The Exchanges

Q And you were presenting the business projections, business plan, and they stopped you midway and asked, how are we doing on culture?

A Totally. Totally. And I'd never been asked that question in that order. Any other organization that I've been with, the first thing that they always wanted to know was about business metrics. This was the first time. This was Grady Burnett who was visiting. Of course, they're so excited. We want to show him the business metrics of the impact that we were making on global operations, and we did a bunch of prep on that, and that's what I started with. And indeed, he paused me and he said, I think they're getting ahead of ourselves. I would like to know, how are you building the right pipeline for people? What are you doing to build the right culture? And then, of course, business results will come. It was an aha moment for me. And I decided that I'm going to really spend time understanding the Facebook culture. Uh, and in Facebook, it was all about being anchored on its values. You know, be bold, move fast, build social value, um, focus on impact. So these were some of the elements of the, uh, of the culture that I spent a lot of time on. Sid, that led us to lots of work streams, if you may, to make that real. One, we used to have discussions about what does it mean. Let's take be open as an example. You ask five people what be open means to you, you'll get 10 different answers. It could be about be open with information. It could be about be open in how we are having conversatio…

AI assessment note: “This was Grady Burnett who was visiting... paused me and he said”

Q And which of the companies that you saw going public during SoftBank time?

A Yeah, so one of it was IonQ. Um, this was the first quantum computing, uh, investment scene. Um, and there's a story in there. Um, the story is, um, you know how for the best companies, it's a, it's a hustle to get into their cap table because there's always more dollars chasing them than there is the capacity to accommodate. And IonQ was one of those. Um, and it was very, very oversubscribed. Everyone was hustling to get in. Uh, it came down to one of, um, my, uh, fellow board members from another investment, Collective Health, Ala Hawala, who is with Mubadla, uh, who was an early investor in IonQ. He really rooted for me with the CEO and the rest of the team and said, I've been with her. I've seen the kind of value that she adds to companies. You will, you, it will really be beneficial for you to have, um, both SoftBank and Kirtika be part of this investment. Um, and if I step back from that example, uh, that is so often that these rounds get full with just the people who are The investors who they know, and people just co-invest together, and that leads for very little opportunity to bring new managers in, emerging managers in, diverse managers in. So for everybody who's listening, uh, when you're investing, creating a team, I would really urge each one of you to think broadly than the classic tribe that you bring together as for co-investment and see whether there is someon…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so one of it was IonQ.”

Q And assume Facebook then globally in 2010 would have had like hundred or two hundred million users globally?

A Uh, you know, we were a few hundred million, because I remember that we celebrated the five hundred million mark, and then we celebrated the billion dollar mark while I was there. And of course, since then, it's now like three billion plus, uh, people. So it was a time of unprecedented scale. There was no playbook. Uh, my first charter was to build one of their global operations offices, uh, which ties back, um, said to what I'm doing now with, uh, virtualness and metrics. Because we had to look at, are you a real user? Are you a fake user? Um, um, my co-founder at Verix Virtualness did a lot of work on news and media, fake news, not fake news. Trust transparency was a big part of what we worked on when we built global operations. So I did that first and then, uh, focused on, uh, India revenue, uh, and Asia Pacific, uh, revenue. Um, We spent a lot of time visioning and doing vision exercises, and our first vision for the India market was articulated as a hundred, hundred, hundred, where, um, we wanted to have a hundred million people on the platform, a hundred million in revenue, and a hundred million people that we touched through our community efforts. It was a very cross-functional goal. Uh, Facebook, like most multinational companies, Is structured functionally. So whichever function, um, I directly managed global operations reported into me, things like HR would have, uh, …

AI assessment note: “we were a few hundred million, because I remember that we celebrated the five hundred million mark”

Q Yeah. Yeah. And do you see, you know, uh, uh, like you have almost lived Silicon Valley on 20, 25 years of your life. Yeah. Right. Do you see Silicon Valley is getting replicated over other parts of the world, like the kind of talent density and capital density and innovation density Silicon Valley has? Uh, is Bangalore closer to that?

A It's a great question. Um, and I'll answer it in two ways. One, India today is so night and day, um, different in terms of its maturity level of entrepreneurship and the pace and the vibrancy of entrepreneurship, and it is such a joy to see. I remember, um, 20 10 being one of the handful of tech entrepreneurs. Today, to fast forward, Um, and we're not talking about decades and decades. Right. In one decade, seeing entrepreneurs like Mukesh Bansal, who came and spoke at the first Facebook India Day event. We were really small at that time. Um, and now he was with Myntra, and to see what he has done, being a repeat founder, doing angel investing, and stories like that across the board, um, seeing, um, Um, you know, Ritesh from OYO. Um, I, I, I, I was part of a network. I still am part of a network called edge to, uh, dot, um, uh, core where we were part of this tech entrepreneur ecosystem. And I remember talking to Bhavish and to Ritesh and the ideas where, you know, ideas at the back of an envelope, if you may. And if you see how far things have come, it is mind boggling. And I also project that if you fast forward a decade from now, the transformation that we're going to see, including with what AI is going to drive, is going to cause the last 10 years to pale in comparison. And let us not minimize the last 10 years. India had less than a hundred million people on the internet …

AI assessment note: “India today is so night and day, um, different in terms of its maturity level”

Q And then what led to Stanford? I think you went to Stanford at the age of 32, which is usually.

A I was 29, 29 at that time. Um, and so, yes, so it, I was one of the older, um, members of that class. Um, what led to that? I, you know, a lot of people ask me, how do you, have you planned out your career, um, right from the beginning where you wanted to be an engineer, be, go to an MBA, go be an investor, entrepreneur. And sometimes they say, of course, it was all planned. And, um, um, I remember, you know, the first time I was listed in one of the Fortune Most Powerful Woman lists and came back and we had our usual, this was at Facebook, um, and we have our usual Friday Q&A session, which is a tradition across all Facebook offices, um, and someone asked me that question. They said, did you know, did you have, had you, did you have, All of your career path charted to move to this moment. And I looked at her and I said, yes, of course. Yeah. And by the way, if anyone believed even a fraction of that answer, you will believe anything because none of that was planned. I did not know. I would, I did not know growing up that I would want to come to my master's in the United States. When I did my engineering, I did not know that I would want to go, uh, get an MBA and certainly Mark wasn't even born at that point. So I certainly did not know that I would want to go to Facebook. So what led to it? Um, what led to it was as a director of engineering, I was beginning to make a lot of b…

AI assessment note: “what led to it was as a director of engineering, I was beginning to make”

Q You are comparing yourself with your peers at, uh, Stanford, obviously, right? What are they doing after?

A What are they doing after? Right. Um, so, um, so. All learnings of life along the way, and it was really important for me to listen to myself, and what was important for me, also have the benefit of having community around you, and experts that you can ask question, so, which makes me think about the community that you're building with your fund, and the ability to go ask your hard questions, and to get tell it like it is advice, Um, I reached out to someone who was a Stanford Business School alum, Jana Rich, who was with Conferry at that time. I asked her, is this going to look bad if they see that I was a Director of Engineering and after Stanford, I'm going to do this? She said something that will also always stay with me, where she said, Kirtika, if this is a short-term move, it's not something that you are Um, going to put your heart, soul, spirit into seeing if it can make, if it, if it will work, then don't do it. But if this is something that you really are passionate about, trying product management, wanting to work for a startup, things will work out, and you will grow so fast that it will not matter. And sure enough, um, went to the startup, rose up very quickly again to being the director of product management. I often tell, um, the, um, the younger generation that if you look at, if today, if you go to my LinkedIn, your eyes will be trained to just see, oh, she was…

AI assessment note: “What are they doing after? Right. Um, so, um, so. All learnings of life”