The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:45:36 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:45:36] S0: So it sounds like with... Because a lot of these banks you're working with are global banks. Right? But you've got to sell to them by region, so they come by Fogo globally? [00:45:45] S1: Occasionally. What I found... This is me drawing a broad, like, kind of a characterization that's probably not fully accurate. Frequently, I found that The US bulge bracket banks, The US banks have a central procurement where you, like, sell in New York and then you get users globally. Sometimes in the European banks, it's a separate procurement office, procurement center in Asia. You need to go, like, get budget approved. It's completely different paper. It's a different MSA, etcetera. [00:46:10] S0: Right. Interesting. [00:46:11] S1: It's a pretty boring [00:46:12] S0: answer. It's just kind of accurate. Yeah. Mean, I think the takeaway is it's not one size fits all. Yeah. [00:46:18] S1: Exactly. [00:46:18] S0: Which which makes sense. I'm conscious of time, so I wanna come to rapid fire sprint. But before I do, we talked a lot at the start about the challenges building rainbow. Now things are up and to the right. If you think in the past twelve months, has there been one moment where you've been tested a lot? And I wonder if you can share it.
00:46:18 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:46:18] S0: Which which makes sense. I'm conscious of time, so I wanna come to rapid fire sprint. But before I do, we talked a lot at the start about the challenges building rainbow. Now things are up and to the right. If you think in the past twelve months, has there been one moment where you've been tested a lot? And I wonder if you can share it. [00:46:34] S1: Yeah. Good question. The sheer volume of scaling has been a huge task. We've, like, you know, in the last twelve months, we've gone from, like, I think, like, 40 people to, like, 200 or something like that. So it's a completely different company. And so when you're 40, it's like you don't really need any process. Right? It's just like everyone just doing everything at the same time. And, like, as long as we're roughly on the same page, it's it's fine. Now it's like we're hiring people who are hiring people who are hiring people. And there are people at the company like we don't really know that well. Hopefully we spend a little bit of time with them. But to be able to create kind of an operational cadence, a set of values, a way of doing things that is not restrictive and still like fosters autonomy and creativity, but keeps people aligned is a big is a big challenge.
00:46:34 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:46:34] S1: Yeah. Good question. The sheer volume of scaling has been a huge task. We've, like, you know, in the last twelve months, we've gone from, like, I think, like, 40 people to, like, 200 or something like that. So it's a completely different company. And so when you're 40, it's like you don't really need any process. Right? It's just like everyone just doing everything at the same time. And, like, as long as we're roughly on the same page, it's it's fine. Now it's like we're hiring people who are hiring people who are hiring people. And there are people at the company like we don't really know that well. Hopefully we spend a little bit of time with them. But to be able to create kind of an operational cadence, a set of values, a way of doing things that is not restrictive and still like fosters autonomy and creativity, but keeps people aligned is a big is a big challenge. [00:47:21] S0: How how are you getting better? Like, if I reflect in my own self, like, being a manager of people leaders really are. Like, sure when you were like... You go back to, like, Princeton days, we all said it. Right? We're like, we wanna be a manager. We wanna be a coach. We wanna have, like, 20 direct reports. And now I think of it and I go, no. I don't actually want 20 direct reports because that's 20 careers. [00:47:41] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:42] S0: Emotions and 20 egos that I've gotta manage. Yeah. How are you getting better at being a people manager? [00:47:51] S1: Because it's I am. Yeah. It's... No. It's so... It's the hardest thing. I think, yeah, when you're when you're
00:47:51 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:47:51] S1: Because it's I am. Yeah. It's... No. It's so... It's the hardest thing. I think, yeah, when you're when you're [00:47:55] S0: you're really good. You're teaching like, a good listener and you're empathetic, which is like a daily challenge. Right? Particularly in a startup that's growing so fast.
00:48:03 · John Willett
[00:48:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. That's really nice. Yeah. I think when you're 20 years old and you picture managing, you picture like everyone's gonna be happy all the time and like you're just gonna be a good manager and there's not gonna be these like problems. And, yeah, that's never how it is. Even once the company's doing well, it it, you know, these things still come up. I think I've just like learned to be so transparent about what I do and don't know about what I'm working on, about what I need from folks with feedback. Like I'm just so open book on literally everything. And when we first started the company, like we were '23, '24, we had people who were like in their thirties reporting to us. And so there's a bit of a pretense of us being like, yeah, we know what we're gonna do. Like we have these clients lined up, like whatever. And you're trying to kind you know, show why you're the boss and and not them. And as you gain confidence over time, it's like, I I would never pretend I know something I don't. I would never purport to, like, be better at something if if someone else is. I'm like, hey. This story when I when I asked them to join the company is not like, hey. Come work with me as I solve these things. It's like, hey. Like, let's grind on this together. And, like, we are just on the same team. We're just gonna run at it. And that perspective I think allows you to have just a lot of bidirectional checks and balances throughout the day. People always kind of know where I'm at. People always know, you know, if I liked what they just did, if I didn't like what they just did. And when you give feedback constantly, it like de weights it. If there's an endless stream of feedback from me to everyone else, then no one takes it personally when they when they get something. People kind of know that they can... Hopefully that they can trust me and that I have their back because I'm so kind open. So that's probably been the biggest lesson is just being myself as much as possible and putting on as little of a a pretense as as I can.
00:49:50 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:49:50] S0: It's so interesting because this is probably the first time in tech where there's so many, like, founders, CEOs that are, like, in their late twenties [00:49:58] S1: Yeah. [00:49:58] S0: Right, running, like, multibillion dollar valuation companies. Well, like, again, back to Kevin Ryan, people like him were running those companies in their forties. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Five, ten years ago. Was now you've got, like, a whole group of you guys in your, like... Literally, like, in your late twenties and maybe somewhere in, early thirties. Yeah. I think that's, like, fascinating, like [00:50:15] S1: Yeah. [00:50:15] S0: How that plays out, and that probably just speaks to the, hopefully, the meritocracy nature of tech where [00:50:21] S1: And especially what's different, you know, is, like, where you had these people in their twenties before in, like, the two thousands and 20 tens running companies. They were typically, like, consumer companies, social media companies, Internet companies. And yet now it's, like, bank rates secure enterprise software companies, but that is a big change for sure. [00:50:39] S0: Yeah. I wanna move to Rapid Fire Spring, John. Before I do, is there anything I haven't asked that you wanna touch on? This has been fairly comprehensive. [00:50:45] S1: But No. This has been [00:50:46] S0: great. Alright. Rapid Fire, is there one non work investment? Ideally, you have time and energy. Is there a course or a hobby or a holiday you've really enjoyed?