The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
01:03:23 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
Creating something that could keep us company and fill a void that otherwise might be left empty. And Yuri got that just from two conversations with her. And so I think having someone else be able to feel like... Yeah. Like you said, like, you have to be delusionally confident in where you're going, But at least having someone validate that delusion makes you feel... I don't know. It just makes... It... It's like a spring. It makes you go so much faster. [01:03:51] S0: Yeah. It's so interesting. Right? Because if you recap your journey, in my words, is early on, you were fighting for to be in the room metaphorically, you were trying to raise a bit of money, you were trying to get it out the door, you're trying to find a team. Whereas now it feels like you've gone from almost survival mode to scaling mode, right, where you've got the capital, you seem to have got the team. Yes, you're still early in many ways, but you also have some runs under your belt. [01:04:20] S1: Mhmm. [01:04:21] S0: Is that how it feels in your head? Like, you've moved from survival mode to scaling mode now?
01:04:26 · Grace Brown
[01:04:26] S1: Even when you were describing that, I was like, interesting outside perspective. We're definitely beyond the survival mode of the first two years, but I don't know. I feel like as founders, maybe you always feel like you're in survival mode. Earlier this year, I was saying to one of my friends, I was like, at this point in time, I thought I'd be out of the dog years. And they looked at me and they were like, Grace, like, the dog years are, like, within you. You know? Because, yeah, that feeling, that paranoia, that panic, that, you know, it's still there and it still feels like survival mode. That's actually been a lot of my incentive for reading all the philosophy that I've read recently because I'm like, I'm just in this state. And one, I don't think it's sustainable or particularly... I don't wanna say it's unhealthy, but it's not always pleasant. But I've just been in this state of we can't stop. We can't let go, this this intense urgency. And even like you said, with the runs under the belt, it doesn't ease any of that. Maybe sometimes there are moments, like brief moments where I'm like, we got past that one, but but it doesn't go away. And last week, I was sitting on my couch, you know, as you alluded to, where we're closing a funding round at this moment. And I was sitting in my couch a week ago just sinking into it, thinking about, oh my god. This journey is going to be so long and so arduous. And because I've met now with so many founders and CEOs who are many years ahead of me and I'm hearing their challenges, I'm like, god. We have such a long fucking journey to go through, and it's not what I signed up for. I don't know if I'd changed my mind, but, like, it's... Yeah. So it's it's... I don't know if I'd say I'm out of survival mode, but it doesn't feel like it even if we objectively may or may not be.
01:06:14 · Vidit Agarwal
[01:06:14] S0: I completely hear you and I'm nodding furiously because one of the chats me and my wife have, I met her just starting my company and I've been doing it for almost seven years now full time. She used to say to me that at the start you were paranoid and now you're still paranoid. It's in different ways. It's exactly what you said at the start, I was starting the company with my own life savings, I had no brand, no profile, nothing to lose, when now it's like, there's a lot to lose. And that creates a level of paranoia where it's like there's expectations and there's reputation and there's feedback. And someone said it to me really well the other day, we were looking at when I said the other day, a couple of months ago, we were looking at launching a new product. And I reached out to a few people for their opinions. And one of them said to me, they said, Vidit, you seem to be looking for a safe landing here. Did you do that early on when you were launching new things? I said, No, I just launched it because I believed in it. And they're like, Well, maybe that's why it worked, was now you're looking for the world to approve it before you put it out there. And this person actually said to me, he said, As you get more successful, you should have more risk appetite. And I said, That is funny, like it's easy for you to say that, but I also have more to lose internally and externally where there's more paranoia. And you see this in big companies, right? Why do small companies innovate things more than big companies? Because big companies, not that my company is big in terms of Google or anything, is there's a lot more downside risk, right? Whereas a small company has less of that, so they come in and eat the big company's lunch metaphorically. You see this all the time in life, like you've seen this for decades and centuries where this has happened every five, ten years. It's something I often think about is exactly what he said that story we tell ourselves and kind of also why you and I are founders, right? Like I always say it's because I got a huge chip in my shoulder. And that chip in the shoulder only gets bigger in some ways, it never really disappears. So, no, it's a long answer to your comment, but I... Not an answer. Long, like, reflection to your comment, but I agree. Yeah.
01:08:14 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
[01:08:14] S1: And this actually reminds me of one thing that currently makes no sense to me, and maybe it will in two months. Maybe it will by the time this comes out, and I'll be like, you know... But, like, I've been thinking recently, what am I so scared of? Like, why am I paranoid? What am I scared of losing? What... Let's say the worst thing happened. Like, what what is it that that's... That I'm so fearful of? And when I look around at other robotics companies that are my peers that I've shut down, like, I'm like, okay. Maybe is it losing the company and the company having to go under, which I've seen more commonly in San Francisco. And then what happens to the founders is, like, they they end up just becoming, like, robotics engineers at Google DeepMind or OpenAI or somewhere, and they pay... They're paid, like, 1 to $2,000,000. And to me, it's nothing wrong with that path at all, but I'm like... To me, it's like, objectively on paper, that actually sounds like a much better path than the founder path. If you think about it, you're paid, like, a 1 to $2,000,000 salary. You're far less stressed. Like, these founders that I know, they're not stressed like they were when they were running their companies. But to me, it's like, I don't want that. I want this. I don't know why, even though objectively, this might not even seem [01:09:15] S0: Yeah.
01:09:15 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[01:09:15] S0: Yeah. [01:09:16] S1: Better. Like, stress free, much more lucrative path, much more secure, and they have so much freedom to be creative and do what they wanna do. But for whatever reason, I still don't wanna lose this. Mhmm. I don't know if that makes any sense. [01:09:30] S0: I've got someone in my door. Give me ten seconds. I'm just gonna tell them to come back once. [01:09:34] S1: All good. Good. [01:09:36] S0: Yeah. This is such an interesting reflection. I I almost wanna do this reflection with you in six months and twelve months and eighteen months. Right? Because your thought process is gonna evolve. I wanna move to RapidFi Sprint to wrap this up. Before I do, is there anything I haven't asked that you wanna touch on? [01:09:54] S1: Oh, I don't think so. Nothing really comes to mind. Yeah. I think... Yeah. We've covered a lot of real estate. [01:10:00] S0: We we have. Yeah. Cool. So is there one non work investment that you consider the best in your lifetime investment of time and energy? Is there a hobby or a course or a holiday? [01:10:13] S1: I'd say recently, in the philosophy that I'm reading, I think it's got... I won't get into it too much, but just coming up with my own beliefs for what does it mean to live well. I think that exercise and that kind of endeavor has helped me just show up even better in myself as a job in in being CEO, in... For my friends, for, you know, my dating life. Yeah. So I think that that's actually been quite, yeah, quite significant for me recently.
01:10:13 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
[01:10:13] S1: I'd say recently, in the philosophy that I'm reading, I think it's got... I won't get into it too much, but just coming up with my own beliefs for what does it mean to live well. I think that exercise and that kind of endeavor has helped me just show up even better in myself as a job in in being CEO, in... For my friends, for, you know, my dating life. Yeah. So I think that that's actually been quite, yeah, quite significant for me recently. [01:10:42] S0: Is there one thing you wanna learn in the next six months in in work or outside work? [01:10:48] S1: I think self growth self growth is not absolute or complete. There's always gonna be areas to work on, and even the areas that you work on, there's it's never gonna be like... You never reach an end to it. But I'd say the thing I'm focused on right now, or definitely for this next chapter, is being a lot less avoidant of hard conversations. Depends on who you ask. Some people think I'm direct, but then, you know, a lot of you know, more kind of, like, powerhouse women who have been in business much longer than I have are like, you're avoidant of hard conversations. Not just women, but, you know, my advice as well. [01:11:20] S0: How do you learn something like that? [01:11:23] S1: How do I learn to be more direct and less avoidant of hard conversations? [01:11:27] S0: Yes.