The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
01:09:30 · Justin Lopas, Vidit Agarwal
[01:09:30] S1: No, let's go for it. [01:09:32] S0: Sweet. Is there one non work investment that you consider the best in your life? Is there a course or a hobby or a holiday? [01:09:40] S1: Investment. What do you mean by investment? Oh, just like something? [01:09:42] S0: Time, time and energy, like investment of time and energy. [01:09:45] S1: Oh, for sure. Health four years ago or so I did a, spent a lot of time on that. Still spend a lot of time on this, exercise and sleep sounds like simple and literally everyone says it, but man, that has been the best highest ROI thing I've done. [01:09:57] S0: How many hours a night would you try and sleep? [01:10:00] S1: I'm really trying to get eight. It's hard. I was just traveling a bunch was getting five and six and feeling really bad. At least seven though is probably the average. And I just, you got to just force yourself to do it and it makes you get less hours in the day, but those hours are 10x more productive, at least for me speaking [01:10:15] S0: I'm the same. If I don't sleep and if I don't eat, I cannot function. I can only have so many coffees, and they don't solve the problem. Is there one thing you wanna learn in the next six months? And this could be in a work context or outside work.
01:10:15 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[01:10:15] S0: I'm the same. If I don't sleep and if I don't eat, I cannot function. I can only have so many coffees, and they don't solve the problem. Is there one thing you wanna learn in the next six months? And this could be in a work context or outside work. [01:10:28] S1: Yes. I want to learn... Well, there's a bunch of different technical topics that I want to learn. I'm really interested in learning a lot more about the regulatory space that we operate in. I've gotten a sort of crash course in it over the last few years, and also in particular how to operate within it to change the rules of the road. We've passed a bill where we had... Well, I guess we passed a few bills and advocated for a bunch more, but like what is the sequence of events and what is sort of like excellent look like in the change the laws space? Basically, like, if your sole goal in life is to change a law in favor of free markets and better customer experience and lower cost for people, which I think I think are the sort of fundamental things that we support, how do you do it? What is the playbook? And how do you get the excellent of that in the same way that we're excellent in installing batteries? I think we've come a long way. We've learned some, but I really wanna learn more about it. [01:11:19] S0: Is there one interview question you love asking prospective candidates in a hiring process? [01:11:25] S1: Yeah. If you were the CEO for a day or a week or a month of your company, what would you change? [01:11:30] S0: CEO of Vase? There was
01:11:30 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[01:11:30] S0: CEO of Vase? There was [01:11:32] S1: CEO of Vase? No. The company that they work at. [01:11:34] S0: Right. [01:11:35] S1: Because we're interviewing them. Right? And the... Then a a non answer is bad. It's like, no. I don't really have anything. It's like, no. There's definitely something you would change. There's also another bad answer, which is like, well, I'd fire everyone because I don't like them. Or there's like, you can tease out the interpersonal things. Or if you're like, well, I would change the strategy or I'd change the way in which we, whatever, designed this piece of hardware or whatever. That's a much better answer. [01:11:58] S0: One thing you've learned from your wife? [01:12:02] S1: Resiliency. She's extremely resilient. She's had a lot of challenges building her business. She's raised a lot less capital than we have at Base Power, and she has been extremely tough and resilient and just stuck through a bunch of difficult periods in the business building. [01:12:16] S0: If she's taught you resilience, she must be tough as nails because you are very [01:12:21] S1: no she s way tougher than me. Wow, [01:12:25] S0: wow, I would love to meet her one day because if she s wow, I am just blown away by this comment. Last two, is there one, like I love asking about habits and routines, is there a tool or an app that has given you a lot of efficiencies recently?
01:12:25 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[01:12:25] S0: wow, I would love to meet her one day because if she s wow, I am just blown away by this comment. Last two, is there one, like I love asking about habits and routines, is there a tool or an app that has given you a lot of efficiencies recently? [01:12:39] S1: Yeah. I've been playing with Grokbot over the last whatever month it's been, and man, totally transformational. It preps me for meetings. It proactively helps burn through the inbox. It summarizes stuff that happened in Slack. There's just so many channels now. It's hard for me to keep track of it. It is like an information funnel in the best way possible. And I've trained it. I've got a bunch of different bots. I got one that also like tracks my calories or whatever because I'm a health nerd. And so, that is a world class tool in my opinion. [01:13:07] S0: Yeah, I agree. And last one, I ask every guest if you want to recommend a question I should ask the next guest. Of course, you don't know the next guest, but anything I should include in my prep? [01:13:16] S1: I really like the upbringing thing. I think most people don't, most interviewers don't ask about that because most of the person's public life is in the recent past. And like how somebody was brought up is I think very indicative of them as a person and shaped who they became or becoming in recent times. And so I would say ask more of that. That is a great set of... A great line of questioning that most people don't ask.
01:13:16 · Justin Lopas, Vidit Agarwal
[01:13:16] S1: I really like the upbringing thing. I think most people don't, most interviewers don't ask about that because most of the person's public life is in the recent past. And like how somebody was brought up is I think very indicative of them as a person and shaped who they became or becoming in recent times. And so I would say ask more of that. That is a great set of... A great line of questioning that most people don't ask. [01:13:42] S0: Yeah. This comes up. I'm glad you said that. This comes up every time. The most consistent feedback we get is, hey, I've known Justin for ten years and I didn't know half these stories. I didn't know about him as a person because I know his work identity. So, that's exactly. I said at the start, I'll give you feedback and you'll give me feedback. My feedback is you're great. I thought I have to come into this and I have to work really hard and you wouldn't give me much, but you were great. Big thank you. I really enjoyed this. What's your feedback on me? [01:14:09] S1: I would say something similar. You've been great, very thoughtful questions. Yeah. I think you you asked so much questions basically that I wasn't necessarily either expecting or at least was not was not like, you know, haven't answered before. I have a canned answer to the how do we go to market and that sort of a thing. And so... No, man. This is this is great. I'm super excited to see what the end result is.
01:14:09 · Justin Lopas, Vidit Agarwal, Vidit Agarwal
[01:14:09] S1: I would say something similar. You've been great, very thoughtful questions. Yeah. I think you you asked so much questions basically that I wasn't necessarily either expecting or at least was not was not like, you know, haven't answered before. I have a canned answer to the how do we go to market and that sort of a thing. And so... No, man. This is this is great. I'm super excited to see what the end result is. [01:14:29] S0: No. I appreciate it. That was the plan. I tried to ask you different questions that people haven't asked before, so I'm glad I did that. Awesome. This is the finish line. Thank you so much, Justin, huge fan of what you've done and excited for what's ahead. [01:14:41] S1: Yes, likewise. [01:14:42] S2: That's a wrap. So if something in this episode sparked a thought, send it to a friend or colleague. And if you're curious about partnering with us and the Curiosity Centre, whether it's this podcast, to our reports, events and more, and join the ranks of existing commercial partners including Google, KPMG, Vanta and others. My details are in the show notes. Until next time, I'm Vidit Tagawal, and this is the High Flies Podcast.