Sachin and Adam
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.
00:30:27 · Mina Radhakrishnan, Adam Miller
And I just think you can do so much more with fewer people. And so that's another thing. It's just... It's... Guess maybe it all ties back to this do more with less. Do more with less is really... Like, that that that scarcity mindset, I think, is a really powerful one to have. And you you have to, I think, as you grow, get rid of it to some extent. Right? You can't just have... Be, like, working in in resource constrained mode all the time. But I think it's it's okay to have a lot of money in the bank and try to do more with less and then slowly figure out how to get those funds back in and put them into the business to grow and build it out. [00:31:00] S2: During that kind of process of voluntary administration, how did you feel? Like, was a lot of your identity tied to the company, and how did that kind of feel emotionally?
00:31:09 · Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:31:09] S0: Oh, it was awful. It was awful. I wasn't... I mean, it's not pleasant at all. Right? Yeah. Because you also... You feel like you've you've... You feel like you've let everybody down. Like, it's not that you didn't you didn't do everything that you could. You did all the stuff that you were supposed to do, but you still didn't make it in the end. You know? And, like, you you you bring these employees on. You're you're you're talking to them about where you wanna go with the business and how you wanna do it and where it's... What you hope to achieve. And those ambitions just don't don't come true. So it's... It was, I think, certainly, emotionally, was very, very hard. And you're trying to do the right thing. You're just trying to... You just wanna make sure everyone gets, like, paid out and set up and can move on to, like, a good job. You know, I am played, like... I think I played, like, full time recruiter for, a couple of months. I was just like, anybody, like, what do we need to do? Who can I introduce you to? Where do we go? How do we find you a new job? Where do we go from there? In terms of identity and validation, yeah, I definitely think there was an element of, I feel like I'm different. It was a huge part of me, and now I have to go of it. I I don't... Like, the... There... I think there's a certain amount of, like, ego and stuff around it. Like, I'm a successful VC backed startup founder. Like, that stuff is a big deal for me. Like, I don't really think about it in that way because I I don't... That's just not how I define myself. It was more about, like, the the actual company itself, like, different and how I wasn't able to make those dreams come true, like, is a is a really tough thing. But, you know, that's life. Right? Like, you're gonna fail. You're gonna fail at times, and it's not about whether or not you failed. It's about how you recover from failure.