work. It's a yearly exercise which we follow. It's a way to reflect on the past year and set goals for the coming year. We used to write this even at The Commit Company, and here at Frappe we are following the same practice. I truly like this practice and suggest everyone reading this blog to write one for themselves.

Now, firstly, writing SOP is not just about listing down your "goals" and setting out to achieve them.

Writing an SOP forces you to pause. To look back at the last year - not just what you did, but why you did it. To ask uncomfortable questions. To admit what worked, what didn’t, and where you actually stand.

And more importantly - to decide where you want to go next. I’ve come to realise that most of us don’t lack ambition. We lack clarity. We keep moving, doing things, chasing outcomes - but rarely stop to ask: Why am I doing this? What am I really optimizing for?

Writing an SOP helps with that. It’s not about writing fancy goals or sounding ambitious. It’s about being honest with yourself.

When was the last time you took a pause and actually reflected on your past year? Some sort of introspection and self-awareness.
How can you set new goals if you don't know where you are currently?
How can you measure your progress if you don't know what you are trying to achieve?
How can you know if you are on the right path if you don't know where you are going? How do you know if you are making progress?
How do you know if you are doing the right thing?
How do you know if you are doing the right thing for the right reasons?

Your SOP can be structured in whichever way you want. There is no right way to write a SOP. But there's some structure we follow at Frappe. You can try the same.

The story so far: Set context for your purpose by sharing about your career/personal goals/progression.

Your personal goal / vision: This is ofcourse subject to change, but the best articulation of what you seek at that point in time. This could be like - I want to be a great leader, I want to build great products, I want to be respected in society, I want to create great impact - or I want to have fun, I want to be wealthy, I want to discover the truth.

Your career goal / vision: How does your career link to your personal goal. If you want to create great impact in society, then how do you ensure that the work you do is highly impactful. If you want to be a leader then your career must be driven towards building the skills that help you become a better leader.

What does success look like for the coming year: What would you have achieved that would make you satisfied at the end of the year.

What is the hardest problem for you? What will stop you from achieving your success?

How are you going to tackle the hardest problem? Now that you have identified your hardest problem, how are you planning to tackle it?

Again, this is just an example and very specific to our workplace context. You can structure it in whichever way you want. The fundamental idea is to reflect on your past year and set new goals for the coming year. And not just set goals, but explain the reason - the "purpose" behind your goals. Why do you want to do any of this? The best motivation is the one that comes from within. If you don't know why you want to do something, you probably won't do it.

I think now that I have set enough context, let's dive into my SOP, if anyone wants to see an example of it. The only reason why I am sharing this is to help someone who is looking for a reference. Also, I had mentioned that I will share my SOP if anyone wants to see an example of it in my previous blog post - Letters From The Quiet Phase. I was supposed to share the previous year's SOP, but I ended up posting this year's SOP, lol.

Also, having this published on my personal site would be a good reminder for me to keep track of my goals and progress. Would help in staying accountable.

My SOP (workplace)

The story so far

It’s been around three months since I joined Frappe after the acquisition, and it has been anything but linear.

I came in with a rough idea of what I wanted - work on meaningful problems, improve as an engineer, push myself outside my comfort zone, and learn skills apart from engineering. What I didn’t expect was how quickly the context would keep changing. Total chaos, but good kind of chaos honestly.

I started with Raven in January. The focus was on solving long-pending issues and getting the product into a more stable state. Somewhere along the way, I was asked if I could take up a lead role on Raven. I said yes. It felt overwhelming initially, but I think eventually I might have pulled it off. It involved me thinking more like a Product Engineer who can lead people and manage other aspects of product building.

Just as I was settling into that, February pulled me into the Framework team to work on quality. This was a completely different kind of problem - core engineering, debugging, understanding systems deeply. To my surprise, I really enjoyed working on the framework. Closed around 40+ issues, got around 15+ PRs merged during the sprint. It also gave me confidence that I can adapt to new challenges seamlessly which was a surprise for me. Since I did well in the framework team, there was some initial discussion on whether I wanted to join Framework team in the long run along with a few others who did well during the sprint. I seriously considered joining the Framework team, until…

March came along and it brought another shift. After a brief discussion during the offsite with Neha, I was asked to work on the Marketplace. I didn’t see it coming, but it immediately felt like a problem worth taking on.

Marketplace would not just be an engineering problem to solve, but also an entrepreneurial problem. It involves developers, users, incentives, quality, discovery, metrics - things that are not entirely in your control. That’s exactly what made it interesting to me. I’ve always wanted to understand how products grow, not just how they are built. I wanted to learn some business, marketing things as well when I joined Frappe. This seemed like a good opportunity as I could learn all these things from someone like Neha while working on this problem.

It also meant an engineering fun challenge to take up as handling marketplace would mean joining Frappe Cloud team. For me, I always considered Frappe Cloud team to be very high performing and extremely talented. Getting to work and learn with people who I admire would be a great opportunity is what I felt.

At that point, I had a choice - continue with Raven and go deeper into that path, or take on Marketplace within Frappe Cloud. I chose Marketplace because it felt like a higher leverage problem with direct potential impact on growth, and an opportunity to learn a completely different side of building products with newer set of people.

Alongside this, I also picked up PRM onboarding as a short-term problem to better understand the partner ecosystem.

Looking back, the last three months might look chaotic, but there’s a pattern that I have identified. Rather, I knew about this pattern, but it just got highlighted more. I tend to move towards problems that are harder, less defined, and have higher impact. That’s something I want to continue.

Personal Goals

I have a lot of personal goals honestly, I don’t think writing all of them here makes a lot of sense. So, I don’t want to overcomplicate this. Here goes:

Have better fundamentals, raise the quality of work I produce in everything that I do.
Build things I can genuinely be proud of - again a reference to -
At Frappe, outcomes matter. I agree that outcomes do matter. But, for me personally intent matters more than outcomes. I will have the right intent behind my work and hope that outcomes follow.
Keep choosing growth over comfort?

Career Goals

From career perspective the goal is very simple.

Do great work that I can be proud of. I agree to Aditya’s goal in some way. At some level it’s the same - I want to win. I want my story to be remembered. It’s as simple as that.

That’s too vague though, I will narrow it down to this year’s goal.

Strong engineer with solid fundamentals. Someone who can be relied on.
Become someone who owns systems/products end to end. Not just from an engineering POV, but from an entrepreneurial angle. Own Marketplace, PRM onboarding and eventually any other area where I can contribute to.
I want to be a leader. Idk if it’s a weird goal to have in mind. It’s not something that you ask for. It’s something that you grow into, naturally. That’s something that I want to transition into. Not sure if this is something that can happen over the next year. In that case, this will be a recurring goal until I get there.

What will I focus on?

My primary focus this year in Frappe Cloud team will be Frappe Marketplace, with PRM onboarding as a supporting area to understand the ecosystem better.

Marketplace

I see Marketplace as a long-term growth lever, but right now the problem is more foundational than expansion.

Immediate focus areas:

Improve quality of apps (basic standards, reliability, fewer broken experiences)
Introduce better auditing/validation systems for apps
Reduce friction in publishing and maintaining apps
Improve developer experience (docs, workflows, feedback loops)

Mid-term:

Improve discoverability for apps
Create videos and educate people better on why build on marketplace. Already started with a pitch at build, but need to do this more. Creating more awareness in general. I think Vibhav can help me here.
Work towards better incentives for developers (in collaboration with product/business)

The goal is not to scale Marketplace immediately, but to make it reliable and usable first.

Also, the auditing system would be a valuable extension for other third party custom apps. I would immediately focus on extending the auditing to solve our reliability issues due to such problems.

PRM Onboarding

This is more of a short-term learning + impact area

Learn Vue and finish PRM onboarding project in short term.
Improve onboarding by implementing the designed flow and reduce dependency on manual intervention.

Frontend Engineering (UI/UX)

This was not in my plans, but I see there is some attention required here. Although we do have developers in the team whose primary focus would be UI/UX. I think I can be a helper here as well. I am not someone who has great taste like Faris/Nikhil, but I have some acquired taste and experience with writing good frontend(albeit in React) which I think I can leverage for the FC team.

The Hardest Problem

The hardest problem for me this year is working on areas where outcomes are not directly in my control. Most of the work that I want to pick this year - its outcomes are not entirely in my hands. I understand that. Marketplace and PRM onboarding depend on external actors - developers, partners, users. Unlike pure engineering problems, effort does not directly translate to results here.

These are hard problems because of the uncontrollable factors.

The challenge is to stay focused on controllable inputs and do my best to execute them:

improving quality
reducing friction
building better systems

…while being patient about outcomes.

Other than this, another hard problem that I see for me personally is my goal to transition into a leader. It’s not something that happens overnight. Nonetheless, this is going to be something that I want to work towards.

What will success look like this year?

For me, success would look like making the system meaningfully better than it is today - in ways that compound over time.

Marketplace quality improves noticeably Fewer broken apps, better baseline standards, and more confidence for users installing apps.
Auditing/validation becomes a strong system, not just a feature Something that not only improves Marketplace quality, but can also extend to other custom apps and contribute to overall reliability of Frappe Cloud.
Publishing apps becomes simpler Less friction for developer will lead to better ecosystem over time.
Initial improvements in discoverability Not solving everything, but moving in the right direction so that good apps don’t stay hidden.
PRM onboarding becomes smoother and more self-serve Less manual intervention, clearer flows, better experience for partners coming in.
UI/UX improvements in areas I touch Not trying to own it entirely, but contributing wherever I can to reduce obvious friction.
Personally, transitioning into someone who can direct people and own systems.

How will I describe my role in the team?

I like sports, so I’ll use a football analogy.

If “FC” were a football team (pun intended), I see myself playing in the midfield.

Not necessarily the one scoring goals, but the one who connects everything - winning the ball back (“press”ing, pun intended again), linking play, and keeping the system moving.

I was brought in to FC to work on specific problems like Marketplace and PRM onboarding. They’re not core infra problems, but they directly influence how the system grows. These layers sit between the product and the ecosystem - developers, partners, and users.

My role is to make these layers reliable, usable, and easier to build on.

If done well, it helps the team move faster and creates more opportunities for growth.

Conclusion

My SOP is primarily focused on my role in the Frappe Cloud team, and I’ve tried to keep that as clear and focused as possible.

That said, I will continue contributing to Raven in areas I’ve previously worked on. It won’t be my primary focus, but more out of continued ownership and interest in the product. Wherever I can meaningfully improve things, I’ll do that.

Similarly, any contributions to the Framework will be driven by curiosity and interest in the problems there. This is more of an extension and an alignment with being a better engineer goal, not a shift in focus.

Overall, the priority remains clear - Marketplace and the problems within Frappe Cloud. Everything else will be secondary.

Compensation

I wrote expected compensation here, but won't disclose to general public ofc.

Final Thoughts

This was my version. Obviously, I don't have it all figured out, nobody does. The point of a SOP is for you to sit down once and honestly reflect - about what you want, what you’re chasing, and what might actually matter. Now while I was writing this, I was thinking about my personal goals as well. Personal SOP should be a different document, I think it's good time to write one soon as this site will complete 1 year soon and it started with kind of a personal SOP.

If you’ve never done something like this before, I’d genuinely recommend trying it once. Not for productivity, not for goals - just to understand yourself a little better.

No audience. No pressure. Just honesty. If you want, you can share your SOP with me. I'd love to read it.

That's all for now.