The One Percent Project- Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Resilience (Pritish Sanyal)

Listen to the entire conversation: Spotify: https://bit.ly/3pwiWwe YouTube: https://bit.ly/44bkR8s Apple: https://bit.ly/3NXQnkL Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast) Show notes & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Mayank

About Abhay Maheshwari:

My first guest on the career series is Abhay Maheshwari. I met Abhay through the Spotify India and Ideabrew studio LevelUp program for podcasters. I was fascinated by Abhay's story. He took to storytelling, open mics and podcasting only after completing his engineering degree and landing a full-time job. Despite being encouraged and nudged to participate in drama, skits, and cultural activities, he hesitated to deviate from the traditional career path in school and college.

Listen in to learn how Abhay became an award-winning storyteller, nationally featured writer and a TEDx speaker.

If you have any feedback about this conversation, speaker and topic recommendations, you can drop me a line at pritish@onepercent.live. Subscribe to the show where ever you are listening to it and sign up to The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Deepit

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About Mayank Tiwari: Success in the textile industry is not just about fabrics and threads; it's about empowering communities and redefining the way we connect with our roots. Welcome to The One Percent Project, where we bring you the stories of exceptional leaders who have achieved extraordinary success in their fields. In this episode, we speak to Mayank Tiwari, Founder & CEO of ReshaMandi, a natural fibre venture from Bharat (India), along with my co-host Sarthak Ahuja. Sarthak is an Author, Virtual CFO, M&A expert, and ISB Gold Medalist. Mayank Tiwari's saga is one of resilience, ingenuity, and unwavering commitment to transforming the textile industry. As the mastermind behind ReshaMandi, he has forged a path where tradition intertwines seamlessly with innovation, revolutionising the way we perceive and engage with fabrics. Join us as we dive into the fascinating story of ReshaMandi. Mayank shares the challenges of the natural fibre industry, the social impact his company has made in the space, and the exciting future ahead. Listen in as Sarthak and I explore the origins of ReshaMandi, commitment to social welfare, and visionary path forging. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Mayank Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: 00:00 Intro 02:49 India’s association with natural fibre. 08:45 India’s fibre consumption pattern and Challenges in scaling production of natural fibre. 19:20 How does fashion get influenced? 25:35 Reshamandi’s focus areas and route to profitability. 40:12 Why is the mulberry leaf mentioned in the Vedas? 51:27 Why is Mayank and Saurabh best placed in building Reshamandi? 56:33 Will Reshmandi become a monopoly such as Amazon, where new players will find it harder to enter the space? 1:02:24 Why has Reshmandi expanded from silk to other natural fibres? 1:06:46 What are the available white spaces within the fabric/ textile industry? 1:09:33 Evolution and contribution of Fab India.

About Salone Seghal:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Salone Sehgal, a trailblazer in the world of gaming and interactive media. Salone has shattered the glass ceiling by becoming the world's first female general partner of games and interactive media VC funds. Her impressive journey has seen her co-founding Lumikai Fund, India's first early-stage interactive media and gaming VC.

Salone's remarkable career expanded to over 18 years as a global game and new media investor, games entrepreneur, and former M&A banker. 

In this conversation, she talks about the history of gaming, the cultural impact of gaming, the female Indian gamer, the unit economics of the gaming industry, and much more.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at ⁠onepercent.live⁠ for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Salone

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00:00 Intro 02:14 Salone's journey into Gaming. 07:38 The History and Evolution of Gaming 16:11 How did Nokia stumble upon "Snake"? 17:49 FAANG founders are gamers. 23:41 The Indian Female Gamer. 27:32 Unit Economics of the Gaming Industry. 30:37 Observations on One-Hit Wonders in Gaming. 34:39 Evaluating Success in the Gaming Industry. 38:36 Understanding the Gaming Demographics- Building a Career in Gaming. 44:26 Views on the Metaverse. 47:59 One management advice that you have learned as a leader. 50:44 Reflections on Leadership Figures- Michelle Obama & Indra Gandhi. 52:22 Are leaders polarising? 52:56 Kindest thing anyone has done for you. 53:32 Key takeaways

About Sawan Kapoor:

My next guest is Sawan Kapoor. Sawan is widely recognised as 'The Career Guy' and India’s foremost career coach. From his early days at Daymon Worldwide, the largest private label broker in the FMCG industry, to his rise as CEO of a multi-million-dollar organisation in the Wine & Spirits industry, Sawan's journey is marked by rapid progression and visionary leadership. His ability to navigate challenging situations, like a sudden job loss in a foreign country, spurred him to develop a systematic, scientific approach to finding the perfect job fit, a methodology he uses to guide thousands of professionals towards career success.

In this episode, we will dive deep into Sawan Kapoor's life, extracting insights and wisdom that have the potential to reshape career journeys. Discover how Sawan's experiences, from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, have shaped his perspectives on adversity, growth, and the art of career development.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Sawan

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In this conversation, he talks about:

• ⁠00:00⁠⁠ Intro

• 02:13 History of career guidance and coaching.

• ⁠⁠03:22⁠⁠ Early life.

• 13:53 Path to becoming a CEO.

• 18:40 How important is it to invest in yourself?

• 20:08 His journey to becoming a Career Coach. ⁠

• 23:56 How to design a career?

• 29:02 How to find the right career coach?

• 32:38 Why do you need to surrender to your coach?

• 37:07 How to kick off a career in coaching?

• 40:11 How do you create a brand that lasts for generations?

• 45:33 His views on being a generalist vs. a specialist.

• 47:23 Counterintuitive insights about career coaching.

• 50:13 Books that have influenced him the most.

• 51:45 Advice to his younger self.

About Susan Zhang:

Leadership is not just about achieving success but about inspiring and empowering others to do the same. My next guest on The One Percent Project, Susan Zhang, embodies that. An exemplary business executive and visionary entrepreneur, Susan has a remarkable career spanning three continents. With an impressive legacy through her work with Google and ByteDance (TikTok), Amazon, and Canva, she effectively combines technical prowess with commercial acumen. Susan has an exceptional track record and has become a prominent figure in the global business, making her a powerful catalyst for positive change.

Susan's passion for driving China-Australia linkage led her to found her own company, assist UoW's 2015 rebrand in the Chinese market, and become a Technology Evangelist for the Australia China Millennial Project. She is a published author, a dynamic, inspirational speaker, and a valued mentor for young entrepreneurs worldwide.

Join me in this episode of The One Percent Project as I speak to Susan about her unconventional career trajectory, leadership style, her book ‘Life Outside My Comfort Zone: Hup Draak!,’ and her strategies for a successful career.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Susan

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In this conversation, she talks about:

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠00:00⁠⁠ Intro ⁠⁠
• 1:26 Her journey from China to working for Google, ByteDance, Amazon and Canva by age 30.
• 4:33 How did she navigate through different roles at different organisations?
• 7:22 Her book “Life Outside My Comfort Zone: Hup Draak!”.
• 9:46 Productivity tool.
• 11:48 Books & Blogs that have influenced.
• 14:22 Advice to her younger self.

About Sarthak Ahuja: My next guest and co-host on The One Percent Project is Sartha Ahuja. In this episode, Sarthak & I deep dive into India's Food and Beverage industry. We discuss the unit economics of running a restaurant to making butter chicken, ordering patterns in India, the business models of food aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy, cloud kitchens, and the reason behind the rise and fall of Uber Eats. We uncover the success story behind Domino's and how in such a competitive industry, Ankit Gupta and Chirag Chhajer built Burma Burma, a Burmese cuisine restaurant chain. Sarthak shares how consumer businesses must undergo a "speed Ludo test," emphasising time efficiency, small transaction sizes, and positive unit economics. This strategy is essential for long-term success in a price-sensitive market like India. ⁠Sarthak is a published author, a seasoned Chartered Accountant with expertise in startup advisory and investment banking and a LinkedIn top voice who brings a wealth of intriguing insights to the discussion. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_BusinessBreakdownIndianFB Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 ⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_YouTubeVideos⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Instagram: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta 00:00 Intro 04:10 The most ordered dishes 09:21 Indian Food Preferences and the Authenticity of Chinese Cuisine 11:06 The Business Models and Unit Economics of the Food Industry 15:40 The Challenges and Economics of Running a Restaurant 39:54 The Success Story of Domino's in the Indian Market 44:38 Identifying Opportunities in the Food Industry 45:18 Burma Burma's reason of success

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL):

Hindustan Unilever is one of India’s most valuable companies. The book “The CEO Factory: Management Lessons from Hindustan Unilever” by Sudhir Sitapati is a handbook of counterintuitive management insights that he learnt over 20+ years at HUL. The book covers HUL’s 100+ years of history in India and its management lessons in marketing, product, pricing, sales, cost, HR, and company values.

Mind map of all my notes from the book: https://bit.ly/TOP_TheCEOFactory

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Full Conversation: https://bit.ly/TOP_BusinessBreakdownIndianFB

About Simran Khara: My next guest on The One Percent Project is the charismatic Simran Khara, the founder and CEO of Koparo. Simran talks about her Journey: From McKinsey to Entrepreneurship. She has an MBA from the Indian School of Business and is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and Shri Ram College of Commerce. With over 16 years of experience, she has advised, built, and monetized in her roles at McKinsey & Co, Star TV, and Juggernaut Books. Now, she is building Koparo, a D2C toxin-free home-care brand. In this conversation, Simran talks about the importance of discipline, adaptability, and social skills that she imbibed growing up in a Faugy Family, the liberating environment Mumbai offers to women, her role at Star TV and what she gathered from her mentor, Uday Shankar, becoming the CEO of Jaggaurnat Books, building Koparo, the impact of being featured on Shark Tank India, and much more. This conversation inspired me to kick off a series on "First Time Founders", where I will invite young and experienced entrepreneurs who will help share their journey of building a business with no prior entrepreneurial experience. If you have any guest recommendations, drop me a line at pritish@onepercent.live Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 ⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_YouTubeVideos⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Instagram: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: 00:00 Intro 02:24 Finding Love and Career in Mumbai: A Personal Journey 03:31 Life Lessons from a Fauji Brat: Discipline, Packing, and Social Skills 05:07 Embracing Competition and Empathy in Professional Life 07:41 From McKinsey to Star TV: A Career Transition Story 10:47 Learning from Uday Shankar? 11:30 The CEO's Perspective: Sales vs. Operations 13:15 Leading Juggernaut: An innovative book publishing venture 21:06 Launching Koparo: Innovating in Home Cleaning 24:27 Applying to Shark Tank India: Leveraging TV for Brand Growth 26:24 Unique Challenges and Insights as a D2C Founder 30:15 Generalist Vs Specialist: A career choice for youngsters 32:26 Why is struggle an evolving concept? 33:41 Counterintuitive insight about entrepreneurs. 34:28 Shark Tank India: Impact, Value & Opportunity 36:15 What does success mean to you?

Listen to the full conversation:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Ce91ho
YouTube: https://bit.ly/42hwfOo
Apple: https://apple.co/42iwzfO
Or available on all other platforms
Show notes & Transcript:
https://lnkd.in/g5VfwBfp

Listen to the entire conversation:
Spotify: https://bit.ly/3pwiWwe
YouTube: https://bit.ly/44bkR8s
Apple: https://bit.ly/3NXQnkL
Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast)
Show notes & Transcript:
https://bit.ly/TOP_Mayank

About Raja Ganapathy:

What is so unique about Ogilvy, Hindustan Unilever, and Sequoia capital that they have stayed market-relevant and built and enabled iconic brands? How Don Valentine, the grandfather of Venture Capital and founder of Sequoia, built a generational brand. If brands and brand-building intrigue, you listen on.

My next guest on The One Percent Project is a brand builder, a voracious reader and an eternal optimist Raja Ganapathy. Raja spent his conceptual years learning the ropes of marketing at Ogilvy on accounts such as Hindustan Unilever, and his defining stint was as the Chief Marketing Officer at Sequoia Capital India. At Sequoia, Raja worked with industry-defying founders of Byju's, Free Charge, Healthkart and many more. Today, Raja is the founding partner at Spring Marketing Capital, a skin-in-the-game marketing value-added investment firm to build the brands of tomorrow.

Listen in to learn how Raja navigated through his career from Ogilvy to Spring, what is the new world order of marketing, are Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Kunal Shah brands or founders and much more.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Raja

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About Karthik Reddy:

What does it take to identify and back the next big thing in the world of startups? How do venture capitalists navigate the complex web of risks and rewards to make successful investments?

Welcome to The One Percent Project, where we continue our exploration of the world of startups and venture capital with the visionary Karthik Reddy, the co-founder and Managing Partner of Blume Ventures. In part 1 of our conversation, we learned about Karthik's upbringing, the values he has instilled in Blume Ventures, his perspective on the role of venture capital in fostering innovation, the X Unicorn hypothesis, and more.

In part 2 of our conversation with Karthik, we delve deeper into the world of venture capital. Join us as we explore Karthik's approach to investing, his counterintuitive insight about venture capital, how he identifies exceptional founders, concepts and frameworks that have influenced him in his career and much more. 

Tune in to The One Percent Project for another engaging conversation with Karthik. Don't forget to subscribe to our "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_KarthikReddy_2

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Twitter: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta⁠

In this conversation, he talks about:

⁠⁠00:00⁠⁠ Intro ⁠⁠02:04⁠⁠ Why he built Blume? ⁠⁠08:13⁠ Counterintuitive insight about venture capital ⁠⁠⁠12:34⁠ How he evaluates founders and ideas. ⁠⁠⁠18:58⁠⁠⁠ Three books ⁠⁠⁠20:44⁠⁠⁠ Three productivity tools 23:31 Kindest thing anyone has done for him. 25:27 What advice will he give to his younger self?

Alfonso Fiore, Head of Packaged Product at AirAsia. He has been with Grab, Agoda, Nokia and other leading firms shares his journey of becoming a product manager and how his entrepreneurial journey helped him to be a better product owner. He discusses the evolution of Super Apps in Asia, the role that Brand and Trust play in product development and why Google Maps is his most favourite product.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures.

About Alfonso:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Alfonso Fiore. Alfonso has an MSc in Computer Science and an MBA from London Business School. After a long career in telecommunications across Europe, he moved to Asia and started a new career in product management quickly rising through major Southeast Asian multinationals and now heads all packaged products at AirAsia.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation, Alfonso talks about his journey of becoming a product head at AirAsia and discusses

• Evolution of Super Apps in Asia
• The role that Brand and Trust play in product development
• About his entrepreneurial journey and how that experience helped him in becoming a better product manager
• Why Google Maps is his most favourite product
  

About Prasanna Sankar: Few possess a rare combination of exceptional talent, entrepreneurial vision, and a relentless drive to push boundaries. My next guest on The One Percent Project, Prasanna Sankar, the co-founder of Rippling, is undoubtedly one such individual. In 2010, Prasanna co-founded Likealittle, a college campus social network that experienced an incredible surge, skyrocketing from 0 to 20 million page views in six weeks. Prasanna's coding prowess has earned him international recognition. Furthermore, during his college years, Prasanna held the esteemed rank-one position at TopCoder, solidifying his status as a true coding prodigy. In part one of this two-part series, listen in to learn about Prasanna's journey from TOPCoder to Microsoft, strategies for building and optimising for pace and efficiency, views on the future of crypto, the invaluable lessons learned along the way that help him identify the next big thing and much more Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Prasanna Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠00:00⁠⁠ Intro

02:03 Growing up in India.

05:00 The role of confidence in early life.

08:15 The balance between pace & efficiency.

16:05 Meta, Microsoft and Google

20:22 Future & Brilliance of Bitcoin.

27:36 The power of having a free mind.

Amit Agrawal, founder of OckyPocky and Ex-YouTube India head, shares his views on how one needs to think about the Indian consumer and discusses the evolution of EdTech and digital media in the last decade. And how Netflix, Amazon Prime, TikTok and Cousersa are disrupting the Indian consumer space.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures

About Amit:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Amit Agrawal, Founder, OckyPocky, and growth expert. OckyPocky is India’s 1st interactive English learning app for vernacular preschool kids. Amit head YouTube India and grew the business from scratch to $100 million per annum revenue. Known as a thought leader in kid-tech, internet and online video space, he has advised some of the biggest names in Indian industry, Silicon Valley and Asia.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Amit, we speak to him about the Indian consumer and discuss the evolution of EdTech and the growth of the Indian digital media in the last decade.

• How businesses are coping with the impact of COVID, economically and culturally.
• How you can create organic virality?
• Who is an Indian consumer?
  • How to segment and analyse the 1.3 Billion Indian population?
  • Growth strategies that EdTech products such as OckyPocky, UpGrade and Coursera have used in India?
  • How Netflix, Amazon Prime and TikTok have entered and dominated the Indian market?
  • YouTube: It’s challenges trying to compete against other nimble and younger social media video platforms.
    

QuickFire Questions:

• Favourite Book/ Blog:
  Magic of thinking big
  
• Hardest Thing about your job
  Everything is determined by you
  
• What Do I Know Now That I Didn’t Know When I Started
  Speed is underrated

Full Conversation: https://bit.ly/TOP_BusinessBreakdownIndianFB

About Dhruvank Vidya:

Dhruvank is the Head of Podcasts for Spotify India. Over a career spanning 25 years, he has launched several media and technology businesses and held leadership positions (CxO/ Business head) in digital media, content, television and technology companies like Star TV, Times of India group, NDTV Imagine/ Turner Broadcasting etc. 

In his entrepreneurial stint, Dhruvank co-founded ‘The Adaptation Company’-- a content company focused on book-to-film/TV adaptations.

Dhruvank delves into key topics that shed light on his unique perspective. Drawing from his experiences, he shares valuable insights on decision-making, career choices, good workplace relationships, and effective team-building. Furthermore, Dhruvank emphasises the significance of grit, the balance between being a generalist and a specialist, and the power of a clear vision in leadership.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Dhruvank Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: 00:00 Intro 01:53 How was life growing up? 02:40 What is the journey to becoming the head of the podcast at Spotify India? 04:47 What made you join Spotify? 05:57 What did your parents expect you to be? 06:44 What influence does IIM have in your life? 07:44 Do you attribute your success to your brilliance or your network? 08:52 Decision Making: You kicked off your career as a manufacturing consultant and moved into media, which is a significant jump- How do you reflect on it and study your decision-making? 10:26 What is your view on being a generalist Vs specialist? 13:11 You have been an entrepreneur and launched new businesses for MNCs. What is your counterintuitive insight about building a business? 14:31 What is the role of Ego in one's career? 15:23 Team Building: You have played a lot of team sports. What do you think about building a team? 17:06 What is your superpower? 18:07 What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 19:13 Who is Dhruvank in a stressful environment? 19:57 What are your three productivity hacks? 20:50 Books, coffee and your walks- What is your relationship with books? And your passion for coffee? And your walks? 18:07 One advice that you would give to yourself? ⁠24:31⁠ If you had to work with one of these people, who would you choose, someone with grit or brilliance?

Listen to the full conversation:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Ce91ho
YouTube: https://bit.ly/42hwfOo
Apple: https://apple.co/42iwzfO
Or available on all other platforms
Show notes & Transcript:
https://lnkd.in/g5VfwBfp

About Guy Kawasaki:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is charismatic, enticing and Apple's 2nd evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Guy is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of the Remarkable People podcast. He was a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He was a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has authored Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and eleven other books.

In this conversation, Guy reflects on his career that has spanned over 40 years, from counting and selling diamonds, being an evangelist at Apple, how great products and leaders polarise people, the relation between humour and intelligence, the emergence of ChatGPT, Nithin Kamath, the CEO of Zerodha and much more.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Guy

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About Vijay Rayapati:

The next guest on The One Percnet Project is Vijay Rayapati, the co-founder and CEO of Atomicwork a startup that helps enterprises bring their employees, IT systems, and HR operations together to drive business impact. Previously, Vijay co-founded Minjar, a cloud management startup. Minjar was acquired by Nutanix in 2018.

Vijay’s journey is a testament to grit, patience, and perseverance. From his early life in a small town in Andhra Pradesh in India to becoming a prominent entrepreneur, Vijay shares his counterintuitive insights on entrepreneurship, the importance of people's success, and his passion for seeding and building. 

Join us as we explore Vijay's journey, from his roots in a small town to his role as a leader in the tech industry.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Vijay

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• Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1
• Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

In this conversation, he talks about:

• ⁠⁠00:00⁠⁠⁠ Intro
• 02:28 Influence of his mother
• 05:01 Journey from a small town to Atmoicwork
• 13:52 Why build Amnigos- a Food delivery startup in 2007?
• 20:28 Why build Minjar after Amigos’s failure?
• 25:23 Types of entrepreneurs
• 27:27 Why build Atomicwork?
• 35:13 Outbound vs. Inbound lead generation
• 39:17 Pricing
• 42:07 Why is generative AI the next Saas?
• 46:40 Generalist Vs Speacialist
• 47:07 Counterintuitive insights about entrepreneurship
• 49:24 Three Books
• 51:05 Advice to younger self

About Nuno Goncalves Pedro:

In the realm of innovation and strategy, few individuals embody the true spirit of transformation, possessing a unique blend of strategic prowess, unwavering determination, and a passion for creating lasting impact. Nuno Goncalves Pedro, the co-founder of Chamaeleon and Strive Capital, epitomises this rare breed of visionary leaders.

Welcome to The One Percent Project, where we delve into the minds of extraordinary individuals who have achieved remarkable success and made a significant impact in their fields. In this episode, we have the privilege of hosting a true thought leader, Nuno Goncalves Pedro.

With a background that spans the realms of technology, strategy, and entrepreneurship for over two decades, Nuno has carved a unique path in the corporate world. As a former senior leader at McKinsey, specialising in Technology, Digital, Media, and Telecom, he has a wealth of experience guiding organisations through complex digital transformations.

As a co-host of Tech Deciphered, a top 3% podcast globally, Nuno dives deep into the intricacies of the tech industry, shedding light on emerging trends and deciphering the complexities that shape our digital landscape. As a sought-after speaker, advisor, and board member, Nuno shares his strategic insights and invaluable expertise with audiences around the globe through his podcast.

Join us in part one of this two-part series, to listen to Nuno’s reflections on his career, his unique perception of adversity and how to deal with it, his experiences of staying in more than 35+ countries, his views on food as an art form, and much more. Get ready for an enlightening conversation that will leave you inspired, motivated, and armed with invaluable insights to unlock your own potential.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Nuno Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about:

• ⁠00:00⁠⁠⁠⁠ Intro
• 02:06 His 25+ years of career in technology, investing and consulting.⁠
• 04:29 How to catalyse adversity?
• 09:13 How to slow down and intensify focus?
• 15:12 Learnings from living in 35+ countries.
• 24:08 How love for food has influenced his career?

About Karthik Reddy:

Is venture capital about funding the next unicorn or backing exceptional founders who are hardwired to think differently and bet against conventional wisdom?

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the humble, decisive communicator and counterintuitive thinker Karthik Reddy. Karthik is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures, one of India's pre-eminent early-stage venture funds. At over $600 Million in AUM, Blume has made 150+ investments across three funds. Karthik also serves as the Chairperson of the Executive Committee at the IVCA (India's Venture and Alternative Capital Association) - India's apex association for Venture & PE Funds, working alongside the Indian Government in policy & regulatory issues concerning Alternative Investment Funds.

In this 2 part series, I speak to Karthik about his upbringing and the values he has infused into Blume over the years.

Listen in to learn Karthik's insights on resilience in building his career, the X-Unicorn hypothesis, why exceptional founders are mutants, how he assesses risk and much more.

Subscribe to the show where ever you are listening to it and sign up to The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_KarthikReddy

Follow & Subscribe:

WhatsApp: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2⁠

YouTube: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube⁠

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Instagram: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro

02:39 His journey from Chennai to Wharton

10:50⁠ The role resilience has played in building his career and Blume?

⁠16:21⁠ The X-Unicorn hypothesis and why exceptional founders are mutants.

⁠21:32⁠ How does he assess risk?

⁠28:56⁠ Do founders need to disapprove or disprove your long-term held market or industry hypothesis to get you interested?

⁠31:25⁠ The power of communication

About Aditi Sharma:

Aditi Sharma is the co-founder of Grow Commerce. Aditi started her career as a chip designer, did her MBA, and joined McKinsey. Then, she chose to join Grab. When Aditi joined Grab, not only was she expecting her first child, but Grab was in overdrive to enter and grow across South East Asian markets while competing against formidable competitors such as Uber and gojek. It would have been a super caustic high-pressure environment to drive and deliver consistently. Eventually, Grab acquired Uber's South East Asian business in 2018. So Aditi took a leap of faith by not joining Google, but Grab, which at the time did not even have maternity coverage insurance. That was a bold move, especially for an expecting mother. Women often hesitate to take such steps because they feel unsure about managing their personal and professional lives. Therefore, Aditi's journey matters to all who must make bold moves and walk the unchartered path.

I recently listened to an interview by Ginni Rometty about her journey to becoming IBM's first female CEO in 2012. She is another corporate leader who exemplifies bold and strategic decision-making. She was born in 1957 in Chicago. Ginni grew up in a family that struggled financially, but through her perseverance, she attended Northwestern University and earned a degree in computer science and electrical engineering in 1979. After graduation, she started her career as a systems engineer at General Motors Institute (now Kettering University).

In 1981, Ginni joined IBM as a systems engineer. She quickly rose through the ranks and held several leadership positions in IBM's consulting, services, and sales organizations. In 2009, she was named senior vice president and group executive for IBM's sales, marketing, and strategy division. In 2012, Ginni was appointed CEO of IBM, becoming the first woman to lead the company. She oversaw IBM's transformation from a hardware-focused company to services and software-focused company. Ginni stepped down as the CEO of IBM in April 2020 and was succeeded by Arvind Krishna. Today, she serves on the board of directors of several companies, including JPMorgan Chase and the Mayo Clinic. I recommend reading her latest book, Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Career_Aditi

Follow & Subscribe:

WhatsApp:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2⁠⁠

YouTube:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube⁠⁠

LinkedIn:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn⁠⁠

Twitter:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1⁠⁠

Instagram:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

About Deepit Purkayastha:  

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Deepit Purkayastha. He is the co-founder of Inshorts & Public app. Deepit's entrepreneurial journey began in an IIT Kharagpur dorm room with his co-founders Azhar & Anunay. 10 years later, Inshorts is India's #1 short news app, with 10 million+ active users, and Public App is India's largest platform for hyperlocal content, with 50 million+ active users.  In this conversation, Deepit talks about how he convinced his parents to take a gap year to pursue Inshorts, his counter-intuitive insights about the Indian consumer, why Inshorts & Public App are unique, their product moat, and much more.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Deepit

Follow & Subscribe:

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YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn

Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1

Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

00:00 Intro 

01:24 Is a start-up an extreme expression of founders' nature? 

02:48 How he convinced his parents to take a gap year to build Inshorts? 

04:19 The importance of timing in launching products.

11:30 Why is Inshorts & Public App unique, and what is their product moat?

Full Conversation: https://bit.ly/TOP_BusinessBreakdownIndianFB

Listen to the full conversation:

Spotify: ⁠https://spoti.fi/3Ce91ho⁠

YouTube: ⁠https://bit.ly/42hwfOo

⁠Apple: ⁠https://apple.co/42iwzfO⁠

Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast)

Show notes & Transcript:

⁠https://lnkd.in/g5VfwBfp⁠

About Jeffrey Paine:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Jeffrey Paine. He is the Managing Partner & Co-founder at Golden Gate Ventures and an Edmund Hillary Fellow. Jeff is one of the most thoughtful VCs I have come across. Last year, he launched an initiative called Coachable that focuses on founders' mental wellness by pairing them with experienced coaches and mentors. He wishes for other like-minded VCs and corporations to join this initiative so that more founders get the support they need while building their startups.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. The state of venture investing in Asia.
2. Is there an Angel investing bubble and its impact?
3. His framework for learning and understanding a new industry.
4. How to get the timing right as an investor?
5. How to choose among copycats; who gets funded and why?
6. Are Asian founders always building a business around problems they encounter?
7. The need for coaches and mentors for founders.
8. His views on blockchain, NFTs and Metaverse.
9. What makes introverts strong leaders?

About Abhinandhan Sridhar:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Abhinandan Sridhar. Abhinandan is a screenwriter who kicked off his career as an assistant director to Andhadhun writer and National Award-winning filmmaker Hemanth M Rao. His writing credits include Netflix's Little Things Seasons 3 & 4 and Teen Tigada, a film for Prime Video's Unpaused anthology.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How have OTT platforms disrupted the creation process and the new media industry?
2. His experience working with Netflix as a creator.
3. What should new creators do when kicking off their careers?
4. His research technique and what has he learnt from Pixar's filmmaking process?
5. How does one judge and manage execution in creative processes such as filmmaking?
6. What are the attributes of a head writer?
7. How are OTT platforms enabling creators to be producers?

About Shrishti Sahu:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Shrishti Sahu. Shrishti is the Managing Partner at SSV. SSV is a sector-agnostic family-office investing in early-stage companies. Through SSV, she has invested in 30 companies such as Plum, Kutumb, Chingari, Rupifi, Jar and 10Club.

Before setting up SSV, she built two businesses, worked with a PE fund and led Facebook's South Asia Startup Program.

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In this conversation, she talks about:

1. How has waking up at 5 am enabled her?
2. Being a Generalist vs Specialist.
3. How has writing empowered her?
4. Leading people and businesses in towns & villages vs metropolitan cities.
5. Why did she plan to become an Angel Investor?
6. Her decision framework for startup investments & how to build a startup portfolio?
7. How can early-stage founders differentiate themselves?
8.  What got her into the crypto space?

About Taru Kapoor:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Taru Kapoor. Taru is the general manager of Tinder and Match Group in India. In her previous stints, she has worked with Sequoia Capital and The Boston Consulting Group. Taru graduated from IIT Delhi with a B.Tech and M.Tech in Chemical Engineering and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

This is an amazing conversation on leadership, solving a hard problem and educating the youth on how to safely and respectfully express their feelings.
 
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In this conversation, Taru talks about:

1. Her leadership style and decision-making process;
2. Balancing between EQ and IQ;
3. Is it important for Tinder to have a female leader?
4. The objective behind creating "Closure", a creative film that talks about consent;
5. Dating in Metaverse; and
6. Reasons behind Tinder's adoption and growth in India.

About Sourjyendu Medda:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sourjyendu Medda. Sourjyendu is the founder and Chief Business Officer at DealShare. After spending 15+ years with leading Retail and FMCG organisations such as Metro, Raymond and Britannia, Sourjyendu kicked off his startup journey at the age of 40 to build Bharat's first social e-commerce unicorn.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How his experience with Britannia, Raymond and Metro helped him understand and build DealShare.
2. Why has DealShare been able to penetrate a consumer segment that the retail and FMCG giants have not been able to connect with?
3. How to build a consumer-centric business?
4. Building and growing a network of community leaders.
5. How to build an MVP - Minimum Viable Product?
6. His leadership style
7. Why is it hard to copy and compete with DealShare?

Some Key Highlights:

• Value creation comes only through building disruptive solutions because another copy can't create value.

• Communication is critical. However powerful a product may be, if it is not publicised, there will be no market for the product. Communication should be simple, clear and to the point.

• When you make a difference in the community and solve the correct problems, your career is bound to be better than others.

About James Keyes:

My next guest on the One Percent Project is James W Keyes. James served as the Chief Executive Officer of 7-Eleven and chairman and CEO of Blockbuster. James graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross. He also obtained an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1980. James is the founder of the 'Education is Freedom' foundation

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How curiosity and adversity have helped him lead organisations such as 7-Eleven and Blockbuster?
2. The need for entrepreneurial thinking within a corporation.
3. The art of negotiation and its tenets. 
4. How has 7-Eleven been able to keep itself ahead of the curve, and why others have not been able to replicate its growth model. 
5. Why did he choose to join Blockbuster?
6. Would Blockbuster be a different company if it had accepted to buy Netflix?
7. Are the principles of leadership being disrupted by the new generation of leaders?

Some Key Highlights:

• When you are hit by adversity, you can respond in two ways: You can have your head down and become the victim, or keep your head up and say I'll get through this and get to the other side. Most of the time, there's hidden learning, and there's a strength that comes from knowing that you were able to make it through to the other side. This gives you the quiet advantage over someone who hasn't had to endure the adversity.

• The idea of a corporate entrepreneur is almost an oxymoron. Unfortunately, many corporate cultures believe in conformity and force people into a norm, discouraging the outliers. The very definition of an entrepreneur is someone who sets out on their own as an individual and breaks the norms. In contrast, the definition of a corporation is coming together as one; it's a body, not an individual.

• Leadership is about adapting to change, and change happens every day. So whatever you learned about leadership last week, you might have to change it next week based on a new set of facts, people or circumstances.

About Ahana Gautam:

Indians love their snacks. We have grown up having our samosas, chaats, namkeens and mithais. There are hundreds of local and national snack brands in India.

The Indian snacking industry crossed an annual sales of $14 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow by $2.88 billion from 2022 to 2026. While snacks do magic for our tastebuds, they dont always work wonders for our health.

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Ahana Gautam. She is the CEO & Co-Founder of Open Secret, a Harvard Business School and IIT Bombay alum. Open Secret is on a mission to un-junk the Indian snack industry.

Some Key Highlights:

• We take creating a meaningful difference in the world as a responsibility, not a choice.
• Every business's biggest moat is its customer.
• Culture is the thread which helps companies scale. So without that thread, products won't exist.

In this conversation, she talks about:

00:00 Intro
01:45 What makes Ahana a unique founder?
03:45 How has moving away from instant gratification helped her find her space in the world?
05:15 How has attending Harvard and IIT impacted her thinking?
08:11 How mothers are the north star for Open Secret?
10:34 How does a business create moats?
13:39 How has Open Secret been able to penetrate beyond tier 1 cities in India?
25:18 How does Ahana assess talent?
27:10 How is Open Secret creating impact? Is it through culture or its products?

About Haldiram’s:

Hello everyone, I am kicking off a mini-series based on the research I do for The One Percent Project conversations.

Prep for every guest conversation leads me into some fascinating rabbit holes about people, companies and industries. So, I plan to share some of these stories and insights through this mini-series. I hope you enjoy them. Here is the first one. 

While doing my research on Ahana Gautam and Open Secret, which is on a mission to un-junk the Indian snack industry, I stumbled upon the Namkeen Industry of India. Namkeen in Hindi means snack. It is a $ 15 billion industry in India. No conversation on namkeens would be complete without mentioning, Haldiram's, India's No.1 Namkeen brand. Haldiram's 85+ years of history is an MBA in itself. It is fascinating to learn how Gangabhishenji Agarwal, fondly known as Haldiram, in 1918 kicked off the making of a Rs 5000 Cr, USD ~600M, brand, which is now a household name in India.

Haldiram was a school dropout who started working at his father's bhujia shop early in his life and eventually became an outlier among ~300 other bhujia sellers in Bikaner through product innovation, branding, marketing, pricing and opportunistic expansion.

Production Innovation

Haldiram started his journey from his family snack stall in Bhujiya Bazar in Bikaner. He reinvented his aunt's bhujia recipe to what we know as Haldiram's bhujia. He made it with moth beans, a type of lentil. This changed the taste and made the bhujia more crispy. The new bhujia was an instant hit among consumers.

Branding/ Marketing:

He named the bhujia "Dungar Sev" after the name of then popular Maharaja Dungar Singha. Here is a great example of Influencer Marketing from the 1930s.

Pricing:

Bhujia was a commodity. But given the popularity of "Dungar Sev", Haldiram raised the price from 2 paise/kg to 5 paise/kg. It made Haldiram's bhujia a premium product, and sales kept growing.

Expansion:

From 1937 to 2000, Haldiram's had grown to 4 cities Bikaner,  Calculta, Nagpur and Delhi. Expansion into Nagpur was a challenge and an opportunity. Nagpur or the whole of Maharashtra, a state in India, in the 1960s, was not interested in bhujia and was not exposed to many snacks.

In the 2000s, they diversified into sweets, which brought the next age of growth for Haldiram's. They went on to add 400+ products which include snacks, sweets, cookies, pickles and much more. They also went international and set up a base in the US, Canada, UK, UAE, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Today, Haldiram's valuation has crossed $3 Billion, and the business has now spread to 80+ countries. Haldiram's present-day success is not only the outcome of Gangabhisenji's courage to break out and try something new but also the vision his sons and grandsons have had in this 85-year journey. I will stop there; let you ponder how a bhujia wala from Bikaner landed up, creating a Namkeen empire. However, the journey of building the empire has not been a straight line. If you found this interesting, refer to Ajuniorvc.com's blog on Haldiram's and the book Bhujia Barons. 

If you liked this mini-episode, share it with someone who would find it valuable. You can drop me a line at pritish@onepercent.live and tell me how else will be interesting to look into. Until next time. 

About Sidu Ponnappa:

About 90% of startups fail. 10% of startups fail within the first year. Failure is most common for startups during years two through five. Given such odds, why does one choose to be a founder?

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Sidu Ponnappa. Sidu is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. His startup C42 Engineering was acquired by GO-JEK in 2015, with C42's founding team joining GO-JEK's board of directors. GO-JEK grew 900X in 18 months and became Indonesia's first unicorn in 2017. Sidu has experienced building and scaling businesses as a founder, CEO, and head of engineering, sales, marketing and HR. 

This is a no-noise just signal conversation where Sidu shares his observations on decision-making, why generalist vs specialist is a flawed concept, the probability of building a successful startup, why angel investing is not investing and much more.

Some Key Highlights:

• The best executors are people who are activity oriented because they've been practising that activity forever. Therefore they're really good at it. People who are objective oriented are great at wrangling reality in certain ways and making decisions and operating across boundaries. People who pick activities are just really good at those activities. So if you need to write great copy, you need to hire someone who writes copy all day.

• If you are building a sustainable business and someone else is building an unsustainable business and the two are in competition, you winning is improbable. It's not that it hasn't happened, but it would be exceptional.

• The entropy of any complex system always increases. The entropy of society always increases the entropy of the laws of a country always increases. As things get more complex, more conflicts emerge. Unless the system is static. Its entropy will increase.

In this conversation, she talks about:

00:00 Intro
01:38: Learning and experience being a founder?
02:01 Lessons and observation as a leaders
05:13 Why a generalist Vs specialist discussion is flawed?
09:47 Why should you hire someone who is objective-oriented?
10:14 Twitter tread on "Obvious Startup Truths" by Sidu
14:13 Founders mindset
19:23 Lessons from Angel Investing
24:10 Being acquired by GO-JEK
32:03 Are there 10x developers?
32:19 Why does the entropy of complex systems deteriorate?
34:55 Impact of reading

Generalist Vs Specialist:

This mini-episode stemmed from my discussion with Sidu Ponnappa. Sidu is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He says the generalist Vs specialist discussion is misleading. It is better to analyse someone as objective-oriented or activity oriented. One can choose either not both at the same time. 

These days there is a debate, especially among the younger talent pool, about being a generalist or a specialist. There is a popular book on this topic by David Epstein called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Epstein argues against specialisation early on in one's life and makes a case for "Range" to gather as many skills and experiences as you can and later to specialise based on your strengths.

What got me thinking is, does the brain have a generalist vs specialist evolution, and do Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Michael Angelo, and other achievers have a generalist or a specialist mindset? It turns out that the brain goes through a generalist and specialist evolution cycle between early childhood and adulthood.  

A child is born with 100 billion neurons. These neurons communicate with each other through a structure called synapse. During infancy, the brain experiences a large amount of growth. As a result, there is an explosion of synapse formation between neurons during early brain development. This is called synaptogenesis.

Synapse growth is critical in learning, memory formation, and adaptation early in life. Around 2 to 3 years of age, the number of synapses hits a peak. Just after this peak, the brain starts to remove synapses that it no longer needs. A synapse can either be strengthened or weakened based on its use. Synapses that are frequently used grow and strengthen and the ones which are not used are removed by the brain. The process of removing synapses is called Synaptic pruning.

Going back to our business world, the brain begins its journey as a generalist, adds as many synapses as it can early on and then switches to a specialist mode where it starts pruning, killing, synapses that show low or no use. If you consider the journeys of Warren Buffet, who made his first investment at the age of 11, Bill Gates, by the age of 19, had more than 10,000 hours of coding under his belt, Michael Angelo became an artist by the age of 13 and there a numerous such examples of high achievers who started honing their crafts in their teens. 

David Epstein talks about Roger Freder as a generalist because he dabbled into skiing, wrestling, swimming and skateboarding. He played basketball, handball, tennis, table tennis, and soccer at school. It was closer to his teens that Roger picked up tennis. Maybe this is an example of synaptic pruning where the brain kills the less used synapses. 

Now can you and I pick up tennis in our twenties or thirties? Sure we can! But it will potentially be 5 times harder than someone who has worked on their serve and backhand since early childhood. Our schooling system pushes us to be a generalist when it should provide us with the environment in our teens to be a specialist and focus on activities and subjects we enjoy. We can't say for sure if synaptogenesis is a generalist function or synapse pruning is a specialist function of the brain. Still, it does indicate that the brain's development has a generalist to specialist evolution cycle.

I found the topic valuable not only to get a better understanding of my strengths and weakness but also the formative process that my little one is going through.

If you like this mini-episode, share it with someone who would find it valuable. You can drop me a line at pritish@onepercent.live. Until next time. 

About Peter Wang:

"Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence." — Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 1975. Simple put, all it means is once you build software and keep making changes to it. Its quality will degrade and eventually degrade to a point where it becomes unusable. 

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Peter Wang. Peter is the Chief Technology Officer at Buzzfeed, overseeing Product Management, Engineering, Design, and Data teams across all portfolio brands. Peter has built both consumer and enterprise products and fundraised from a diverse range of investors across industries—health (The Mighty, backed by GGVC, Upfront, and WPP Health), SaaS (Buddy Media, backed by Greylock, acquired by Salesforce), media & e-commerce (Refinery29, backed by Stripes, WPP, Scripps).

Peter, in this conversation, talks about his journey as a CTO, leadership vs management, and his delegation mechanism, which Keith Rabois outlined in his essay How to be an effective executive and what has been learnt as an angel investor.

Some Key Highlights:

• Buddy Media was acquired by Salesforce. I remember being there after it was acquired by Salesforce. And I realized that what we have built wasn't particularly the most technologically robust advanced futuristic version of it. but it was a combination of the right set of capabilities slash features that the clients need combined with the right marketing.
• Emotion has so much more decision-making power than we even understand.
• Culture is based on identity. Culture is based on values. Culture is embedded into our decision-making, even though we cannot articulate or quantify it when we talk to people.

In this conversation, she talks about:
00:00 Intro
02:13 How does one know the role they play beyond their title?
04:56 Leadership Vs Management is there a difference?
06:30 As a CTO, how do you build an intelligent and practical system without being too futuristic?
10:32 Delegation: Your views?
13:56 Is there a difference between a CTO and a VP of engineering?
17:24 90-day plan, when you kick start in a new role. The 3 Ps- Double-click on that.
21:42 Is technology the secret sauce of Buzz Feed's success?
24:58 What can data not do?
29:38 What have you learnt as an angel investor?

Links:

• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
• Keith Rabois Essay 3: How to be an Effective Executive

Royal Enfield:

When Vikram Lal, CEO & Founder of The Eicher Group, bought the Royal Enfield brand in 1994, the company was already losing money and market share. Product, operations, management, marketing and sales were facing issues. Many Eicher CEOs tried to revive the brand but failed to get Enfield back to its glorious old days. The company was about to shut Enfield when Siddhartha Lal, Vikram's 26-year-old son, put his hand up to revive Enfield. This is a mini-episode on how Siddhartha took Royal Enfield from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming a lifestyle brand and India's first global consumer brand. 

Royal Enfield is The Oldest Motorcycle Brand in Continuous Production. It found its origin in a British needle-making factory in the late 1800s. In 1901, the first Royal Enfield motorcycle was unveiled. The company made its way to the Indian market in 1949 and later set up a JV with Madras motors. The British arm of the company over the years was unable to sustain itself and eventually shut down, but the Indian JV business chugged along.

In India, Royal Enfield is a cult, not just a motorcycle company. It is as urban a brand as rural. It was brought to India by the Brits, adopted by the Indian army and police, got popular among the socially powerful Zamindars- landlords in the 1960s. Today it is a social icon among millennials. 

When Siddhartha signed up for the job, he faced the Harley Davidson dilemma if you innovate, you upset the fans, and if you don't, your brand dies. So he positioned Royal Enfield as a lifestyle brand and kept its classic design and iconic engine thump. The new Royal Enfield was about independence, passion and freedom. This attracted the youth. They cared less about performance and mileage and more about being a part of a 100- year old nostalgia. They bought the new Royal Enfield because of the old one. 

He went on to take serval other counterintuitive decisions. For example, he built a new engine for Enfield, which was not a popular decision among Enfield fans. He chose to shut down the newly inaugurated Jaipur plant and kept the 50-year-old Chennai plant running. Siddartha pushed for international penetration into the U.S., Australia, Thailand and the U.K.

As of June 2022, Royal Enfield's domestic sales increased by 40% YoY. There is a long way to go for Enfield, but Siddhathra has been able to revive and re-position Enfield as India's first global lifestyle brand. If you found this interesting, head on to reading Amrit Raj's book, Indian Icon: A Cult Called Royal Enfield.

Thomas Edison once said that Genius is prolonged patience. I am patient enough to be sure. 

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Anand Jain. He is the Co-founder of CleverTap. CleverTap is the world's leading customer engagement and retention platform, valued at USD 775M and backed by Sequoia India, Tiger Global and others. 

In this fascinating conversation, Anand talks about how curiosity and constant tinkering of an average student from a humble background have led him to build multiple successful businesses, the value of thinking in first principles, how understanding the customer is selling, and much more.

Some Key Highlights:

• Learning Framework: There is a certain joy in figuring out things on your own from first principles. A learning framework is- Do it as long as it doesn't kill you, then come back and look at what you've learned and can you have a compounding effect on what you've learnt?
• Founders: Technical founders typically start from the problem statement as opposed to non-technical founders, who start from the market opportunity or the competitors in the space.
• Teams: Your competitors will change, markets will change, and products will evolve. It's the people who will decide whether you win or lose.

In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro
01:52 Early life: One bedroom rented house, an average student to co-founder of Clevertap. How do you reflect on it?
12:52 How is understanding the customer- selling?
16:18 What is your learning framework- How do you indulge in learning something new?
19:03 Technical founders - how has the experience been?
22:54 How do you differentiate yourself?
28:25 Being a product-first company- what does that mean?
32:58 Building for a niche/ focus group Vs for everyone?
36:02 What do you think about building a team?
39:16 Key learnings from Moments of Truth?
41:29 Views on Elon Musk?

Links:
Anand Jain
Moments of Truth

About Shreyaa Kapoor:

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Shreyaa Kapoor. Shreyaa kicked off her career at Bain consulting, went on to become a content strategist and influencer with 650K+ Instagram followers and was recognised by LinkedIn as a Top Voice for 2022.

This is a fascinating conversation with a young content influencer about why and how she chose to leave consulting and join the creator economy. 

Among all the insights and anecdotes that Shreyaa shares, the one that stood out was her father's advice "If your content and work can easily be copy pasted then you are not creating good enough content."

Some Key Highlights:

• You need to have patience and the courage to experiment. There will be content pieces that will not work out while you're experimenting but that's the price you pay to stand out and be original.
• If your content and work can easily be copy pasted, then you are not creating good enough content.
• Content quality is more important than content frequency. 

In this conversation, she talks about:

• Her journey from college to becoming a content creator.
• Her LinkedIn Vs Instagram content strategy.
• Her relationship with money, given her Instagram content, is about personal finance.
• How did she kick off her financial journey?
• As a content creator, how do you create a legacy?
• Her lessons as a content influencer?
• How is Gary Vee different from Ali Abdaal?

Links:

Shreeya’s Instagram | LinkedIn

About Sandeep Jethwani:

"It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for." -Robert Kiyosaki

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Sandeep Jethwani. Sandeep is the co-founder of dezerv. dezerv. is an expert-led wealth creation platform that aims to deliver sustainable returns to its clients through its unique Integrated Portfolio Approach (IPA). dezerv. was founded in 2021 and today it has 1,000 crores under management.

In this engrossing conversation, Sandeep talks about his dezerv. journey, the role of patience in creating long-term wealth, building a brand that consumers trust, the role of mentors and much more.

Some Key Highlights:

• We assume building wealth is a lot about the returns we generate but the true trick to growing meaningful wealth is not to lose it. Some of the folks who have made a significant amount of capital have not lost a meaningful amount of money in the worst of times.

• The interesting dichotomy of investing today is it’s easier to figure out where to invest but harder to make money.

• Before you trust a brand, you trust the people behind the brand.

In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro
01:44 His counterintuitive insight about wealth management?
02:56 How did he come up with the name?
04:56 How does one build long-term wealth?
07:15 Where is India in its wealth creation journey, and how is dezerv. adding value to it?
12:55 What is the importance of patience in building wealth?
17:48 How does he think about building a brand?
25:00 The secret sauce of Zerodha.
28:28 The role of mentors.

Links:

Sandeep: LinkedIn

About Matt Abrahams:

Today on The One Percent Project, I am speaking to Matt Abrahams. Matt teaches organizational behaviour and strategic communication at Stanford. He is the author of the excellent book Speaking Up without Freaking Out and host of the Stanford GSB podcast ‘Think Fast Talk Smart’. Matt is a passionate, collaborative, and innovative educator and coach. He has published widely on strategic communication, cognitive planning, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Prior to teaching, Matt held senior leadership positions in several leading software companies, where he created and ran global learning and development teams. Matt has worked with executives to help prepare and present keynote addresses and IPO road shows, conduct media interviews, and deliver TED talks.

Strategic communication can alter people, teams, and organisations. One who recognises the value of communication realises the importance of honing personal and the team's communication skills. Good communicative skills increase employability, morale, engagement, and productivity, along with improved teamwork. Effective workplace communication contributes to improved performance of individuals, teams, and organisations. But the question remains, how does one achieve effective communication? Matt helps people find that answer. In this engaging conversation with Matt, he talks about strategic communication, who is an effective communicator, the communication styles of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffet, his favourite communicators, the role of confidence in effective communication and much more.

Key Highlights & Transcript:  http://bit.ly/TOP_MattAbrahams

In this conversation, he talks about:

• 00:00 Intro 
• 02:42 Counterintuitive insights about strategic communication? 
• 03:37 How is an effective communicator? 
• 04:22 What excites him about teaching? 
• 05:40 Is it hard to teach strategic communication? 
• 07:52 The role of storytelling communication? 
• 09:44 The communication style of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet. 
• 12:41 When you need to speak spontaneously, how do you manage your anxiety? 
• 15:54 How can founders have an effective communication strategy and storytelling framework? 
• 19:32 The impact of martial arts in Matt's strategic communication. 
• 21:53 The importance of the environment in effective communication.
• 23:12 Communicators Matt appreciates.
• 24:43 The importance of confidence in effective communication.
• 26:23 What is an introvert's strength in communicati

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Robert, we speak about the Chinese tech ecosystem evolution and the frameworks to succeed in China. 

• Airbnb growth in China the initial trends and indicators
• Chinese Vs Western consumers how their consumption and spending patterns differ
• What made Goat decide to enter China
• How TikTok became a global sensation
• How a late entrant Chinese tech startup Meituan Dianping emerged as a Superapp while competing against the Chinese tech giants: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu
• Chinese technology trends in the next 10 years

About Robert:

My very first guest on The One Percent Project is my ex-colleague, Robert Hao, Co-Founder & COO, HYPE Asia. HYPE is a venture builder that helps startups demystify, unlock, and succeed in Asia. Presently, Robert is heading the expansion of Goat into China. Goat is the world's largest sneakers marketplace.

In 2012, he helped form the Asia landing team to expand Airbnb into the APAC region. From 2013-2017, Robert relocated to Beijing to start Airbnb China business, where he led Business Operations & Strategy and Host Community Operations and grew the China team to two hundred strong.

About Amit:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Amit Agrawal, Founder, OckyPocky, and growth expert. OckyPocky is India’s 1st interactive English learning app for vernacular preschool kids. Amit head YouTube India and​ ​grew​ ​the​ ​business​ ​from​ ​scratch​ ​to $100​ ​million​ ​per annum​ revenue. Known​ ​as​ ​a​ ​thought​ ​leader​ ​in​ kid-tech, ​internet​ ​and​ ​online​ ​video​ ​space​, he has ​advised some​ ​of​ ​the​ ​biggest​ ​names​ ​in​ ​Indian​ ​industry, Silicon Valley and Asia.​ 

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Amit, we speak to him about the Indian consumer and discuss the evolution of EdTech and the growth of the Indian digital media in the last decade. 

• How businesses are coping with the impact of COVID, economically and culturally.
• How you can create organic virality?
• India
  • Who is an Indian consumer? 
  • How to segment and analyse the 1.3 Billion Indian population? 
  • Growth strategies that EdTech products such as OckyPocky, UpGrade and Coursera have used in India?
  • How Netflix, Amazon Prime and TikTok have entered and dominated the Indian market?
  • YouTube: It’s challenges trying to compete against other nimble and younger social media video platforms.   

QuickFire Questions:

• Favourite Book/ Blog:
  • Magic of thinking big
• Hardest Thing about your job
  • Everything is determined by you
• What Do I Know Now That I Didn’t Know When I Started
  •  Speed is underrated

About Alfonso:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Alfonso Fiore, Head of Product AirAsia. Alfonso has an MSc in Computer Science and an MBA from London Business School. After a long career in telecommunications across Europe, he moved to Asia and started a new career in product management quickly raising through major Southeast Asian multinationals and now heads all packaged products at AirAsia.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Alfonso, talks about his journey of becoming a product head at AirAsia and discusses

• Evolution of Super Apps in Asia  
• The role of Brand and Trust play in product development
• About his entrepreneurial journey and how that experience helped him in becoming a better product manager
• Why Google Maps is his most favourite product

About Rui (Rey):

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Rui (Rey) Ma. She is the Writer & Co-Host of The Tech Buzz China podcast. A  biweekly China tech podcast on unique insights & takeaways on China tech.

She has over fifteen years of experience in investment banking and investing, spanning seed stage to pre-IPO investing, and spent eight of those years working across multiple industries including real estate and media as well as technology in Shanghai and Beijing. She is currently an angel investor and advisor to several startups and funds. Rui is also active in philanthropy and currently runs Rookie Fund, a nonprofit student venture fund network in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Our Conversation:

• The Chinese Tech ecosystem it's strengths and myths
• What makes Chinese Tech businesses good at scaling
• How the second generation of Chinese Tech startups such as ByteDance, Pingduoduo, Meituan and others are giving B.A.T: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, a run for their money
• The contrast between Western and Eastern Chinese consumer. 
  • How ByteDance’s initial traction came from the less Tech-savvy Chinese consumer 
• Can Non-Chinese Tech businesses enter and scale in China
• Venture investment appetite of Chinese Vs Silicon Valley investors

About Karthik:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Karthik Prabhakar. He is the Executive Director and Partner at Chiratae Ventures. Karthik is also a member of the Investment Committee of AngelHub. Karthik for three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018 was recognized as one among the 40 Under 40 in the alternative investments space in India by AAAIF. He is also recognized amongst the global top 100 Rising Stars in the venture industry by Global Corporate Venturing.

Our Conversation:

• His learning as a Venture Capitalist.
• How he assesses early-stage startup ideas and team?
• Is branding important for early-stage startups?
• A new Indian consumer base that COVID has opened up for startups to tap into and sectors that will get a boost due to the pandemic 
• How foreign entrants such as Amazon, TikTok and others were able to scale in a heterogeneous market such as India?
• Factors for Zoom's supremacy over all the other video conferencing products in the markets during the pandemic

Quickfire Questions:

• Team or idea?
  • Team
• A book that has helped you think better personally as well as at work?
  • One is a book by Viktor E. Frankl Man's Search for Meaning. It's been a phenomenal book. And the second one is by Christensen "How Will You Measure Your Life?" 
• One app that you would recommend everybody to use, or you use extensively?
  • I'm invested in gaming and education companies. So I keep playing with these games a lot. I would recommend to check out WordTrek by Play Simple Games. Disclaimers Play Simple Games is one of our investments.

About Aditi:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Aditi Sharma. She is the Head of Startup Programs & Investments at Grab Ventures. She has spent five years at McKinsey & Company post her M.B.A. from Indian School of Business in India. 

Our Conversation:

In this conversation, Aditi talks about her journey from her entering college to Grab Ventures.

• The evolution of the Corporate Venture Space in Southeast Asia
• Hypothesis and framework behind building Grab Ventures
• The impact of GOVID on businesses and trends that are emerging post the pandemic 
• Who is the perfect founder for Grab Ventures?
• Super Apps and opportunities
• Southeast Asian markets their evolution and the opportunities within them

Quickfire Round:

• Favourite Book or Blog?
  • The Knowledge Project
• Idea or Team?
  • Team
• Guy or Data?
  • Data

About Rai Mahimapat Ray, “Ray”:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Rai Mahimatpat Ray. He is the District Magistrate, Collector & Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) - Government of India. A district magistrate is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who is the chief in charge of the administration and governance of a district in India. Ray is responsible for the well being and development of the 3.3M people living in Ranchi district, which has a diverse demographic spread across remote villages without developed roads or schools to upcoming cities where universities and businesses successfully thrive. 

Our Conversation:

We kick this conversation off with Ray trying to understand the Indian Administrative Services, the progress, the challenges and the opportunities Indian have and how IAS officers like him are working to better the lives and mitigate the challenges an every day Indian faces. We also talk about the COVID situation in Ranchi and measures he has taken to keep the pandemic in control.

All views are personal and don’t represent the views of Govt. of India or Govt. of Jharkhand.

About David Collect:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is David Collet. He has been a sales executive in the sports and media industy for more than 20 years and worked with CNN, PERFORM, OPTA Sports across Asia and Europe.

Our Conversation: We kick-off the conversation with him:

• Trying to define media in the 21st century
• The next frontier in the media industry
• Evolution of gaming: Frontier Games, Epic Games, Fortnite
• Netflix and it's challengers
• eSports and it's future in Asia 

About Sachin Tipnis:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sachin Tipnis. He is the senior executive director at The University of Hong Kong. He heads marketing and admissions for MBA, EMBA Global Asia (joint Executive MBA degree with Columbia and London Business School) and 6 specialised Master programs.

Our Conversation: 

• About his career and the impact his father’s job had on him
• His journey building The University of Hong Kong MBA program: The importance of getting the product right
• What does he look for when interviewing candidates for the master programs
• Impact of COVID and influence of MOOC, Massive Online Open Courses, on the Higher Education Industry

About Prasun Choudhary:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Prasun Choudhary. He is the operating partner of OYO Hotels Japan. He joined OYO in 2015 and as a founding member first headed OYO’s expansion in South and East of India and now Japan. Prior to OYO, he has spent a significant amount of time in corporate banking and strategy consulting.

Japan is a unique market traditionally and culturally. Market entry for any foreign entity intriguing. We kick this conversation off with Prasun on how he navigated through Japan’s traditional mindset to launch OYO Hotels Japan.

Our Conversation:

• Building OYO Japan
• What does he look for when hiring for OYO and how did he navigate through Japan’s traditional hiring process?
• How has the OYO model disrupted the Japanese hospitality market
• Operational learning from running OYO in emerging and developed markets
• The impact of COVID and post-COVID hospitality trends
• Ritesh Agarwal’s leadership style through the pandemic

About Utsav Somani:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the young and brilliant head of AngelList India Utsav Somani. Utsav talks about his early career, his mentor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, the evolution of the Indian start-up investment space, building AngelList India, and his view on COVID and its impact. 

Thank you to all our listeners for their feedback and questions, especially to Varun, Mahesh, Ashish and Aakriti for questions Utsav has answered in this conversation.

Our Conversation:

• His early career and learnings of India and Start-up Investment Ecosystem.
• Naval Ravikant his mentor and building AngelList India.
• Setting up a Micro fund and learning from investments thus far. 
• Need for EquityList- AngelList’s- Equity Management System for Indian companies.
• His view on COVID and its impact.
• How to grow and add value in a market with similar investment eco-systems.
• The growth potential of Indian Cryptocurrency start-ups?

About Jayant Sinha:

On the momentous occasion of India’s 73rd independence day, I have with me a very special guest on The One Percent Project, Mr Jayant Sinha, Member of Indian Parliament and former Minister of state of finance & civill aviation government of India.  Mr Sinha is alumni of some of the most prestigious universities across the world, the Indian Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School. He had a remarkable corporate career prior to joining politics, from heading the global IT practise at McKinsey to impact investing at Courage Capital and Omidyar Network.

We talked about:

• His early life and career;
• How his education and corporate experience has helped him with good governance;
• His views on grass-root entrepreneurship and if migrant workers will become the new micro-entrepreneurs;
• The recent success of Jio in attracting foreign capital;
• How governments need to plan for the future based on the learnings of COVID-19;  
• And finally, his vision for India and its youth

Rapid Fire:

• A book or a blog that has influenced your work and personal life.
  • Lord of the Rings.
• The hardest thing about your job.
  • Making sure that I have enough time for my family as well.
• What do you know that you didn't know before you joined politics?
  • How hard you have to work as a member of parliament.

Three ways to support the podcast

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Vikram Chandra:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the world-renowned author, professor and tech entrepreneur Vikram Chandra.  His first book Red Earth and Pouring Rain, published in 1995 was received with outstanding critical acclaim. It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. In 2006, he published Sacred Games,  which won the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction and a Salon Book Award. In 2016, Sacred Games was chosen by Netflix to be their first original series from India. Vikram has been teaching creative writing for 25+ years first at George Washington University and now at UC Berkley. He is the co-founder and CEO of Granthika Co., a  revolutionary software startup that is re-inventing writing and reading for the digital age. 

I enjoyed speaking to Vikram about his early life, his work and his entrepreneurial journey.

Rapid Fire:

• Most favorite comic book.
  • I have to say ‘Phantom’- ‘Vetal’
• Advice that you would like to give Arthur Doyle, Sherlock Holmes?
  • Get more women in there.
• A book, blog, or an author other than you who you will highly recommend for creative writing?
  • Book, that's a tough one. I actually have a list of like 12 books. I guess, you know, I would say... okay, probably I guess I would say the book that I recommend to everyone is Janet Burroway’s ‘Writing Fiction’. It's a wonderful craft book. Absolutely, it covers the field in a really clarify... I mean, a really clear way without dumbing it down.
• The hardest thing about your job?
  • Well, actually writing every day. So, I have a friend. He's a colleague in the Department of English at Berkeley, Robert Hass, Bob Hass. He's a great American poet. And he has this... this lines that he says, “Writing is hell, but not writing is also hell. The only tolerable state is just having written.”
• Is there a third season of ‘Sacred Games’?
  • The writer is the last one to know. So, unless there’ll be an answer, I won’t know. And if I knew, I couldn't tell you because they will send their ninjas after me.

About Victor Lang:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the co-founder and COO of Gini, Victor Lang. This interview is especially insightful and interesting for young startups because Victor shares how within 4 years of Gini’s existence they have been able to build a network of 3000 banks in 60 countries with a small team based in HK through afflictions and partnerships and consumer adoption through word of mouth marketing.

Victor also shares his insights on businesses he built previously and how he managed a successful exit after going insolvent 3 times.

We talked about:

• His career
• How they have built their network of banks in 60 countries
• How they moved from spending money on Social Media marketing to Word of Mouth marketing
• What is product market fit and how do gauge it
• How can young start-ups build and scale in such a competitive environment where Tech Giants and Incumbents are playing in the same field
• How his previous biotech business went insolvent  three times before being acquired

About Ayush Jaiswal:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the young and dynamic founder of Pesto Tech- Ayush Jaiswal. This is an intriguing conversation with Ayush who is on a mission to give everyone equal access to opportunity.In this chat we explore how his personal background of coming from a 2 tier city and early professional hustle helped him find purpose, value time and build a business with impact.

We talked about:

• Ayush’s background and early life
• What do Time and Purpose mean to Ayush?
• Growth and Future of Pesto Tech
• His three learnings from building Pesto Tech and observing other start-ups
• Building a company culture
• How should someone from Tier 2 or 3 be thinking of starting a business today

Rapid Fire:

• The toughest thing about your job?
  • Delegation
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally, as well as professionally?
  • paulgraham.com

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Frank Lantz:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Frank Lantz, Director at the NYU Game Center and Owner of Everybody House Games. Frank was a creative director at Zynga as well after his social gaming company Area/Code was acquired by Zyna in 2011. I discovered him and his work while reading The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova. Maria in the book talks about him and his expertise in game design as she mastered Poker. This led me to explore game design and understand how does this new age discipline work and impact our lives. 

This is an interesting conversation with Frank on: 

• How games are designed and built and their impact on society
• The brilliance of games such as Chess, Go and Poker
• How entertainment companies such as Netflix see Epic Games and sleep as their primary competitor

Rapid Fire:

• What is the hardest thing about your job?
  • Email 
• A book or a blog that has transformed your personal and professional life.
  • meaningness.com a wonderful website by a guy named David Chapman, who was an early researcher in AI
• If not a game designer, then what?
  • Cartoonist

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.
#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate
#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Matthew Lee, partner Progression Fund. This is an interesting conversation on many fronts. 

• Matt defines his career in Venture Capital as an early-stage startup from pre-seed to now at product-market-fit with Progression fund that he built with musical.ly / TikTok alums, what he learnt about his himself and the VC space when he was in the pre-seed learning stage with a 67M fund and investing as an angel.
• His take on why Progression Fund is a consumer-focused fund, when the YCs and Greylocks of the world are bullish on B2B. How Gen Alpha are digital natives, treat Alexa as a human and could turn out to be the richest generation ever.
• We also discuss the opportunity that foundations such as Bill & Melinda Gates bring for Venture Capital funds through the startups these foundations are funding which is solving hard problems with a bottom-up approach in emerging economies. 

About Devaiah Bopanna:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the hilarious and talented Devaiah Bopanna, Co-Founder at All Things Small and Former Head writer at AlB. I was introduced to Devaiah and his work through an article about his recent nationally acclaimed CRED IPL ads series that he co-wrote with his ex-AIB colleagues. The series is a bold attempt by CRED, the Celebrities and the Script-Writer using celebrities to poke fun at advertisers’ obsession with celebrity endorsements.”. 

Devaiah in this conversations talks about:

1. About His Career from Engineering to Creative Writing
2. How he failed his first interview with AIB and then went on to being AIB’s Head Writer
3. What it takes to lead a group of highly talented and ambitious writers
4. The impact of OTT platforms in the new media world
5. His process of creative thinking and script writing

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job?
  • Thinking.
• One book or a blog that has changed your professional and personal outlook.
  • The Illicit Happiness of Other People
• How would you define your career in one word in the next 10 years?
  • Interesting.
• The most creative person you have ever worked with?
  • Everyone at AIB, definitely Tanmay Bhat
• Define Tanmay Bhat in one word.
  • Relentless.

About Abhinav Jain:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Abhinav Jain, Founder CEO Shop101 & Dash101. A graduate of IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad. Abhinav in this conversations talks about:

1.  His entrepreneurial journey from Bain & Company to Shop101
2. Building for Bharat 
3. How to create a reseller ecosystem
4. How Shop101 has been able to generate a positive contribution margin as the business has grown

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job?
  • Not knowing what the next day will entail. Every single day is very different.
• One book or a blog that has changed your professional and personal outlook.
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.
• Your most favorite superhero?
  • Iron Man.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Sanjay Mehta:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sanjay Mehta, Founder & Partner at 100X.VC and Mehta Ventures Family Office. Sanjay has invested in 150+ Start-ups across sectors with a 86% internal rate of return. In his words “Most startups will fail, so you can say everything sucks and be right most of the time. Although you never lose money with that strategy, you never make any either.”

In this conversation:

1. He shares his learning from investing in Start-ups
2. The ethos of 100X.VC
3. His advice for new angel investors & VC on brand building and mentorship
4. His “So What” strategy while evaluating a business idea

Rapid Fire:

• One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?
  • Straight from the Gut, Jack Welch. That's a book which I read in my earlier days in my college times, and that that had a good impact.
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • Peter Thiel.
• How do you see competition?
  • Most welcome. Competition should exist. That grows the market.

About Aviral Bhatnagar:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Aviral Bhatnagar, Founder of  “A Junior VC” Community and he is A Junior VC at Venture Highway. Aviral is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Aviral’s Quora responses have more than 30M views and his start-up essays have led to the creation of the 20,000-member strong “A Junior VC” Community and earned him 170,000+ follower on LinkedIn. 

In this conversation he talks about:

• Non-Linear Decision Making & How it has benefitted Aviral
• Building a community- A Junior VC, AJVC: Why & How?
• Views on the Indian Venture Capital Ecosystem
• What does intellectual honestly mean to Aviral and why is it important in a founder?
• How has Amazon been able to penetrate Bharat?
• Are Indian start-ups improvising or innovating?
• Aviral's views on investing in a bottom-up start-up
• How Amul & Haldirams have been able to build multi-billion businesses by listening to the customer at scale

Rapid Fire:

• One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?
  • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, Harry Potter series and Alex Ferguson's biography. 
• Hardest thing about your job?
  • Saying No.
• Your most favorite superhero?
  • My Dad.

About Deborah Quazzo:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures and the Co-founder of ASU Summit, the incredible Deborah Quazzo. Coursera, Course Hero, Guild Education are among a few Edtech unicorn outliers that GSV has invested in over the years and Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George Bush are among the few superstars whom she has hosted over the 11 years of the summit. 

In this conversation she talks about:

• Her career: How she got into Venture Capital, after having worked for the likes of JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch and why EdTech
• The 5P framework to analysis and valid businesses and ideas. How businesses with Purpose the fifth P, will have a higher outcome.
• Why is the Asian EdTech market attractive, especially India and Indonesia?
• How companies are utilising EdTech platforms for upscaling their employees?
• The impact of Covid on primary, secondary and tertiary education?
• How the GSV team grooms its portfolio of companies?
• The key difference between the US and the Asian ecosystem
• Her learning from organising the ASU EdTech Summit and hosting guests such as Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George Bush, Byju and many other superstars

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Omid Scheybani:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Omid Scheybani. Omid is of Iranian origin who was born and bought up in Germany. He kicked-off his career with Google in Dublin, then moved to Google US and was responsible for Google’s LATAM cloud business, landed up heading international expansion for the Chinese bike-sharing unicorn platform Ofo and now he is with Robinhood, Fintech unicorn in the US. Omid's vast experience across different international markets allows him to draw comparisons between regions in ways few can.

In this conversation, he talks about:

• What does scaling a business mean?
• What are the various tangible and intangible accepts of scaling a business?
• His learning from growing Google's cloud business in LATAM, being the global head of international expansion for Ofo and launching this own eCommerce platform Flamingo in China.
• Why has Robinhood been able to disrupt such an established industry in the US?

Rapid Fire:

• One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?
  • The Monk How Sold His Ferrari
• Hardest thing about your job?
  • Making yourself visible in a fast-growing business 
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • My Dad.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Deboshree Dutta:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Deboshree Dutta. She is Group Product Manager at Paypal, Founder & CEO of RoomPlays and blogger with 150K Instagram followers. 

In this conversation she talks about:

1. What is product management and how to access product success?
2. How she built her blog Design Play took it to 150K followers?
3. Her experience being an entrepreneur and building RoomPlays.

Rapid Fire:

• One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?
  • Will say two books, one book was lean startup. I think that has been brilliant. From day one. From the time I started into product management all the way till I'm doing everything that I do even today, I treat it as a Bible and I'd recommend that to anybody who if you haven't read it. The other one that I really liked is by Arianna Huffington. It's called thrive and that is essentially about mental wellness, meditation, gratitude. It basically talks about how we define success only by typically just two pillars, which are like money and happiness or money and career success, but there's a third leg to this three legged stool, which is your mental happiness and I think her book speaks to me every day. I think it's I highly recommend if people haven't read it, I highly recommend reading thrive by Arianna Huffington.
• Hardest thing about your job?
  • Patience. I think a lot of times we try to have these brilliant ideas, and we want to see them in action. But like I said, you need to bring people along with you and you need to work through the kinks. It takes time to make magic happen. So patience is something I'm learning to do to have.
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • I don't have one. But I would say I love how I built this as a podcast. So every time I listen to one of Kendra Scott, or Kate Spade, or Reid Hoffman, or any of their journeys, and how they've gone from just giving it a shot, like not losing hope that has been that's really why I started replays, like learning from the humility and just for me that they are all superheroes, and I highly recommend how I built this if someone if folks are not listening to that podcast.

Three ways to support the podcast:

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About Abhishek Nag:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Abhishek Nag. Abhishek is the Director of Business Development at Netflix, previously with Facebook, Uber, Hike and National Instruments. He is also an Angel Investor in 40+ startups. He is a graduate of RV College of Engineering and Indian School of Business, ISB.

In this conversation he discusses:

1. The future of the internet in the next 50 years.
2. How the product is the key driver of Market Entry and Growth?
3. His learning from working at Facebook and how Facebook landed to be a social media giant?
4. What did Scared Games do for Netflix India?
5. Adoption Vs Retention- Which is more important?
6. Experience investing in 40+ seed and pre-seed stage start-ups.

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job? 
  • It’s the fact that I'm basically now doing these two jobs. And I'm trying to be good at both of them and better and better every passing day. But there are only 24 hours in a day. So, the hardest thing is prioritizing by constantly wanting to do both Netflix and investing really, really well. 
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?
  • Built to Last, I can think of many built to last, Principles by Ray Dalio, Crossing the Chasm.
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • I probably don't have a favourite superhero. But if I had to pick one, it would be Batman.

About Christina Lopes:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Christina Lopes. Christina is the CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, leaders in precision medicine leader for dogs with cancer. The One Health Company is a YC incubated start-up backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Tau Ventures. Christina has been also been recognized as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

In this conversation, she talks about:

1. Building a Bio company in Silicon Valley
2. Learning from Y Combinator and who should apply?
3. Why have the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Tau Ventures invested in The One Health Company?
4. Building a business in a market with established incumbents.
5. What does it take to build an effective multidisciplinary team?

Key Take-Aways:

1. Build business competitiveness by focusing on a hard problem to solve and solving it with the smartest people available.
2. Before you start building something new. First, do it manually and document your observations. Once you have got your head around it bring the tech and other teams to building it.
3. How to think and build a business from available technology and data and create a business distribution. 

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job? 
  • Dealing with folks, that are really negative on us because we're a new thing and don't understand it really. It's for mission people. It's really hard. 
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?
  • I love Ben Horowitz's, the hard things about hard things. Chapter Four, and then lots of the a16z blogs and podcasts about creating a market is amazing. More in our field, the bio podcast talking about real-world data versus traditional clinical trials. Goes on and on. But they’re amazing.
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • Superwomen.

Three ways to support the podcast:

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About William Mcquillan:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is William Mcquillan. William is a founding partner at Frontline Ventures. Frontline is an early-stage venture capital fund with €250M under management and over 100 investments across Europe and the US. He was the youngest Partner of a European VC fund when Frontline was founded. 

In this conversation, he talks about:

1. Why he wears square and circular spectacles? 
2. The US Vs European VC industry and how it correlates to the Asian VC landscape.
3. Building a brand: Firm Vs Personal.
4. When should founders reach out to VCs and why timing matters?
5. The learnings from Frontline’s gender study report.

Key Take-Aways:

1. Why founders are the actual customers of a VC fund?
2. How one should think about building a brand?
3.  The importance of self-awareness and how it helps leaders to build big companies.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Mahi de Silva:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Mahi de Silva. Mahi is a serial entrepreneur. His company AdMarvel was acquired by Opera, and within the first month of acquisition, AdMarvel 10xed Opera’s browser monetization. His latest entrepreneurial stint, Amplify.ai recently merged with Triller. Mahi is a University of Kansas and Stanford graduate. He kicked off his career at Apple and later was a part of the core startup team at VeriSign. He eventually became the company’s VP (Engineering) and, later, GM of its Wireless Services. 

In this conversation he talks about:

1. His journey from Apple to Ampllfy.ai.
2. How he thinks about building a business.
3. Customer Acquisition Vs Customer Retention, which is more important and why?
4. How valuable has it been for him be a business leader with an engineering background?

Key Take-Aways:

1. How to identify problems that no one is adequately addressing and how to go about it.
2. How to absorb complex problems and situations and express them in the simplest form so that the consumer is able to understand.
3. Innovation is driven by getting to more and more customers and adapting your offering based on their needs.

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job? 
  • I'm both a psychologist and a babysitter.
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?
  • Jim Collins, from good to great.
• Will AI ever take over human interactions?
  • I don't believe so.
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • Batman.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Tarun Davda:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Tarun Davda. He is the Managing Director of Matrix, India. Prior to joining Matrix, Tarun was the Co-founder, India CEO and Board Member at StepOut.com, a venture-backed startup. StepOut became India’s #1 online dating site with over 5 Million users. Before that, Tarun established BigRock.com (incubated by the Directi group) - India’s #1 provider of domain name registration and other web services. Tarun started his career at Infosys as an IT consultant. He has an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and an Engineer from VJTI, Bombay.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. His journey building Matrix India, or rather, reviving and strengthening a brand that was established when venture capital was still in its infancy in the nation. He discusses the opportunities and problems that he confronted while also delivering relatable anecdotes making the conversation all the more captivating.
2. His perspective on how to define disruptive ideas/pitches & highlights how the way venture capitalists think and analyse has changed over time. With a deeper understanding of the matter, he now believes that the most disruptive ideas are the ones that are easiest to dismiss, and that it is only right to hold onto them.
3. How the Indian Founder has evolved over the last decade, and how the crowd has changed radically. Says it's one of the best things that's happened in the last decade; people are more prepared and aware, and Tarun thinks it's just going uphill from here.
4. His thoughts on improvisation and innovation. He believes it is subjective to each individual's interpretation of the terms, but in his opinion, no two marketplaces are the same because innovation is always breaking grounds.
5. What VCs look for in a pitch/ deck: Product, Team, and Market. He believes in a country like India, where everything appears to be a vast market on the surface; coursing through it just serves to highlight how narrow the market is in fact.
6. He discusses the influence of Chinese investments on the progression of entrepreneurship in India. He stresses on how the Chinese have been able to open our minds to accommodate the nuances in the market place. This is because they are benefitted from hindsight and a better outlook on what has worked for the companies in their nations.

Key Take-Away

1. Every investment is a learning opportunity.
2. The most disruptive ideas are the ones that are the easiest to dismiss.
3. An entrepreneur that can change your predisposed view in one, single meeting is the one you need to back.

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job? 
  • the toughest one is to be proven wrong.
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?
  • Super Forecasting and 5 AM Club
• Your most favourite superhero?
  • Spider-Man.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Billy Naveed:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Billy Naveed. Billy is the Chief Strategy Officer at Smile Group. He has spent 20+ years in finance with Morgan Stanely and Credit Suisse. He was the Head of Strategy at Zilingo, a fast-fashion unicorn, and he is the founder of the Young Founders School. 

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. He talks about his 20+ years in finance, including his roles as a founder, CSO, and a Venture-Builder. He describes his career as a process of continuous self-discovery. The willingness to learn, discover and deeply understand things is what drove him to be the person he is today.
2. Leadership Vs People management. Leadership is giving people a sense of purpose rather than micromanaging them with a carrot and stick mentality. 
3. His views on disruption in the financial industry. Billy asserts that the financial sector's disruption is much slower in the short term and much faster in the long term than what one would project. That being said, he considers the two most interesting developments to be the mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies and the capacity to buy and sell these digital currencies.
4. Who is a Venture Builder? A venture build helps entrepreneurs focus on building their business by providing them with all the needed resources and removing blockages that might hamper their growth. Venture building is a private equity model in the venture capital space. 
5. Building the Young Founders School and what has he learnt from it? The inspiration came from how difficult it was to find good interns with basic entrepreneurship abilities. Putting roughly 4000 children through the programme helped him realize a lot of what he talks about in the conversation.

Rapid Fire:

• The hardest thing about your job? 
  • Uncertainty.
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?
  • Shoe Dog
• Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency?
  • Etherrum.

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Shravan Tickoo:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Shravan Tickoo. Shravan is a principal PM at BYJU'S-world’s most valued EdTech startup. Shravan kicked off his career as an entrepreneur by building an app while in college that went viral, and he landed up selling in 2012. Since then, he has worked across industries with India’s leading tech unicorns such as Flipkart, Blackbuck, Time Group and Edureka. He is also a product mentor, influencer and angel investor.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. Why is it essential to think about product and product management in terms of first principles?
2. How to create product defensibility through positioning?
3. Why is engagement a critical aspect of product assessment and how to measure it?
4. How is a product different from a service?

Key Take-Aways:

1. First principle thinking is about how you break down complex non-deterministic structures into deterministic structures that don't change with time.
2. Engagement doesn't necessarily mean anybody coming into your product and doing anything. It is about doing the intended activity that you want the user to do because you believe that it is going to add the maximum value to the user.
3. Product positioning is more critical for your success compared to the uniqueness of the idea. 
4. Product management is the art of problem-solving at scale.
5. Accessibility differentiates good product managers from excellent ones. 

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the incredible engineer, inventor, investor and operator Miten Sampat. He kicked off his career in Silicon Valley, then headed strategy for Times Internet, India’s largest digital products company with 600 million monthly users and is now building CRED, one of India’s fastest growing payments apps. He is also a graduate of Virginia Tech.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. How his education at Virginia Tech shaped his thinking in analysing and operating new ventures.
2. His views about the Indian Internet Consumer and the impact of the internet in Tier-3 cities in India.
3. His experience building his first startup: What he learnt and why it failed?
4. His experience as Chief Strategy Officer at Times Internet which reaches 600M active users in India every month?
5. What has he learnt from investing in early-stage startups?

Key Take-Aways:

1. Underlying conditions will keep changing so capabilities will keep changing and therefore, and user behaviour keeps changing- This is the fundamental principle in building and scaling new ventures.
2. If there are many gatekeepers between you and your customer, the chances of mortality for your startup are very high.
3. If you move when there is broad-based consensus, then the magic is already sucked out. It's already been priced in. Therefore, you have to be right about something ahead of it being a general consensus.

1. How his professional and personal journey helped him as a venture capitalist?
2. Why did he set up an AI-focused seed fund?
3. What is his venture evaluation and investment framework?
4. When should a founder consider raising from a VC?
5. How should seed-stage founders build their teams?
6. Why is bottom-up market sizing more insightful?
7. His thinking behind investing in nuTonomy and Misfit.

1. Venture capital money is "Rocket Fuel". If you take rocket fuel too early, you will burn in the atmosphere before reaching the moon and the stars. 
2. It is not about 'WHAT' you do but about 'HOW' you do it.
3.  Team, Technology and Traction are the three most significant aspects a venture capitalist should look for while investing.

About David Fallarme:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is David Fallarme. Before joining On Deck as their Marketing Director, David was the head of marketing for Hubspot Asia. He has led the product and content marketing initiatives for Electronic Arts, App Annie and ReferralCandy. He also runs the APAC Marketers Roundtable, one of the most active communities of marketers in APAC.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. What is marketing and the types of marketers?
2. His content creation framework
3. Why should marketers focus on who should be buying vs who is already buying?
4. How should early-stage founders think about marketing and marketers?
5. How is marketing different in 2021 Vs a decade ago?
6. How Hubspot's strategy may seem weird but it works?
7. Zoom's and Afterpay's product-led growth through the pandemic.
8. Why he joined On Deck, and how will it add value in Asia?

Key Take-Aways:

• There are three types of marketers: 
  •  Artist: Marketing = winning hearts and minds.
  • Soldier: Marketing = achieving objectives by working through the system and operational excellence.
  • Gambler: Marketing = finding opportunities with an asymmetric upside.
• Marketers are multipliers. So if you're a pre-seed or a seed-stage start-up and don’t see a predictable level of traction and don't exactly know who your customer is, you are not ready for a marketer.
• In future, your social media audience size will be more important than your resume because your followership is an indicator of your influence. 

About Pushkar Mukewar:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Pushkar Mukewar, Co-founder and CEO of Drip Capital. Pushkar kicked off his career at Capital One, went to work for Oliver Wyman and Saama Capital. He has a Masters from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Wharton School of Business.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. His journey building Drip Capital, going from 0 to 2 billion dollars in transactions on the platform.
2. Getting incubated by Y Combinator when Drip Capital was just two founders with just an idea.
3. Scaling the business across three markets, building a team of 250+ employees, and raising 500M+ in venture funding.

Key Take-Aways:

1. Building a startup is about experimentation, understanding the customers’ pain points and launching something - failing quickly - launching again.
2. Your success as a startup depends on how and why you uniquely solve your customer’s pain points.
3. Scaling up a business is like building a scalable machine. You start with generalists who can do everything and bring in specialists who can build specific functions once the business scales.

About Pramath Sinha:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Pramath Sinha. Pramath is an entrepreneur, educator and institution builder, having conceptualised and built hallmark educational institutes such as the Indian School of Business and Ashoka University. Now, he is on the journey of building Harappa Education- a platform that helps future leaders learn essential cognitive, social and behavioural skills.

He has also founded the Vedica Scholars program for women and the Naropa Fellowship. He kicked off his career with McKinsey & Company, headed ABP media and founded the 9.9 Media group.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. His journey to finding purpose;
2. How he goes from an idea to execution;
3. What does an Institution mean to him?
4. Who are early adopters, and why are they unique?
5. Building Harappa; and
6. His legacy and contribution to Hindi Literature

Some Key Highlights:

• How to identify Purpose? I have realised that your Purpose doesn't grow on trees, nor is it buried somewhere for you to go on a treasure hunt and find it and dig it out for yourself. Your Purpose, you find by discovery. And to discover it, you have to try out different things. The more different things you try out, the more you realise what you don't like or what is not your Purpose. And somewhere, you hit upon things that seem like your Purpose. So you engage in that, and you stay with it for a long time, or you say, no, there's a slight variation on this that I want to do, and then that becomes your Purpose.
• How do you start as high as possible? Because the lower you start, the longer it takes to get to that high benchmark. And sometimes, you can never get there because the lower you start, the more you get stuck at that level. Quality doesn't scale. You have to set the quality bar from day one and then scale on quantity without diluting quality, but trying to scale quality is almost an impossible task.
• In taking the idea to execution- You can't execute it all yourself. So your real skill lies in identifying great people, setting the vision and a high bar. You have to hire a crack team of people and be uncompromising about it. 

About Ravi Mehta:

My next guest is Ravi Mehta. Ravi was the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, Product Director at Facebook, and VP of Consumer Product at Tripadvisor.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. What makes product development challenging and exciting?
2. Mental and executional frameworks that Product Managers should develop?
3. How can products managers make good decisions?
4. Why difficulty in prioritisation is a strategy problem?
5. Why have Tinder, Facebook, and TripAdvisor products stood the test of time, especially when hundreds of clones come to market every year?
6. His views on the evolution of the Chinese tech product ecosystem in the last decade?
7. Metaverse’s future
8. Why do today's founders need to have a product orientation?
9. Entertainment Value Curve: Netflix Vs Quibi

About Sabeer Bhatia:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sabeer Bhatia. Sabeer is the co-founder of Hotmail.com and ShowReel. Sabeer and his co-founder started Hotmail with $300,000 and sold it to Microsoft for $400 million within two years. Sabeer believes the success of Hotmail or any startup lies in the core idea of the business and the problem it is solving.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. How to validate a problem worth solving?
2. Why is it essential for a consumer to connect emotionally to a product?
3. Why was Hotmail a success?
4. Why do we need ShowReel?
5. Can founders outsource sales?

About Utsav Agarwal:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Utsav Agarwal. Utsav is an entrepreneur, a networker and a hustler. He kicked off his career in the music industry, managing Indian rock bands and went on to build a music app. Post his entrepreneurial stint, he joined Uber and launched it in eight Indian cities and Dhaka in Bangladesh, breaking all growth records. After Uber, he joined Glovo and launched it in nine Eastern European markets and built a team of 250+ people. Delivery Hero acquired Glovo for $2.6 billion. Utsav is now back to entrepreneurship, building Evenflow, a roll-up platform acquiring and scaling e-commerce businesses.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. His entrepreneurial journey and his learnings?
2. His experience launching Uber in Dhaka;
3. How did he land his Glovo offer and his framework for launching new markets?
4. The power and technique of cold emailing
5. Why is he building Evenflow?

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Ashwin Suresh. This is an intriguing conversation where Ashwin talks about how he went from being an investment banker on Wall Street to becoming a New Media entrepreneur and co-founding Pocket Aces and Loco.

Pocket Aces is the production house behind the hugely successful web shows such as Little Things, What the Folks and Please Find Attached.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. His decision to move from Investment banking to building a career in New Media.
2. How did he navigate through the media industry with no background and network?
3. His first Angel Investor, Mohan and how he funded the whole seed round and kept himself invested even when Ashwin and his co-founder planned to pivot the business.
4. Being venture-backed, at what point do you need to think about growth Vs profitability.
5. How he decided to launch Loco, a gaming platform especially in a competitive ecosystem with multiple well-established players?
6. Building a community
7. Why is success your best teacher?
8. Finding a product-market fit in the content industry
9. Being decisive as a founder

Robert talks about his China immersion. How he built and scaled Airbnb China and shares his views and frameworks on building a venture in China. Why and How to China.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures.

About Robert:

My very first guest on The One Percent Project is my ex-colleague, Robert Hao, Co-Founder & COO, HYPE Asia. HYPE is a venture builder that helps startups demystify, unlock, and succeed in Asia. Presently, Robert is heading the expansion of Goat into China. Goat is the world's largest sneakers marketplace.

In 2012, he helped form the Asia landing team to expand Airbnb into the APAC region. From 2013-2017, Robert relocated to Beijing to start Airbnb China business, where he led Business Operations & Strategy and Host Community Operations and grew the China team to two hundred strong.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Robert, we speak about the Chinese tech ecosystem evolution and the frameworks to succeed in China.

• Airbnb growth in China the initial trends and indicators
• Chinese Vs Western consumers how their consumption and spending patterns differ
• What made Goat decide to enter China
• How TikTok became a global sensation
• How a late entrant Chinese tech startup Meituan Dianping emerged as a super-app while competing against the Chinese tech giants: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu
• Chinese technology trends in the next 10 years

Quick Fire Questions:

• Favorite Book/ Blog:
  The Name of the Wind
  
• Hardest Thing about your job:
  Effective communication
  
• What Do I Know Now That I Didn’t Know When I Started:
  Startups really need to get back to basics and build their foundation around monetization and profitability instead of only focusing solely on the hockey-stick growth story.
  
• A Recent Startup that has got your attention:
  Thras.io

Listen to the full conversation:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Ce91ho
YouTube: https://bit.ly/42hwfOo
Apple: https://apple.co/42iwzfO
Or available on all other platforms

Show notes & Transcript:
https://lnkd.in/g5VfwBfp

About State Bank of India:

It is hard to imagine an elephant dancing, but if that elephant is the State Bank of India, SBI, as popularly known, you are in for a surprise/ delight. SBI is India's biggest bank, with 450M+ customers. As an Indian, you may be able to rattle 100s of challenges and inefficiencies of SBI, but its contribution towards India's growth is second to none. SBI has groomed the finest talents and established financial services and products that has paved the path for other Indian banks.

Though established in 1955, but its creation dates back to the Mughals and the East India Company. There are several case studies about SBI cards, insurance and other financial products, but a less talked about aspect is its talent. There are innumerable examples of SBI chairmen who, in an unassuming manner, have led the bank through its ups and downs to where it stands today.

Now in the 21st century, with the advent of Neo Banks, SBI has brought YONO (You Only Need One), its digital app play, to the arena and reason I looked into SBI's fascinating history and YONO is because I read about YONO in Weekly Olio, an online weekly newsletter written by Mohit & Peeyush. So, I invited them to co-host this conversation with me. We kick this off with Mohit & Peeyush introducing themselves and talking about the exceptional growth they have witnessed with the newsletter.

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About Chaitanya Ramalingegowda:

This episode of The One Percent Project tells the story of Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, the co-founder of Wakefit, a household name in India synonymous with quality sleep.

Chaitanya's journey to Wakefit is a testament to persistence and unwavering determination. Before starting Wakefit, Chaitanya had nineteen years of experience spanning entrepreneurship, management consulting and marketing. Wakefit, his third start-up stint, co-founded with Ankit Garg, has emerged as a game-changer in the world of sleep solutions. Crafting products that redefine comfort and wellness, Wakefit's journey parallels Chaitanya's own pursuit of excellence in entrepreneurship.

In this episode, Chaitanya talks about his remarkable journey, an expedition marked by uphill battles, shares the challenges he faced, the motivations that fuelled his drive, and the strategies that led Wakefit to its current stature. From the tough decisions to the transformative moments, Chaitanya's story is a masterclass in turning adversity into an advantage.

Join us as we dive into the narrative of Chaitanya's entrepreneurial journey and explore the grit, resilience, and insights that turned a vision into a successful venture. 

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Chaitanya Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2

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In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro 02:19 Why is sleep important? 08:06 What was India's association with sleep and mattress before Wakefit? 12:24 Chaitanya's entrepreneurial journey: Setting up English classes in a garage as a youngster? Setting up a failed content startup with friends.  Finding a job post his startup failure 32:32 Founder Market Fit 35:32 Building Wakefit: Is a startup an extreme expression of the founders? At what point did Chaitanyia and Ankit become bottlenecks in Wakefit's growth? Setting up internal feedback loops. 44:03 Marketing Vs Branding: One is built, and the other gets built. 49:36 How has packaging accelerated Wakefit's growth? 52:41 40 investor rejections- Chaitanya and Ankit built a business which didn't even have a category on Amazon. 55:35 Importance of capital allocation 57:04 Counterintuitive insights about D2C business.  58:15 How do you build a great company? 1:00:12 Identifying a Hero Product. 1:02:02 Is it service or product- that leads one to become an industry leader?  1:03:34 Competition. 1:06:11 What is the kindest thing anyone has done for Chaitanya? 1:08:59 Advice to your younger self. 1:09:28 His superpower. 1:09:50 Three Books he recommends

Listen to the entire conversation:
Spotify: https://bit.ly/3pwiWwe
YouTube: https://bit.ly/44bkR8s
Apple: https://bit.ly/3NXQnkL
Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast)
Show notes & Transcript:
https://bit.ly/TOP_Mayank

About Aditi Shrivastava:

My next guest The One Percent Project is the very talented and driven Aditi Srivastava. Aditi is Co-Founder and CEO at Pocket Aces, India’s largest socially distributed content network, which includes five diverse brands: FilterCopy (short fiction), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), Gobble (lifestyle), Nutshell (infotainment), and Jambo (young-adult animation). Pocket Aces also operates Clout India’s largest digital influencer management practice. The company incubated Loco, India’s largest homegrown game streaming and esports app, which was spun off successfully into a separate entity in 2021.

Sales are a critical contributor to the success of any business. They are the source of revenue generation, but more importantly, they help build and sustain relationships with clients. Sales offer crucial insight into the efficiencies of a company's marketing and product development initiatives. A competent sales force may assist a company in reaching its objectives by spotting and capitalizing on new possibilities and cultivating and maintaining connections with important clients. Undoubtedly, sales are crucial in any business's long-term existence and expansion. But how does one build a robust sales force? In this contemplative conversation, Aditi shares her understanding of sales through years of hands-on experience in building sales businesses, the role of storytelling in sales, striking a balance between creativity and numbers, the difference between sales and marketing units, building sales teams through the years, if founders should be key salespersons, and much more.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_AditiShrivastava

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In this conversation, she talks about:

00:00 Intro

02:15 A day in Aditi's life

02:50 How as humans, we are constantly selling

04:31 Role of storytelling in sales.

06:22 The balance between creativity and numbers.

07:56 If all salespersons are extroverts?

10:18 Where she draws the line between sales and marketing functions.

13:11 Her insights on building a sales team.

21:09 If she thinks founders can oust revenue generation or business creation from other key members in the initial days?

26:48 How she manages sales rejections?

31:03 The nicest thing anyone has done for her.

32:09 Her legacy.

About Rajan Singh:

In the modern world, where ample distractions capture our attention and constantly pull it in multiple directions, staying focused and achieving our goals can be a significant challenge. Moreover, with the rise of remote work and the shift towards an increasingly digital lifestyle, maintaining focus and productivity has become even more crucial.

My next guest on The One Percent Project is a discipline and routine fanatic, productivity expert and entrepreneur Rajan Singh.

Rajan is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and a former Indian Police Service officer who served as the Trivandrum Police Commissioner. But after a few years, Rajan felt a sense of intellectual stagnation in his job, and he decided to quit and restart his career. He then pursued an MBA from Wharton Business School and worked as a consultant with McKinsey in New York before returning to India as an investment professional at New Silk Route, a billion-dollar private equity fund. However, his restlessness did not end there, and he eventually became an entrepreneur, founding a habit-building startup called HabitStrong. At HabitStrong, Rajan helps people improve their lives by inculcating focus, self-discipline, and good habits.

Listen in to learn Rajan's insights and strategies for achieving goals and maintaining focus on the things that matter most, his views on entrepreneurship, building products within HabitStrong, his ideas about self-doubt and boredom, and much more.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Raja⁠n

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About Arjun Ranga:

Globally, incense is the silent bridge that connects humans to the divine. And naturally, no Indian wants to compromise when it comes to their hopes and prayers. This episode of The One Percent Project is an intriguing exploration of the incense business and its essence in Indian culture with a remarkable guest, Arjun Ranga, the CEO of Cycle Pure Agarbathis, a part of the NR Group. 

In this insightful conversation, Arjun delves into the fascinating journey of Cycle Agarbathis, the world's largest incense manufacturer, and its transformation into the world's first certified zero-carbon manufacturer of incense, prayer, and air care products. Arjun also shares his journey as the CEO, drawing inspiration from his grandfather and NR Group's founder, Shri N. Ranga Rao. He sheds light on the deep-rooted significance of prayer in Indian culture and the sentiments attached to it, his marketing strategies through the years, his vision for the company and much more. 

Joining him in this conversation is Sarthak Ahuja, a seasoned Chartered Accountant with expertise in startup advisory and investment banking and a LinkedIn top voice who brings a wealth of intriguing insights to the discussion. Join us in this fascinating episode to explore the dynamic intersection of business, culture, and sustainability.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it and sign up for The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live for curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_ArjunRanga

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• Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

In this conversation, he talks about:

• 00:00⁠⁠⁠ Intro
• 02:28 History of the incense industry
• 03:44 Journey of building Cycle Pure Agarbathi
• 09:54 How can you innovate and stay relevant in a highly commoditised industry?
• 12:20 Product Positioning
• 14:42 Key customer retention metrics in the incense industry
• 17:02 Customer segmentation for a diverse Indian market
• 20:32 Premium positioning of incense: Who is the target audience for premium incense products?
• 23:50 Why is vanilla the most used fragrance in premium stores and bakeries worldwide?
• 24:36 Why are the Gulf, Europe and Africa the largest markets for incense?
• 25:42 Value chain & Unit economics of making an Agarbathi.
• 27:09 Actual product differentiation Vs product marketing and branding
• 27:55 His journey of becoming the CEO.
• 31:43 The growth and impact of D2C.
• 34:50 Cyle's association with cricket
• 37:45 Cycle's next decade
• 39:42 The disruption AI would bring to the industry

Listen to the full conversation:

Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3Ce91ho⁠⁠

YouTube: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/42hwfOo⁠

⁠⁠⁠Apple: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/42iwzfO⁠⁠

Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast)

Show notes & Transcript:

⁠⁠https://lnkd.in/g5VfwBfp⁠

About Jeremy Utley:

My first guest on The One Percent Project this year is the exuberant Jeremy Utley. Jeremy is the Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering. He is a celebrated keynote speaker and co-author of the brilliant book "Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.". Jeremy co-teaches two wonderful courses at Stanford, Leading Disruptive Innovation (d.leadership) and LaunchPad, which focus on creating real-world impact with design and innovation tools. Jeremy intended to use his time in Africa and South America as a springboard for a career in economic development when he applied to Stanford's Graduate School of Business, but a contact with the d.school while working at an Indian start-up altered his plans. He learned throughout his time as a post-graduate design fellow that how he worked was more significant than what he accomplished. Today, Jeremy works to assist individuals in transforming their established self-perceptions and learn, like him, that it is possible to contribute creatively to the world without being exceptional.

Key Take away & Insights: https://bit.ly/TOP_Jeremy

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Entrepreneur: How to generate 100s of ideas in 1 hour?

In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro

03:01 When it comes to creativity, why is quantity more important than quality?

04:28 Why shouldn't you be judging yourself when coming up with ideas?

05:32 What does he mean by "every problem is an idea problem"?

06:42 About Ideaflow

07:22 What is an Idea Ratio- How do you calculate it?

08:41 How does Idea flow co-relate with the success of an organisation?

09:36 How to learn creativity and turn it into a daily activity?

13:14 How to make a hackathon an effective way to drive innovation?

14:33 How to run effective brainstorming sessions?

16:46 How to identify, recruit, and retain innovative people?

19:23 How to use Ideaflow as a metric for organisations, companies and startups?

23:39 How is storytelling tied to idea flow?

24:48 What is his counter-intuitive insight from teaching entrepreneurship?

26:52 The nicest thing

About Prasanna Sankar:

What changes after one becomes a billionaire? How does one maintain a sense of purpose and drive after accumulating wealth?

Welcome to The One Percent Project, where we continue our captivating conversation with Prasanna Sankar, the co-founder of  Rippling, and a true trailblazer in the world of technology and entrepreneurship. In our first episode, we discovered Prasanna's early successes, his coding prowess, and his ability to identify and seize opportunities. We explored his insights on building and optimising for pace and efficiency and his views on the future of crypto.

In part two of our conversation, we dive deeper into Prasanna's extraordinary life, understand how his world transformed after achieving billionaire status, the profound influence of Paul Graham's writings on his thinking, and the unique superpowers that have propelled him to great heights. He also shares his book recommendations and unveils his thoughts on productivity, providing counterintuitive insights on making the most of your time and achieving remarkable results.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Prasanna_2 Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠00:00⁠⁠⁠ Intro ⁠02:24 How has life changed after becoming a billionaire? ⁠06:30 The impact of Paul Gramham's blogs and first principle thinking. ⁠08:15⁠ The balance between pace & efficiency. ⁠13:44 His superpower 14:04 Three Books & Productivity Hacks 18:36 Moments that have defined his career. 19:57 Advice to his younger self.

Listen to the entire conversation: Spotify: https://bit.ly/3pwiWwe YouTube: https://bit.ly/44bkR8s Apple: https://bit.ly/3NXQnkL Or available on all other platforms (The One Percent Project Podcast) Show notes & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Mayank

About Brendan Boyle:

Have you ever wondered how your favourite toys end up in your hands? What makes toy companies such as Lego, Hasbro, and Mattel market leaders, and how have products such as Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars stayed evergreen in a highly competitive industry?

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Brendan Boyle. Brendan is a toy inventor, an adjunct professor at Stanford, and the Founder of the IDEO Play Lab. He is also the inventor of the world-famous Jumperoo.

Brendan consults companies about redesigning their organisational behaviour to include space for play and co-authored the award-winning encyclopedia of never-before-seen inventions, The Klutz Book of Inventions.

Listen in to learn Brendan's insights on designing and working in the toy industry, the value of divergent thinking, how Lego & Mattel have kept themselves relevant and much more.

How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself.

Subscribe to the show where ever you are listening to it and sign up to The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Brendan

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Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

In this conversation, he talks about:

00:00 Intro

03:44 How designing a toy is similar to design thinking?

04:44 What is the funnel from idea to sales for a toy?

08:15 How divergent thinking generates better ideas?

09:45 Are toys actual concepts in the world?

11:15 How does the toy industry work?

13:10 Why should you read about the history of your industry?

14:45 How have Lego and Barbie (Mattel) kept themselves relevant?

16:19 Why does a global design firm such as IDEO like to hire T-shaped people?

18:47 What has he learnt as an entrepreneur?

21:22 Three books

22:53 Advice to your younger self?

About Nuno Goncalves Pedro:

In the realm of innovation and strategy, few individuals embody the true spirit of transformation, possessing a unique blend of strategic prowess, unwavering determination, and a passion for creating lasting impact. Nuno Goncalves Pedro, the co-founder of Chamaeleon and Strive Capital, epitomises this rare breed of visionary leaders.

Welcome to the second part of our captivating series with the remarkable Nuno. In The One Percent Project episode, we continue our deep dive with him about carving a unique path in the venture capital landscape. In this second episode of the two-part series, he shares his insights and perspectives on building a venture capital fund, investing in start-ups, shedding light on his decision-making strategies and the meticulous analysis behind his investment decisions.

As we delve further into this conversation, Nuno reveals his favourite books, productivity tools, and the mechanisms he employs to analyse his decisions- part one with Nuno.

Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Nuno_2

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In this conversation, he talks about:

• 00:00 Intro

• 01:32 Building Chamaeleon and decision framework of investing in start-ups.

• 07:18 Investing in consumer tech and the impact of AI.

• 11:13 What is his due diligence framework, and how do they analyse their decisions?

• 20:27 Three productivity tools

• 21:10 Three books

• 23:03 Advice to the younger self.