00:08:36 · Karthik Gollapudi, S0
That's why we actually started Sift to productize some of this knowledge into tools for the rest of the hardware industry. I see Sift growing in, like, the vision that I would have for it or my goal. I want a percentage of the physical world to be operating on Sift. I want at least a percent of the trains, the planes, the automobiles, the drones, the aircraft, things that are out there. I want those operating on Sift, whether they're being designed, whether they're being manufactured. If they're out in the field, they're generating data, they need to be maintained. There should be at least percentage of the fis Roll it out. Ad[00:09:02] S0: Whoever said good things come to those who wait, never shop Black Friday early at Lowe's. Right now, get up to 50% off select major appliances, plus get free delivery, free haul away, and free basic installation and parts when you spend $896 or more on select major appliances. Shop Black Friday early in store and online now at Lowe's. Valid through twelve two while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See associate at Lowe's dot com for details.
00:09:30 · Karthik Gollapudi
[00:09:30] S1: Four Worlds running on Sift. Process for acquiring Sift's first customer was actually kinda novel. We actually just rented Space, Parallel Systems' office. They're the autonomous rail company. They were our first customer. They have a pretty cool office, and we literally just asked them if we can rent one of the rooms as we build out the product. And that was just motivated by... At SpaceX, Elon always wanted the engineer on the factory floor. So we said we should just be embedded with our customers. Let's go rent a room. And then as we built the product, we had new features. We just go grab someone else in the office and say, what do you think of this? What do you want? What do you not like? Our early road map was completely driven by them. The evolution of our sales motion to the next first few customers, it was... A lot of it was, like, using things in network. We were lucky that there is vibrant SpaceX alum community. We also were able to reach out through existing investors or investors that are generally interested in Sift, for introductions, and also just even just reaching out on LinkedIn, talking about this stuff that we solved, what we wanna do, showing a product. But then also, we had a competitor started around the same time as us. We actually had a a few of those bake offs in the early days. The other companies knew that there's a bunch of customers do it through mobile companies in the space, invited us to a bake off because it definitely added a lot of urgency on our team. And we won all the bake offs that we've done to date. That was actually a bit of a novel experience, I would say, compared to most companies. I think some of the biggest lesson I learned is that, like, it really all just comes down to people. You have one life to live. Like, spend it with the people you wanna be around. There's a lot of urgency. I have very, very limited time. If I'm gonna go spend my time with someone, I want to be the best person I can spend that time with, and that goes into everything, whether that's work, whether that's personal. So choosing the best partner for that. Everything that you do is just informed by the people that are into that. End of day, like Sift, you can talk about all this tech. You can talk talk about this architecture. You can talk about all this cool stuff that we do, even our backgrounds or whatever.
00:11:04 · Karthik Gollapudi
But it really just comes down to the people. Without the people we have at Sift, we wouldn't have the company at Sift. Make sure you bring together the best team, create opportunities for everyone to grow, keep everyone happy to be there, and that's the main lesson I learned. And that's actually a big thing I would call out because a lot of the audience here probably... It looks cool to get some person that's like, oh, the CEO or that person who has, like, a really high profile sounds really prestigious to get them as advisers. But if they're not vested in your success significantly, they're not gonna be actually helping you. They're not gonna be doing interviews. They're not gonna help you on the trenches, and you need to get people who are gonna do that. And in that process, they're gonna challenge you and get the smartest folks around. So the best way to evaluate what is a good team or smart team, honestly, is just to kiss a lot of frogs. Maintaining that talent bar and looking for people who want to do something challenging that they can be proud of. They're gonna work hard, and they can think around, like, the same level or smarter than you, even better. For people just starting their career, I have a bit of a different advice. Like, I think a lot people say, go start your own company. Learn by doing. I highly don't recommend that route. I would recommend most people they actually go see what good looks like, and that doesn't necessarily... Part where I talk about prestige is that, like, just because something's prestigious doesn't mean that it's, like, the right place that you're gonna learn the most from. The thing that might have made that procedure might no longer still be relevant. Because the people who were there that got us to that state might not be as involved. It might be a much larger company. It might be a lot more processed. It's very much about, I would say, go look for the smartest people you can surround yourself with and try to work there. And don't just do, like, little flavor one year at multiple companies. Like, you really wanna understand something from first principles, which really requires spending multiple years trying to work through some hard problem. You definitely wanna try to look for places that already had some level of success, and then you're gonna continue to build on a level of success.
00:12:38 · Karthik Gollapudi
The reason I call that out is because there's some pretty interesting companies with smart people that seem smart from the outside. And as a 22 year old or when you're young, it's hard to evaluate, like, what is smart or not smart because everyone's smarter than you. You wanna be careful to not go somewhere, spend a decade, and if that company shuts down, you don't know what that company did that was successful or not successful. That's why it's good to go to a place that has, like, some level of success that has momentum and it's continuing to grow. So, like, SpaceX was really awesome in that regard. They were actually... Around the time I landed was the first time the Falcon Heavy was launched. They already had rocket... Falcon nine rockets that were launching. They already had the Dragon one program, but there's still a lot more there they were planning on doing. They weren't just, like, sitting and resting. That's what I would optimize for. The reason I call out the procedure is, like, I would completely remove the procedure. Like, if you really wanna do that, go do that. The reason I call that out is because a lot times people will go into that career purely for the sake of the saying, like, it looks cool. You can go tell your aunts about it, but are you gonna learn as much? Are you doing
00:13:31 · S0
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00:14:00 · Karthik Gollapudi
[00:14:00] S1: Like, hard skills. Are you actually working on the problem, or are you completely abstracted away? Are you just multiplying the grunt work that's being done? So, like, are you actually gonna ownership of things, or are you just, like, being the grunt work multiplier for someone else that's more senior? So the reason I recommend people to join a company, doing something hard and, like, seeing what great looks like, it's very difficult to strive for greatness if you've never seen what greatness looks like. Cool. You can go watch as many podcasts as you want. You can go see what... Some blog posts, but it's kinda like Instagram. Right? You only see the best of someone's life. You only see, like, a very curated version that's in, like, a blog post. But what were the decisions that got the company to that place? What were the nine failures they had for that one success? That's what you learn by actually solving hard problems. You don't get that by spending one, two years at, like, six companies and then saying, I'm gonna go do an MBA and then go start a company, for example. And you just really have to work deeply on a hard problem with smart folks. And that hard problem, by the way, can be different problems. Like, you don't necessarily have to go build rockets. Even just, like, growing, like, a software startup, there's a lot of challenges in building that company. Honestly, like, I don't think it's a complete reflection on the other person not being smart. I think just that what's the right role for the person? Like, for somebody to join your company, it's, like, it's a pretty big risk. It might be very different than somewhere else that they've been very successful at. Someone who might have been very, very successful, like a Salesforce, they might struggle in a much earlier stage role. Like, I wouldn't hold it against them. It's just a process. Like, don't feel as bad about it. Everyone does it. Everyone struggles. Everyone finds it hard. But as we were talking about iteration rate, you wanna kiss more frogs. You'll see what's good, what's not a lot faster than sitting there trying to grind through a bad decision. The best things that I learned while working at SpaceX, very, very strong focus on first principles thinking. You can just keep asking why.