01:30:24 · Anirudh A Damani, Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:30:24] S0: you there. I... I'll... Definitely, you should. You should. And then the last question for the night, what are three books you recommend every founder should read? [01:30:34] S1: Well, so the first one from a founder perspective, I think something I'm a big fan of biographies. My all time favorite book is Shoe Dog, which is written by Phil Knight, who's a creator of Nike. And I think that book just shows what extraordinary hustle can do. Phil Knight kind of taking a juta in his hand and going to stadiums and asking people to, can you please wear my juta? Can you please wear my juta? And essentially being a distributor for Tiger and then essentially putting his own brand on top of it and kind of creating one of the most historic companies that has ever been created in this world, I think. So I'm a huge fan of the book Shoe Dog. Also, a it's a great book in terms of team building, which which I kind of kind of am a big fan of that. The the most important aspect of startup, I think, to me is team building. And I think looking at the everyday ops, matrices, solving these problems has really come second and fundraising, and everything else comes some... Come somewhere in the fifth or sixth pecking order. So that is one book. [01:31:38] S0: I also like the fact that, you know, where that book ends, it doesn't sort of take you all the way to 2000. Right? It just sort of ends in, you know, like, and it's a very interesting book.
01:31:48 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:31:48] S1: Very well said. Very well said. In fact, just after I finished the book, ended up watching a bunch of his interviews Yeah. On the morning show and all of those. Just because of the curiosity. So very well said. Correct. No, the second book is ah ah huge fan of ah Jeff Bezos. So of course the Everything Store is like Bible. Ah I am now in the middle of I've I've read all of his shareholder letters. I have about 65, 70 pages of notes on across all of his different shareholder letters from across entire site from 1997 onward. We spoke about customer obsession. And if you want to invest with us, you're investing with us for the long term. And the way he thought about every single aspect of the business, every single tat about entering into new businesses and becoming a leader like very very soon. So I think there are few leaders, there are few entrepreneurs who have been as obsessive on every single day of the journey as Jeff Bezos has been. And that is just like I I just absolutely love that. So I love everything store. Ah the original Amazon Bible and I am in the middle of reading Amazon Unbound now. It is part two of that written by the same author. And ah the last book ah I think like I previously was mentioning to you just before the call It's a book called which very few people have heard about called Sovereign Individual, which is more like think of it like a homo sapiens book, which predicts a lot of things that have happened in the last twenty years. It was written in 1997, yet predicted Bitcoin cryptocurrency. It predicted Brexit or the two thousand and eight crisis. And it talks about us moving to a borderless world. And this is good way to essentially kind of close it out as well. So, I am a big believer of the school I went to in Delhi. It's motive was Vasudev Kutambakam. Which means the world is a family. And I believe at a very missionary level. My mission in life also is the same thing. I want to create a more borderless world where people can kind of freely move across borders, do things that are kind of really they are the best fit at, and be able to do it in a very missionary way. So like I said, be able to... If somebody wants to do culinary arts and be like Vikas Khanna, they should be able to do that.
01:33:53 · Akshay Chaturvedi, Anirudh A Damani
If somebody wants to become a great DJ, be like Nikhil Chinapa from the early two thousand, they should be able to do gigs in Netherlands or Australia maybe without a visa one day. So ah I believe everything else that is written in this book has ah turned out to be true over the last twenty five years. It says that over the next two decades we are moving into a world where ah ah they are going to be if you can read my T shirt. I don't know. It says building global citizens. Global citizens. [01:34:20] S0: Right? Tomorrow. Yeah. So [01:34:22] S1: we really believe and that is is my personal thesis as well. That as we move forward, the countries and cities are going to compete for the most able citizens in the world. We've already seen that happening with Silicon Valley moving towards Miami, right? Or large companies losing talented people to Singapore or Abu Dhabi or to places like these where tax systems are more efficient. So I think that's where we headed off to. Countries will have to be really competitive if they want to kind of keep their best citizens to themselves. And which is which is great, which is fantastic. And hopefully, that will eventually lead into a more borderless world. We'll have an Earth flag. And hopefully, when Elon Musk is able to colonize Mars, Leverage will be the company which is helping students go from planet Earth to planet Mars because we already have the playbook together of how to send people between continents. So now we're just gonna do it between planets.
01:34:22 · Akshay Chaturvedi, Anirudh A Damani
[01:34:22] S1: we really believe and that is is my personal thesis as well. That as we move forward, the countries and cities are going to compete for the most able citizens in the world. We've already seen that happening with Silicon Valley moving towards Miami, right? Or large companies losing talented people to Singapore or Abu Dhabi or to places like these where tax systems are more efficient. So I think that's where we headed off to. Countries will have to be really competitive if they want to kind of keep their best citizens to themselves. And which is which is great, which is fantastic. And hopefully, that will eventually lead into a more borderless world. We'll have an Earth flag. And hopefully, when Elon Musk is able to colonize Mars, Leverage will be the company which is helping students go from planet Earth to planet Mars because we already have the playbook together of how to send people between continents. So now we're just gonna do it between planets. [01:35:18] S0: Fantastic. You might find Matt Damon there. We'll make sure we enroll you, sir. Done. Thank you so much, Akshay. I mean, you know, it didn't even feel like it's been an hour and thirty six minutes. And it but I still think that we could have gone on to so many more topics and this could have been like a headlining episode for us, like three hours of how to just build a proper business. But thank you so much. It was a lot of learning. I'm truly excited to learn actually, but what's going to happen next week? I hope you, we could have some, you know, interim episode where you announce it to the
01:35:18 · Anirudh A Damani, Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:35:18] S0: Fantastic. You might find Matt Damon there. We'll make sure we enroll you, sir. Done. Thank you so much, Akshay. I mean, you know, it didn't even feel like it's been an hour and thirty six minutes. And it but I still think that we could have gone on to so many more topics and this could have been like a headlining episode for us, like three hours of how to just build a proper business. But thank you so much. It was a lot of learning. I'm truly excited to learn actually, but what's going to happen next week? I hope you, we could have some, you know, interim episode where you announce it to the [01:35:53] S1: essentially I made that comment. But I'll make sure I text you about that right after this talk gets over. Done. So you don't have to wait for the entire week. [01:36:08] S0: No, wonderful. Thank you so much. And to everybody, I think just as a takeaway, just remember, right? I networking, right? And you calling like having a meaningful connection is so important in your journey, right? As an entrepreneur, having the right set of mentors, and most importantly, updating them. Right? I think what you're doing a commendable job of is this weekly, monthly, quarterly, and, you know, half yearly kind of updates. They've helped me a lot. Right? And I write even as a VC to the ecosystem that I'm I'm a part of. Just brand... You know, to everyone. Like, this is what I'm learning and, you know,
01:36:43 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:36:43] S1: me out. Yeah. So, Anirudh, if if if I can just add to what you said, I think, there are two ways to it. One is about you're building a meaningful relationship and writing with somebody. The other part also is that when you write, it also gives you a chance to structure your thoughts in a better way. And I think that is also super powerful as you kind of get on the journey where you need to have absolute clarity. I've always... When somebody tells me that, hey. I wanna go out and pitch a VC or pitch an angel investor of high equity, I always tell them that boss. The only thing that you need to be seeking is clarity. If you have clarity in terms of what you're doing, if you have clarity in terms of how your everyday looks like, if clarity in terms of what the company will look like in the couple of years, I think that is all that any upcoming investor is kind of looking to understand. And I think very interestingly what you've seen, I've been reading all these VRHPs for the last month. If you look at Zomato, Nike, CarTrade, Paytm, any of these. I think you can easily correlate success to how clear they are about what the future looks like. And that gives the person who is kind of interacting with you even by way of just reading a document that you've prepared. That just gives them so much more confidence. And I think that's a skill that can kind of help you, right, from starting a company at seed stage. All they will do hopefully taking company public and interacting with lakhs and lakhs of shareholders.