00:23:53 · Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:23:53] S0: Yeah. I I think it's it's really hard. I don't think that there's an easy answer to it, and especially in the earlier days of a company. It's not like Uber was successful from day one. Yeah, we were making money. We were doing good things every week. I remember it all heads. It was like, Best week ever. There was a lot of that for sure, but it wasn't easy. It was certainly no resting on laurels, being like, yeah. This is all good. Like, you gotta keep on pushing. You gotta keep moving forward. You gotta keep doing those things. And that can be really hard. Like, frankly, it it does burn people out. And there's no there's no there's no easy end. It's not like you can maintain this beautiful place of just everybody's working really hard, but also everybody's really happy all the time. There's gonna be, like, ebbs and flows. And and I think you can't think of it as, like, a single moment in time. So you have to think of it as, like, a a larger kind of set of things. You aren't pushing at 100% intensity all the time. But if you are, then that's a negative thing. Right? But you... I think if you go into a company, especially a company that's growing and trying to move fast, you should expect that at times, there's going to be really hard pushes and you've got to do it, and then there's also recovery time afterwards. And I think it's that that's how you maintain the balance is you know when you need to push hard and you know when you need to recover.
00:25:05 · Adam Miller, Sachin, Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:25:05] S2: Emil told us that he, like, prolonged having a family for, like, an extra ten or fifteen years so he could build over, like, with [00:25:12] S1: that intensity. Yeah. I I think, Uber's had such a ridiculous legacy on the tech world. Lenny released a chart about the percentage of PMs at tech companies that go on to become founders. And Uber was in the top five, but then this was just percentage. So in terms of the raw numbers, I think Uber would have the most founders it's gone on to create. And when you combine that along with all the distinct lessons people are learning, like, it's probably had, like, you know, one of the biggest influences on takeout of any company. It's quite incredible. [00:25:38] S0: Yeah. Mean, it it was an amazing place to work, and I learned so much from being there. Like, I'm very grateful for my time at Uber because I I... It it really was, for me, a huge shift in my, yeah, I wanna be a founder. Like, this is where I wanna go. Because, you know, I sort of worked my way down. Like, I started Goldman, like, 50,000 people. I went to Google. It was it was so small ish, but it was 20,000 people. Then I went to, like, a 200 person company, and then I went to a 20 person company. And then I was like, that's it. Now I gotta go. [00:26:04] S2: How did your... When did your parents' perception change of Uber that you had this rant?
00:26:04 · Adam Miller, Mina Radhakrishnan, Sachin
[00:26:04] S2: How did your... When did your parents' perception change of Uber that you had this rant? [00:26:08] S0: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It definitely... It took a couple of years. I I remember Ashton Kutcher on... Is it Saturday Night Live maybe? I can't remember. Was some interview. And I remember we were all, like, watching it on, like, YouTube, like, oh my god. Ashton Kutcher talked about Uber on TV and stuff. And then, you know, my mom and dad get to a point where they'd like, oh, I saw an article about it. I saw an article about And then it got to a point where there were so many articles. I'm like, okay. Fine. Fine. You... You're gonna be okay. [00:26:32] S1: I love that. We... I think we've heard so many anecdotes of Indian parents just, like, not believing in the career journey until it becomes, like, so explicit on TV. It's quite hilarious. That being said, my mom barely knows what I do as well. Moving tracked onto Different. I wanna ask about Different in a bit of a different way. I wasn't meant to say say that. So that was a seven ish year long journey. [00:26:55] S2: Yeah.
00:26:55 · Adam Miller, Sachin, Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:26:55] S2: Yeah. [00:26:56] S1: And it sounds like it was a wild ride. Like, you raise a bunch of money. I've heard that you've hired incredible people at Different and went on to become a large company. And I guess, like, sort of where you are now, if you were to meet Mina at the very start of that journey at Different, what would you say that made it in? What are those sort of things that you would say to prepare for or things that you've really got to focus on if you could give yourself some advice back then? [00:27:20] S0: Yeah. I I think one of the... There's two, I think, big things. The first one is around building with less. Right? And I think because, like, we were mostly going through quite positive fundraising environment for the most part, and the focus is very much around, like, fundraising with the idea of growth in mind, not fundraising to just exist, not fundraising to survive, but fundraising to grow. And had I... I think you sort of have to experience that when you go through an example of like, oh, well, hold on. It's not the same fundraising environment anymore. It's fundamentally different. Fundraising is not... Is is for people who are already growing to grow even more. And I think that's the first thing that I would've, you know, sort of really kind of unpacked the difference between. And, you know, I I consider myself relatively sophisticated with regards to funding and investing and all of that. And, like, I'm a noob like everybody else until you actually, like, get into it and do it there.
00:27:20 · Mina Radhakrishnan, Sachin
[00:27:20] S0: Yeah. I I think one of the... There's two, I think, big things. The first one is around building with less. Right? And I think because, like, we were mostly going through quite positive fundraising environment for the most part, and the focus is very much around, like, fundraising with the idea of growth in mind, not fundraising to just exist, not fundraising to survive, but fundraising to grow. And had I... I think you sort of have to experience that when you go through an example of like, oh, well, hold on. It's not the same fundraising environment anymore. It's fundamentally different. Fundraising is not... Is is for people who are already growing to grow even more. And I think that's the first thing that I would've, you know, sort of really kind of unpacked the difference between. And, you know, I I consider myself relatively sophisticated with regards to funding and investing and all of that. And, like, I'm a noob like everybody else until you actually, like, get into it and do it there. [00:28:17] S1: And double clicking into that, does that mean practically finding, like, a greater sense of product market fit or more revenue velocity before going harder on fundraising?
00:28:27 · Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:28:27] S0: You know, I think that, like... I think if you look back maybe, like, I don't know, maybe, like, thirty, forty years ago. Right? I think BC funding was about, like, hey. You're already growing. You're already doing well. What you need is we need to add fuel to the fire. And I think it changed where it was like, hey, let's give people money to see if they can stoke the fire. And then we'll... And and there's gonna be a bunch of people who can't. They... The the kindle... It's just... The kindling is just not gonna work. And we'll we'll we'll lose those things along the way, and then we'll go from there. And I think it's kind of gone back to the original of, like, fuel on fire. And so I would say, like, look. Show people that you can actually, like, kindle the fire, right, is what I would say. And and I I don't think it's completely on founders. Like, I don't necessarily think that BC should, assume that the only thing to invest in is things that are already growing. Otherwise, how are you gonna support? Like, the same thing we talked about earlier. Right? How do juniors become seniors? Well, how do startups become scale ups? Right? It's like you've gotta assume that some of that's gonna happen. But I definitely would advise people to be more thoughtful about whether or not they choose to move forward VC funding because there's a lot that comes with it. You have to you have to understand how the the game works, right, with with Venture. And I don't see this to be negative about it. I'm just... This is the reality of Venture is it's a hits driven business. And there's gonna be a lot of people who are not hits. And more likely than not, you're gonna be one of those people that aren't hits. So how do you think about what that should mean for you? Like, if you're not necessarily gonna produce a 10x outsized return to bring the fund back to a VC, how do you make sure that you run your company in a way where you will still be able to find, like, personal satisfaction and growth and do the right things by your investors and by your employees. So there's that. And the second one is just we live in a completely different world when we think about how AI changes product teams and how we build and evolve and what we do with it. And I definitely would have hired a lot. I thought I was hiring less, but I obviously wasn't.