The Exchanges

Q Well, would love to know your journey before entrepreneurship. Where did you grow up? Your parents, their background, uh, and your education. Yeah.

A So, um, I grew up in Bangalore, like I've been a Bangalore boy all my life. The only time I ever left Bangalore was, uh, to study. I went to Manipal, uh, the Mangalore one. And my mom's a CA. My dad's a doctor. So they both come from like, so my mom comes from Udupi. My dad comes from this place called Bantwal. It's a village, right? So they did okay for themselves because they kind of Sort of accelerated from, you know, a tier two, tier three sort of ecosystem, and then finally made it to Bangalore, right? Which is a big thing in those days. Uh, gave me the kind of platform to be able to at least, you know, finish my college and, and, uh, you know, they, they get, I think the best thing my parents ever did for me was they gave me a computer very young. So age of seven, I was gifted a computer. Uh, by the age of 1011, I had already started like playing games. Uh, in fact, one of the first games I played, most people don't know about this game, but it was a game called Mugen. Right? Where you could create your own character. So you could have Superman play against Pikachu and Flash play against, I don't know, uh, Iron Man, right? So it was like crazy. And the game allowed you to also, uh, write in your own character. So you could code the characters in and you can also sort of change the sprites, right? So I had to do a little bit of design on changing the sprites and I had to d…

AI assessment note: “I grew up in Bangalore... My mom's a CA. My dad's a doctor.”

Q And, uh, tell us more about your, uh, learnings on YouTube and then again for Twitter in the last four years of creating content on it, what works, what not works. This is for the, the, Entrepreneurs and creators who aspire to build an audience like you?

A Uh, I'll be honest, right? Like, and I think a lot of Indian VCs are going through this because a lot of Indian VCs are now become creators in a, in a, in a traditional sense of things, right? I feel like one thing that I didn't get back then, which they also don't get right now is that they create content with their self image in, in, in focus, which I did for years, right? I was like, this is me. This is who I am. This is what I talk about. And yeah, I can't, I have to hold this very close, right? For example, I will tweet about, uh, you know, five quick commerce trends and write a thread about it. Here's what I believe about quick commerce, write a thread about it. I feel like, um, that's good. It attracts you one kind of audience, but if you truly want to build a brand, you have to take a stand.

AI assessment note: “if you truly want to build a brand, you have to take a stand”

Q But, but there's a difference between, you know, solving a problem really well and building a large business. So which part do you care more about?

A Yeah, I, I, and I know I shouldn't be saying this on a, on a podcast listened to by VCs, but I just really want to solve the problem. And I feel like At the end of the day, right? It's always about the best product, the best product wins, right? I understand. I know the VCs have this question about GTM or, you know, how are you going to capture any number of customers? How are you going to win the market and whatnot, right? I feel like those are lesser, smaller challenges for us. And it's something I don't say often. So, because I know it for granted and a lot of VCs don't, but it's like for us, the minute I know there's a product that people love and people really want, I will get the distribution.

AI assessment note: “I just really want to solve the problem.”

Q I think nature has perfected over millions of years. So why to reinvent at least the human form?

A Yeah, that too, plus everything we have built is all only designed for us. It's not designed for cats, right? Like when a cat jumps on a table, it's like, it's, it's not natural for the cat to be on a table. But for human beings, you know, it's perfect height, perfect for my hands to be here, whatever. So, if you see figure zero one, one X, Optimus, which is Tesla's Optimus, robotics is getting better, and I don't fully understand hardware as much, like I'm learning over the year, because it's important for me to pick it up, but I can foresee that robots, just like a store owner, just deploying the robot, like I said, right, the store owner has a leverage, he's bought that small property, he owns that shop, he has some connections within the offline world, from where he gets lemons and all that, he just keep a robot selling there.

AI assessment note: “plus everything we have built is all only designed for us.”

Q Do you think these kinds of things will continue?

A See, it was, I'm very surprised it took so long, because I'll tell you what happened to the Facebook fiasco, right? Apple said Facebook is a villain, Facebook is stealing your data, blah, blah, blah, blah, and now you have to opt into apps, including Facebook, Instagram, etc., right? You have to opt in to be tracked, and without tracking, Facebook can't sell ads, send you ads, so they're sending all sorts of rubbish ads, and Facebook, like, they really made Facebook the villain, then, and their pitch was, oh, privacy, this, that. Well then, next few weeks later, they just launched the Apple Ads thing, right? Which is on, now on Maps and a bunch of other places. So they are building their own ad network. So they just eliminated a competitor using some other thing, and then Apple's very clever at messaging like that. Uh, so it was about time they got this.

AI assessment note: “I'm very surprised it took so long, because I'll tell you what happened”