[CTQ Smartcast] How should one think about community building? with Suhas Motwani
Suhas Motwani is working with PepsiCo, where he is building a bunch of internet tools on their finance and innovation team. He is the founding member of one of India’s largest volunteer-driven product communities, The Product Folks.
In this Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, discusses some great insights on community building and how one should think about it at different stages. We have also discussed where the Indian start-ups are heading when it comes to product management.
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SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
The inspiration behind starting The Product Folks
The rise of product start-ups in India
Suhas’ perspective on community building
Advice for people who are building communities
How has volunteering changed over time?
How can community building help organisations to uplevel?
The way communities contribute to other areas.
The definition of success, according to a community builder
How can the education system and companies improve the product community?
Tips on how to seek volunteer opportunities
PLUS
Future relevance of product start-ups in India
Future relevance of metaverse and Indian B-Schools
LINKS TO BOOKS, PEOPLE AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
BOOKS
The Third Door by Alex Banayan
The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier
Originals by Adam Grant
Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries
PRODUCTS/SERVICES
COHORT-BASED PROGRAMMES
NEWSLETTER
PODCAST
OTHERS
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like How Should You Think About No-Code? With Max Haining
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish: Suhas Motwani is currently working full time with PepsiCo, building out a bunch of internet tools on their finance and innovation team. On the side, he manages one of India's largest volunteer-driven product communities, The Product Folks (TPF), and is also building a suite of productivity apps to help folks fight digital distraction. So we caught up with Suhas to pick his brains about community building. How should one think about it at different stages? Zero to one, one to 10 and 10 to 100? How should volunteers think about communities and what they can get out of communities like The Product Folks? We also spoke about the changing world of work in startups and product management. If you want insights, deep insights on community building from someone who's been there and done that, you will want to listen to this. If you're serious about your future relevance and building a career in products, you'll definitely want to listen to this.
00:01:13
Harish: Welcome Suhas, welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:01:15
Suhas: Thank you. Thank you so much. Super excited to chat with you today.
00:01:20
Harish: Yeah, so let me start with an easy one. And we throw in a bouncer immediately after that. It's an easy one is, you know, what is a community for you? What is its importance and why should one start a community? What inspired you to start The Product Folks?
00:01:36
Suhas: Sure. In the early days, The Product Folks was essentially doing offline events, right. And if you think of the early days, our intention was just to get interesting people in the same room. Funny story, I think we were also early in our career. We were like we also want to meet other people in our similar space, similar time, people who are looking to, you know, grow in their product areas. And also we got talking one to one with senior product leaders. So we thought others might also be interested, you know, whether just as a fly on the wall, or maybe we were looking at, how do we just get interesting people in the room. That was the baseline where we started, we started doing offline events. The first offline event was in Bangalore, luckily got some support. We were given space. Two product leaders came down to share their time with us for about one to one and we got about 70-80 folks in the room, right? Imagine zero social presence back then either personal or TPF. We had to manually DM a lot of different people and they turned up. So we're like, Okay, this is interesting, right? We're getting people in the room, people are also interested. So let's just do it. Right. So that's how the early days of TPF, just started getting interesting people, we got to meet interesting people. And at the same time they got to network. So then we started WhatsApp groups, they used to interact. So stay back network then get into Whatsapp group. And those were the early days of TPF. Slowly, we started growing across different cities, just offline events, but across nine different cities in India, it took some time, one city at a time. But over six months, eight months, I think every month we used to do these offline events and then COVID hit, right. So we had to switch everything online and post that I think that's when we started learning. Okay, what is it that the community wants? We didn't know, we were building community back then honestly, we just started with the, you know, events and offline groups, didn't know anything, what community management was, etc. So with that intention, slowly, we started getting reached out saying, Okay, we're also interested in breaking into products and back then we saw what were the offerings available in the market? There were MBA boot camps, because that's how people were breaking into products. Well, okay, there's lots of great content on the internet already. Why don't we just curate it and share it with them? Right, so that Learn PM With Me was born. And within a month, we were seeing easily about 6000-8000 hits on there organically, right? Back then, society was not that strong for us. So good. Okay, if people are interested to read, and once we started getting some feedback, we were seeing, okay, there is a good time spent on the website. But even like two, three months later, we were still getting DMs saying that, hey, content is great, you curated it well, gives us an understanding, we're still not able to break into product, right. So the outcome is still not coming. Some of them are maybe trying on their own but a large majority weren’t. And as we started growing and doing these events, we realised a lot more people wanted to break into products, there is enough demand, lots more supply, at the same time someone needs to play that enabler route and connect these two in a better way. So that's when Insurjo happened, which is our flagship program in a very, very small format. And everything, if you notice, is built based on something that we're hearing from all of our members, right? So Learn PM came from there and from there we thought of how do we target outcomes? So we looked at a lot of the APM programs in the US. And there was this company in Canada called Toronto APM, which was doing a similar program. And we thought this might be interesting. Can we do something similar but for India, we start off with a very tiny cohort, the two small cohorts of that and then this time was our biggest flagship. But the same thing we just unbundle the entire office. Over 2000-3000 people were on the waitlist for this year's program. We were like, Okay, let's do one thing. Let's open up the educational side, get the most senior folks, the best folks in the industry to take up each of these topics, about 12 topics we had. And the education is open to all those who go through the interview, whoever's putting in the effort, doing the assignments, doing the office hours, doing the weekly live sessions, coming down to the networking, all that is free and completely open to everyone that of course, there was some amount of shortlisting based on how they filled, they have to take about 15-20 minutes to fill out a form. So based on that some basic level shortlist is nothing, no one was eliminated, if you filled everything, and everyone gets access, right, so we're not stopping anyone from that. But at the end of it, what we do we have an assessment, a 50 minute assessment. And based on that, they attach the PRD, they're going to be working on a PRD. Based on that the top quartile gets access to opportunities, that's access to mentorship. This we used to do for maybe 10, but that was operationally heavyweight, right? And because what we were doing there was like we had so many people on the waitlist, why don't we open up this to let more people get access. And that had tremendous responses. We're about 20,000 signups on that. But to cut short, I think that's how the journey has started. Like, if you ask me, okay, what was TPF? early on? Why did we start? Initially, it was just that, but gaining interest, getting some, you know, need in the market, gaining some more responses from the members in the community that, hey, this is something that's missing, can you guys come together. That is how I think the the community has grown, and of course, an unsaid truth is the really good set of volunteers who came on board right to build together, the core team, the main group, all the volunteers were currently also new folks who joined, all of them, what a lot of effort behind the scenes, which goes unnoticed, I think, huge props to that. Touchwood, luckily, we've been able to get a very, very good set of folks to actually run this, right.
00:06:57
Harish: So, product has always been an area of weakness for the Indian system. Services are always our forte. And, you know, this has been something which NASSCOM has tried to address. There have been other bodies, I think there's an Institute of Product Leadership, and people have tried to do it on their own. And, of course, now I see some of these, you know, individual PMs running their own courses where they're doing this. But do you see this current rise of the Indian startup space, much better than what it was last, you know, 10 years ago, where so many companies are now you know, they have achieved product market fit. And now getting into the IPO stage and unicorns are raining left, right, and centre. All that is also a culmination of this whole product movement now becoming mature. And that's how we can actually say that whatever it is, think of Silicon Valley, right? That or things like that in Silicon Valley, and here, it's always services. So have we sort of reached that inflection point with respect to product startups in India?
00:08:17
Suhas: 100%. I think a lot of folks today you see, I think Anu Warrier had also recently said, the quality of entrepreneurs, the quality of products that are getting built is far, far ahead. I'm not sure I can comment from 10 years ago. I probably wasn't in the market back then. But what I can say for sure, is in the last five years or so from what I've been observing there are two parts to this. One is definitely a lot more people are coming and helping, that give back is there in the society, which probably would have been there, but at least it's far greater today, right? These are folks who maybe come back from the valley, these are folks who have worked with, you know, Flipkart and Snapdeal that have grown to the edges. So they've seen some amount of scale, right? They've been building products, they've been involved in the space and are now ready to give back. So I think that is also a huge factor. That is one side of things. And on the other side of things. I think the mindset is also slowly shifting right. Over the years, I think startups have become less risky, right, compared to a lot of talented folks how they used to think earlier, but maybe I go down to the US, maybe that's where the money is. I don't want to work here and maybe that was the thought process back then. But now I see even folks, right in college doing lots of internships, they graduate from universities and want to join early stage startups. The knowledge of ESOPs is improving. Founders are now realising how important it is to build the team and give them also some skin in the game. These are small small things but I think all of this adds up right? I don't think product alone in fact, like you mentioned I think NASSCOM have done a fantastic job building that ecosystem, building the foundation. Now it's just that things have changed a little bit, NASSCOM probably was building the bridge between how you transition services to products. Now it is about how do you develop this entire ecosystem? Because you know, the last three years have been more about how do you bridge talent and startups right. So there was one shift between services and products, which I think we've crossed to a certain extent, right, of course, it's not going anywhere, right Infosys and TCS, still probably one of the largest, and that is here to stay. But I feel at least we've crossed an inflection point where lots of folks are thinking about right, even if they've been in the industry for some time, or they've been right out of college, everyone is trying to think that entrepreneur bug is hitting a lot of people right, in some form, or the other way. Whether it is side projects, whether it is full time, whether it's working with startups, you think of it even like a founding team is taking some risk, maybe not as much as the founder, or at least taking the risk, at least like having that mindset that okay, I want to work on build something. I think that inflection point is definitely here and only going to grow. I feel like this decade is India's decade. Probably what we did over the last decade was a foundation. But this entire 2020 to 2030 is definitely India's decade. We're no more seen as an outsourcing hub, right? Some of the biggest startups are building here and selling outside of India, the Flipkarts and InMobis have put us on the global roadmap. And like you mentioned, I think unicorns are probably just a secondary effect of that. That's just a validation that there's outside money also coming into it. The validation IPOs are happening, right? This didn't happen till just three months ago with the Zomato IPO, things have restarted. Yes, there were some earlier. But this has started the new wave. I think today was the last day of Paytm. So I think with Zomato, Nykaa had a fabulous start. So I think there's a series of events, which will bring back more liquidity in the ecosystem which will spur up, the entire loop is just getting a lot more stronger.
00:11:31
Harish: Yes, I think it's also a question of the Indian consumer now becoming more aware. So they're also probably demanding better products. Right. I think it is working on both sides.
00:11:43
Suhas: I agree. If you see, it's absolutely true what you mentioned, right? Design is such a big focus today, compared to, you know, X number of years ago, you're probably like, hey, let's just ship this, people will use it. But now I think that aesthetics also has a, like the entire UI plays such an important role. Founders are looking for designers very early on. Good product designers are so hard to find. So I think all of that is coming together. And I think it's just not, you know, this product works is not the attitude. Founders are also trying to build a much better product. But it's hard work, of course, but also much, you know, better working, how do you make it simpler for the user? What is the best way from A to B, you know, for that to happen? How do you make it more visually aesthetic, I think all of that is coming together. As I mentioned, I think this is probably just like the inflection point that we were waiting for. Maybe these IPOs are just going to add more fuel to that fire, for sure.
00:12:42
Harish: In fact, when I look at what people consider, as a PM’s work these days, the role. You know, if I look back at, you know, when I started my first startup in 2010, that is what a founder would have been thinking of right? Today, almost all of that responsibility is with the PM these days, because it's not just product managers, not just looking at the technical aspect, but a whole range of things, which earlier would have been what a founder would have been thinking about. So it's an interesting progress. But coming back to you and The Product Folks. So, now that you've been running this, this is the bouncer that I talked about earlier. Right. So what do you know about community building that others don't?
00:13:32
Suhas: I can tell you one, I don't know whether others know it or not but I think one thing I've realised over time is consistency plays a lot of effort. And there are so many things that you need to do and secondly, also, you just need to put in the hours, right, the most part to it that you need to put in the hours to understand those first, 200-300 members and what do they exactly want? There is no way you can scale this from day zero, right? For example, I'll give you a parallel example. Right tomorrow, just about starting a business, I could just probably, you know, figure out a place where I can source material X, set up a Shopify store, run ads, and at least try making money. I'm not saying it'll work, but at least I can do that and there is a chance of making autopilot, right? For a community to get to that stage, a lot of effort goes in. A lot of people think I’ll just start a Discord server. I have some following on Twitter, on LinkedIn or on Twitter or anywhere I'll just run or even if I don't, I’ll run an ad, I'll bring them to the Discord server. And we'll engage and that's a community management is so easy, right? That's been the biggest learning. I feel it's very easy to start a community in today's day and age, right? Because everything is digital for the last year and a half everyone's been stuck at home. So it's very simple to start a community. But the hardest part is retaining. As simple as that, how you want to ensure folks find interest, whether you're doing an event, whether you're doing something online in an online world, I think retention is the hardest challenge. In one way, although we started offline, I think that was a huge boon for us, right? Logistically super hard. I might not go back to doing it. But because we did that, honestly, I think we have a much tighter early community because they met in person, right. They know each other from person, what they engage online is like a follow on to that it's a loop closing over that. I think from that aspect, boon or bane, I think that was definitely a plus one. Online just helped us scale a lot faster, right. So I feel like giving it time, right? If I were to tell someone who's starting, and this is something we share with everyone in the community. Give it time, right. Unlike a lot of other things, this one will require a lot more patience. You might start a community, within three months, people might not be as engaged, you figure out something and it will evolve. You can draw lots of parallels between community management and product management. Just community management, I feel a lot more patience. In product management, you need a little more impatience, right, you need things to move a little faster. In community management, that is the only difference. You can draw an infinite number of parallels between product management. You as a founder building a startup and you as a community manager running your company, I think these are three parallels you can draw, I would say lots of things are very, very similar. But one thing I definitely put a lot more emphasis on is our consistency. We've done about 350 events, right in just two, two and a half years. That means almost if you counted it, every week, we might be doing at least three, like if you put an average number to it right over the last more than two years now. So and this, this is something that has been happening over time, right? Initially, okay, we were across lots of cities, but now online, also we've been able to maintain. So I think that consistency and patience, I feel these are two things. Someone had told me early on, I would have had a lot more confidence, a lot more double down on it much, much. I think we took it very slow. Initially, we didn't have an idea ourselves. But this is something I wish more people knew. And if you do it for two years, then lots of potential on top. But right now I'm just sharing where we are today, I'm not sharing any nuggets of wisdom, I'm just sharing what we've learned over the last two and half years, I can tell you for a fact that lots of things you can do after you've crossed that nine month period that consistently do it, right. It's as simple as even like when you guys do a podcast, right? You can draw lots of parallels, I mean, going for that first six months is the hardest, right? Because you don't see any output. But as soon as you cross that episode number x, right, and if you just do one episode, every week, for one year, right, you have 50 episodes, that when things start ticking, you need to go through the grind for one year, same thing for community. You can probably draw a lot more parallels than maybe other people.
00:17:44
Harish: In fact, I'm actually reminded of this interesting recipe that I had read, I think it was for some French dish but it works for everything. So it had a list of ingredients. And the most important ingredient is time.
00:18:02
Suhas: Must have been like a slow cooking recipe. But yes, I agree. I think maybe I will put that as my number one, you need to put time into this. Once you start a community, there are lots of things to take care of. But there are other things you could do as well. But you don't have to start a community. But remember that starting a community is the easiest, retaining is hard. So spend a lot of time learning if startup companies spend a lot of time then I think, okay, maybe 12 months is very difficult to plan, or at least the next three months, where do I want to take it at some goals, some activities and some very rough structure. So at least you know, you're going one step ahead.
00:18:42
Harish: So let's unpack this a bit. Like you said, starting a community is very easy in terms of the tools, it's very democratised. Same thing with podcasting, you can actually, you know, publish a podcast very easily, but it's the rest of it, which is actually timeless, which was there earlier as well, which is probably going to, you know, hold true later. Which is the mindset that you require, you mentioned patience and showing up. It's got nothing to do with the tools that are available today. Right. So what are the tips that you would give to people at different stages of community building one let's take two or three different use cases. One is a somebody who wants to start a community, one who has probably hit that six months one year, now what next for them, and another one who probably has a thriving community thinks knows a lot. But then what next for them as well. Let's look at these three use cases and think of what you would recommend?
00:19:46
Suhas: So I'll start with the zero to one, like people who are just thinking of starting a community, I’d suggest to take away the inertia, right? Like I mentioned some time for maybe just three months, don't plan two years, five years from now. Where will I be? What do I do as a community? How do I monetize? All that will follow. Just highlight that initial thing, hey, where do my interests lie? That circle of competence, you might have heard of that. Because my interests lie. Because if you're passionate about something, you'll give it a longer time, especially if it's something like community, you need to delay that gratification as much as possible. So you know, figure out your circle of competence. Based on that, you'll have some more interest in what you're doing. Right. So that's the only thing so figure that then there are some very easy like you mentioned, I think tools are just enabling in today's digital era. Say you want to go the same route we did. What are you going to do? Very simplistically with Luma and WhatsApp. And in between, you already have Zoom, right? Three tools very seamlessly with Luma, gather registration, or that's the Zoom link. At the end of the event feedback combos, in which you have the WhatsApp link, the entire loop is created. Right? This is very neat, I'm just giving it away to you. But I think this is the simplest tack shouldn't stop anyone from starting right? If we kick off things so seamlessly, right? So you will figure out honestly, I think that is step one. Step two is now again, I'll say excellent. And I'm telling you like, if you're starting with events, as a community tomorrow, you can start with content or community anything. From the product perspective, Lenny has done a fantastic job there, started writing a newsletter, and built a community on top of it. So there are tonnes of different ways to start a company to figure out which channel you want to start with, wherever you're comfortable. A podcast would be another one, right? So there are different channels where you can start figuring out what works for you. But first step in your zero to one figured out that interest, figure out like a two three month plan, hey, where do I want to go and get started. And then on the very next step, figure out some of these initial members who might be interested, you know, to help you. So I feel like don't go solo into this, because that's where the journey becomes a lot harder to retain, you know, give that initial try to try finding those early folks. And just starting, I think these are the minimal things, one or two things which I can share, which might help you a little more. Also don't go too early into monetizing, right? I feel like that just changes the entire dynamic. What in fact, your KPI or your Northstar at that point is just to figure out how to build relationships? How do I add value right to things? The rest of it will follow if you are able to build those earlier relationships, whether it's your community members, whether senior folks who you want to invite, and that will play a much larger role. That is number one. And secondly, how do you attract more of these folks to help build with you, right? Don't get stuck doing it alone. I just feel like that journey becomes a lot harder. Right? So for early folks, that is something from that zero to one point. But as you scale now say you've been doing it for six to 12 months, like you mentioned, right? There are some more members. And at this point, there are two three challenges that might come forward and which might also follow through with the next part that you mentioned. So you've been doing it for 24 months. So there are some common challenges. Number one, would I see stagnation, right? People love new things. 24 months into this someone else starts something new, people are going to want to try. Be completely okay with that your members are going to go, that is the simple bottom truth. Your members are going to go where they find value, that is important the word they find value, if you are the most valuable, they're not going to leave, but be completely okay. Right? So two, three things that you can start thinking about: how do I stay relevant to today? You might have been great two years ago, but you cannot not stay updated. So you know, people want new things, give them the basics, double down on that. It's not that just because you see some shiny object theory, right, don't do that. But at the same time, try keeping like, you know, innovative, try keeping yourself in order because that's what as human as you go on adding new things, you're adding value to your community members, they are going to stick around, they find the most value, you're not going to go elsewhere. This is for 12 to 24 months, okay, maybe for six to 12 months also this is relevant. How do you figure out like first number one, double down on things that are working? And second, figure out new things that keep yourself updated in the market? What is it that members want to advance into our journey, even though we have this nice curated period, we thought we were doing incredible but people are not able to transition, they are going to go to something more structured, right? They want to figure out, keep talking to your members, right and product, you know, keep talking to your users. Keep talking to your members, and if you are building for them, they are going to use it, at the end of the day listening to them and building for them. So it's a much easier way to build products. Six to 12 months that stay there. And that's how you can also start thinking now about that vision, the mission etc. Right now you need to get people and this is a time for early stage first time community builders. If you are good the third, fourth time, then maybe you can do a lot of these things much earlier today. But first time, first build momentum, right? Once you build momentum now start figuring out the process, now start figuring out the vision, mission. All that is important because that's when you know committee members, your volunteers, your core members will start aligning to what is it that we are really doing? Why am I putting in extra time, right? It's a volunteer or if it's a full time also, what is it that they want because initially when you don't have an idea, so it's not that easy, but now you need to start figuring out, you sit down with the core team and figure out so that everyone else has some direction as to where you're going or what is it that you want to achieve? And you're, I think, a lot of principles that you can learn from how web3 is evolving, right? Community governance, community voting, you can do that on the web2. But a lot of us miss out on that, right? We do it very ad hoc. So like, try to figure out how you can involve the community. That is a six to 12 month post that I think now it is about figuring out now you have some amount of vision and mission, try aligning more processes, how do you scale. You are at that scaling factor, let's say we did 1000 members, you want to figure out now if you want to scale on volume, do you want to scale on value, maybe you can bring out paid memberships, you're ready to become the freemium player, maybe you can start with paid from day one, but then you need to have an audience to select. So figure out where I'm telling you broad principles across zero to one one to 10 and 10 to 100. But these can definitely overlap based on what your existing journey is, right? So you have a crazy following on Instagram of 1 million, you can directly start with paid membership from day one, not a problem to skip that zero to one entirely, right. But at 12 to 24 months plus we are also at that stage right now. So I feel at that point of time, it's much more important to ensure that the things that you're doing continue happening, you have processes in place so that even if you know some of these community members drop was a volunteer job, or someone else can easily step in and pick up. That is the foundation getting built. And second is now you're in the driving seat, right? You've been doing this for 24 months now, you know the ecosystem better, you know the space a lot better. There might be early people coming, but you've been there, done that for 24 months, right? Using those insights, can you now be in a driving position? And right now you are big enough? Maybe not as big, but you are at least big enough to make small dents. Right? Maybe can you figure out how to start enabling it? How do you start bridging it even further? Right? Initially, things might have been out of your reach. If you reach out to the top of the pyramid, an entire block is missing. So because now you've built out a certain block and can you take those leaps? Can you connect more dots? Right? I think you are now becoming at the centre of driving a lot of things. So it is important for you to act more responsibly, but also be a lot more ambitious. Right now is the time where you set really ambitious goals. It's okay, right? Those are those moonshots that like our startups have that 20% for moonshot, you really need to start taking those while maintaining that 80% and growing the community right, don't let that go. It might not have become as exciting because anything new is exciting. But two years into it, now things might seem like there's some monotony setting in, there are some boring stuff that I need to keep doing month on month. Figure out how I can automate this? All that stuff is there to figure out. There might still be some things that you cannot automate relationships, 30 minute calls that cannot be automated, right? If you do have that interest, I think, double down, figure out how you can delegate, onboard more people, you need to do the boring stuff that is a given. But at the same time, give 20% of the time for those moonshots, because that is where even your community gets much more excited. Plus you're in the driving seat right? Moonshots would have been not possible two years ago, right? Not possible 24 months ago, but now you're in a good position. So don't miss out on that 20%. But at the same time, ensure that 80% is now maybe driving sustainability for you, maybe driving monetization for you that can further you know, help grow your community a lot larger. So I think there are different stages, focusing on different things. And yeah, keep it tactical, like I like sharing some things that are a little more tactical. And hope that helps.
00:28:22
Harish: So you know, while you were talking about how somebody who is starting a community should be thinking, a parallel thought struck me. Right, two parts to this question. Have people started volunteering their time, in a different way as compared to earlier when I guess the default was to go and consume. Now, has it changed? Has that changed? Have people started volunteering their time more easily, more readily?
00:28:55
Suhas: I think now they're seeing the impact of it. Right? Initially, when we started, we didn't really have too much to give back to the volunteers. I think at that point of time, it was like, I just want to help out and see where it goes. It used to become a lot more difficult to align incentives, right? Because it's a lot farther out. It's not very immediate, right? There at least, like 12 months out where we can even like to promise something, of course, something you can do. But you need a lot more believers at that stage. Now, I think it's a lot more structured, right? We've seen so many volunteers transition to product roles themselves, that they know the importance. So that loop gets created. There is lots more visibility in the ecosystem today. People want to associate with, for example, back then, building TPF versus maybe going and contributing to the Google Developers/Facebook community. People choose the latter, right? No one knew TPF back then but now you get so much more inbound rate. I have to say five hours a week. I have 10 hours a week. I'd love to help do the ecosystem. Or for example, we just finished our Insurjo which is a flagship program. Lots of them have graduated from that found jobs and now just immediately they say, you guys did a fantastic job, I'd love to contribute back. Right? So if they start seeing the value, that's when people end up saying that these guys are doing, you know, a great job on the side, why can't I just help them out? So I think it's a factor of time initially, it's a lot harder, initially, you need to do a lot more outbound. Get them in. But I think, once you have some believers, I think, as you scale at that 12 to 24 months mark, things start becoming a lot easier. As long as you stay relevant and fun. One of the best parts, I think, is that our volunteers, lots of people, ask us up here, what's in it for the volunteers? I think we have a younger volunteer set compared to many other organisations, it's a much younger volunteer set. And if you see once you're outside of college, there are a few avenues to make friends, right? And I can tell you for a fact, some of my closest friends today are volunteers that met on Twitter and never met them in person until this one month. So two years under the journey and never met them in person. And they're some of my closest friends who eventually tend to talk to them in a video call about five, six times. So oftentimes, things fall outside of that. So I think whoever joins in nearly I delegate everything apart, maybe three months later, you figure out does not feel like it. So things get busy, completely. Okay, bottom line, have fun and make friends, right? If you go out without making friends, I'll be disappointed. Right? The rest of it is up to you. Right, you put in more time, you will get more value. That's the simple fundamental, right? It is a factor of time. Nothing you can do and everyone grows, right? People who contribute early, they see value they've transitioned, they come back, add more value. So it's a function of time, like you mentioned. Exactly the slow cooking recipe. You mentioned, this is externally internally both are the factors of time.
00:31:45
Harish: Right. Yeah. So one thing that strikes me is that, you know, we often actually talk about this in our work, where we say that today, you're seeing this is the age of the empowered employee. Even for companies or for startups, you want people who really believe in the cause, right? And how that is going to happen is when you have figured out what you're northstar is, articulated it, everyone is aligned on that, you know, whatever the culture manifesto that you're talking about, that is continuous reinforcement of the culture and all of that, right. The reason why this has become so important these days is people want to connect with things, which they believe in, right? So if I see an employee of a startup, devoting four hours to a TPF, where he or she is not getting paid, but doing it with so much more interest than his or her day job, right? The entrepreneur is going to question that, what am I not offering to this employee that he or she is putting in at the same time to a TPF? Which is why these ways, you know, companies are also thinking about how we can sort of pick the kernel of what this community building is happening outside and bring it into our own world? So this is this, this is what is happening, you know, whether it is the right way to go about it or not, it's a different question. But people are trying to do that. What is your take on it?
00:33:19
Suhas: Honestly, I don't see a right or a wrong here. I feel like we'll probably figure it out. I feel like at this point of time, it is what works for them. Right? If it works for you. Great. If it doesn't, it is still completely okay with I still feel like there's so many avenues to go. Why are people contributing to it? Because they want to do it personally. No one is at a stage where it's philanthropy but where they're wanting to. They have that good intention for sure. Right, that's why they are coming forward outside of their full-time and putting an effort here right. So that is there for sure. But over time, if they do not see an incentive to align the time outside of this which they would have put into something else right, and their friends are doing it everyone else so if they don't see that value coming back to them, then it becomes harder than the long term. So some other incentive needs to align. Sometimes this works, sometimes something else might. Many times they would have joined your might have dropped out and come back later that's happened. I feel it's completely okay, either or is okay. Do what works for you. I think it is important for the individual to decide here that hey, how does this now and think a little more long term? It's not easy, it's very easy to say this. But in the short term, everything looks exciting. Think a little more medium term, right? Six months from now, how is this going to impact you? One thing I think just for me personally, though, like I've realised that don't equate everything in terms of money right? There's lots more to life after money like once you're into your career for X number of years, you realise that eventually after X number of years, you will make more money in one month than what they made in the entire of any of those dynamics and that is true, right? It's very difficult for someone early in their career to realise it. But it is the truth, you will make enough money at some point in time, as long as you're going to get better as long as you're going down this route, you will get a little better, you will get better jobs like, but you need to do something outside of work that excites you. Right. And that's probably one of the reasons people, you know, indulge in other ways to do it. I think that is the more important factor as and when they realise that, okay, you know, it's not just about the money that also comes from maybe right, this impact, maybe you get a much better job has happened to a lot more volunteers. But I feel all that is secondary, the first impact is, how do we help more people? And that's just like, I think most of the volunteers who stuck around from the beginning enjoy that one aspect, they don't have anything, in fact, we don't even discuss this internally but it just happens. It's more about you. Okay, what is that next step, now people have started questioning, okay, if you're launching a new initiative, internal volunteers, they start questioning that, how's it going to impact people? But initially, the question did not come together. So it's adding to it now. They're starting to think, Okay, this looks exciting. How's it going to help others? What is good and bad? I think that is a good point, that a lot of other communities at some stage, I think it's good to question. Sometimes I might be on my own. This looks exciting. Let's do someone else's. I feel like cross dialogue is also super important. And that's healthy, like, if you measure community in some form, it's probably not on volume tomorrow, you'll grow your community, but more on these engagement metrics. Are people, you know, really thinking doubling down on what is really creating an impact? I think those are the metrics that someone should look at.
00:36:28
Harish: Right. I think that is true for companies also, which are trying to build community, right? Eventually, what is the value that you're, you know, giving to the community members?
00:36:38
Suhas: On the company aspect I've seen a lot of companies now doubling down on building community, like you mentioned, I think that is definitely true in 2021. That is, no, it's not going away. And the best part is putting effort and money behind it. You know, the hiring community managers are integrating this with the marketing departments and engineering departments, with their branding department. Like they're figuring out the way communities work for them. And they're also realising that it takes time initially, also, they might have been three months, six months later, okay, this is not giving us any RoI, and a direct return on investment. So then they shut it down. But I think now they're at least invested. And especially second time founders, I see like, even from day one, they are starting community first, right? Whether they're SaaS solutions, whether they're building a consumer product. Name some of largest startup starting today, right from a Jupiter, which is a neo bank to Rocketlane, all of them, I think its community from day one, even though the product is exciting, that's a great inflection point, I'm talking from India POV, in the West it is couple of years ahead, right. But from an India point of view, I think lots of second time founders are taking this very, very seriously. And that's a very positive sign, right? There's more respect, there's more money coming into the domain of community management, you'll see a lot more people taking this up seriously, you'll see a lot more good community managers come up.
00:37:50
Harish: Right. In fact, it just just extended this right. I mean, if you think of community as a theme, there have been movements that people have contributed their time to from Wikipedia, to open source to even political movements, right? I mean, whether you talk of the Arab Spring or whatever else, right? It always boils down to community building. So do you see that as you know, something, which is going to become more and more stronger in India, where these communities will also start thinking about, Okay, what else can we do outside of say somebody like The Product Folks? What can you do outside of Product Management?
00:38:31
Suhas: Of course. I'll give you two examples, right? One of our volunteers was running one of India's largest political communities, a Facebook group with more than a million plus members. And that's a huge number to actually manage. And there's so many different learnings that come from that. So I'm reading one example of that happening within the community. Second most recent example. For two months, we shut down operations for TPF and all of us were involved in day to day COVID relief efforts, right? We will build out a donate page, we've got more than 4 million hits in a month, right? And all of this is just this entire team saying that, hey, okay, we must pause everything we're doing. And it's so much easier because we're already across 27 different cities in India. And that became one overnight thing. On Thursday, we thought okay, hey, you know, we are going into the second wave. Things are getting very bad. Can we do something about it? On Friday, like, hey, let's pause and by Saturday, Sunday, we had the Glide app ready, right? We had that resource. By Monday, we had the donate page in a span of five days, which wouldn't have been possible, because you spent five days first of all trying to figure out what to do. And how do you get more people to mobilise? This was already in place for us, right? Within five days we started of course then word spread and then like traction increased, but within five days we had that initial thing ready through different people contributing in different ways. We had volunteer groups across WhatsApp, which would have become super overwhelming for people who are doing it for the first time. But for us, operations ran on WhatsApp, so it happened overnight, right. And I saw so many other volunteer groups springing up right, right outside of Twitter. I don't know if the impact is greater, but honestly I feel like 99% impact is definitely what doctors did in hospital. But even then 1% of just trying to put in some effort to bridge help, just being the support layer, I feel that I think a lot of these volunteer groups stepped up. And not just as I saw at least 40 different volunteer groups spring up over the last, you know, in that COVID relief effort. So these are just two recent examples to share with you. I think community management has been going along for decades, for years, for centuries together in different forms, whether religious, whether political, just causes right tomorrow, there are so many other volunteer groups who are trying to protect the Earth, like, I feel those are also much larger causes to contribute to. Product management, in fact, is a smaller niche that we started, it's important to start with a niche. But over time it grows, those tomorrow might become, you know, the world's largest place for entrepreneurs to go to. Right. Eventually, that just increases. And I think that's how communities grow. You start with a niche. And eventually you become an umbrella where lots of these people find value. As long as you're providing value, as long as the people are finding value, I don't think it matters how big the cause is. But absolutely what you mentioned, I think it's a matter of time, some causes are much larger from day one, and attract a lot more people, but it's much, much harder to manage, right? Imagine climate change itself is so hard to make an impact but lots of volunteer organisations are coming up there as well. I think it's just that we see it as a new form. And lots of learnings, we're just picking up from what's already existing, right, just adapting to the new times.
00:41:44
Harish: So yeah, in fact that's the most common thing that I say to founders when I talk about helping them build and articulate their culture and influence their employees. People have been doing this for centuries. You know, religion was always about building that culture. They had rituals, they had this mythology of stories, that's the same thing we want to build, you know, just that you are a remote company, doesn't mean the tactics change, right? It's the same thing that we've been doing for centuries. And you just need to apply to this context. So very true to exactly what you said. So what question that comes to mind is for a community or a community builder, what can be defined as success?
00:42:30
Suhas: Sure, again, two-three ways to look at it, I think, if you're looking at this as a full time gig, and you want to build like a monetizable layer, I think that should be your northstar. If people are paying for it, there's a direct correlation to value, right? If they're seeing value in it, they will pay for it. If they are not, they are going to drop out of it. Right? Whether you think about your membership or whichever form, if that is your core, if you're not trying to build a business out of it, figure out when people are willing to put money to them or like me, and we will say, Hey, you do it, we will pay for it. That's a very different category. But if they're really paying, that means you are creating value. Right? That's how I would see that, that is one category. Second is maybe, you know, like us, if you're building a volunteer driven community, then optimise for what is that outcome? Right? What people are sticking to? Many people might get attracted to it thinking, Okay, what is this? Are people sticking to it? Right. So that's a different metric. How engaged is a community might be a good metric to track, you know, success might be like, Are you growing? In fact, like, if you stagnate, it becomes a problem at some point of time, because there will be churn in the community, right? It's never 100 out of 100 people, especially in a completely free community, even in peer communities, that happens, right? So grow, keep growing month on month that can be one metric you can track. And second is the value of providing another value can be if people are coming back to your community, that is the engagement metric you're tracking, then you are providing value, right? So these are proxy metrics. I don't think there's a direct metric. For us, you asked me what's a direct metric, it is the outcome we are creating, how many people are transitioning, those who are looking to break into product, right? And we're transitioning via product. So that could be a metric we are tracking right. Right now we started tracking that for senior people, right? So this is what people want to break into products. But for senior, mid senior look at like, we've been doing a lot of user interviews. I think the focus is also on that for now. Right now, we've been focusing a lot more on helping people to break into products, but maybe in the next 6-12 months, you want to build out that layer where people were already into product, how do we help them get better at their skill? How do we help them interact with either people in their circle of company, people who are in their same journey, or people who are like seniors to them maybe for mentorship, or guidance, etc. So there can be different ways of doing it. But maybe success metrics there will be like, how many of those intros can we make how many of these people actually find guidance? So I feel it depends on the path you are taking. If monetization is your goal, definitely focus on and easier to tie back, it might take you a little longer. But in our case, I think value is the success metric that we are growing month on month. And we're able to increase or at least maintain our engagement rate, people are at least finding some value. If we can increase our engagement rate, if we can increase our retention rate, nothing like it. I think I would put a lot more emphasis on that and primary metrics slowly. I think we also want to transition to outcomes, like how do we help more people and actually track that as a metric? That is number one, for the senior, mid-senior folks, it is about like, again, it's very difficult for me to tell. Okay, how are you going to track this value as a metric? But I think some of the lagging indicators will be right, if you are going month to month, if you are increasing your engagement rates. And eventually, people are putting out these testimonies with or without you saying people are going to put out these testimonials on social media. If that is going I think this is a fair value to say, growth equals to success metrics, in some ways. Meaningful growth, rather not about doing an audience here is more about helping your community members find value from it. Now this value as a metric can be different for different communities.
00:46:00
Harish: Right. Yeah. So if you think of the product community in India, right. Like I said, you know, there have been these bodies, the NASSCOM, Product Council, and all these people who are trying to do something, and they've done a fantastic job. What do you think the education system and companies do to improve the product community? You guys are doing a fantastic job, you are volunteer driven. But there is a role that someone else needs to play and has not done a great job for whatever reason, where is it that they can step up both the education system and companies themselves?
00:46:44
Suhas: 100% agree, I think both of them have an equally important role to play right, from the education point of view is what we are doing. I think that is something the education system should essentially be doing. So do as an entire program become much, much more earlier, many of them who joined are people who are early in the career like I think at least 40% of people who entered us are early in their career, I think that is something education system can just take it off whether as a core curriculum as a workshop on top of it, I think as early as we can get into product building, nothing like that. Right? I think on the education front for sure, I extend education within companies, right, as they enter it is not only about the work they're doing, but also a lot that they can help in upskilling. Right, whether they're doing that internal, like as an L&D program, or they're partnering with maybe cohorts or maybe even bootcamp, but it is very important to help you know, your employees continuously upskill, the market is changing so fast, the skills are changing, the tools are getting outdated, the concepts, fundamentals remain the same, of course, right. So everything around you is changing, right? Unless you can help your employee stick around you, you as a company might not be relevant tomorrow. Right? But it is as important for you, because they learn these skills, and they are able to apply it to your company, your company is also going to grow. I think from both points of view, it's important. We, as a volunteer driven community, try to play the enabling game. NASSCOM probably was the enabling layer between the government and a lot of these industries, where they were trying to get a lot more participation. So I think they are at a far, far better stage to solve this. But just like every other community, right, when you're in the first early 12 to 24 months, now a lot more excitement, you're a little smaller, you can build things way more in an agile fashion, right? You want to do this, it doesn't take so much time. Once you grow out, like a body that's that big, there are a lot more processes. There's more bureaucracy, there are things that you can get done very easily. But then it is also important for you to stick to the grassroots like do you have enough ears on the ground to see if this is really making an impact? Right, you probably have a lot more connection, like I mentioned on the top of the pyramid, but you need to, at the same time, have at least ears on the ground to ensure or else you will be living in your own biases, right. So I think that enabling layers does and it's easy to do, and there's probably something very important for us as we grow. I think it is important for us to still stick to the rules and understand that point of time, what is it that the community wants. So I think for bodies like them, I think it is super important not to just policy is something they can drive right to do it. But at the same time, ensure that whatever policy you're driving is actually relevant to today, right? Not relevant to what you thought is relevant or what you started doing 8-10 years back. It was great at that point of time, what you did was fantastic. And today what you're doing is great, right, but you do ensure that the level of power you have is translating down to outcomes, which is relevant to today's time frame. So they have a lot more leverage, honestly, like essentially, we'd love to partner, we'd love to do things together. But it should just align right. I think that becomes the most and I feel like that is an inherent advantage. We have lots more young folks who are guided by senior PMs or guided by people who are a little senior in their career. So, that input even if they get a lot more junior folks in their organisation will help them understand what are the challenges people face today. Or maybe don't play out that in time or maybe just solve at the top? That is also completely okay. Right? Maybe you are solving policy level changes, maybe you are making an impact. I think they do a lot of stuff on the policy side of things. They are in fact, also coming out with the upscaling programs, they did a great job in trying to do the entire services to product way. Right. And you mentioned that I think the Ispirit did a great job. ProductNation did a great job. NASSCOM did a great job. And these organisations are far, far bigger today. So for them to come down to the grassroots, they can in fact, do every single thing we're doing, maybe to greater precision, also. I think it is about the incentives aligning for the right. I think as the organisation grows, focus shifts, energy shifts, everyone is very, very excited earlier, how do you maintain this energy as the company grows, as with every company.
00:50:47
Harish: And for individuals, you know, what is your advice to people who are looking at, and this is true for people at different levels, right, from somebody who's just starting off their career, what do you do today in order to be relevant tomorrow? That is what is most important. And we've seen people with impact, we've had guests on this show, who have self taught themselves to move from a business analyst role in a large IT services company to now being a product owner in a startup? Right. But he actually had to do the hard yards himself, right? Because there is nothing supporting him. So what are the things that people should do? Both for somebody who's just starting off their careers? Where should they want you to seek out where they should volunteer? To somebody who is mid-career, you know, 5-10 years in any kind of a role product or services company? What should they be thinking? Any advice to them? Yeah,
00:51:49
Suhas: I'll probably go on record to say that there is absolutely no substitute for hard work. Everything in life has trade offs. So ensure that at any point of time, if you want, like a really good work life balance, just remember there are tonnes of other people out there in the same market, who are putting way more effort than you are, forget talent, right? You might be very talented, that might offset your hard work by small percentages, right? But if you are out there saying that, okay, the hustle culture, I'm saying this on record, right? I'm not promoting hustle culture, it is each one's choice. That's all I'm saying. Right? I'm saying that. It is proportional to the effort you're putting in, right? You can call it smart work. Right? Smart work is essentially hard work plus more direction added to it. You're going in the right path of luck. I'm not discounting everything, how do you increase, you might be working super hard. Things are not working out for you. I agree. There are lots of instances we've seen. But what is in our hands, right? Is luck in our hands? No. What is in our hands is the effort we put in, we can control the inputs, we cannot control outputs, right? So the basic thing is, forget everyone around. You might not come from the best circumstances, completely okay. It's in the past, you might not have the best circle around you. Because oftentimes, I think the ambition and every other thing that we see around us, is a factor of what have you been exposed to? It might not come to them again, in the past, right? Today, maybe it's very difficult for you, if you want something tomorrow, it might not happen right? Immediately, something might not happen. But if you put effort today, six months, twelve months, the needle will move, right? If you're putting an effort, the needle will move. No one can guarantee how much the needle will move. There are different factors that come into play early into your career. Some very tactical things to do, right? Split it into two buckets, right? One is to figure out whether you want to climb up the ladder, what do you want to do, right initially? Are you in a position where you want to start something? If you're in that position? Write that down. Is that something you want in the position? If not, maybe 5-10 years from now, do you want to start up right? How do you work towards that? Do you want to be like an engineering leader? Do you want to be a product leader at a company? How do you work towards that? Right? First step is figuring it out, and honestly, even though I don't know what I might want to do 10 years from now. Very difficult, right? So that's our broad vision, maybe two or five different visuals, maybe I want to do this or this and this etc, etc. Just have some vision towards where you want to go right? If you want to get into hospitality, but you're doing engineering and working in an IT firm, it is completely different, right? Have a broad idea to start with or at least have some path. Mid career, you have fewer options. As you work in this office, you need to start figuring out more depth. Second, now you start splitting it into two steps, right, two different skill sets. One is how do I get into those opportunities? How do I increase my surface you need to get into those opportunities, right? Is it better for me to sit and apply to 200 roles on LinkedIn and then wait for the chance, or can I create more opportunities for myself? Right, can I you know, maybe start a podcast or be a part of a community, can I start writing more blog posts? And can I be active on social media, Twitter, Instagram, whatever gameplays that right? Can I just maybe I don't even need to do that, can I just reach out to, you know, write 15-20 cold emails and the companies I'm interested in, right? There are 100 different ways to figure out what works for you. But at least take the first step. Tomorrow, you might start a podcast and three months later, you realise this is not for me. But you might figure out okay, here it is, you eliminate something, you realise, okay, maybe podcasting is not a thing, you will then explore maybe writing my thing, right? It's completely okay to experiment a lot more early to get you to figure out what works for you. Right? Do you enjoy engaging with people? I enjoy like, I think the reason when you ask how, or or why why product like via the community, I think I enjoy just interacting with people. I think in hindsight, I can say that maybe back then I didn't. Experiment a lot early in your career. And don't fall for that FOMO. If your primary circle of friends is not doing it, don't worry, you can still go out and do it just because they're not doing that. What will they think about, early in a career that sets in a lot. These are two three things that I feel tactically to get out of that you can do a lot of these things. Second part that I was telling is to build that skill. Here, this will help you get an opportunity. But once you get an opportunity, it is equally important. So yes, you need to get that opportunity and get the foot in the door. And there's a great book called The Third Door by Alex Banayan, check that out, you can put a link in the description. That is a great way to build the first bucket, right? How do we get that opportunity now that I've got the opportunity? How do I prove my worth? So it's equally important to have that skill, whether it's engineering, product, etc. I'm a huge believer that things can be learned online. But at the same time, I don't downplay that, for example, in product, there's a huge discussion that goes on, is MBA required to get into product, right? I don't downplay it, right. It's a great accelerator. If you have that 30-40 lakhs that you want to invest. And you have the skill to get into a college like ISB, nothing like it. Right. It's a great accelerator that will find a lot of 2x hard work to do from the outset. Brand plays an important role, plus it opens up some of these doors, right? So what you are essentially doing in two buckets, I feel that you and there are long term effects of IT people just thinking about it doesn't have any traction. It's an accelerator, whether in terms of money, whether the skill, whether an opportunity, it's an accelerator, right? The trade off is yes, you are spending some money, energy, right? You are spending money in the form that you're trading that for some time that you're saving? The other way of doing it is can you get that material? Can you hustle your way? Can you make that network? Can you write cold emails? Right? So there are two buckets and there is no fine line. But in both of them, it is about working hard whether you go to ISB, they stay up nights to solve the case study, break those interviews, right? It's not easy for them, right? And say today, you're like, okay, dude, I don't want to spend that 30-40 lakhs, don't want to go to ISB. I don't want that credential. I can do it on my own. Imagine they have all that plus, they're spending 14 hours a day full time just studying, preparing for interviews, building that network? Are you putting in the effort, you first of all have a 10 hour job. On top of that, you need to match up with something like this. I'm just putting it out there. These are facts, right? There's nothing to do with hustle culture. There's nothing out here, right? putting it out there, you are probably playing for the same, now Google opened up three openings. Say you're breaking also right? You can also talk about zero sum how much ever right? But there are three positions that they are opening up this year, right? Maybe you were exceptional, they might create a poll question. But you have to be that exceptional person, you break in, come in front of them, and Google in fact doesn't hire someone outside. The lateral is very, very likely. And this is an example that tomorrow you want to work with an early stage company, you have to get in front of them, you get that opportunity, then you prove your skill, right. So it is a factor of the work you put in, some might get lucky early, some might get lucky later, there's a factor of luck. But it is the effort that you put in. I think either mid or late it is very important for folks to understand the market they are playing, the game they are playing. First understand the game you play and understand the market of play. And tell me one person who has made it without working hard. And I'll be convinced but I just feel like people want it easy today which is not the case, right? Whether as a function of time and patience. We are all in a FOMO driven society, right? We want everything happening tomorrow, realise that the person next to you might be putting in the effort that you don't right. So I think like one modifier to say like it is the effort, right? People are putting lots of effort behind the scenes. Do that then the rest of it will follow whether there are different ways to do it. Right. Figure out different paths for what game you want to play in your hand. But whatever game you play, you need to put in the effort required for that. Extended answer, but I just went as deep as I could.
00:59:38
Harish: Yeah. So you mentioned the book, The Third Door so any other books, podcast people to follow that that you would recommend?
00:59:50
Suhas: I’ll tell you what I'm reading right now. So like I just started, like a couple of books that I have. One is, if you're into the investing side of things, I'm currently reading the Education of a Value Investor. And this book was one up on Wall Street, but Peter Lynch has been interested in the stock market lately. Another one I'm currently reading is Originals by Adam Grant. And this is pretty famous. There's another book on reading. I think one of them is Barking up the Wrong Tree. I think this was a gift from a friend from TPF. It's by Eric Barker. These are three-four books that I'm currently reading. I haven't really got the time to read as much as I love to. But I think I have one per the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. I think that is super important for me to read. That’s lying on my shelf, I want to read that at least by the end of this year.
01:00:50
Harish: That will change the way you look at the world.
01:00:52
Suhas: Oh, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I'm looking forward to that. In fact, gifted to me by another founder friend. Fantastic.
01:01:03
Harish: Okay, great. Great. So that brings us to the end of this conversation. But before you go, I'm going to ask you for your hot takes on three things. Okay, so the first one is, what do you think is the future relevance of product startups in India?
01:01:22
Suhas: Super bullish. You just saw like the recent Dairy Milk campaign, refresh your day, fantastic job. I feel like this decade like I'm 110% bullish on this, I feel like if you are early in your career listening to this, you're building your career listening to this. Just look out for funding announcements, those are the teams that are just out there with money looking to grow, reach out with some relevance, some value, right? Make a deck, see the pain points, and reach out to senior product managers. I'm talking from a product point of view, but any role that you'd like to, if it's a smaller company, reach out to the founder directly. I'm sure they'd be willing to chat with you. They want great talent to work with the brand, you just need to add value before like that's the best way right? Can you add value even without being a part of the team? especially young in your career, take chances. And I'm super bullish, honestly, a short answer to that 110% bullish on product startups. This decade is definitely ours.
01:02:22
Harish: What do you think is the future relevance of metaverse?
01:02:27
Suhas: At the risk of sounding cliche, this is something I've been exploring as well. And you know, what I've done is I've set the setup like another Twitter account, like another anon Twitter account, where I just follow these folks. So it feels like this account is open only late at night just before sleeping. I live in another world as before going to sleep. It's very, very different. Many of us are not believers today. But the biggest companies, Facebook and Microsoft have already announced this, right? So FOMO driven, but you just need to remember that this FOMO is now at that stage, right? It may be FOMO. But now there are two biggest selling biggest companies on the other side of the world, right? So as a matter of time, I've been working very closely with the founders in India, some founders in India building in this space. So it's a very exciting time. Honestly, if you're early in your career, if you have the time, or if you have the bandwidth to take a bet. Go for it. Two years later, it might not work. I'm not saying, I think it's very early, like I mentioned very early to say yes or no to that. But if you have the chance, I think you should definitely take a bet on this. Okay, I'm bullish again. I'm super bullish at the intersection.
01:03:41
Harish: And what do you think is the future relevance of Indian B-Schools?
01:03:44
Suhas: Honestly, some of my closest friends have done degrees in India and abroad. So not dissing, but I feel and I want to do, I think on the shelf behind you can also see my GMAT preparation book lying there for like two and a half, three years. So, I feel like if you get a chance today, do it. Relevance of it from the point of view, right, if you're going there for the network, internet makes things easier, you can build a network in a better way. If you're going there for the degree as a credential. And you want to work at startups, startup founders don't look at degrees, don't look at credentials, you have better ways of showcasing that in the internet first world, you can spend a fraction of that money and then like get into really coveted CBCs for example, you know, there are these On Deck, Stoas, all these CBCs that are springing up right will be a part of them early, because the network is very curated. And for a fraction of that money you can be set. Figure, what do you want from that MBA? Right? These colleges aren't going anywhere because I think huge endowment, huge instances where they're there and that is they'll still be alive majority of people want to go to it. So I don't think it's going away anywhere. How relevant will it be to extend an internet first world? I feel there are much better opportunities available today, it is in your hand, what game again comes down to the game you want to play. It's not going away anyway, I still feel like 90% of people will look forward to that. And my credential because of how we are as a society, right from the short to medium term, it's not going away. But if there are lots of great opportunities in the short to medium term, you expand your network, expand your skill, and credentials will come over time. Credential isn't something that you can pick up as easily. So maybe being part of one of these boot camps or CBCs can be an alternative, if they grow to a similar tomorrow, 10 years from now that On Deck has the same value. Maybe not right? Because there's a much larger rigorous process of getting in the brand has been built over to I think the credential will take time. But are the opportunities you're looking for looking for a credential. Are they looking for a credential, maybe not. And that is something that will change over time, like the proof of work concept is coming through, there are lots of ways to showcase that. In fact, I don't come from a tier one college, but no one has asked me for which college I come from right, and I'm not even there yet, like I haven't like even like, I feel like, there's so many ways to showcase your proof of work, it takes some time, again, boiling down to exactly that. I feel like it's not going away anywhere. But you have lots more avenues today to showcase your skill set for you to upskill. So you'd rather invest directly putting in the same amount of effort. You'd rather invest in that. I think the returns are much, much, much larger, like the amount of money you spend here, there's a chance that the upside is a lot more, right. I think the upsides are kept at some point again, like I'm not a believer, saying that, hey, no MBAs, I've seen lots of people get that career boost with it. Some of my closest friends have gone to good colleges, right? So I've seen the impact of that. So anyone who says MBAs are useless. I'm not in that school of thought as well. I feel like these are good opportunities as well, right. And for a much larger firm, much less so this point of view. And why risk because if you are going out of India for studies, spending 100k-200k, which you will have to spend the next three, four years getting back, right, you're already spending 30-40 lakhs. Of course, your salary will be higher outside. And if you're doing an MBA, do it at a tier one college. I am comparing only tier one as an MBA. I'm not even talking about the others. When you mentioned relevance in my head, I was talking only about tier one MBA. For the others, yes, there will be much less than again for a different part of the population, which maybe we are not discussing today. So as I'm assuming one, yes, we're not discussing tier two, tier three MBA and we're discussing only for the Top X percent, right, that's where I'm coming from. But for that percentage of population, which mostly will be listening to your podcast, I feel y'all have a lot more opportunities today, grab that two years later, that doesn't work. I think MBAs are always going to be there.
01:08:03
Harish: On that note, I think that was a fantastic almost an hour long chat that we had on the nuts and bolts of community building. And you know, how things are changing in the world of startups. And how should people think about it? Two things that stood out for me, one was time and patience when it comes to community building and for individuals to think about their future relevance. Know the game that you're playing, know the rules of the game, and make a very deliberate choice of whether you want to play that game or not. If you play, make sure you know the rules, and play it accordingly. Otherwise, you're playing T-20 in a test or a test in T-20.
01:08:49
Suhas: Know the rules so that you can break it as well, right? If you don't know the rules you don't know. And it's fine. Like just learn the basics like then understand how it works, then break it, it's fine. But understand the game you're playing like that if you don't know what game you're playing, then you're on two boats, two legs and two boats, which becomes very difficult.
01:09:06
Harish: Yeah, so on that note, thanks a lot for this great conversation.
01:09:09
Suhas: Thanks so much, Harish. I honestly loved it. Thanks for driving the conversation. And thank you so much for having me here.
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