Oultiers S05 E14 Lucky Ali by FactorDaily

Oultiers S05 E14 Lucky Ali

Nand Kishore Chaudhary

Outliers S05 E13: Nand Kishore Chaudhary by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E13: Nand Kishore Chaudhary

Outliers S05 E12: Ajit Isaac by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E12: Ajit Isaac

Outliers S05 E11: Aditi Mittal by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E11: Aditi Mittal

Outliers S05 E10: Dhimant and Anuradha Parekh by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E10: Dhimant and Anuradha Parekh

Mitch Grasso

Outliers S05 E09:  Mitch Grasso by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E09:  Mitch Grasso

Ivan Zhao

Outliers S05 E05 Ivan Zhao: How Notion Works by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E05 Ivan Zhao: How Notion Works

David Tibbitts

Outliers S05 E08 David Tibbitts: How Notion Works by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E08 David Tibbitts: How Notion Works

Camille Ricketts

Outliers S05 E07 Camille Ricketts: How Notion Works by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E07 Camille Ricketts: How Notion Works

Akshay Kothari

Outliers S05 E06 Akshay Kothari: How Notion Works by FactorDaily

Outliers S05 E06 Akshay Kothari: How Notion Works

A podcast about the ones who chose to take the road not taken often. It’s about the crazy and the curious. Those that dared to stand out, and stand alone. It’s about their journey through hope and disillusionment, failures and pitfalls, joy and success, pain and bliss. It’s a candid exploration of experiences and ideas that have driven some of the shining stars, told as is.Produced by Anand Murali

Mmm mm

A podcast about the ones who chose to take the road not taken often. It’s about the crazy and the curious. Those that dared to stand out, and stand alone. It’s about their journey through hope and disillusionment, failures and pitfalls, joy and success, pain and bliss. It’s a candid exploration of experiences and ideas that have driven some of the shining stars, told as is. Produced by Anand Murali

Outliers

Kishore Biyani

Kishore Biyani talks about his rollercoaster ride of an entrepreneurial journey and his latest ammunition to fight his business battles - a combination of his customer base and technology-powered data insights for making decisions. Produced by Anand MuraliMusic Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Kishore Biyani talks about his rollercoaster ride of an entrepreneurial journey and his latest ammunition to fight his business battles - a combination of his customer base and technology-powered data insights for making decisions. Produced by Anand Murali Music Credit: <a href="http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.accelerated-ideas.com/</a>

Kishore Biyani on his survival lessons for the future

Ravish Kumar

Journalism’s biggest existential battle isn’t about fighting the business model disruption or the way new consumers of news are behaving. It’s the war against intense polarisation and biases plaguing the newsrooms. There’s extreme negativity on one hand and excessive cheerleading on the other. For those in journalism staying true to the craft and following the principles of objectivity and the good old world balance, it’s a tough battle. Amid all this chaos, Ravish Kumar is a rarity who practices fundamentals of journalism by pursuing. How does he stay this way? And why? And what’s the cost of speaking truth to power? Our Season 2 Finale of Outliers is with a journalist who evokes emotion in what he chooses to cover as much as admiration in the way he keeps to the fundamentals of on-the-ground reportage.

Journalism’s biggest existential battle isn’t about fighting the business model disruption or the way new consumers of news are behaving. It’s the war against intense polarisation and biases plaguing the newsrooms. There’s extreme negativity on one hand and excessive cheerleading on the other. For those in journalism staying true to the craft and following the principles of objectivity and the good old world balance, it’s a tough battle. Amid all this chaos, Ravish Kumar is a rarity who practices fundamentals of journalism by pursuing. How does he stay this way? And why? And what’s the cost of speaking truth to power? Our Season 2 Finale of Outliers is with a journalist who evokes emotion in what he chooses to cover as much as admiration in the way he keeps to the fundamentals of on-the-ground reportage.

Ep 87: NDTV's Ravish Kumar ‘I'm the only one in Delhi...to say the Prime Minister lies’

“Always remember the poor who gave their bodies for you to learn medicine. You owe it to them.”Every time a new batch of ophthalmologists joins LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, its founder Dr  Gullapalli Nageswara Rao tries to instill a sense of empathy for India’s poor. “The rich didn’t even let you touch their bodies for research. It’s the poor...” Dr Rao has been able to combine world class healthcare with compassion in his career. In three decades, his institute has treated over 20 million patients, with nearly half of them availing the services for free. (The institute is named after filmmaker and producer Lakshmi Vara Prasad Rao, who contributed money and land for it.)The institute came on my radar when I read recent announcements about an “eye hackathon”. What’s an eye hospital looking to achieve from hackathon -- a contest among coders typically known to be organized by startups and large companies to hunt down the next big idea?“We’re now trying to build an institute in Amravati for the future, looking at how eyecare can be delivered in 20, 50 years from now,” Dr Rao tells me.

“Always remember the poor who gave their bodies for you to learn medicine. You owe it to them.” Every time a new batch of ophthalmologists joins LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, its founder Dr Gullapalli Nageswara Rao tries to instill a sense of empathy for India’s poor. “The rich didn’t even let you touch their bodies for research. It’s the poor...” Dr Rao has been able to combine world class healthcare with compassion in his career. In three decades, his institute has treated over 20 million patients, with nearly half of them availing the services for free. (The institute is named after filmmaker and producer Lakshmi Vara Prasad Rao, who contributed money and land for it.) The institute came on my radar when I read recent announcements about an “eye hackathon”. What’s an eye hospital looking to achieve from hackathon -- a contest among coders typically known to be organized by startups and large companies to hunt down the next big idea? “We’re now trying to build an institute in Amravati for the future, looking at how eyecare can be delivered in 20, 50 years from now,” Dr Rao tells me.

Ep 69: Dr Gullapalli Nageswara Rao on shaping eye care with compassion, disruptive tech

Ryan Hoover

In the mad, mad world of tech, discovering the next big thing is a holy grail for everyone – from investors to startup founders looking for their next pivot and even large tech companies hunting for the disruption in their core markets. From a small email list launched in November 2013 by Ryan Hoover, ProductHunt has now helped discover over 100 million products with more than 100,000 new product launches on its platform. In this week’s Outliers, we have for you a conversation with Hoover who talks about the ProductHunt journey, its $20 million acquisition by AngelList in 2016, and some deep lessons in building communities and keeping them alive. Hoover, 31, eats, breathes and lives the ProductHunt community. “I still love what I am doing and I still see so many opportunities to experiment and grow,” he says.“I am really weird when I wake up in the morning, far too early like 4.45 am today. My mind starts turning on and truthfully, I want to get back to the bed, but my mind gets excited, starts working. Now, this is still stressful and I get frustrated... for me and my awesome girlfriend.”P.S. How AngelList works? Look out for a set of deep conversations with folks at AngelList to be published on FactorDaily as an audio story soon.image credit: (cc) Ken Yeung -- www.thelettertwo.com

In the mad, mad world of tech, discovering the next big thing is a holy grail for everyone – from investors to startup founders looking for their next pivot and even large tech companies hunting for the disruption in their core markets. From a small email list launched in November 2013 by Ryan Hoover, ProductHunt has now helped discover over 100 million products with more than 100,000 new product launches on its platform. In this week’s Outliers, we have for you a conversation with Hoover who talks about the ProductHunt journey, its $20 million acquisition by AngelList in 2016, and some deep lessons in building communities and keeping them alive. Hoover, 31, eats, breathes and lives the ProductHunt community. “I still love what I am doing and I still see so many opportunities to experiment and grow,” he says. “I am really weird when I wake up in the morning, far too early like 4.45 am today. My mind starts turning on and truthfully, I want to get back to the bed, but my mind gets excited, starts working. Now, this is still stressful and I get frustrated... for me and my awesome girlfriend.” P.S. How AngelList works? Look out for a set of deep conversations with folks at AngelList to be published on FactorDaily as an audio story soon. image credit: (cc) Ken Yeung -- <a href="http://www.thelettertwo.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.thelettertwo.com</a>

Ep 51 : ProductHunt founder Ryan Hoover on life with AngelList and lessons in building community

Jyoti Bansal

Every time we spot a hugely successful entrepreneur (either multi-billion dollar exit or an IPO), there’s a rush to analyse what went behind the success and whether there’s a playbook that can be replicated to create more successful exits for startups. Everyone from investors to existing and wannabe entrepreneurs are looking for  “deep insights” that will catapult their idea into the big league. If you read some of the top learnings shared by Jyoti Bansal and even listen to the entire podcast, I bet you will get a feeling that none of this is something you haven’t heard before. However, if you can learn from Bansal’s insights by contextualising everything he says against his startup journey, the AppDynamics story, and so on, there’s a lot to learn. One of the things that stayed with me since I had this conversation with him, for instance, is what he said about the kind of people he will hire for his next startups. “I will try and avoid hiring people who have been part of big exits.”This is because exits and startup wealth creation also brings a certain comfort, risk averse nature. So whenever Bansal builds his next, he wants people with a lot more hunger than those who have already drank the nectar.

Every time we spot a hugely successful entrepreneur (either multi-billion dollar exit or an IPO), there’s a rush to analyse what went behind the success and whether there’s a playbook that can be replicated to create more successful exits for startups. Everyone from investors to existing and wannabe entrepreneurs are looking for “deep insights” that will catapult their idea into the big league. If you read some of the top learnings shared by Jyoti Bansal and even listen to the entire podcast, I bet you will get a feeling that none of this is something you haven’t heard before. However, if you can learn from Bansal’s insights by contextualising everything he says against his startup journey, the AppDynamics story, and so on, there’s a lot to learn. One of the things that stayed with me since I had this conversation with him, for instance, is what he said about the kind of people he will hire for his next startups. “I will try and avoid hiring people who have been part of big exits.” This is because exits and startup wealth creation also brings a certain comfort, risk averse nature. So whenever Bansal builds his next, he wants people with a lot more hunger than those who have already drank the nectar.

Ep 50 : Masterclass with Jyoti Bansal

The first time I heard about Gourav Jaswal was some time in 2003-2004 when I was early in my career and working with technology media group, Jasubhai Digital Media. “You must meet him,” Maulik Jasubhai, the group’s CEO had told me while hiring me. And then there were legends about how Jaswal would turn obscure ideas and aimless pursuits into meaningful and impactful journeys.Finally, I met him few weeks ago when he walked into FactorDaily office one afternoon. Over past few years, he’s been running Prototyze, a new age business incubator. Jaswal is not on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. But he still manages to stay ahead of the information clutter, thanks to “the human and interpersonal networks” he so passionately curates. For me, I believe more of us should learn from the way Jaswal has built and evolved with his own “human networks”, far from the clutter and pretentious worlds of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The first time I heard about Gourav Jaswal was some time in 2003-2004 when I was early in my career and working with technology media group, Jasubhai Digital Media. “You must meet him,” Maulik Jasubhai, the group’s CEO had told me while hiring me. And then there were legends about how Jaswal would turn obscure ideas and aimless pursuits into meaningful and impactful journeys. Finally, I met him few weeks ago when he walked into FactorDaily office one afternoon. Over past few years, he’s been running Prototyze, a new age business incubator. Jaswal is not on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. But he still manages to stay ahead of the information clutter, thanks to “the human and interpersonal networks” he so passionately curates. For me, I believe more of us should learn from the way Jaswal has built and evolved with his own “human networks”, far from the clutter and pretentious worlds of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Ep 54: No to social media, meetings at 7.30 am, embracing “human and interpersonal networks”

Raju Reddy

Raju Reddy of Sierra Atlantic talks about his entrepreneurial journey, and how the underground nerve center of BITS Pilani network – he's an alumnus and currently the chairman of BITSA – works. Produced by Anand MuraliMusic Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Raju Reddy of Sierra Atlantic talks about his entrepreneurial journey, and how the underground nerve center of BITS Pilani network – he's an alumnus and currently the chairman of BITSA – works. Produced by Anand Murali Music Credit: <a href="http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.accelerated-ideas.com/</a>

Meet former entrepreneur Raju Reddy, now a startup ecosystem builder

Sunit Singh

Amid India’s smartphone boom and the rise of large consumer internet companies such as Flipkart, Myntra and several others, profitability and funding rounds have dominated the narratives. Designing these consumer products, creating engaging user interfaces hasn’t really made any big headlines, though.Cleartrip, with its simple, uncluttered mobile web interface, has been an outlier on the design front. When most rival travel websites were busy packing their sites with innumerable features and deals, Cleartrip chose to doggedly keep its focus on a simple user interface when it launched in 2006.“We said, 'Who is on mobile, and who are we designing for?’,” recalls Sunit Singh, design head of Cleartrip until August 2015.“That helped us with a razor-focused design approach. In terms of the complexity of the interface, we cut it down to quite a extent.” Singh adds: “That’s where I first learned the value of being razor-focused.” So, how does a product balance ease of use and user convenience with this quenchless urge to pack more features than your rivals? “You have to pick your battles. You can’t fight all of them. Designers have to pick their battles.”Is Cleartrip indeed a greatly designed product or is it just that most of its rivals have shabbily designed products? How and why does Cleartrip continue to live on? “I think about this question a lot myself. I would always tell my team that get to a level where there’s no other way to do it. There’s no better way to do it. I think that’s the secret,” says Singh.

Amid India’s smartphone boom and the rise of large consumer internet companies such as Flipkart, Myntra and several others, profitability and funding rounds have dominated the narratives. Designing these consumer products, creating engaging user interfaces hasn’t really made any big headlines, though. Cleartrip, with its simple, uncluttered mobile web interface, has been an outlier on the design front. When most rival travel websites were busy packing their sites with innumerable features and deals, Cleartrip chose to doggedly keep its focus on a simple user interface when it launched in 2006. “We said, 'Who is on mobile, and who are we designing for?’,” recalls Sunit Singh, design head of Cleartrip until August 2015. “That helped us with a razor-focused design approach. In terms of the complexity of the interface, we cut it down to quite a extent.” Singh adds: “That’s where I first learned the value of being razor-focused.” So, how does a product balance ease of use and user convenience with this quenchless urge to pack more features than your rivals? “You have to pick your battles. You can’t fight all of them. Designers have to pick their battles.” Is Cleartrip indeed a greatly designed product or is it just that most of its rivals have shabbily designed products? How and why does Cleartrip continue to live on? “I think about this question a lot myself. I would always tell my team that get to a level where there’s no other way to do it. There’s no better way to do it. I think that’s the secret,” says Singh.

Ep 70: Sunit Singh on designing Cleartrip

Vijay Shekhar Sharma

So who is Vijay Shekhar Sharma?Depending who you ask in India’s technology and startup ecosystem, the answers will range from “that crazy guy” to “overly obsessed entrepreneur”, “trying to fight too many battles at the same time”, “a desi entrepreneur”, “rags to riches story” and so on. If you ask us at FactorDaily, we’ll perhaps point you to our Code of Conduct that names him as one of the three investors backing our media startup. But this podcast isn’t about what we think of him; it’s about who he really is.And as I sat down with him for this special episode Outliers Podcast Season 1, I realised he’s no different from many important entrepreneurs in these times — at the core, they all want to make it big, are inspired by Elon Musk or such, and are very, very lonely. “When I lost my father few weeks ago, I also lost the only one who understood what I really do. Now, I have no one who understands me, and that will remain a gap forever,” he says.

So who is Vijay Shekhar Sharma? Depending who you ask in India’s technology and startup ecosystem, the answers will range from “that crazy guy” to “overly obsessed entrepreneur”, “trying to fight too many battles at the same time”, “a desi entrepreneur”, “rags to riches story” and so on. If you ask us at FactorDaily, we’ll perhaps point you to our Code of Conduct that names him as one of the three investors backing our media startup. But this podcast isn’t about what we think of him; it’s about who he really is. And as I sat down with him for this special episode Outliers Podcast Season 1, I realised he’s no different from many important entrepreneurs in these times — at the core, they all want to make it big, are inspired by Elon Musk or such, and are very, very lonely. “When I lost my father few weeks ago, I also lost the only one who understood what I really do. Now, I have no one who understands me, and that will remain a gap forever,” he says.

Outliers Season 1 Finale: Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the life of a founder

Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian Thrun, the Google X founder and among the world’s top AI and robotics scientists, flying cars are no more science fiction. In this episode of the Outliers podcast, he talks about flying cars and solving today’s problems Produced by Anand MuraliMusic Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Sebastian Thrun, the Google X founder and among the world’s top AI and robotics scientists, flying cars are no more science fiction. In this episode of the Outliers podcast, he talks about flying cars and solving today’s problems Produced by Anand Murali Music Credit: <a href="http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.accelerated-ideas.com/</a>

Sebastian Thrun on flying cars and solving today’s problems

Manav Garg

Manav Garg is clearly an outlier in the Indian startup ecosystem. Coming from Moga, a town in Punjab, Garg conquered his inability to speak English and fear of failure to set a launchpad for himself. Also, he never went to an IIT. After finishing his graduation from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Garg joined G Premjee Trading on its commodities desk starting with coffee in 1998. From around $50 million worth of trading, he became part of the team that scaled it to over half a billion dollars in three years. Later, in 2001, Garg started building Eka. He’s among a bunch of rare few entrepreneurs who come from core business backgrounds to build a software company. “A lot of time my wife and family ask me why I’m going to work all the time, working so hard. It’s not really about work, but it’s the mission for me,” he says. “For me, it’s a mission. You’ll always have enough to survive. I want to change the entire agricultural space in India.”Garg has also learned to use meetings over a cup of coffee as a negotiation and persuasion tool. From getting his first $1 million customer for Eka in 2001 to hiring his head of sales, Garg’s coffee meetings have delivered. “This Singapore customer called us after reading our responses to his RFP, said he will never ever work with us. I persuaded him to have a coffee with me the next day. I flew overnight to be there,” he recalls. Ditto with Rick Nelson who Manav hired as the head of sales in New York in March 2009

Manav Garg is clearly an outlier in the Indian startup ecosystem. Coming from Moga, a town in Punjab, Garg conquered his inability to speak English and fear of failure to set a launchpad for himself. Also, he never went to an IIT. After finishing his graduation from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Garg joined G Premjee Trading on its commodities desk starting with coffee in 1998. From around $50 million worth of trading, he became part of the team that scaled it to over half a billion dollars in three years. Later, in 2001, Garg started building Eka. He’s among a bunch of rare few entrepreneurs who come from core business backgrounds to build a software company. “A lot of time my wife and family ask me why I’m going to work all the time, working so hard. It’s not really about work, but it’s the mission for me,” he says. “For me, it’s a mission. You’ll always have enough to survive. I want to change the entire agricultural space in India.” Garg has also learned to use meetings over a cup of coffee as a negotiation and persuasion tool. From getting his first $1 million customer for Eka in 2001 to hiring his head of sales, Garg’s coffee meetings have delivered. “This Singapore customer called us after reading our responses to his RFP, said he will never ever work with us. I persuaded him to have a coffee with me the next day. I flew overnight to be there,” he recalls. Ditto with Rick Nelson who Manav hired as the head of sales in New York in March 2009

Ep 53: Manav Garg on learning from his father’s entrepreneurial failures, building Eka

With over a million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands on other social platforms, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw keeps a really visible and busy profile. This fan following also brings trolls and critics who can get really personal at times. As I sat down with Shaw, the founder of India’s biggest biotech company, Biocon, to record the last Outliers podcast of 2017, I asked her how she manages criticism and trolls. “From the very start I’ve faced criticism…..being a woman entrepreneur, and trying to build a startup in an area not understood by many,” she told me. “More recently, some retail investors even asked me to step aside and hand over the reins to someone else who understands the business better. There’s even been criticism about my gender, and so on.” “I believe if you’re honest about your beliefs then you’ll be able to take criticism. I don’t hesitate in apologising or retracting what I said if someone points to factual inaccuracies etc..” In this age of extreme and polarized opinions, it doesn’t matter if you have one follower or a million. Keeping a balanced view and asking for fact/evidence-based debates on Twitter and elsewhere is scoffed upon. How does Shaw manage all that? How can she critique and praise the government at different times?These are among the questions I asked. Do listen in for some bold insights from one of the most important business leaders in the country.

With over a million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands on other social platforms, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw keeps a really visible and busy profile. This fan following also brings trolls and critics who can get really personal at times. As I sat down with Shaw, the founder of India’s biggest biotech company, Biocon, to record the last Outliers podcast of 2017, I asked her how she manages criticism and trolls. “From the very start I’ve faced criticism…..being a woman entrepreneur, and trying to build a startup in an area not understood by many,” she told me. “More recently, some retail investors even asked me to step aside and hand over the reins to someone else who understands the business better. There’s even been criticism about my gender, and so on.” “I believe if you’re honest about your beliefs then you’ll be able to take criticism. I don’t hesitate in apologising or retracting what I said if someone points to factual inaccuracies etc..” In this age of extreme and polarized opinions, it doesn’t matter if you have one follower or a million. Keeping a balanced view and asking for fact/evidence-based debates on Twitter and elsewhere is scoffed upon. How does Shaw manage all that? How can she critique and praise the government at different times? These are among the questions I asked. Do listen in for some bold insights from one of the most important business leaders in the country.

Ep 45: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw on handling criticism and trolls

Ritesh Arora

Ritesh Arora talks about how he learned from failures to bootstrap, and then turn BrowserStack into a $60m rocket ship.Produced by Anand MuraliMusic Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Ritesh Arora talks about how he learned from failures to bootstrap, and then turn BrowserStack into a $60m rocket ship. Produced by Anand Murali Music Credit: <a href="http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.accelerated-ideas.com/</a>

How Ritesh Arora turned BrowserStack into a $60m rocket ship

Deepak Shenoy

Deepak Shenoy was one of the early professionals to start algorithmic trading in India, way back in 2009. It required sifting through patterns of data and using software-based decision-making systems to trade and make stock calls. While I have been following his Twitter handle @deepakshenoy for past couple of years, some of his recent writings have clearly been outliers, especially in terms of fresh perspective and incisive analysis. “How The 11,400 cr. Import Ponzi Scam at PNB Unfolded” published in February is an example of that. Shenoy, a computer science graduate from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, started his career as a coder maintaining mainframe computer systems during 1996-1997. Before formally launching Capitalmind in 2010, Shenoy launched two startups--Moneyoga and Agni Software. “When you are in a job, it’s difficult to harness opportunities. It’s not just being your own boss,” he says. “At some point, you start getting tempted to take up a job because of the cash flow. And around 2012, I had started getting job offers and I didn’t want that,” he adds. It’s important to have targets about how long will you give your startup before calling it quits. “I decided to work on making Capitalmind into a company and give it one year. ““The first business I ran, we had a 4 months target. It was 1998 and we were making 15,000 every month. We actually did it. We wanted the company to make enough money to help the four of us buy Tata Safari for each of us,” says Shenoy. “If you don’t have a business vision, the danger is of becoming a zombie company. You would always have enough to survive, but without growth, nothing matters. Every company is supposed to be geared for growth. “

Deepak Shenoy was one of the early professionals to start algorithmic trading in India, way back in 2009. It required sifting through patterns of data and using software-based decision-making systems to trade and make stock calls. While I have been following his Twitter handle @deepakshenoy for past couple of years, some of his recent writings have clearly been outliers, especially in terms of fresh perspective and incisive analysis. “How The 11,400 cr. Import Ponzi Scam at PNB Unfolded” published in February is an example of that. Shenoy, a computer science graduate from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, started his career as a coder maintaining mainframe computer systems during 1996-1997. Before formally launching Capitalmind in 2010, Shenoy launched two startups--Moneyoga and Agni Software. “When you are in a job, it’s difficult to harness opportunities. It’s not just being your own boss,” he says. “At some point, you start getting tempted to take up a job because of the cash flow. And around 2012, I had started getting job offers and I didn’t want that,” he adds. It’s important to have targets about how long will you give your startup before calling it quits. “I decided to work on making Capitalmind into a company and give it one year. “ “The first business I ran, we had a 4 months target. It was 1998 and we were making 15,000 every month. We actually did it. We wanted the company to make enough money to help the four of us buy Tata Safari for each of us,” says Shenoy. “If you don’t have a business vision, the danger is of becoming a zombie company. You would always have enough to survive, but without growth, nothing matters. Every company is supposed to be geared for growth. “

Ep 52: Deepak Shenoy on building Capitalmind, and the impending fintech bubble burst in India

Sridhar Vembu

In June this year, we broke away from the mould to bring you companies, not just people, that are outliers with How AngelList works. If there’s one thing common in most of the companies that appear outliers, it’s their founders. From Steve Jobs to Elon Musk and even Jeff Bezos, the founder’s mentality continues to shape Apple, Tesla and Amazon. These founders are almost inseparable from their companies. I first discovered Zoho, the cloud software company, in 2010 when I wrote this story about how it was hiring talent from unconventional places. Sridhar Vembu, the Zoho founder who we hosted for the 27th episode of Outliers podcast last July, is an outlier for many reasons. For instance, amid all the startup frenzy, he believes in “slow laddering” or building a company slowly, one step at a time. And to top that, he’s shunned venture capital and said “no” to an over $25 million acquisition offer from Salesforce during the early days of Zoho. Zoho, the cloud software company with estimated revenues of over half a billion dollars, is an outlier for many reasons. For over a decade, Zoho has been hiring students from government schools and colleges and turning them into software programmers. Such students will constitute nearly half of the company’s over 5,000 workforce very soon. And then, there’s a strong growing “Zoho mafia”, too, wherein former employees and leaders including Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Chargebee’s co-founders are building the next generation enterprise software companies. Why Zoho exists: Sridhar Vembu“Zoho exists because India exists. I always thought that if I were born in a different country, I may not have been an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to become a professor, to teach, publish papers. But growing up here...surrounded by what you see, at some point you ask, 'Why are we so poor?’” he tells me. “I realised you have to be building a lot of things to skip poverty. And I am the kind of person who will say, 'What am I doing about it?’”“So, in a sense Zoho exists because India exists and it continues to exist because some 27 million kids are born in India (every year), and in this state of Tamil Nadu the number is around 1 million. That’s actually the same number as all of Japan’s. And you see the number of companies, the brands from Japan….”“South Korea has around 45 million population and Tamil Nadu has about 72 million people. Which brands are popular worldwide?”“It’s not just about the brands. It all correspondingly translates into jobs, incomes, infrastructure, all of that.”“If we are not able to create world class products and world class companies here, then we will never have world class incomes, or world class healthcare. In other worlds, we cannot consume if we cannot produce.”

In June this year, we broke away from the mould to bring you companies, not just people, that are outliers with How AngelList works. If there’s one thing common in most of the companies that appear outliers, it’s their founders. From Steve Jobs to Elon Musk and even Jeff Bezos, the founder’s mentality continues to shape Apple, Tesla and Amazon. These founders are almost inseparable from their companies. I first discovered Zoho, the cloud software company, in 2010 when I wrote this story about how it was hiring talent from unconventional places. Sridhar Vembu, the Zoho founder who we hosted for the 27th episode of Outliers podcast last July, is an outlier for many reasons. For instance, amid all the startup frenzy, he believes in “slow laddering” or building a company slowly, one step at a time. And to top that, he’s shunned venture capital and said “no” to an over $25 million acquisition offer from Salesforce during the early days of Zoho. Zoho, the cloud software company with estimated revenues of over half a billion dollars, is an outlier for many reasons. For over a decade, Zoho has been hiring students from government schools and colleges and turning them into software programmers. Such students will constitute nearly half of the company’s over 5,000 workforce very soon. And then, there’s a strong growing “Zoho mafia”, too, wherein former employees and leaders including Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Chargebee’s co-founders are building the next generation enterprise software companies. Why Zoho exists: Sridhar Vembu “Zoho exists because India exists. I always thought that if I were born in a different country, I may not have been an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to become a professor, to teach, publish papers. But growing up here...surrounded by what you see, at some point you ask, 'Why are we so poor?’” he tells me. “I realised you have to be building a lot of things to skip poverty. And I am the kind of person who will say, 'What am I doing about it?’” “So, in a sense Zoho exists because India exists and it continues to exist because some 27 million kids are born in India (every year), and in this state of Tamil Nadu the number is around 1 million. That’s actually the same number as all of Japan’s. And you see the number of companies, the brands from Japan….” “South Korea has around 45 million population and Tamil Nadu has about 72 million people. Which brands are popular worldwide?” “It’s not just about the brands. It all correspondingly translates into jobs, incomes, infrastructure, all of that.” “If we are not able to create world class products and world class companies here, then we will never have world class incomes, or world class healthcare. In other worlds, we cannot consume if we cannot produce.”

Why Zoho exists: Sridhar Vembu

“What can I do that I haven’t done in the past, or trained for?” At 44, Indushekhar Khaitan has been an entrepreneur, a VC and a corporate executive. Khaitan’s journey across these assignments was triggered by the restlessness to do something he had not done before. And that meant long, painful journeys apart from discovering what he’s good at, and what he’s not. “We had no idea what venture investing was when we started Morpheus. We didn’t even know we had to set aside 2 per cent as the management fee for our salaries etc.,” he says. “Now that I piece it all back, I was only finding what I’m capable of doing and what I’m not.”“When I decided Morpheus wasn’t for me, it was because I couldn’t see myself giving gyan to founders without actually doing it,” he says. After Morpheus, things changed a lot. “I was now feeling, where’s my power, my army?” So what really changes when you’re not an entrepreneur? “In a job, boundaries are laid out for you. As an entrepreneur, you lay out the boundaries. You’re still the same person,” he says. Why is Indus not an entrepreneur again? “You do a startup, make half a million, the bar is $50 million for the next one. Now the next one has to be $500 million worth of your time. That bar is actually the bar that doesn’t let you enter entrepreneurship until you have the next 500 million idea,” he says. For now, Khaitan is training to be a pilot apart from helping the SaaS startup Chargebee hack its next phase of growth. “In five years, if I’m a pilot, that will be a completely different career.”

“What can I do that I haven’t done in the past, or trained for?” At 44, Indushekhar Khaitan has been an entrepreneur, a VC and a corporate executive. Khaitan’s journey across these assignments was triggered by the restlessness to do something he had not done before. And that meant long, painful journeys apart from discovering what he’s good at, and what he’s not. “We had no idea what venture investing was when we started Morpheus. We didn’t even know we had to set aside 2 per cent as the management fee for our salaries etc.,” he says. “Now that I piece it all back, I was only finding what I’m capable of doing and what I’m not.” “When I decided Morpheus wasn’t for me, it was because I couldn’t see myself giving gyan to founders without actually doing it,” he says. After Morpheus, things changed a lot. “I was now feeling, where’s my power, my army?” So what really changes when you’re not an entrepreneur? “In a job, boundaries are laid out for you. As an entrepreneur, you lay out the boundaries. You’re still the same person,” he says. Why is Indus not an entrepreneur again? “You do a startup, make half a million, the bar is $50 million for the next one. Now the next one has to be $500 million worth of your time. That bar is actually the bar that doesn’t let you enter entrepreneurship until you have the next 500 million idea,” he says. For now, Khaitan is training to be a pilot apart from helping the SaaS startup Chargebee hack its next phase of growth. “In five years, if I’m a pilot, that will be a completely different career.”

Ep 72: Indus Khaitan on the curse and joy of entrepreneurship

Sandhya Menon

Why are there hardly any women in top roles in Indian newspapers and magazines? The answer is the same for most business sectors and organizations. These companies have sexual predators lurking around at the workplaces who make sure the bright women don’t rise up the ranks, especially if they don’t succumb to their demands. Yes. It’s that bad. And if you feel this is an exaggeration, please read the stories shared by top women journalists on social media over the past few weeks.This week’s Outliers Podcast is with Sandhya Menon who triggered a revolution on Twitter and elsewhere by sharing her own story of harassment. And while it reinvigorated the #MeToo movement, she stays away from using that hashtag.This will be among a series of such conversations we will do over the next few weeks to ensure that we all wake up and become sensitive enough to realize the value of shaping a healthy workplace for everyone.

Why are there hardly any women in top roles in Indian newspapers and magazines? The answer is the same for most business sectors and organizations. These companies have sexual predators lurking around at the workplaces who make sure the bright women don’t rise up the ranks, especially if they don’t succumb to their demands. Yes. It’s that bad. And if you feel this is an exaggeration, please read the stories shared by top women journalists on social media over the past few weeks. This week’s Outliers Podcast is with Sandhya Menon who triggered a revolution on Twitter and elsewhere by sharing her own story of harassment. And while it reinvigorated the #MeToo movement, she stays away from using that hashtag. This will be among a series of such conversations we will do over the next few weeks to ensure that we all wake up and become sensitive enough to realize the value of shaping a healthy workplace for everyone.

Outliers 75: Sandhya Menon on life beyond hashtags for India’s #MeToo

Arpita Kapoor

Mech Mocha

“If I wasn’t running a startup, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.” If there’s one thing most of the entrepreneurs will agree as the biggest influence while building their startups, it’s the personal transformation they go through. For Arpita, who comes from a small village called Pihani near Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, growing up was all about watching how generations of Indians were relying on mobile screens for everything from entertainment to business. At 27, she now runs Mech Mocha, backed by both Accel Partners and Blume Ventures. (Both are among FactorDaily’s backers, too.) Mech Mocha builds mobile games for Indian users. She met her cofounder Mohit Rangaraju while still in college. Together, they attempted an online food startup in the campus (IIT Guwahati), which didn’t work out. Now, Mohit helps her balance “excessive entrepreneurial optimism” with the realities of running a startup. “We balance each other out.”

“If I wasn’t running a startup, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.” If there’s one thing most of the entrepreneurs will agree as the biggest influence while building their startups, it’s the personal transformation they go through. For Arpita, who comes from a small village called Pihani near Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, growing up was all about watching how generations of Indians were relying on mobile screens for everything from entertainment to business. At 27, she now runs Mech Mocha, backed by both Accel Partners and Blume Ventures. (Both are among FactorDaily’s backers, too.) Mech Mocha builds mobile games for Indian users. She met her cofounder Mohit Rangaraju while still in college. Together, they attempted an online food startup in the campus (IIT Guwahati), which didn’t work out. Now, Mohit helps her balance “excessive entrepreneurial optimism” with the realities of running a startup. “We balance each other out.”

Ep 71: Arpita Kapoor of Mech Mocha on making “India play games”

“The biggest investment you make in a startup is your time; it’s not capital or anything else.” The first big lesson for Kabeer Biswas, from his first startup Hoppr is that entrepreneurship is more about the time than anything else.Biswas, who co-founded Dunzo, is potentially building the next unicorn, or the startup with over billion dollar valuation. But that’s not what makes him and Dunzo outliers.“Our mission is to go ahead and say we’re going to make cities more convenient and we’re going to make sure that every store in the city can be transacted with,” he says.“That’s a massive business. It’s not the business of hyper-convenience, time—this is the business of buying and shopping. This is the business of local commerce.”“And nobody wants to give you money because logistics as business lost a lot of money in 2015-2016.”So why go on building it when none of the investors were ready to write the big cheques?“Because the users wanted it,” he says.And it continues to be frustrating for Kabeer and his co-founders to explain why Dunzo deserves bigger rounds of funding to fulfil its mission.By September of 2017, Dunzo actually became profitable. But it was also the year when Kabeer and his team faced a near death experience.“We ran out of money in June. And by that time we had got 85 people (potential investors) to say “no” to us.”Dunzo has been an outlier from the time it was born on a WhatsApp group in 2014 and kept battling it’s near death experiences despite a growing community of users who loved the app.Much before Google invested in Dunzo earlier this year and it became a popular startup, FactorDaily wrote this story in August 2016. “Dunzo! How a hyperlocal concierge app is killing it in Bengaluru”

“The biggest investment you make in a startup is your time; it’s not capital or anything else.” The first big lesson for Kabeer Biswas, from his first startup Hoppr is that entrepreneurship is more about the time than anything else. Biswas, who co-founded Dunzo, is potentially building the next unicorn, or the startup with over billion dollar valuation. But that’s not what makes him and Dunzo outliers. “Our mission is to go ahead and say we’re going to make cities more convenient and we’re going to make sure that every store in the city can be transacted with,” he says. “That’s a massive business. It’s not the business of hyper-convenience, time—this is the business of buying and shopping. This is the business of local commerce.” “And nobody wants to give you money because logistics as business lost a lot of money in 2015-2016.” So why go on building it when none of the investors were ready to write the big cheques? “Because the users wanted it,” he says. And it continues to be frustrating for Kabeer and his co-founders to explain why Dunzo deserves bigger rounds of funding to fulfil its mission. By September of 2017, Dunzo actually became profitable. But it was also the year when Kabeer and his team faced a near death experience. “We ran out of money in June. And by that time we had got 85 people (potential investors) to say “no” to us.” Dunzo has been an outlier from the time it was born on a WhatsApp group in 2014 and kept battling it’s near death experiences despite a growing community of users who loved the app. Much before Google invested in Dunzo earlier this year and it became a popular startup, FactorDaily wrote this story in August 2016. “Dunzo! How a hyperlocal concierge app is killing it in Bengaluru”

Outliers 73: 80+ investors said no to Kabeer before he raised funding from Google

Guneet Monga

Guneet Monga of Sikhya Entertainment talks about her journey producing next gen movies in a world ruled by the incumbents.Produced by Anand MuraliMusic Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Guneet Monga of Sikhya Entertainment talks about her journey producing next gen movies in a world ruled by the incumbents. Produced by Anand Murali Music Credit: <a href="http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.accelerated-ideas.com/</a>

Guneet Monga’s journey producing next gen movies in a world ruled by the incumbents

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