Mayank Mehta

Solo founder building at the edge of AI and human intent. Founder and CEO of GatherHQ (gatherhq.com), backed by Anthropic, Menlo Ventures, and True Ventures. Previously founded Cooliris (acquired by Yahoo!) and Pulse Q&A (acquired by Gartner). Active angel investor in 50+ companies including Gusto, Brightwheel, Manoramic, and Anthropic. Creator of Butler (an AI executive assistant), Monet (a free, open-source local-AI desktop app), and an AI-native software development webinar series. Based in Hillsborough, California.

What I'm building

GatherHQ (Founder & CEO)
Butler — AI executive assistant
Monet — free, open-source local AI

UNINTENDED: The Strange Consequences of Good Ideas

A book of 74 true stories about unintended consequences — where a good idea, well-intentioned and carefully designed, made things worse, stranger, or both. Read the full book.

The Cobra Effect — How an initiative to curb the cobra population instead caused it to explode.
The Tale of Useless Nails — How targets intended to promote production undermined the value of industrial output.
The Price of Social Ties — How the introduction of a fine encouraged the behavior it penalized.
Striking Out — How a tougher approach to sentencing strained the justice system and deepened inequalities.
The Price of Knowledge — How incentives for knowledge generation promoted the output of dross.
Publication Bias — How science learned to hide its own failures.
The Unintended Consequence of Protection — How the Endangered Species Act spurred the destruction of habitats it was designed to save.
The Fear Factor Fallacy — How the attempt to frighten youth out of crime made them more likely to offend.
The High Cost of Cross-Sell Culture — How a toxic sales culture turned a trusted bank into a punchline.
The Cost of Control — How an attempt to control consumer costs created shortages, hyperinflation, and an uncontrollable black market.
Spanish Colonial Wealth — How discovering endless silver left Spain poorer.
The Echoes of One — How a policy to curb population growth left China struggling to encourage it.
The Vanishing Rupee — How a bold move to eradicate black money instead triggered chaos and economic hardship.
The Kansas Gamble — How tax cuts trickled up.
The Cost of Generosity — How a once-admired pension system became an economic anchor.
Gorbachev's Sobering Challenge — How an attempt to reduce alcoholism had the opposite effect, while also tanking an economy.
The War That Would Not End — How the War on Drugs strengthened the very thing it was designed to destroy.
The Tariff That Backfired — How an attempt to protect American farmers during the Great Depression made everything worse.
The Body Count — How cash incentives for population control created a nightmare of coercion and broken trust.
The Test That Left Students Behind — When measuring success became more important than achieving it.
The Four-Hour Miracle — How saving time endangered patients.
The Dirty Secret of Clean Diesel — How clean diesel got dirty.
The McNamara Fallacy — How a focus on measurable metrics in warfare obscured the realities on the ground.
The Hidden Cost of Safety — How the pursuit of safety created new risks.
The Smoke and Mirrors of Vaping — How an alternative to cigarettes designed for health ended up making things worse.
The Price of a Perfect Fit — How a marketing gimmick for the shoe industry irradiated a generation.
The Poison in the Tank — How the solution was worse than the problem.
Ford — How a spreadsheet decided that burning alive was cheaper than fixing a flaw.
Lead Pipes in Ancient Rome — How one of ancient Rome's most impressive innovations may have contributed to its collapse.
The Floodplain Paradox — How an attempt to mitigate risk instead multiplied it.
The Double-Edged Pill — How a miracle cure created a diverse range of ills.
The Bitter Harvest — How an agricultural revolution fed a nation but poisoned its soil and bankrupted its farmers.
The Cornfield Conundrum — How an initiative to promote renewable fuel harmed the environment without improving energy efficiency.
Shared Space — How ripping up the rule book made roads safer.
Congestion and Complexity — How a system defeated common sense.
The SUV Loophole — How a law intended to curb vehicle emissions boosted SUVs.
Brooks' Law — How adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Too Big to Fail — How institutions deemed essential to the economy became powerful enough to threaten it.
The Cure That Created Panic — How protecting investors made markets more fragile.
The Streisand Effect — How trying to hide something guaranteed that everyone would see it.
The Sweet Taste of Nostalgia — How a massive marketing blunder accidentally strengthened a brand.
The Pregnant Pause — How the predictive power of big data got a little too revealing.
The Identity Crisis — How a policy designed to make people safer online exposed those most at risk.
The Unseen Holes of War — How what you don't see is more important than what you do.
The Sparrow's Revenge — How a simplistic policy to protect crops triggered a devastating locust plague and famine.
The Parachuting Cats of Borneo — How the use of DDT to control malaria led to a cascade so absurd it required airborne felines.
The Toad That Ate Australia — How an ecological cure turned out worse than the disease.
The Iron Lung That Made Polio Deadlier — How a life-saving machine quietly reshaped an epidemic.
The Silent Superbug — How attempts to control biology created worse problems than they intended to solve.
The Invader with Beautiful Flowers — How an ornamental flower throttled entire ecosystems.
The Air We All Own — How everyone's problem became no one's responsibility.
How Wolves Change Rivers — How a single species transformed an entire ecosystem.
The Unseen Toll of a Miracle Drug — How a cheap painkiller nearly wiped out an entire order of birds.
The Emu War — How the Australian military was defeated by birds.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Stereotype — How stereotypes produce the outcomes they claim to reflect.
The Gap Between Intentions and Actions — How comfortable thought experiments collapse under real authority.
A Willingness to Kill — How deep-seated moral convictions can be trained out of an individual.
The Wall of Desperation — How the guards at an arbitrary border could be convinced to defend it with the lives of their compatriots.
License to Sin — How affirming one's own virtue can lead to unethical actions.
The Spark That Burned the House — How a single act of protest unleashed forces no one could control.
Potlatch: When Giving Becomes Power — How Indigenous wealth challenged Western assumptions.
Market Economies vs. Gift Economies — How market thinking captures only half of what value is.
The Gift Economy in Unexpected Places — How academia resembles a drug gang.
GitHub: The Power and Price of Non-Monetary Motivation — How people work for free, and why it still isn't equal.
The Concrete Promises of Khrushchev — How cosmetic quick fixes become worse than the problem they are intended to solve.
The Price of Panic — How more haste equals less speed.
The Price of Sunlight — How a misjudged economic policy ended up taxing sunlight.
The Bitter Taste of Melamine — How the profitability of infant milk formula led to a food safety crisis that harmed hundreds of thousands.
The Grain of Goodwill — How food donations fanned conflict and disrupted local economies.
Urban Renewal and the Destruction of Community — How an urban renewal initiative destroyed the community it was meant to help.
The Giants of South Korea — How an economic policy to promote reconstruction led a country into captivity by industrial oligarchs.
Ancient Greece vs. the Persian Empire — How smaller is better.
From Fishermen to Pirates — How state failure creates a pirate industry.
The Steel City's Silent Collapse — How protectionism hastened the very decline it was designed to prevent.

Connect with Mayank Mehta

Mayank Mehta is on LinkedIn and GitHub. You can also chat with an AI version of Mayank on this site, or read his blog and book.