[CTQ Smartcast] How Should Founders Think About Building A Culture For Future Relevance, With Ria Shroff Desai

Ria Shroff Desai leads the People & Culture function for Blume Ventures. She has worked across the not-for-profit, startup, and mid-sized corporate spaces in India and Latin America in strategic and operational roles, and brings a global perspective to leveraging human capital. She is passionate about building strong teams, dynamic cultures, and sustainable practices that translate into growth and results. At Blume, she works closely with the founders to create a progressive workplace driven by growth, support, innovation, and purpose.

This Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder, BV Harish Kumar, is a great opportunity to witness the discussion about the importance that people’s function and culture hold in an organization and why and how founders should codify it.

If you are a founder or the custodian of the culture in an organization, you will find this conversation extremely insightful.

 
 

Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.

 
 
 
 

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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)

SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • What does heading people’s function in an organization entails?

  • Using your company’s culture to attract and retain talent.

  • Relation between product and culture of the company.

  • The distinction between the diversity of thought and toxicity.

  • The importance of codifying your organization's culture.

  • Deliberate actions to maintain your organizational culture.

  • The role of stories and rituals in building a culture for a company.

LINK TO THE BOOK & aRTICLE MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST

ARTICLES BY RIA SHROFF DESAI

If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like Will You Need A Personal Information Management Assistant In The Future? (with Sajith Pai)

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

00:00:00

Harish Kumar: Ria leads the People and Culture function at Blume. She also works closely with founders of their portfolio companies to create a progressive workplace driven by growth, support, innovation, and purpose. Given our own experience in this space, I had lots to discuss with Ria. How should founders think about building a culture? When is the right time to do it? What are the risks of not being deliberate about it? And what are the warning signs to watch out for when founders start building their people functions? How and why should founders codify their culture? Ria also spoke about the role of stories and rituals in building a culture. It was fun to exchange notes with Ria about our own experiences in working in these areas, building culture manifestos and repositories of stories. We also spoke about, you know, the poster children of startup culture narrative like Netflix and Hubspot and how there’s a need to find an Indian equivalent of this? There's a lot of actionable advice as well as food for thought in this chat. If you're the founder or the custodian of the culture of a small and growing company, you should basically just drop everything and listen to this. And by the way, do the usual things. Subscribe, rate us, write a short review or leave a comment. It helps others as you discover us. If you're a founder, you may also want to check out how we help companies articulate their culture manifesto using a framework of dilemmas resolution, you'll find a bunch of interesting ways in which we can help you. Just check out choosetothinq.com. But first, you can start by listening to this fascinating chat with Ria Shroff Desai. 

00:02:00

Harish: Hi Ria, welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.

00:02:02

Ria: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:04

Harish: Yeah. So Ria, let me start with the first question. So you head People and Culture for Blume. So what does your role really involve?

00:02:13

Ria: Pretty much what it says, I think. But more, it's a custodianship more than a job and a role, I think it is ownership of everything that has to do with taking care of the people who work at Blume and really helping build a culture for 2.0. Blume has been going for about 10 years right now. We've come from 0 to 1 in the startup sense and the world has changed around then as well. So the expectations from a workplace, the expectations of what a venture capital firm is meant to do are changing. And the founding partners realize that they do need someone who can own this as a function on its own and be able to manage and solve for the people part of the venture capital business, which in itself is pretty unique because your expectations of growth, your expectations of reward recognition, your rule, the empowerment and the ownership you get are very different from whether it's a corporate or whether it's another startup. So I think primarily my role involves, within the lens of venture capital, figuring out what sort of systems, processes help better decision making and what people development within the context of the firm’s mission looks like. Taking off a little bit of the load from the senior team and providing a little more channelised communication, decision making and helping figure things out. Eventually, I will move towards working with our portfolio companies in some capacity to drive again what Blume’s investment thesis and approach is, and helping them solve their people development and the questions that come up around then. But all of that requires more understanding and spending more time in the ecosystem, which is pretty much what I'm focused on right now in addition to working with the team and hopefully building a great place to work.

00:04:03

Harish: Right. So I'm gonna have a couple of questions about Blume’s culture that you talked about. But before that, since you mentioned what this role is eventually going to grow into, that has piqued my curiosity. So the popular perception about startups is that they're usually fighting survival battles and culture is not the top priority for entrepreneurs. Similarly, early employees have also sort of decided in their minds that we're going to have sleepless nights, we're going to put in long hours and that's the price they have to pay for a great payday sometime later. So how true are both these perceptions? Is it a perception? And if it is, how true are these perceptions, and has there been a change in recent times?

00:04:53

Ria: So I think the keyword here like you rightfully pointed out, is perception. There's no right or wrong here, but that's pretty much how the startup ecosystem evolved. At that point, the goal of startups, you know, when the whole startup ecosystem came was to try and find an alternate way to create a product, to get it to market, to probably do it faster, to allow for more innovation and creativity faster than the speed of what was being allowed in a traditional work setup. So at that point, you were supposed to commit to the passion, for the purpose, for being part of something bigger. Maybe at that point, it was an either-or because you had to take a risk to get out of the established system, but the more people started doing that and the more the startup ecosystem developed, I think people started thinking more about their role in the system and that's when market dynamics come into play. When the ecosystem is small, you sort of have to get on and do whatever was needed at the sacrifice, at the cost of your personal life. You had to do whatever was sort of needed and just get onto the rocket ship and be grateful you got a seat. Now we're increasingly seeing that people have more power of choice, they have more power of demand. It's demand and supply, as with any case in market economics. When the supply starts demanding, that's pretty much when change comes. I think you would almost think of it in a way that people are now trying to regulate what the startup ecosystem should look like and what they can expect as a fair reward for that work, which should not be seen as any less compared to the work that's put in at a corporate and should equally be rewarded for the same.

00:06:28

Harish: Right. But in the recent past, if you look at the last few months at least in the tech entrepreneurship space in India, there's a war for talent, right? Being fought mainly on pay raises and fancy bikes and cars. So is it realistic for some companies to still use culture as a magnet instead to attract and retain talent?

00:06:56

Ria: It absolutely is because if you are continuously linking your employee joining you on an external point of validation or gratification, someone else may come and give a bigger car, bigger house, a bigger bike, more money and they will leave. But if you are banking on your employee staying with you because of how they feel at your organization, which people still think sounds fluffy and wishy-washy, but in fact, it's not. If it ties into their sense of who they are, makes them feel valued, recognizing part of something bigger, even a 4x package will not make them leave. I've met companies who will state their CTC in the job description upfront for example and say the package is not negotiable. Please proceed with the process if you'd like to as well, right? That sends a very clear signal on compensation is one part of what you will get here. We need to see what more and if we want you, you know, I think we've been swinging between two extremes of the ball being in the manager's court, whereas the ball being in the employee's court. Both feel like they can demand and I think it's come to a healthy balance right now, that companies are being smart and realistic about the amount of money they have to pay. But they're also being very clear, at least the ones that get it are being clear about, “We're gonna take our time and do a culture check and make sure you're in it for the long run.” Once you're here, we'll do everything we can to set you up for success, to work with you when you make mistakes and to make you feel like you own a part of this, right? I think coming from the corporate world, we talk a lot about, I'm not the owner, I'm not the founder, I don't have the ESOPs, why should I care? You know, why should I put in so much work if I'm not going to get the rewards? And I think in the startup ecosystem we can solve for that by making employees feel like they have ownership, by designing the organization, the role, the rewards. So you can do that. And I think that sense of ownership and sense of culture will any day trump two bikes or a car.

00:09:10

Harish: Yeah. I mean speaking from personal experience, I have worked in companies where the joke used to be that trespassers will be hired. To our company right now, where we have been accused of having an extreme amount of friction in the whole process for even hiring for something like a freelancer role. So yeah, we've seen, personally, I've seen that entire shift and what comes with that whole shift in philosophy as well, right? Because now, you know that the people who are coming in are in it for the work, they really want to do that. 

00:09:46

Ria: It's a very scary thing to be on the HR team, to be on the founding or the leadership team of an organization, and to have an employee come to you and say, “Hey, I have an offer from somewhere else and they're paying me X.” And to take the ethical call at that point, whether you will engage in those discussions or not, and to be ready to take the risk that if you say, “Look, if you want to move on for a higher salary, please move on.” and losing a strong candidate, and really balancing being confident that you are offering the best experience that you feel is relevant. I mean you can always be questioned on that. Being on the other side of the table is always a tricky situation to have to justify yourself to employees. But I think companies who are confident in what value they can generate for employees down the line, in the long run, will ultimately end up having cultures that also create for that, for those who are willing to stay.

00:10:41

Harish: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we also do a lot of work in the culture space. So we get to hear some of these stories. In some cases, they are war stories from some of these founders. Before the next question, I'll just mention what we heard from Monish Darda, CTO and co-founder of Icertis, it's a unicorn company. So we just published a Smartcast with him and one of the most interesting things that he said was when he and his co-founder when they sat down, they first decided what is the kind of organization they want to build before they even decided what product they're going to come up with. He said this wisdom was due to the fact that he was a fourth or fifth-time entrepreneur when they started Icertis. So you know, these second, third, fourth-time entrepreneurs seem to value culture and the kind of organization they want to build. So what do they know that a first-time entrepreneur usually doesn't?

00:11:46

Ria: So I spoke to one of my colleagues, Sajith Pai, who was instrumental in getting me into Blume to get his thoughts on this because as I mentioned I'm still learning about exactly this topic and about how entrepreneurs think. He said something really interesting and the concept he brought up, which really stuck with me, is that second and third-time founders are very mindful of what we call culture debt. First-time founders are in very much of a hurry to build and get something out and you know, at any cost and gloss over issues that may have happened or forgive someone who's not a great team player. What ends up happening is that you accumulate cultural debt, which piles up and then things start breaking down when you have to scale and when you have to grow and really take those big decisions, bring more people on. For example, allowing toxic people to stay just because they're great at the job. Like having a sales head who really bangs out targets but might be a horror to work with or that might make people really uncomfortable. Those sorts of things in the long run, when a brand develops end up actually poisoning it. And first-time founders don't think it's as important because they also are not aware of everything because they themselves are so focused on, like you mentioned the product and whether it's funding or how are people thinking about me? Am I moving fast enough? Second-time founders are very deliberate about the team as much as they are with the product because they understand that the best teams build the most relevant products. They have aggression, but they know what sort of checks and balances to put on themselves. Paying the sort of interest on debt, one example is the amount of time that your senior management will then have to spend solving these issues which should have been taken care of earlier, you're losing valuable time, right, That's an interest you're paying on culture debt. I found that concept very insightful because I think it is. When we make an investment in our team and our people with the expectation of getting certain returns and when you don't do it, you're penalized for it somehow. So I think that is primarily what second-time founders have learned and what they keep in mind. I think they definitely take a lot of learnings from the product, from the external market, but the biggest learnings they bring in is that, and, you know, I read something about this also that the kind of organization you build actually determines the kind of product you will create. I think that's really interesting because the way you build your team structures, the way decision making happens, the way discussions happen eventually go into the features of your product. Does it have the same smooth interface? Does it require multiple levels of approval or going through before getting to the end product? So the way you think of your org structure actually ends up impacting the kind of product or service you create and the ultimate user experience that someone has.

00:14:46

Harish: Right, so a couple of follow up questions on that Ria. You mentioned the product that you end up creating is hugely governed by the kind of culture that you have. So what happens when companies or startups end up doing a pivot? So in your experience or whatever you have seen, how have these kinds of pivots affected the culture or the culture affected the product after the pivot? Any anecdotes that you can talk about?

00:15:17

Ria: That's an interesting point and I haven't thought a lot about that part, but I would say that the decision to pivot comes from some sort of feedback about what is and what isn't working. I would say that I don't have first-hand anecdotes of that, but my assumption would be that if someone has spent enough time to be able to consider feedback, that they would also then be very open to considering that feedback internally and you would probably see parallel and complementary shifts in the culture or in the internal structure as a result of having to rethink what the core offering is, right? Like your core offering is your identity, it's who you are to the world is what you do and when someone is willing to accept that “Hey, we may need to change this,” it implies a fundamental acceptance of ‘something is not working, we need to fix it’. I think that's an incredibly positive environment to actually rethink about culture and org as well because you have already laid the foundation of the desire to grow the desire to be better. I think it's a great time to think about complementarity and what does this mean for our culture? If we're rethinking our product, what does this mean for how we solve for things in general and how is it going to impact? Who gets involved? What the ownership is? How do feedback loops continue happening? It could be planned. If it happens spontaneously, I think HR leaders or the de facto people leaders in the organization would be wise to sort of use that as a moment to make sure that that conversation happens in a parallel sphere as well.

00:16:53

Harish: All right. And I guess in that sense, once you pivot, you're almost like a second-time entrepreneur and all that we talked about earlier in terms of reflecting upon what has changed, what can they do better? I think all that will also kick in, right?

00:17:07

Ria: Automatically. Yeah.

00:17:09

Harish: Yeah. So, another question on the whole startup scene was that founders also end up having the first few hires or first few people that they start working with, who are usually people that they have gone to college with or friends, ex-colleagues. In most cases, these would be very similar to them, they will try to look for complementary skills but they would still be people that they gel with. At some point, they would also want to add that whole diversity of thought which is where probably some people go out on a limb and try to hire somebody that they don't immediately gel with. So how do they understand that this is a diversity of thought and not toxicity or vice versa? How do they make that distinction?

00:18:00

Ria: I think what's extremely important at that point before going out and trying to add anyone else to your team is really being able to articulate what is important to the founding members of your core team. Like yes, they might be cut from the same cloth so to say, they might have similar mindsets and similar experiences but values still go a little beyond that. For example, if they've all met during college, the college life from then on might be very similar and they might have similar experiences but pre-college they might all have certain values that they hold close. So I do think an articulation of “Here's our culture's DNA” making sure that everyone is broadly aligned on that and then using that as a guidebook for looking for the next person. And being able to be objective enough to understand that the person matches the values. They might have a different way of doing something, their values and actions may not look like what our values and actions look like but the intent is there. It is a little difficult early on to try and be objective in this process. It normally helps to have, if it's only the core team or only the founding team, it always helps to bring in another perspective, someone who can help them objectively evaluate like, “Look, you're looking for X, this person has it, they might not.” The packaging might not look like what you expect, it's the packaging or the wrapping up mostly, which is what we tend to focus on in interviews and adding folks to the team. At that level though, it still is very important for the founding team’s values to really come through to that next layer and for them to be still very involved in the hiring. It's a calculated call that someone can take, that we do want to hire people who have these values to match what we are thinking because we believe this will help us bring our product and help us take the next stage. What's important is probably at the level, the minute you feel like now it's getting too big, or maybe some of the earlier founding team members have left and the initial culture that was codified is at risk of breaking down or getting diluted, I think that's a place where probably focusing a little bit more and having someone else help you articulate and help you objectively look for the next set of people would be helpful. Until the level where the existing founding team is still there, the culture, the DNA will still seep through, but the minute someone leaves or you know there's exponential growth, you're at risk of it being diluted. The further someone gets from the founder, the more their understanding of the culture will get fuzzy and that's what you have to account for. My signal is, the minute you have to hire a manager, whatever it's called when you have to hire someone who has to manage someone else, that's when, you know you're getting pretty big and you will need to account for someone to be able to drive, who has to own this culture translating down.

00:21:00

Harish: Right. Yeah. And you also mentioned the culture codified, right? The DNA. How important is it for people to actually articulate that whole culture? A lot of times people feel like I know whether this person is a culture fit or not. Sometimes they're probably going by gut feel, and we know that there are a lot of biases at work there. Unless it is codified, as you said, it's going to be very difficult to actually objectively say that it's a fit or not.

00:21:33

Ria: Of course, there are two camps broadly on this. One that believes ‘culture fit’ is detrimental because that just means you're adding more and more people who are exactly like you and believes that you know you should be looking for ‘culture add’, what else are these people going to add to the team. And one more broadly believes that we do need someone to fit within what we believe. I think there are two aspects, you are not going to know if someone fits what you believe unless you, like I said, articulate and codify, what do you believe? What is inherently non-negotiable to you? A couple of ways that you can very quickly determine that is why would you fire someone? What would make you fire someone? Having that conversation internally will tell you what values really matter to you. Would you fire someone for poor performance? Would you fire someone for disrespecting a colleague or disrespecting an external stakeholder? Would you fire someone for out and out theft or IP fraud or misrepresenting the firm? That's going to put together your values. Like the values that actually matter to you integrity, customer service, keeping the customer first. You can actually back write your values and what you call dear based on that decision. The second point is how would you promote someone? Do you promote based on, would you think of growth based on tenure? “Oh this person has completed three years, they should be promoted to manager,” or “This person has only completed six months but they've done a phenomenal job, I think they deserve to be raised.” So that will tell you immediately if your culture is merit-based versus if you're happy to go a more traditional way and try to be equitable for everyone. Are you going to really focus on performance or are you going to really focus on collaboration and contribution? And I think the third point is who are the kind of people you want to add to the team? Are you going to add folks who have credentials or are you going to have folks who you believe have the potential to grow, who have shown that you know they may be at a 60 or 70% of skillset as a comparable person but have really demonstrated to you that they want to stay here? I think those things are going to signal and help you really make those decisions more than, and you honestly don't need more. Folks who have a really nice typed up and design culture and value statement, stuff across the entrance wall or everywhere. It's great. But what does it mean? You know like I would much rather ask someone these questions or I would much rather go to someone and ask them, how does your company fire people? How do they promote or reward? What do they reward? Are they rewarding, “Hey you met your targets”? or “Hey, you got great feedback from a customer”, or “You really picked up the slack for someone else's work?” What a company chooses to highlight and reward is what they call dear regardless of what is said or the stuff up on stickers on the wall. 

00:24:28

Harish: Yeah. That's very fascinating because, as I said, we work with founders and owners to help codify, articulate their culture manifesto. So we have this framework of around 30 dilemmas. We pick some of them, work with the senior leadership and actually try to understand this. We ask questions like this. So we say, “Yeah you all want to be radically honest and candour is like a big value for you. But what really happens, you know, can you give me examples of how things go? How are things on the ground?” And then there is this huge, there are two aspects to it in fact. One is that people seem to have different definitions of these values. Their manager thinks that this is what it means whereas the founder had probably thought something else. So one is to break that and that's when they realized that this is where they came to be. So on a scale of 10, they want to be on 9 or 10 with transparency. Probably they just want to keep their salaries as a confidential thing and everything else they want to be transparent about. But when they actually rate themselves, they are a 3 or a 4 on 10. That’s when they realize that like you said, those things on the posters and the worlds are not actually living.

00:25:52

Ria: Another great example that you can look at. If you are, for example, coming from the outside and you want to sort of do an audit on what the culture is. Go look at the policies that have been outlined for people, right? Go look at the policies and the benefits that they say to be offering and check with the staff if it makes sense for them. If you, for example, have a lot of the people on your team who have been recently married or are new young parents and are struggling with just balance and everything and let's talk about a pre-covid world right? Right now, it's a little different. But if you did that and you ask them, if the company's philosophy or the policy of saying, “Hey, everyone on a Friday night is going to have beer and pizza post work.” What does that signal? Does that signal that you are expected to be in office? Does that signal that the company has understood who its people are? That we have a lot of young parents, maybe we kind of want to end work and you know six and then allow them to go home early and if they need to take calls from home. Are we rewarded at work and presence in the office versus getting stuff done? Or are we, you know, we say we want to be inclusionary, do our benefits offer that? Are you just buying tickets for cricket matches as a reward to everyone not thinking about what for example female staff might want? Even if you have a few in them, is your reward signalling that all the rewards are meant primarily for this kind of staff? Just things around that, like planning. Even companies that plan hackathons or all-night code-athons and that sort of stuff in tech startups. On one hand, as a tech startup, you say we want to have more women work with us. On the other hand, do you understand the realities of being a woman and either having to travel late at night, going back, feeling safe, working late hours, or having to explain to family? Are you allowed, are you able to design your work experiences around what someone might be experiencing and have to feel comfortable? Right? So I think it comes down to, are you designing intentionally or are you just trying to sort of throw benefits and say, “Hey look, we have a great culture,” because your culture is not your perks, your culture is what your people say it is, and how safe they feel and how much they feel like the company gets us?

00:28:07

Harish: Correct, yeah. And you know, as Ben Horowitz says, culture has to be deliberately designed through actions, right? Because even if you don't do it, your company is going to have a culture, it's up to you as the custodian of that culture, whether you want it to be designed the way you say you want it to be right. Because there's a big difference in what you say and what ends up happening. That should not be the case. So in your experience, what are deliberate actions that startups are doing that you have seen, where they are trying to ensure that the culture that they talk about is actually what they have in their company as well?

00:28:50

Ria: I think there's only really four-five things that you can intentionally design and control for when you're on this side of the fence and either starting up or deciding to start up. Like I mentioned earlier, who do you choose to hire? How do you choose to deal with underperformance? So you know, how do you choose to hire, fire or promote? That's a big part. Because then the people are going to see who does this company value? How can I grow here? What sort of values am I expected to demonstrate? What should I not be doing at all? And it also allows you to show to the external world when you're creating sort of an employee experience while hiring. That's something that you can very intentionally design for because that might be the make or break for someone to choose to come and work with you versus someone who is offering them 30% more. How do you make them feel in the process? So the policies that are around hiring, firing, promotions and exits is definitely one. The second is performance evaluation and employee growth. What factors do you consider important? And what's the signalling that goes down there? How do you end up giving feedback? How do you evaluate growth? Is growth only meeting targets? For example, in the VC world, we are going through this ourselves right now. You know, for a company that can only understand and visualize success at the end of 3-5 years when one of their startups either has an exit or an M&A. How do I design for quarterly evaluations? What am I designing every three months when all they're doing is continuously working with employers, with companies to make sure they have everything they need. So at that point, what we are doing is telling people that we will measure outcomes at the end of the year, during every quarter we’ll measure your inputs because you're in charge of that. Your manager can see your inputs, right? We can't control mergers and lockdowns and companies going bust. What we can control is what we input. So we've designed our ideas of performance around what can you control, what can you do? You are not entirely responsible for the outcome yet because our industry has multiple factors at play. And that is one thing that you know you can do intentionally and make a decision and then that sends a signal to the organization about how you are evaluated and why I feel confident that the company is taking a holistic view, not just pegging me to a number or a metric. And then the last point is what we were discussing earlier is your policies and how you are creating a safe and welcoming a comforting workplace. Every policy that you create is signalling to your employees whether you understand them or not. And by doing that, you are either telling them, you will grow here. You have the ability to be, there was a lot of talk about say you know two years ago about people bringing their whole selves to work and people being authentic at work. Are we doing that? Are we allowing them to say, “Yeah, you have to go and take care of a sick parent, you can do work from home is fine.” You're expected to do these things, we'll check-in. By the way, your insurance is going to cover XYZ and let us know if you need anything, if you need to take a month off, we'll figure it out.” Are you able to have that sort of conversation with your employee to let them know that their job is secure, to let them know that you're there for them? And conversely, you expect the same, right? Like you expect them to put in everything they can, regardless of what the personal situations are. So I would say broadly how you bring employees on, how you let them go, how they grow over here and what more can you do for them? I think those are the only areas where pretty much everyone designs for. Everything else is sort of a subset of this, but these are broadly the three areas that anyone who is trying to intentionally design for culture will end up focusing on.

00:32:44

Harish: Correct, correct. And since you mentioned your own industry, how do you ensure that newcomers at Blume imbibe and practice the culture that you were talking about?

00:32:54

Ria: Very relevant point. We have a great analyst cohort of young professionals who joined us over the last few months and I'm doing exactly that with them. I think one thing that they all have shared feedback on is we did a very extensive hiring process itself where during the process they spoke to at least 4-5 people, with some people spoken to multiple times to really get a sense of what it's like to work over here and to really understand who they are. And I think that conversational approach really helped them understand even before they knew they had an offer or they had to make a decision about the kind of place they were getting into. And I think investing that time and effort upfront goes a long way in helping someone understand with their eyes open, this is the place and sort of getting into. And on the other side, it makes a huge difference if the employees having those conversations are able to be balanced but frank about what works and what doesn't work over here, right? I don't think anyone in our company tries to gloss over our challenges. We are one of the smaller funds in India, but we have been growing exponentially and that means teething pains, which means growing pains like anything else, right? Like some things may not be in place, but we are actively working to solve them. I think admitting that up front, helps someone coming in know that okay, this is a work in progress, but they want to do it, the intent is there and I think that helped a lot of them when they came into the organization to know what to expect. We also put a lot of focus on building a one-on-one relationship, since we are a small organization, regardless of your function, we do expect you to be able to have pretty much an independent relationship with anyone on the other team to be able to directly work with them, support them or sort of champion their work when it's needed. So as part of the induction process, we baked in sort of a two week, what I call a listening tour. You would have a road tour and meet people in other offices, we were still in sort of a lockdown and all remote, so we just had new people and I did it myself when I joined six months back. Over the period of two weeks, just talk to everyone in the organization. You know, there was a guided set of questions for the goal was just to get a sense of their experiences. And after talking to at least 25 folks, you get a good sense of what this place is, right? Like, I mean there are some friends that come out, there are some things that you keep hearing again and again and I think that more than anything else helps you feel comfortable about these are the people I'm going to work with, this is what I've signed myself up for. I think everything else, structures, processes, meetings, presentations and targets comes after that. But if they don't have that sense of comfort and belonging in the first few weeks, it's very hard to build on that and make someone feel like I made the right decision.

00:35:36

Harish: So Ria, continuing with this question about people at a VC firm like Blume, right? You would, I'm sure, need to consume, retain and use a lot of diverse knowledge. So do you have any tips for creating a culture of curiosity at work? I'm sure there'll be other companies who would have similar requirements like yours in Blume.

00:36:00

Ria: Yeah, knowledge and knowing what's happening in the ecosystem is what allows us to do our job. But if you speak to anyone internally, I think that's something that they all equally do struggle with given the bulk of work that is going on during the day. I think what most and I did speak to a lot of people to understand that individual approaches around this. One technique I have seen multiple people and our team do is intentionally block time either at the start of the day or the absolute end of the day to consume content, to really see what's going on out there, to really work on building that understanding of what's going on. So number one is blocking intentional time at the start or the end of the day. The second is creating content on their own and making that a priority and that sort of almost a cultural norm at Blume. You know, whether it's someone like me doing this conversation because what we believe it does is that it helps you distil your thoughts, it helps you focus and then capture it in a way that would hopefully be useful to other folks in the company or in the ecosystem. So creating their own content forces everyone to do the research, to put stuff together, to do their own learning and to create something that they are proud of sharing and that adds to the collective ecosystem knowledge. It is also formally embedded into, you know, not performance evaluations but expectations of the role. What we call, are you building the organisation, are you building our collective knowledge? So everyone does in some form of the other work on building their thought leadership, their content, their engagement with the ecosystem and that’s sort of an official part of the role. I think that was a great way if it was signalled by the senior staff and they do it, all of our founding partners, you'll notice a very active in the ecosystem including the next level, you know, Sajith himself, Arpita Agarwal who's sort of a leading mind in the health care, in the mobility space. And then our partners, Karthik, Sanjay and Ashish make the time very consciously to be present in multiple areas of thought leadership, to be able to both consume content to be ready for that and to help create content. And I think the last bit around, you know, intentionally creating our culture is to make time as an organization to do it collectively, because again, it's a signal that's sent to everyone. We recently started sort of Monday afternoons block where anyone who does want to share some of their knowledge is open to do so, anyone who wants to request another team member to share something they're great, whether it's productivity hacks, whether it's time management, whether it's knowledge about a particular sector or a program. We're sort of encouraging each other, getting to know what each other's strengths are really pushing them to share it in sort of a common learning space, which we try to do once a month. So I think those are sort of some broad frameworks that can be used, but I think the biggest thing that makes a difference is signaling from the organization's side that content is king and content consumption is what helps us be better investors and better understand the companies that we work with.

00:39:13

Harish: Yeah, of course. In the show notes, we link to our episode with Sajith, that's a fantastic one. We'll link to that from the show notes. Speaking about the sharing sessions, we actually have these sessions on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday, we have something called a Future Fitness, basically, these are sessions around how to ensure you remain future relevant as individuals. We've done a whole range of things in that. Coming back to, you had mentioned the signal that when people are trying to hire managers, rather founders are trying to hire managers. That's like a signal that things are probably going to go out of hand. Another point of inflection that I've seen in growing companies is where founders hire an HR person and this is usually somebody who will do the operational stuff and slowly, they're the people who start taking all hiring decisions, right? Not just the onboarding experience, but even whom to hire, and this is where I've seen a lot of people struggle with that, you know, 25-50 employees to 150-200, that's the space where things sometimes start going downward. Because whatever the founder had in his or her mind is not the same that this recruiter has done, and in many cases, it is not that the recruiter has done it with mal intent or something. It's just that there was some loss of transmission from the founder to that person or that person was not really hired with that in mind. It's not a senior person who's going to think strategically. So is that true? Do you agree that's the point of inflection and what should people do to sort of be wary of that and, how do they prevent that?

00:41:11

Ria: I think there are two points at play here. The first is that we need to separate people operations from people development. People operations is the more administrative, as the word suggests, the operational part of keeping the engine running. I definitely think that an HR resource plays a huge role in making sure that the systems for taking decisions are there and required to be there. I think that requires ownership on that side. When it comes to hiring, I think the biggest mistake that founders may make is if you want someone to be hiring on your behalf, they cannot be a junior person, number one. So I think really being clear and intentional about the seniority and the role that this person has to play. The second mistake that a lot of people make is not being able to give enough time to a new HR resource. You're bringing in someone who is expected to solve people for you, who is expected to use your lens to judge and bring in people into the organization, which is one of the most ambiguous and complex tasks. I mean, my husband doesn't even know half the time what I would want to order. If I asked him to select someone at a restaurant, he wouldn't know what I wanted to order. If I ask him to select on my behalf, that's giving a huge responsibility to them. They cannot do that until they really understand you as a person first of all, right, and then understand what you want for the organization because they are not responsible for the culture, it's your company, you're responsible. I think people tend to forget that when people come in and culture thinks about this thing to be outsourced immediately. All you can probably outsource like I said is the people operations bit. If you don't devote enough time to give them a great induction, to help them really understand the mistakes you made earlier. The hiring mistakes, the people that didn't work out the processes that you use so that they know what to do and what not to do. If you don't give your HR resource that time during their ramp up time. It's gonna be very hard for them to make independent decisions without having historical context. You can definitely have them pick up, all of the joining, the exit, the performance management. Like you need someone to own a system. It's the same as like, I mean, I would always think of them as the product manager for people and culture, if we're using the language that people understand, right? Your people and culture is a product, it needs to be managed. There are systems, processes, frameworks, decisions to be made that this person can do, but ultimately what the product is supposed to do, that's not what product managers ultimately decide, right? That's still what organizations decide. This is what we want our product to do. It's the same thing. What do you want people to do? How do you want your people to be? That's not up to them until they've been in the organization long enough and have grown to be your chief people officer, then they can take decisions entirely independently and probably challenge some of yours, which they should do, which I believe a good HR resource in any capacity should feel comfortable to do, but until they don't get that from you, you are effectively handicapping them to be effective.

00:44:26

Harish: Correct. Yeah. And I think usually what happens is these people come in like you said, when there is exponential growth, so they're being tasked with or “get me 10 people who are going to work on full-stack developers,” or things like that, and then they're being measured on how many people did you hire? Did we get these many people? These are the requirements, but what you are then landing up with is a set of people about whom you have no idea whether they're adding to your culture, are they a fit? Nothing...

00:44:58

Ria: You are right. it's not always a perfect world where we're able to have everything together, but that's why codifying things like a culture and the values document, that's why being very intentional about what growth looks like, mapping out growth parts and making sure that the right people are in place to make those decisions and are empowered before embarking on sort of this 1 to 10 phase would ideally help people. We're not an ideal world and as we have to move very fast and if that is the case that at least knowing that okay, I'm going to have to be a little more involved here in the culture signaling bit. I mean you can get the person to get the 10, 20, 30 people, but what do I need to do to reinforce before they start a process like that. That's something that will probably not take a lot of time, but at least spending some time reinforcing some of your principles, even if you haven't had time to codify or write it down may help the person who's recruiting on your behalf.

00:45:55

Harish: Right. And continuing with that, when you talk about this codified culture, a lot of the narrative in startups around the culture code and culture manifesto is inspired from the likes of Netflix, Google, Hubspot, which are great documents. I have the greatest respect for them, but like Erin Meyer herself says in the book, that how she had a culture shock about dealing with people from different countries within Netflix, we also need to think of these within the Indian context. So what do you think are the pitfalls of being completely besotted with these kinds of documents and trying to just import them into our context? Is there a danger there?

00:46:45

Ria: Yes, short answer. And I'll tell you why. I'm going to put a little bit of my academic learnings into here. And a large part of my academic learning is also involved in understanding how to build teams, sort of in a multicultural environment and building multicultural and effective teams and bringing people together. And there's one framework and I'll share the link for folks who might be interested. It's rooted in the work of Hofstede and it talks about a few different dimensions of culture that are prevalent in societies across the world that really help you understand the cultural fabric of the society you are operating in. A few of them that I want to bring on here, which are very relevant for the workplace, are number one, is this idea of power distance. How does the culture or the society that you're in view power? Is it that the person who is higher up on the rung has more power? Or is it the person who does good work? So power distance is one is one criteria. The second is how individualist versus collectivist is the culture? Is it one that really celebrates, “Hey, I'm going to do it on my own,” or is it one that really says,” We're all in this together?” What is the cultural fabric of society? So, you can say whatever you want internally, but what does your society say? And it's interesting because different countries are rated on different spectrums of this. In India, China and Japan tend to be on the more collectivist side compared to Denmark, UK, US who are on the more individual spectrum. The third is how is masculinity in leadership perceived? There are certain traits that fall into the realm of leadership that tend to have sort of a masculine or feminine connotation to it. And how do those get perceived within that culture? Right. For example, if we talk about aggression and being outcome-driven versus care, empathy, service, how are those perceived by that culture? How are they perceived positively or negatively? The last point of uncertainty avoidance. How comfortable is the culture with ambiguity, how much structure do they need? And the last one is long term orientation. Is it common in that culture to continuously be thinking down the road, long term, or is it a very short time? What's going to happen tomorrow? Apologies for being, taking a step back and getting a little academic into it. But I found this to be a very interesting framework against which to help organizations identify their work culture. And then accordingly design it. If you look at a Netflix or Google or a Hubspot or Etsy or a lot of these places who have admirable culture, the way we are talking about the ratings of people on the cultural fabric in their areas, it's going to be very different than what is in India. In India all intents and purposes still are more collectivist, high power distance, low tolerance for uncertainty avoidance. You know, they need to know what is going on, high preference for masculine leadership behaviors and I don't know where it stands on a long term orientation, but knowing these sorts of things, you cannot copy-paste, a no-rules rule. For example, the unlimited vacation days or Netflix's best interests when it comes to receipts. I think those are admirable approaches to take, but it's hard for us to imagine no managers, for example, if you tell someone to take decisions independently, it's hard for us to imagine that because that's where people's sense of power and that's what people's sense of identity comes from. And when you think of those things, I think the time is really right for sort of an Indian culture code for companies. I think startups have been trying a little bit on their own to move in that direction, but sometimes it can be fake. You're saying you want a culture and that's what people are behaving. Is that what they really believe and if put under a pressure situation, what is the behavior they will be default to? That is actually the cultural fabric of what you are trying to build around. So I do think the time is really relevant for us to take, of course, the learnings that are coming from there, but really understand what the Indian social fabric is made up of, what influences decision making over here. For example, Indians who are young, new professionals still as much as they say that they are not a team influenced by what their parents say, that's not the case in the US. So if you try to apply similar aspects of reward and recognition, it's not gonna make a difference and it's not going to be seen in the right sense as by families and then what are young professionals going to think of? So I think Indian cultural contacts really differ from our Indian startup context. But I think, yeah, to answer your question at the start, I don't think we can blindly copy. I'm also not sure as to how aspirational it is? I think it's great to see something put out there and I think that's what excites us. Yeah, it really depends a lot on the leader of the organization as well and what sort of organization we want to create. So I think a lot of these documents are great frameworks, I think they're great guiding points to start having a discussion for companies and what's the culture code they want to have internally and honestly that's a lot of work. You know, we're doing that at Blume right now as well with 200% support from our partners and our leadership team, but it's difficult work to put time aside to really be able to articulate what are we doing well, what are we not, what do we want to see? Because we get asked questions from our team and we fully encourage it because it forces us to think around these things, right? We're trying to build policies around stuff that didn't happen 3-4 years ago. So that's also a new development for the organization. But I think the willingness to understand who we are and what we're trying to solve for is the first part in sort of creating a culture code that will make sense for the organization.

00:53:03

Harish: Yeah, I think using these books or these works as a starting point, use them as a backdrop to start a conversation and try to understand and identify where you stand. I think that has been our preferred approach as well. But yeah, it helps in our conversations because people have read these books and they want to do something like that and then yes, we need to rein them in saying no, you can't go the whole hog right now. Yes, you may want to, but I think we need to start small. For all you know, you may be having that team and the organization which could be like the Netflix of India, but let's identify that, let it emerge rather than try to force-fit it is how we have been approaching this. On that note, another question Ria, is that we've been working with company founders to collect and spread a lot of these stories, these anecdotes of how people behave, how people live those values? Basically we're trying to create this folklore of that company, that is what the culture is all about, right? I mean, if you think of all the great cultures, there are these mythology, the legends, whether it's Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bible and so on. These are all stories and great anecdotes and that is what sort of gives you an idea of how I'm supposed to live and behave if I'm a follower of this tribe, right? So in your opinion, what kind of storytelling muscle should startups and entrepreneurial teams build to be able to create this folklore for themselves.

00:54:48

Ria: So I think culture is really created and the stories that we tell are created around a few key anchors. How do things happen here? What are the rituals and traditions that we use? You know, what happens again and again and again. The second is who are the heroes and villains in our stories? A lot of times this ends up being maybe like the startup founder who decided she wanted to break away from the family business and do something to solve a problem and that becomes the hero story. Or someone who really went over and above and solved like a massive customer problem with zero resources and you know, saved the day. Those are your hero stories. Your villain stories are people who have probably been very toxic to the environment or what Netflix calls, the brilliant jerks like these guys were there around, they were really smart but they were really difficult to work with and finally they had to go. So those are your heroes and villains. I think the last point is your celebrations, what do you all celebrate? And that is a recurring theme in mythology, right? That comes down from, if you look at the archetypes of behavior and of societies, all social groups have these factors in common. The rituals and traditions, what they celebrate? The heroes and villains, right? The battles that they fought. So I think all founders can use these as anchor points and build their storytelling narratives around these. What do we do that no one else does? How did we solve the problem? Who do we want to recognize? Who are the unsung heroes? Who do we not want to recognize? You know, if we don't talk about it, this is not what we want, but sometimes it helps by calling out that we will never do X. In days like today where people are saying, and people are expecting almost CEO activism and corporate activism, Like will you say we will never work with these brands? It's moving more and more towards that. So like what will you do, what will you not do? And what do you celebrate? Do you celebrate milestones? Do you celebrate people? Do you celebrate impact? Do you celebrate your customers, your communities? I think those are the broad storytelling hooks and anchors around which founders can really drive both internal and external storytelling muscles.

00:57:18

Harish: Yeah. And these stories are all around them. You know, they don't really need to manufacture these things as you mentioned, they all have these heroes and villains. They have had these battles, which is why they're there. I'm sure a six-month-old company will have enough stories. And we've also seen that a well-built repository of these kinds of stories actually becomes a strategic asset because if you think of it, what are the objectives that can be served by a repository like this? Right from your recruitment, hiring, onboarding, marketing, rewards, and recognition for people that this is the kind of behaviour that I want to encourage in my team, it becomes like a badge of honour, like “Oh, Ria’s story has appeared on the microsite because she showed XYZ and this is what we want.” So that's great. But yeah, again, it is still lower in the list of priorities for a lot of people. So we end up trying to make a case for it.

00:58:20

Ria: But I mean, you're right, that is lower on the list of priorities when you have to go out and search for it, right? But I think a few ways where you can make this a full factor, is building it into a few formal frameworks where you encourage people to share each other's stories at times of recognition. You can build it into performance management, you can build it into formal feedback cycles. A lot of companies with 360s appraisals and you can probably move towards involving these stories instead of only looking at metrics at times like those. Because those are official points in the company's history where we do capture information. So instead of building a system anew to capture these stories, think of ways where you can build it into existing frameworks where then it can be sort of record for posterity.

00:59:04

Harish: Yeah. So on the same lines Ria, you talked about mythology and how these things have all, it's a solved problem. People have been doing this for generations right in terms of how to build that whole community, how to build my own tribe. So, what other worlds can founders draw analogies from for lessons in building company culture?

00:59:29

Ria: So I think the analogy that I struggle the most with is when people say, you know, “We are a family,” because while I understand the sentiment of care, empathy, and support that they are actually alluding to what makes it harder being the person who has the ownership of people, culture and performance are, what do you do when a family member doesn't perform? You're supposed to unconditionally just accept them and keep them on. And also a lot of people are disappointed by family members who don't do anything. So are we saying that then we will just let people stay on and not do anything because a company at any point is accountable for performance, to its shareholders, to its customers, and to its board? So there are expectations of performance and what does that do for the people that they have to pick up the slack for those who are not performing? So I think that's a crucial question that any startup or any company that defines itself as a family should actually answer for themselves. If they're able to explain how they deal with this kudos to them. Right. But I think a lot of times it ends up being the elephant in the room. The other spectrum of this is what folks call, the sports team that was like a sports team. We're gonna hit aggressively and be there. I think sometimes that does not allow for mistakes. A guy who doesn't perform in two ODIs is benched. But maybe you don't want to build such an extreme culture. Where do you give the space? So, I think the right companies are sort of figuring out the sweet spot between familial values and sports-like outcomes. So, I think that's one thing to pick up on existing tropes that exist in the world out there as well. I think the most relevant analogy I can think of today with how the world is changing around us is actually that of a social movement, and the reason behind that is because there's very high ownership and that's what I think the companies of today and tomorrow need. More and more people are experimenting with all structures with leadership structures, flat organizations, diverse teams. I think anyone who feels like they have ownership in an organization will be able to contribute and will also be able to get a lot out of it, right? Because in social movements, taking the example of Black Lives Matter or the Arab Spring or the protest in Delhi around the citizenship act, what was important around there? That people felt enough strongly around the topic to self-congregate, gather and decide that action needed to be taken. Importance is given to communication, collaboration and building partnerships, it's never perfect, right? Obviously, someone will come and tell me, look at everything that went wrong out there. I'm just giving an analogy of the fact that we need to look today at the idea of how we get people to own the work that we want them to do. And how do we also make it less about the founder and more about the company? Because in a social movement, you can’t really pinpoint who started it right? It starts out of a series of conversations and everyone feels collective ownership over it. That's ideally how we'd want companies to be like today. Less about the dramatic, charismatic founder and more about the people who are working there. That's how I see and would like to see modern companies moving towards and figuring out, how can we build that culture, how can we get people in? Obviously, do the bare backbones to make sure stuff is working for them, but then sort of step back and let it happen.

01:03:09

Harish: Right, yeah. We often give the example of Wikipedia contributors, right? Nobody pays them, but they're doing such a fantastic job and a back-breaking job, I would say, in terms of doing all the research and flushing out all the peacock words and things like that. But nobody's paying them, they're doing it out of their own interests, and they want to be part of that. So, yeah, I think that that's a great example that you talked about in terms of building that movement. That's a great analogy. So, one of the final questions that I have, Ria. In the post-2020 world of collaboration and distributed work, do you see some kind of levelling off the ground from our diversity and inclusion point of view?

01:03:54

Ria: I think when everyone right now is just limited to, sort of a 2 by 2 square on the screen right now, I think people have definitely become more aware of their biases and their limitations managing people and their challenges. And in doing that they have become aware of the diversity of people that are on the team and also their own background and upbringing that has gone into how they become managers. That plus the extremely personal losses that a lot of people have felt this last year and challenges. Even if it is not a loss but significant challenges that everyone experienced. I think people realize that they are somewhat of a disadvantage if they don't work with more empathy and they don't build connections with their team. So I think number one, that's the realization that everyone had. Remote work has levelled the playing field for sure in terms of access to opportunity, which I think is the first thing that we try to solve. But I think there's a lot of internal work that still has to be done by companies to be inclusive. Number one, because there is much more face time across folks who would probably not even have that or might not have even looked at other people in companies. It's still very hard for people to form safe spaces and build relationships with new people who have joined Zoom. When you have 30 minutes scheduled call, you don't have the spontaneity and the serendipity of a conversation and learning more about them that you would have offline. We also can't stare into each other's eyes for so long. Like it’s been multiple research studies that have been done with, it becomes very difficult for folks who have some form of introversion or some form of social anxiety and actually did better when they were in groups or when they did not have to maintain eye contact just to use an example. You know, we've made that the default right now without any opt-out, right? We say that, okay, we have to be inclusionary, We have to be a video on, but we don't understand how challenging that still is for some folks who have challenges. I think the last thing to think of is not everyone has the privilege of a safe, comfortable work-from-home environment. Those of us who are able to work from home are privileged. We enjoy more freedoms and more safety than a lot of people for whom work was their escape. They were able to probably escape a situation that was not great at home. We need to be mindful for people that sometimes it's still not possible to be at home working 6-8 hours a day and manage our expectations and still work to make those people feel included within workplaces. Yeah, I'll be honest, I think there's a lot of companies that still struggle with this. I struggle with it when everyone says work from home is so great. I'm a mom of a 20-month-old. You know, it's not great. It's very difficult. You're balancing multiple roles. Women have got the brunt of the pandemic. Women have got the brunt of the lockdown and expectations to shoulder emotional loads and additional loads at home while you're still working are still not the same as what a male member has to do. Expectations of being online at certain times or having meetings at 6, 7, 8 in the evening. You're not being inclusionary if you don't consider these facts while you're designing for them. If you have considered them and still decided to go ahead with it, that's fine. But I do not think that we have levelled the playing field in any way. I think we have unearthed more hidden bombs that we did not see because we were so far away from the field on a daily basis.

01:07:32

Harish: Yeah. In fact, we're helping some of our clients figure out the future of work with respect to hybrid work because they are going to open up offices. And we see this as a big fear among people, that yes, you are going to offer me this option of working from home. But I know that you're gonna treat me as a second-class citizen because I'm working from home. You know, my colleagues are in the office and they're going to be seen in a different light. So we're just trying to figure out what the best ways are.

01:08:06

Ria: Yeah, viewed as being more committed to the organization.

01:08:07

Harish: Yeah. So that's also...

01:08:11

Ria: Yeah, very relevant. It is something that I think people need to not just assume that the experiences of some are the experiences of all in the organization.

01:08:20

Harish: Yeah, again boils down to empathy, what we've been talking about earlier as well. But yeah, these are also challenges that are going to become more and more, they're going to start impacting very soon.

01:08:37

Ria: And that's when you know that you have either created a culture of belonging and a safe space. If people can come and tell you that, that's also a signal for you to look at. If someone is able to come and tell you, “I'm sorry, I can't join the 6:30 evening happy hour catch up because I have to be home and be with my daughter.” I mean that's an example from my life. I shared it. You know, my team does catch up on Friday evening at 6:30 and I think it's a brilliant idea. I am the new mom in the organization, I have a daughter and I have limited time with her. So I do have to make a balance and I have to trust that my colleagues are not going to look down on me for it. But I do owe it to them with a sense of respect to explain why I'm not there and to trust that they will not judge me for it, they will not hold it against me. And if I am able to do that then I know I have a culture that respects and celebrates me for who I am. And that's a great point for founders to think if they have heard enough from folks sharing openly about their challenges, about how stuff has been structured that more than anything else is going to tell you whether you have a culture that is inclusionary and a place where people feel like they belong.

01:09:49

Harish: Right. Yeah, I mean, in fact, if these things are being voiced, that's a great start because they feel they're safe enough to actually voice it. So Ria, the final section where we're going to ask you about the future relevance of certain things. I’m going to give you three words, terms, and things. I'm looking for a hot take from you. So what do you think is the future relevance of the freelancer or the gig economy? Not just in the context of Ubers and Olas.

01:10:23

Ria: Yeah, I think we are empowering people to design life. For me, that is ideally the ultimate outcome of moving to being a freelancer or working in a gig economy. For me. I think more organizations will design their structures to make sure that they have talent and skill, not just bodies to fill a seat and that's where freelancers and the gig economy can take advantage of it.

01:10:50

Harish: Okay, next one, what is the future relevance of the traditional startup hubs like the Silicon Valley Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad in India?

01:11:00

Ria: I don't know if we can answer that yet, because I still feel like people are waiting for the next calamity and catastrophe to happen. So I think it would be interesting to revisit this in 6-9 months to see if everything dies down and everyone is vaccinated. Will people migrate back to these areas? Off the top of my head, I do think that there has been enough work and ecosystems built in these areas that the relevance is not going to go away. What we might end up finding are micro hubs or satellite hubs, you know, really next to these areas where people feel like Chennai is going to come up much more close to Bangalore, and a Pune next to Bombay is going to develop or, you know, New Mexico vs Silicon Valley. So I don't think the central hub will go anywhere, but we might see the emergence of satellite hubs.

01:11:48

Harish: Right. What is the future relevance of generalists?

01:11:53

Ria: Generalists are going up and up. I think if you don't see the value in a generalist, you're not going to be able to attract, retain strong talent that probably is trying to take unconventional views and you're not going to have strong leaders. I think generalists make the best organizational leaders hands down because they have the ability to see multiple viewpoints, to have done multiple things across the organization, and they continuously have to get buy-in from a lot of people to get stuff done. They are more often than not new people in roles that never existed before. They know how to hustle. And they also know that what they do next will be different from what they are doing today. So they are very open to change.

01:12:44

Harish: Right, okay. And the final one, which I'm not going to let you go away without answering, what is the future relevance of the Marvel and DC universe?

01:12:53

Ria: Oh, I think I strongly take a lot of inspiration from superhero stories. I think, any time I have either a down moment, I by default turn to either a sports movie or a superhero movie. I’m also a huge fan of the Harry Potter universe. I think stories and heroes and overcoming challenges will never get old. I think sometimes we try to tell ourselves otherwise and try to tell ourselves that we can handle it, but I think we always need to see people do things that we need to root for the underdog. And I think that's generally how life is. Blume put itself and positioned itself saying we are the startups that back underdogs. I think all of these sorts of stories, all of these sorts of universes help you really develop your sense of right and wrong, they help you develop what you should do. They help you just figure out the kind of person you want to be. And I think you always want those inspirations. And I think I would say our generation looks to that because unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of heroes, I mean who are the heroes in India that we look up to or across the world. It's either sports heroes or it's someone like this. You know, I mean politicians or others are not really heroes. So I think you do need people who give you a guiding light. And I'm a huge superhero fan. I've learned a lot of life lessons and tried to write a lot of them based on the entire universe. I think it's a great way to build relevance for the next generation.

01:14:27

Harish: Alright. On that note, fantastic conversation Ria, there was a lot to unpack here. I still have a feeling we're going to do part two of this, though this has been a long one. There are a lot of other territories that we want to explore on this topic. But thanks a lot for this Ria.

01:14:48

Ria: Happy to be back. Thank you so much for planning this Harish.

01:14:50

Harish: Thanks.

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