The Exchanges

Q Now coming on the side of Gaurav as an angel investor. Why do you angel invest?

A I don't. The only angel investments I have done are, uh, an academy team members who have gone and started their own companies or my, or friends, or if a friend is saying that they're investing in this company, I don't actively angel invest. I invested, uh, in, uh, Nishant, who was building Bolo and who's now building Newton School. He's, uh, ex-unacademy. I invested in Sumit, who is now building OpenTalk. He was my mentor at Uh, he's my mentor and, uh, he, uh, he was the CEO of common floor when they acquired us. I've known him for a very long time. I invested there. So, so, uh, I invested in Shashang Murali because, uh, for company tap cheap, because I've known him for a very long time. I don't do angel investments. And like, it's not like I won't do if I see something, but usually I have done in places where I knew the founder or I don't actively go out looking for deals.

AI assessment note: “I don't. The only angel investments I have done are, uh, an academy team members”

Q Uh, how, what time do you say today Being a very busy CEO, do you dedicate to learning in a week?

A I, I think, uh, I, I think there is no concept of a CEO as a busy CEO, because For me, learning is my part of the schedule. For example, um, five to five 30 every day is dedicated for learning. It's, I don't think learning is something that you do outside of your schedule. For example, the statement that I'm a busy CEO, how do I find time to learn? That's the fundamental problem. I mean, what, what, if I'm running a company and if reading books or learning from my mentors will help me run that better. That should be my number one priority. So I think, uh, and I think I would like to thank Bhavin of Direktai, uh, who was also, Direktai was the first company I ever worked at. And eventually Bhavin joined us as the board of directors and he's a friend and a personal mentor to me. And I think, uh, I think he started recommending books to me and every book that he recommended has had a huge impact. I mean, I remember the first time I read Traction, or the first time I read 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. It just made me see things differently. And one of the things I liked about Bhavin, in fact, it's his birthday today, and we were just discussing this in the night, that people who are able to build very solid companies are the ones who see this as a sport. And who's, who's goal is to play the sport. Well, And when you want to excel at a sport, you have to spend considerable time tra…

AI assessment note: “five to five 30 every day is dedicated for learning”

Q Gaurav, you're a learning machine, and you have said it again and again in this podcast, that how do you learn? So, in your team, and especially among your leadership team, How that, how do you transfer the same passion of learning? It's difficult because as a founder, disseminating that same values.

A It's not difficult. I think if you use the right tools, I think one of the, one of the interesting part about our organization is that we would be using tools that probably other organizations would adapt 18 to 24 months later. For example, a tool I use is called LOOM, L-O-O-M. It's a tool to give, to share thoughts and feedback very quickly. And before you came here, I was just recording a Loom video, which was like a 10 minute Loom video. Because you have figured out the best tools and because we live in a world where you have products like Slack. So if I'm reading something, I quickly share my notes on Slack. I have a reading notes group on WhatsApp. There are times when I start my leadership meeting with people watching a 30 minute video. I think if you read, so, so my belief is, you know, if founders really want to do something, so for example, if founders really want to build a culture, um, of learning, they can. I just because I have focused on learning, I know I can make my leadership focused on learning. Uh, but you know, and then that becomes your value. So, so the values of an organization are not what they put up on the wall. The values of the mission statement of an organization is what you do every single day. Now, because people see me reading and sharing notes every single day, they get inspired and they start reading. For example, I, Gave my entire, uh, co-team…

AI assessment note: “because people see me reading and sharing notes every single day, they get inspired”

Q What are your learnings on building for large markets after your first stint, or your first, uh, Flat. TO acquisition happened?

A You would be surprised to know that I never thought about large markets. Today I do, because I have learned a lot. But when I started Unacademy, um, I had no idea what market I was building for. We wanted to build test prep. We wanted to build computer programming content. We wanted to build K-Twealth content. We wanted for people to learn English. Um, I think, I think what we really were excited about is that I created some videos and Roman created some videos and that got millions of views. And we knew how we can get educators online and help them create content. And eventually we ended, ended up in the test prep direction, and we realized, oh, it's a multi-billion dollar opportunity, and then we built products around it, and, uh, but, but, but to be honest, uh, I had no idea about what market we were targeting when we started Unacademy.

AI assessment note: “You would be surprised to know that I never thought about large markets.”

Q you have more than 70,000 paid subscribers for an academy plus. Very few brands in India or very few online companies in India have been able to go distribution first for a long time, 2015, 2019 for, in your case, and they'll crack monetization the way you cracked it. What was the thought process behind it? It could have gone wrong also have people not subscribed to an academy plus.

A No, it couldn't have gone wrong because, uh, um, I think one of the things about us as founders and leaders at an academy is that, um, grit is there. We don't give up. So it, it, it would have been very difficult. We, and we pivoted a lot by the way. In fact, before launching the plus subscription, we must have done at least seven, eight different monetization experiments. Uh, we, we did experiments of if a learner can dedicate something to a teacher directly and we take a cut, or if teachers can sell their individual courses, we did a bunch of experiments, um, and we finally picked something. So it's not like we just launched plus subscription and it worked. We did a lot of experiments and a lot of things didn't work. So, um, you know, initially the goal was to build something like a YouTube for education. And, and a lot of people understood that. And I think people know that, uh, uh, when you're building a platform, you can always monetize later. But if you have a, if you have a place where you have great educators and learners, you have supply and demand. Uh, eventually you can monetize it. We were lucky to have also investors who were not pushing us for monetization at any point of time.

AI assessment note: “before launching the plus subscription, we must have done at least seven, eight different monetization experiments”

Q Any mistakes from the first venture where you said, oh, this is not going to happen in Unacademy?

A See, I was 23 years old. I was an angry young man. I, I remember, um, uh, I did a lot of mistakes. I had no idea. I had run college committees where I was the president, but this was the first time I was running a company. Um, I hired too many people too fast. Uh, we were not mindful about the burn. Um, this is, this is when we had just raised 20, 30 lakhs in angel investment in FlatDot too. Then, uh, I was not good with feedback. I used to give feedback publicly. Um, Today I still do in my leadership team, because you know, those are senior people and they can take it. But, uh, to junior members of the team, we prefer one-on-one feedback. Um, I, I, I think I was, I, I always have been a very aggressive founder, uh, who, who, who had very strong opinions about everything and who used to get very, very highly pissed if something was not done his way. But today I have evolved into accepting that, um, I need to be more patient and tolerant, and, um, I need to let people figure out the solutions on their own, because if I keep telling them what to do, thinking that only I know the best solution, they are not growing, and, and I am too staunch about my opinions. Well, I think, and then this is like a four year, five year journey. It's not like this happened in a few months. I think when you work with different kinds of people, when your organization grows, you learn these things. Bu…

AI assessment note: “I hired too many people too fast. Uh, we were not mindful about the burn.”

Q What has been the process that from day one you have been able to get the best educators which you differentiate yourselves in on the academy platform?

A So see, uh, the founders of an academy have been content creators themselves. For example, when I was in college, I used to run a bunch of Facebook pages. Roman and I both are in the top 20 most followed Quora writers in the world. Now, when you understand what creators want, Then you are able to build an organization from a product relationship management content level that others are not able to because we have done it ourselves. That gives us an edge, but it doesn't mean others can't learn it. It's just that we have been obsessed about it. For example, we have an educator delight team and, and I'm publicly saying it that makes us different because overall I want the industry to benefit from it. Now that Educator Delight team is obsessed about giving memorable moments to the educators. See all, all companies will pay the educators, but the companies which makes the educators feel very, very good about themselves and feel that, you know, even if they're working remotely, they're a part of a mission. That is the company that will help. That is the organization that will retain the best educators. And we do that through our Educator Delight team. We have events for them. Uh, we have contests for them. Recently we did Secret Santa for our educators who are not even in our office, who are sitting at their homes, but they go crazy about these small things. You need to compliment th…

AI assessment note: “we have an educator delight team and, and I'm publicly saying it that makes us different”

Q So, so I, I, I mean, do you take notes or you maintain Evernote just for the audience? What your structure look like for learning?

A Yeah, a lot of them. At this very moment, uh, let me just open my laptop. At this very moment, I have probably, uh, 8000 notes in my notes app. I use Apple notes. I have my work dashboard. I have my meeting notes. I have my learning dashboard. I, my learning is very structured. Uh, every meeting that I do probably ends up, uh, with certain notes, uh, in, in the same app, I maintain my diary. So it's, it's very structured. Every idea that I get, um, uh, is, is documented here. Then you have stuck, uh, then there are structured meetings for the week. There is an organization framework. And, um, if you, if you don't track these things, uh, it's, it's very difficult to be productive, um, at any stage. Whether you are a five member team or a 500 member team.

AI assessment note: “I have probably, uh, 8000 notes in my notes app. I use Apple notes.”

Q And, uh, for you, uh, there's a recall process also that you, at the end of every week or weekend, you visit these notes back from a week. How does the process work for you?

A No, no. I spend close to hour, hour and a half on the, on these notes. So, uh, I do document it. For example, I have something called as a work calendar. In the work calendar, It's not a to-do list, but let's say I got five ideas today. Now these ideas can be long-term ideas, or these can be fixes that I want to do. I will just put them under 20th December or 21st December. Now every day. So now I've been doing this for the last two, three years, and I have hundreds of such items. And whenever I complete it, I take it. Now every day I go to these points of the last 30 days, last 40 days, and I pick, and then, then some of them I prioritize over others. It's a very structured process, and I was in fact planning to write a blog post regarding that, which I, which I might be looking forward to it.

AI assessment note: “every day I go to these points of the last 30 days”

Q So coming to the part of Gaurav as a storyteller, you have evolved beautifully as a founder in terms of this narrative. Which you have built from day one. Was this the number one pillar to bring such great advisors and investors in an academy?

A I don't know. I don't know why they came. I think it was not one thing. I think it was, if I had to say number one pillar, I think it was clarity. Um, Many founders built because they want to build, uh, for a particular market or because they want to build because, uh, VCs are investing for that particular product. For example, I think that, um, except a few companies, a lot of companies which started in the income share agreement market, uh, that was because investors were funding those particular type of companies. Or a lot of companies which started focusing on, um, um, so, so basically the, the point being that we were never building for anyone except ourselves. We had identified a problem and that's why we were very clear about it. So I remember, uh, an investor pitch, I don't want to name the investor. The investor asked me, oh, will you eventually do that? I said, no. And they were stunned because they were except expecting a different answer. I think one of the reasons that we have been able to, uh, raise funds, uh, is because of our sheer execution capabilities. We have, um, executed in a manner that is 20 X, 30 X or even a hundred X better than others. We have changed this industry. So, so we just completed four years and I wrote a blog post about, um, There are two types of successful companies. There is a successful company which, which is a successful company and w…

AI assessment note: “if I had to say number one pillar, I think it was clarity.”

Q And can you share what's your vision for an academy two years, three years down the line? Where do you want an academy to be? Is it an IPO that you are aiming at?

A See, it keeps on changing. If three years ago, You had asked me, if your top, if the metric is valuation, and you want me to define in that metric, though it's not, the goal has been to build the largest educational platform of the world, and test prep is how we start with. Eventually, we want to go into everything, like starting with maybe K-Twell. Um, but if valuation is, you are asking whether three years ago you would have asked me, I would have told you, That, uh, I want Unacademy to be a unicorn, but I think Unacademy will be a unicorn in 12 months. I think, uh, we will get there very fast. Um, but, uh, but I, I, I think Unacademy can be a ten billion dollar company. I think we can be a decacon. I think we can be a very, very large organization. I think we have fundamentals in place and the market is big enough. So, I mean, if we are not able to be a very, very large company, That means we fucked up something. It's not like, like it means we did something wrong because we have been lucky to get the right investors. If we have been lucky to have such a big market opportunity, we have been lucky to build a great product that now we need to focus and keep executing.

AI assessment note: “the goal has been to build the largest educational platform of the world”

Q Gaurav, obsessive is a word you mentioned continuously during a conversation. It's one of your leadership principles, and you are now interacting with many founders or investors. How being an obsessive founder helps you when you see others who are more relaxed about, but building in the same fashion?

A I mean, the negative side is that I, I have difficulty sleeping on most days because I'm too much worried about everything. But the positive side is that we are reshaping the industry as we know of. We are giving nightmares to all our competitors about what our next move will be. Because most of them are worried about, hey, what will an academy do next? Will they come in our segment or not? And that's not something to be proud of. Not, not that particular thing, but we are in general just proud of helping shape this industry. For example, every other education player is copying us right now. We launched a subscription model. Every other education player is launching the subscription model. That makes me feel happy because we are changing the industry. So, you know, that immense obsession and paranoia. I feel that great companies are built on obsession and paranoia. That immense obsession and paranoia. Great companies which create a dent. Let me also clarify it. I think that's needed. If you just want to build a successful company, it's not needed. But if you want to build a successful company, which also creates a dent, which moves the industry forward, you need to build that. Yeah. The, the, the guy who, uh, uh, invented OKRs as we know of. Yeah. In fact, Andy Grove, uh, has been, um, um, I mean, his, his management style, his leadership philosophies, um, um, he has been very,…

AI assessment note: “I feel that great companies are built on obsession and paranoia.”

Q So what is Unacademy replacing in the physical world?

A As of now, an academy is, will, it, it's not technically replacing. I'll, I'll tell you the concept. I'll tell you the plus subscription and why it works. And, uh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that one of, one of my, uh, most helpful mentors has also been Konal Shah of Gret. Uh, I think he's one of the most candid mentors and he has always given brutal and candid feedback, which has helped me improve as an entrepreneur. So I think, uh, Um, it's also an advice to other entrepreneurs that please have mentors. Please have mentors who tell you the reality when nobody else can. Because very few people will be honest and brutal. And if they are, don't take it personally. Don't get offended by their brutal feedback. There is nobody else who's going to, there are very few people who are going to give you the brutal feedback. Yeah. What was the question?

AI assessment note: “And, uh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that one of”