[CTQ Smartcast] A VC's Guide to Staying Future Relevant, with Amit Somani
Amit Somani is currently Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage VC firm focused on investing in disruptive product companies out of India, with a particular focus on Fintech & SaaS.
Amit brings over 25 years of global experience in technology and internet industries. He's held Product and Tech Leadership roles at Google, Makemytrip and IBM including over a dozen years at Silicon Valley.
In this Smartcast with CTQ’s BV Harish Kumar, we talk among many things about what makes companies resilient, how to become comfortable with failure, the future of work, and his passion: reading.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
Some things we spoke about
7 timeless books for managers
The power of leverage
Your approach to personal curation & Tsundoku
A trait that many good founders share
How VCs have changed in the last decade
The relevance of Global In-house Centers (GICs)
LINKS TO BOOKS AND articles MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
HBR articles: Managing Oneself by Peter F Drucker | How To Manage Managers by Amy Galo
High Output Management by Andrew Grove
Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Warren E. Buffett
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
Amit Somani’s 7 timeless books I’d love to gift every new manager
Amit Somani: Why Everyone Should Take a Jobbatical
Books for Product Managers:
Ideas we spoke about
Tsundoku - A Person who owns a lot of unread literature
Centi-reading - Reading a book a 100 times
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - M.K.Gandhi
Yoga Nidra - Yogic sleep, a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping
If you enjoyed this topic, watch the CTQ Smartcast on Personal Information Management.
READ THE Transcript of this episode
[Start of Transcript]
[00:00:00]
Amit Somani is Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm, focused on investing in disruptive product companies out of India. Amit brings over 25 years of global experience in technology and internet industries. Amit was Chief Product Officer for MakeMyTrip when it went public in 2010. His ads product at Google won the Founder's Award. Amit has also been named in the LinkedIn India Top Voices in 2018 and 2019.
In this Smartcast, we picked Amit's brains on a whole variety of topics, from gaining wisdom to founding companies, the VC industry, product management, work environments in India and the US, and the future of work. Of course, we spent a lot of time on a mutual favourite topic, that is reading and books. We had a great time recording this, and hope you too find this episode as insightful as we did.
Harish Kumar: Welcome Amit to this CTQ Smartcast. We've been looking forward to pick your brains on a bunch of topics for a long time now. So looking forward to the next hour, hour and a half.
Amit Somani: Thanks Harish, pleasure to be on CTQ.
Harish Kumar: Thanks, Amit. The first time we actually interacted on LinkedIn was about reading. So let's dive in straight into the topic of books. Tell us about your reading routine. And how do you pick the books that you read?
Amit Somani: I love to read, of course. And that's how we got connected, I guess, through LinkedIn. And I read a lot. I got originally inspired by one of my first managers in the US, in California, who used to read a book a day, [00:02:00] that's what, 300 a year, which was shocking, because I could barely read four a year. But obviously, things have come a long way since.
Now, of course, in terms of your specific question of how I pick books, I pick books from recommendations mostly, from people that I know, from podcasts that I listen to, from articles that I read, from tweets that I see. So it's literally like a very broad funnel. And as we'll explore probably later in the podcast, I keep tending to buy a lot of books. And it's not even that I read everything I buy.
Harish Kumar: We see a lot of books in your bookshelf. Do you read on the Kindle? Or is it the physical books that you read? And what's your routine like? When do you read? Before sleeping, through the day, how does it work?
Amit Somani: Majority of my reading is on the Kindle. That's what I do have a fairly large bookshelf in the back there, and I do occasionally buy books in physical form. Because you know, there's a certain joy and delight that comes from reading books like that. In terms of the routine, literally, I read every moment I get. So there isn't a schedule, like at 7:30 am, I will read and at 10:30, before night, I will read. If I get a slot, I read. And it's not always books, obviously. We're all reading for our jobs and various things. So I tend to read quite regularly. I don't have a quantification, but it wouldn't be a surprise to me if I was reading like one and a half to maybe two and a half hours a day, which is outside of the kind of day to day, not counting email and all that kind of stuff.
Harish Kumar: Since you read so much, what about personal knowledge management? Do you take notes? How do you take them, electronic, pen and paper? How does that work for you?
Amit Somani: That, something to be honest, Harish, I have not really cracked yet, despite the fact of reading so much. So a couple of things I do, of course, on the Kindle, [00:04:00] it's much easier. I highlight a lot of things and take notes on the Kindle. I think it's read.amazon.com or read.kindle.amazon or something like that. So all your notes that you took, as well as the highlights show up there. And I will take those and often export it to Google Docs or to Evernote or something like that. I have on my to-do list to explore using note taking tools like Chrome research and others, but I just haven't gotten around to it.
One simple trick that I kind of picked up over the years is in terms of trying to have recall or remembering things is when you read something, especially a book, I will try and explain it to at least a few people. And now actually you don't even need human beings in a direct sense. You can put it on Twitter or LinkedIn. So I will often try to write up some of my takeaways or highlights or quotable quotes or in the rare cases, actually a full book review on LinkedIn or Twitter or somewhere else. But actual note taking can be much better.
Harish Kumar: Right. And any favorite book reviews that you have done? Not books, I'm asking about reviews that you've done.
Amit Somani: No, I actually started a newsletter last year, this was the beginning of COVID-19, called Mind Trails on LinkedIn, where I started reviewing books. I wouldn't say there is any particular one that I like. In general, I mean, books are amazing. And if you're going to go write a review about a book, then you really liked it. So I would say they're all quite intriguing and interesting.
Harish Kumar: Right. You have a very popular post about the seven timeless books that you would gift to every new manager. We'll link to that post from the show notes as well. But, just talk me through that list. How did that collection of those books, actually, what is the impact that it had on you? And how did you come to the conclusion that this is the list of books that I would love to gift [00:06:00] to every new manager?
Amit Somani: Yes, I've both been an individual contributor and a manager and Senior Manager, what have you, right for many decades. And often people will call me and ask me for book recommendations, because I read a fair bit. And so once, something got triggered, again, perhaps through social media, whatever. I was just thinking about, oh, let me give this to this person, let me gift this to that person, etc. And I just said, what about all the books that new managers should have? And then literally, it was like an inventory of books that have had a big impact on me over the years that I wish I had when I was starting out as a manager, say 20-25 years ago. And that's how that book came about.
Just to give a couple of examples from that list for your audience. There were two that I actually saw at Harvard Business Review that were given to me by my manager at Google. One is How to Manage Yourself. And the other is How to Manage your Manager. Those are actually articles, not even books. But yeah, I think there are books also eponymously with those titles, but I have gifted that pretty much to anyone that has ever worked for me since then. And often to even people who newly become managers saying, you know, these are good ones, but there are many others in that list. Happy to talk about some of those if that's of interest.
Harish Kumar: Yeah, please go ahead. Because managers looking at upleveling themselves is a prime category of audience for us. So we definitely like to talk more about that.
Amit Somani: Sure. So one other classic book in that seven-book list is High Output Management by Andy Grove. I'm a big Andy Grove fan. And if you're into management, or for that matter, leadership skills, you would want to read Andy Grove. He is also often cited as the original creator and founder, not just of Intel, but this whole category of performance management. [00:08:00]
In fact, in the modern era, companies like Google and Facebook, and others use this thing called OKRs: Objectives and Key Results, as opposed to KPIs or KRAs, which is more popular, perhaps here in India. And he is widely credited to be the creator of that. And really, I think, what High Output Management, I read it many years ago, like, a couple of decades ago, what it inspired me to think about is, the leverage that you have as a manager, is not the number of hours you work, or you put in, it's how much leverage can you get from the team? How effective can you make the team? How effective can you make your decision making? Are you spending the right time on the right kind of issues? Right? So leverage really was one of the key takeaways from that book for me. Leverage, both with respect to your time, with your calendar, with your decision making, with the people and how you're empowering the people or managing the people or holding them accountable. So, a phenomenal book that I would recommend. It's a little dated now, but I think it's one of those timeless ones, which is why I recommended it in the seven books that I would gift every manager.
Harish Kumar: Yeah. So, another thought that struck me while you were mentioning these, you mentioned these two HBR articles, which then later became books. So what about these other sources of wisdom? You said, you consume a lot of podcasts and articles. Is there any pattern in how you curate these different sources? And how have these sources changed over the years for you?
Amit Somani: Yeah, it's very, very interesting. I think podcasts have become a very big source of book recommendations. Because you listen to a guest and you find something that they're saying that's compelling. And then they say, Oh, I read this book here, or this ties up with that thing, and so on, so forth. So maybe listeners who are listening now might pick up a copy of High Output Management or, [00:10:00] you know, the OKR Book by John Doerr and so forth.
Podcast is something that has become very, very interesting in terms of selecting books. But beyond that there's this nice term since we talked in the podcast about books called Tsundoku. I don't know if you've heard this. And the meaning of that Japanese term, I'm sure I mispronounced it, is that you keep acquiring books, even the ones that you may not end up reading, because every book literally contains years, if not decades of wisdom, right, from the author, or the creator of that book.
So in terms of how I pick books, I already shared that earlier, that I'm looking at any and all sources. I've also reduced the bar or the pressure on myself back to the Tsundoku kind of metaphor. On every book I read, I must finish cover to cover, from preface to you know, afterward, right? I'm like, look, if it attracts me, if it grabs my attention, if it motivates me, I'll read it. Sometimes they don't, I drop it. Sometimes they do, but they're dense and intense, and they need multiple readings. So I will read it, and then I'll park it away. And then I kind of come back and read it again. So I think that the bar for my time is very high. But at the same time, the bar to pick up a book has actually become a little bit more generous. I wouldn't say I'm picking low quality stuff, but definitely, if it's not been referred in some channel that I like or appreciate, then I won't pick it up.
Harish Kumar: I think Taleb also has this concept of anti-library, books that you haven't read, I think it's on similar lines. So another concept that's there is centi-reading, you know, a book that you will read probably 100 times, that's what the article says. So is there a book that you've actually read so many times, or you wish you read at least 100 times?
Amit Somani: There are many actually, [00:12:00] maybe that's another listicle kind of article that I could write potentially. Clearly Bhagwad Gita is one of those. I think Charlie Munger's Almanack is another one of those. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman is an evergreen, you can read it every year. I think, When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi, is another one which is about mortality and his last year while he was living. I think there's at least a couple of dozen books I would put in that category, which can be read, not only many times, literally at least once a year. Man's Search for Meaning is another book that is worth reading every year. And it kind of centres you, reminds you… Bhagwad Gita, I think I mentioned that earlier.
Harish Kumar: Yeah. And do you see any fundamental difference between how say entrepreneurs and corporate professionals should be reading for future relevance? Is there a difference in outlook? Should there be a difference in outlook?
Amit Somani: I don't think so. I think you should read what grabs your curiosity, your attention. You should read whatever helps you perform better in whatever task you have at hand. I suspect if you're in the corporate world, and more on the classic business or leadership or management path, either as a technologist or as a business person, obviously things which are more around organizational design and management and books, like we talked about earlier, High Output Management, OKR, etc., they might have more bearing, whereas startup entrepreneurs and so forth will be probably reading much more around risk and decision making and innovation and zero to one and you know, things of that nature. But pretty much I think the lines have blurred quite a lot.
An entrepreneur could go certainly, become a [00:14:00] large company IPO and suddenly they're running a big company. And vice versa. A big company executive could leave tomorrow and go to the proverbial two BHK Bangalore startup. And so I think you should read broadly and what grabs your interest.
Harish Kumar: Right. Yeah. You know, we love our quizzing. So we're going to pepper this interview with some quiz questions. And I think this is the right time for this very appropriate question and to put some pressure on you, there's going to be something at stake. Every question that you get right, we'll actually give you a code that you can use to block a spot on one of our Daily Reader compounds, you can gift it to someone. Okay, so the first quiz question is this:
In Iceland, 'Jólabókaflóð', I hope I've pronounced it right, is a Christmas Eve tradition. It translates to Yule ____ Flood. This began during the Second World War, partly to support local businesses in a particular industry. So I want you to fill in the blanks, Yule ____ Flood. And I'll give you a hint. It involves an exchange of something.
Amit Somani: Okay. The poor kind of reader who would have got a free subscription is under more pressure than me because I'm totally drawing a blank here. I have no idea. But let me take a guess. Yule ______ Flood, like ‘F’ ‘L’ ‘O’ ‘O’ ‘D’, is that what it is? All right. Let me say some kind of... let me put glacier or something like that in there.
Harish Kumar: Okay, not glacier. Let me give you another broader hint, all the quiz questions are going to be very closely connected with you.
Amit Somani: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Harish Kumar: Let me repeat [00:16:00] the second part of the question, this began during the Second World War to support local businesses in a particular industry. And this involves an exchange of something.
Amit Somani: Got it. Is it capital? Or venture capital or something like that?
Harish Kumar: Okay. Not venture capital. I'll repeat the word again. Jólabókaflóð. And this is the last.
Amit Somani: Okay, book.
Harish Kumar: Exactly.
Amit Somani: All right. This one is like both hit wicket and stumping and caught behind, all at once. Okay, got it.
Harish Kumar: So this is exchanging of books and reading. So the Icelandic people, they have this big tradition of sitting up on 24th December and reading, all of them sit and read. The Iceland Publishers Association actually distributes a free catalogue of newly published books to every Icelandic home to enable this, and this is a big tradition that they have.
Amit Somani: It's fantastic. We should start that here. I think it's a lovely one.
Harish Kumar: Yeah, so on the third try, but you did get that right. Now coming to the next section, where we wanted to cover your current role as a venture capitalist. What in your opinion, are the building blocks of an enduring and a resilient organization?
Amit Somani: A VC organization?
Harish Kumar: No, for organizations that you will be funding.
Amit Somani: Okay, got it. I think that some of these might sound clichéd, but we have since further validated those clichés and we believe they are true. I think having a sense of a missionary organization, as opposed to a mercenary one is very critical. So the reason [00:18:00] often founders start companies is not like, Oh, I want to be rich, or I want to be famous, or I want to be powerful. I mean, those are also very interesting, and perhaps pleasing side effects. It is because they want to wrong something that they see in the world, or it's something that they want to solve or some problem that they want to solve.
So even if you meet founders, who 10, 15, 20 years later, after making 10s, if not hundreds of millions of dollars are still driven, and motivated. Not just the Jeff Bezos and the Elon Musks, you will see there is a sense of mission, they're trying to change the world in a certain way. So that is one very important thing. Are they really driven by a passion or a mission to change the world in some positive way? That is one thing that is very important.
The other one is the ability to iterate and ability to stay current and to problem solve. For example, now, even after hitting the S&P 500, which is the 500 largest companies, on the Standard and Poor's index in the US, probably arguably the 500 largest global companies, you die as a company, you vanish, you disappear after 20 years. So after becoming one of the 500 largest companies in the world, you vanish into thin air. Call it the erstwhile Kodak and there are many more that have lived and died. And the reason that happens is if you're not able to adapt and iterate and keep up with the changes, whether it's in the consumer behaviour, whether it's in the market dynamics, whether it's in business models, whether it is in technology, of course, then it's difficult. So I would pick these two as sort of very interesting traits.
Maybe a third one if I had to add is your ability to attract and retain the best people, very, very critical. Because you know, for both number one and number two to be true, which is being missionary, as well as constantly iterating, you need people that are really, really smart and hungry and will stay with you. So I think those are two or three that come to mind [00:20:00] right off the top of my head.
Harish Kumar: Right. So let me unpack this a bit. The first and the second point sort of sound to me like future relevance that we personally keep talking a lot about. Are there any lessons that individuals can draw from the way startups or organizations actually look at building future relevance? Because future relevance is seen as something that you know, organizations need to do. You need to avoid being a Kodak as a company. But what about individuals? The principle remains the same?
Amit Somani: Absolutely. Brilliant point. And since this is so much about books, and you guys run this CTQ around that. I think, human beings and professionals, if you don't constantly evolve, you're going to be out of a job, out of a paycheck, out of whatever, right? You have to constantly evolve. When I graduated 25 years ago, there was the C programming language, and the C++ programming language, even Java wasn't born yet. And now, if you see what is happening, if you're a 16 or an 18-year-old today, or a 38-year-old, and if you're not paying attention to AI, or to privacy-preserving, data mining or machine learning, or to some of these sort of new trends around 5G and so on, you're going to be defunct 10 years from now. You'll basically be jobless. And therefore, I think it's very, very critical that it is no different than a startup, for you to constantly evolve yourself and to constantly get better. And books are a great way to do that.
Taking risks is another good way to do that. I think talking to other smart people in diverse areas is another way to do that. And constantly challenging yourself to think a little bit beyond your status quo, or your comfort zone is very, very critical. I think, again, related to books, I think there's a quote from Charlie Munger, who is one of the legendary investors that I'm sure he's been often cited on your podcast is, [00:22:00] so he has this thing like he knows zero smart people, zero smart investors who don't read. Zero! And this guy is like 96 years old, and of course, one of the most epic investors of all time. I think you need to keep asking yourself, how can I evolve every day? What can I learn every day? How do I grow every day? Because if you don't, you're going to glacial ice.
Harish Kumar: Right, yeah.
Amit Somani: Yeah. And, in fact, even when we look at the whole Clayton Christensen innovator's DNA kind of thing, these larger companies versus smaller company mindset: larger companies are organized and designed for success in something which they have had success in. Everything is designed around that, but we know that you need to actually go iterate and be ready to fail. In fact, just yesterday, I heard this comment from a large company that we are working with that, you know, in our company, everyone comes from these pedigreed B schools. So they are habituated to success. So if we say that you need to be ready to fail, that is something which is anathema to them. So how do you make that change in the mindset for the organizations then?
Amit Somani: Yeah, there are again, all kinds of books and folklore around this. For example, 3M, which is a company in the offline world, that makes Post-its and so forth, adhesives, whatever. So they have this rule of thumb that at least 25% of their revenue every year has to come from new products. You set an OKR like that, or a KPI like that, you're forced to innovate and do something.
One of my popular blog posts, not necessarily, but books, that went quite viral was, I believe in taking a year off every 10 years. Call it a sabbatical, call it a jobbatical, self-imposed, take a year off, go read, travel, whatever it is, that makes you very uncomfortable. [00:24:00] But it helps you not only relax, but also grow a lot because you talk to people, you explore things, etc. So I think you're right, it is a mindset. Because once you're successful, or once you're stuck in Newton's laws of motion, that inertia is very hard to change. I think that you just have to maybe self-motivate, maybe the right kind of group you hang out with, to just try a few new things from time to time.
It need not be about books. It could be about some other experiences or downloading a new app, or a new game, or seeing a different TV show than you normally would or a different series on a Netflix or an Amazon video or Hotstar. I think it's just exposing yourself to some differences that can help you overcome a little bit of that inertia. I'm not sure, but maybe some of this is also nature. I would love to think that it's 100% nurturable, but those are a couple of thoughts.
Harish Kumar: And on the third point that you mentioned about organizations, about being able to attract great talent, a lot of that I'm sure will boil down to building a great organizational culture. So, that's something which, again, we've seen in some of our work with these smaller companies, especially the funded companies, where they are in the battle of the here and now. Which is right, I mean, they need to get the product-market fit and all of that, but there is a very, almost a deliberate de-prioritization of building an organizational culture and giving that focus on the values. So, is that something that as a VC, is that something that you flag to your companies or to people who come to you for advice? And how do you work on that people foundation bit? [00:26:00]
Amit Somani: I think, again, it's a combination of nature and nurture. Some founders are inherently driven to build an amazing culture and to build an amazing organization and to attract people smarter than themselves into the company, and so forth. And for some others, it's a learnt experience, they evolve as they go along the way. So we spend a lot of time on org design, we spend a lot of time helping them with hiring their top talent, and even being a part of the process to be perhaps a sounding board, or maybe even in some cases, interview talent and give them feedback to the founders and so forth. We also pay a lot of attention to that before investing and after investing.
We look at, for example, what are the employees saying about that company on platforms like Glassdoor or LinkedIn or even for that matter, Twitter, when we can anecdotally look at it to see what kind of culture is there? We will do discreet ref checks on asking people, how is Harish to work with, or how is Ramanand to work with? Or what have you, etc. The Glassdoor ratings, we track both pre and post investing. We actually occasionally if they fall below a certain level, we send a note to the founder, and ask them to do a little dipstick. We do annual 360° reviews. And by the way, not just for the founders, we encourage them to do it for themselves. We also do it for ourselves, saying, how are we as a VC partner to work with? And what can we do better? Because we meet very actively and work with them and do reviews.
So I think these are a couple of things that really help. Things like 360° review, things like Glassdoor ratings, things like an employee NPS is becoming popular for the best companies. Some of the best companies are not just doing customer NPS, the Net Promoter Score, but they're also doing employee NPS saying, on a scale of zero to 10, would you recommend working at CTQ or Prime Ventures to somebody else? [00:28:00] Employee NPS is becoming... So there are many different techniques. And like I said, I would love it if everybody did it. But I would say certainly, I don't have the actual kind of factual data. But anecdotally, I feel the best companies in the world are magnets for hiring and retaining talent. I can't think of any company; you can go from China to the US. Alibaba, Tencent, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name it, Amazon. If you can't figure this out, you're just not going to build it at scale, which will be a successful company, you could even be a very profitable company. But until you crack this code, and you can't crack this magically, it's not some inspirational halo effect that will come in your hair or your head, it has to be something which is cultivated and constantly reinforced.
Harish Kumar: Is part of this realization like you said, some of it is learned experience. So is that a missing piece in how or before people actually jump into going and starting their own companies, is there a missing piece here? Because not all of this can be taught in an entrepreneurship course. You have to burn your hands and then learn all of this. But is there something that somebody is doing well? If you look at countries like Israel, yes, they are the startup nations. Yes, they need to scale up now. But there are some places where this is happening better than in other places. Comments on that?
Amit Somani: I think that the question is it's not like you're going to be born having learned everything. I mean, Bill Gates started when he was 19. Zuckerberg started at 18-19. So many of these things can be done. The question is, do you have the mindset [00:30:00] to learn? Do you have a growth mindset? Are you open to input and feedback? Or are you too arrogant or too cocky and too unwilling to see something else? That's one part of this challenge.
The other part, like you said in your earlier part of your question, is that there's also food and shelter issue as a startup because you're saying, Boss, I don't even have customers, I don't have revenue, I don't have funding. What the hell talk about organization design and employee NPS? Have you completely lost your mind? And that doesn't really work, does it? So I think there is a little bit of that Maslow's hierarchy of needs saying, once the food and shelter is sorted, I can think about all these beautiful concepts that I heard.
And then the third is, of course, your personality. But then the personality is not just to say that you would have only learned it in a job. Oftentimes, when we are looking for founder traits, people who have been very active volunteers, who were the college cultural secretary or helped organize the entrepreneurship fest somewhere, or were volunteering for Akshay Patra, did this, that and the other, etc. We see all these other traits, where if you're fundamentally a believer in collaborating, in recruiting people to your cause, in helping get leverage back to Andy Grove and multiplying your cause, then those things really, really help. So, we look for those traits, but 100% it can be nurtured. If you are open minded, if you have a growth mindset, if you are willing to take some tough medicine from time to time, I think it can be nurtured.
Harish Kumar: And in your experience, have VCs changed their outlook towards what they should be adding to the companies that they fund over the last decade or so, in India as well as in the US?
Amit Somani: Yeah, it is. It is also an industry [00:32:00] which is highly disruptive. I mean, sources of capital are changing. The way entrepreneurs raise capital is changing. In what way do VCs want to distinguish themselves is changing, to your question. For example, we at Prime Ventures, we are what we call a very active investor. So we are very, very hands on with respect to helping the founders on whatever it takes. Could be with, like I said, hiring, could be with fundraising, could be just a shoulder to cry on, could be with helping crack a partnership with a top-five bank in India, it could be whatever. Some other VCs distinguish themselves through other means. So I definitely think the landscape not only has changed a lot in the last, let's say 15 years in India, which is the life of the Indian modern VC industry, but even globally.
One common trait I would say is that, even if I look at not just India, but globally, US and so forth, is VCs are now much more open, and less mystical and back smoky backroom kind of cigar deals, or whatever. People are… you know, the fact that I'm doing this podcast with you. But I also have a very active LinkedIn and Twitter page, and so do several of my other partners, and so do many other friends of ours and the other VCs who nominally, we either partner or compete with. So people are much more transparent. Like, this is what we believe about this sector. These are the entrepreneur traits we look for.
This is what we're looking for, people who are organization builders, are not, as opposed to saying, Hey, I will just meet, you know, Harish or Ramanand, and then we'll just take a scribble and say, Okay, thank you. It was nice meeting you. This is what we look for. So it's almost like open sourcing of your theses, open sourcing of your investment decisions. On my LinkedIn page, I actually write these are the five questions we go through. And so hey, look, there's nothing to hide. [00:34:00] So I think it's a lot more transparency, a lot more openness, and because it's a competitive business, which itself can be disrupted, we're constantly saying, Okay, what other value can I add to the ecosystem, to the portfolio company, to a prospective company that I might want to invest in?
Harish Kumar: Before we move to the next section, there is one more quiz question for you.
Amit Somani: I have to put my helmet on now. Okay.
Harish Kumar: This is again very closely related to you. That's a big hint. Which publication started in 1988, started with a headline with these words, Mendota Monster Mauls ______. The Latin motto of this publication is Tu Stultus Es or in English, it means You Are Dumb. So which publication and what's the dash there? It's a Mendota Monster Mauls ______, the dash starts with an M.
Amit Somani: Mendota Monster Mauls _____ and what is the other hint?
Harish Kumar: Motto? The motto is, it means you are dumb.
Amit Somani: Okay. You Are Dumb.
Harish Kumar: It's a publication which started in 1988. So where it started is very, very closely related to you. But later they have moved cities and now the publication doesn't exist as a print. I think the print edition closed back in 2013, if I'm not wrong.
Amit Somani: Is it 1988 or 1998?
Harish Kumar: ’88.
Amit Somani: Okay. If it was in '98 I would have been tempted to say Motley Fool [00:36:00] because the Motley Fool brothers started their company, I think in the 90s. Okay, I am drawing a blank, it's a publication. Yeah, okay.
Harish Kumar: And think about the motto, it means you are dumb. Okay. And I'll also tell you what the next section is. The next section is going to be about your career and work, entire student and work life.
Amit Somani: Got it. Okay, to be honest, I'm totally blanking out here. So what would I say? 1988, it's not too old either. That is the challenge. All right. Okay, no, I am sorry. I am totally blanking out. So yeah, I will either have to do a pass or prove that you are dumb.
Harish Kumar: The dash in Mendota Monster Mauls was...
Amit Somani: Oh, okay. I got it. Late-breaking news. Is it something to do with the Wisconsin Badgers or the Wisconsin letter?
Harish Kumar: Okay, so the dash is Madison. Now, you will have to tell me the publication.
Amit Somani: The Onion?
Harish Kumar: Yes, it is The Onion. A late cut, but you got it. Right.
Amit Somani: Yeah, very late and very fine cut. Okay, got it.
Harish Kumar: So we wanted to move to the next section where we wanted to talk about how your life moved on from your days at Wisconsin Madison. And that's what [00:38:00] we thought we'll start this with. So, Wisconsin Madison, how was your life there in terms of, again, reading to start with, with all the libraries there, especially, sort of pre internet days. So, how was that when suddenly you had the doors to the world of the internet and these big libraries opened for you as a book reader, what was your first reaction there?
Amit Somani: To be very honest, I went for grad school in computer science. And there wasn't a whole lot of reading outside of the curricula and writing tons of code, literally, like hundreds of 1000s of lines of programming code in various languages.
That said, one big thing, since I grew up in Bombay and Ahmedabad, and then moved to the US, that was absolutely astounding and mesmerizing, about the US system was the Public Libraries. And so both, I would say, in Madison, Wisconsin, you know, I took some benefit of that, but like I said, for the most part, I was in the department writing code, or reading books or finishing assignments. But when I moved to California, and even later in my life, and got married, and all that stuff, I would spend hours and hours in the public library, and I thought it was the greatest public good that could ever be done. To make information, knowledge, entertainment, etc., accessible to everyone, for just being a citizen of that county or that state or that country. So that was definitely a big thing. Less about Wisconsin, per se, just phase of life perhaps, but I leveraged the Public Library System enormously in California.
And then later on, like I said, post being married and all that. Literally, as a family, we would go and pick up 8, 10, 12 books every Saturday [00:40:00] and then we would just skim around and look around and all that. And it was just magical.
Harish Kumar: So talking about your stint in the US, and even now in India, you’ve moved across roles, starting from software engineering to product management to now being a VC. So how much of this was very deliberate? And what did you do to prepare yourself for the next role or just when you knew that you're going to move to a very different kind of a role? What did you do to prepare yourself?
Amit Somani: I think there isn't anything explicit, like, oh, now I'm going to be a product manager so let me prepare for it, or I'm going to be a VC, let me prepare for it. I think the process for me has been very consistent. Keep learning, keep evolving every day. There's a nice quote I have from Mahatma Gandhi that I stumbled upon very early in my life. And I believe that. “Live every day as if it's your last and learn every day as if you are going to live forever.” And so very rarely have I like, Okay, let me prepare for a career in VC.
I think I was an accidental Product Manager, I was an accidental Venture Capitalist, perhaps accidentally got into Wisconsin, etc. Accidentally gone to IIT. I didn't know what IIT was until almost 12th grade. And I grew up in Bombay, and everybody was studying and I'm like, all my friends are studying for this IIT thing. So I asked my dad. So really, that I would not say is like some kind of... it's like the Jobs quote, “It’s easier to connect the dots looking back than looking forward.”
That said, I have always been very inquisitive and curious, and open to other ideas and talking to people. And I would always ask people like, Hey, tell me something interesting. Tell me something new. Tell me, not just books, just anything really. So that I think has helped me quite a bit with respect to preparing for new roles. And being open to new roles, [00:42:00] etc. I'm less scared. I mean, I'm still vulnerable, I change into something you have no clue about.
Just to give you an example, when I was becoming a VC, my partners offered me to come on board as a venture investor, I have no investing experience. I've done some angel investing, but it has largely been ad hoc. I met the founders, I liked them. I'm like, okay, you know, these are good people to support. So let's fund them. And they said, you know, that's totally fine. That just works for us. But it wasn't like, Oh, I spent the last 10 years preparing for how entrepreneurship is done and venture companies are done. But when I look back, I was helping founders of all kinds of companies, including the famous ones like the Flipkarts and the Olas is and HolidayIQs and so many other companies, even One97, before it was Paytm, for 10 years, or 8 years before I became a VC. But I was not helping them because I wanted to become a VC. I was helping them because they were interesting people doing interesting things. And it felt good to help them. And I was also learning something along the way.
I think people often get caught up in the transactionality, if I do this, so what? What will I get out of this? You have to sometimes let that go. And certainly it has worked for me. It may not work for everyone, but it has worked for me.
Harish Kumar: And the move from the US to India, how was that move? Were there any jittery moments then? And was there any moment when after you came in, and you sort of wondered why did I make that move?
Amit Somani: Yeah, the move was, unfortunately, triggered by some personal family stuff. So that was the trigger for the move. It wasn't any grand design. We literally picked up the phone and said, let's just both quit our jobs. And let's move back to India. Thank you very much. So that was pretty quick. There were many jittery moments.
My wife [00:44:00] used to work at eBay. And then IBM. I was a fairly fast-rising executive at IBM. And so we both resigned our jobs and we didn't even have resumes or a job in India. That was very jittery. A month after we both resigned saying 'Ab kya karenge?', 'Now what are we going to do?' Fortunately, I got into Google and several other companies, and so did she. So I think things that were a bit jittery just after moving here you know, beyond all the food and shelter issues and getting a job and all that, was the culture was very different, the professional culture. Because I had always had grown up in India, I would visit often, but I had worked in the US. The US is very cut and dry. You come, you do your stuff, you get out. I mean, there is water cooler conversation and people will go hit a bar and people will go play some sport together. But when you're at work, you're getting stuff done. India had this whole social culture to get work done. So if I didn't come and have chai with Harish, and talk to him a few times, the CTQ podcast would not happen. And like dude, that's his job to do the podcast. It's my job to ask him or him to ask me so once we have agreed it should just happen. Why do I have to further pursue it and motivate him? And this was even in large companies and successful ones, like Googles and MakeMyTrips.
So I realized the power of, I mean, both the power, the boon and the bane of having relationships at work, which were much more social, not just professional, to get work done. And that was a big, big, big shock, because you were like, he agreed to do it, or she agreed to do it. So now, why am I like, it should be done now. Right? And it's not even about pulling rank or power. It's just like, so anyway, so that was one big shock. Yeah, let me just stop there. If you have more questions...?
Harish Kumar: Yeah. I sort of expected that answer as well. So I [00:46:00] wanted to ask you about that, when people make that switch, a lot of people are making that switch these days, both from the US to India. And the other thing is also moving from a large company to say starting something of their own. Sometimes people don't realize the weight that the large organization that they are working with has. Suddenly when they're on their own, doors are not going to open that easily. So how do people accept that change? And what do they do? You mentioned persuasion, again, that's not something which comes naturally to people. How do people navigate through this maze? It's almost like a labyrinth that you need to work through.
Amit Somani: Yeah, I think it's gotten better now. Because there's been enough osmosis, reverse osmosis, probably is there a better term here, reverse brain drain or whatever. And so therefore, people have balanced out a little bit on both sides. But it is hard. And I know plenty of people that went back because they couldn't deal with the culture shock, professional culture shock, not the personal social life and all that. That is also a different ballgame. But maybe for another day.
And so I think that if you are one of those listeners thinking of moving back to India, I would find enough people that have made this transition, because if somebody had told me that this is what it takes, it takes building relationships, and organizations are very relationship-driven and people-driven and, maybe I wouldn't have been so shocked. Because you're like, Okay, that's what it is. So you know, I can be a fairly social person, right? I've been in, you know, college organizing committees, and cricket teams and soccer teams, so I'll like, okay, I didn't think this was a part of my job. But you're now telling me this is a part of your job. So I think talking to people helps a lot. Back in the day, there also used to be this nice forum called Return to India or R2I, which is probably defunct, or maybe it's alive. I don't know now, it was like a newsgroup, like a Yahoo group kind of thing. A lot of people would talk about these experiences. So, I think just talking to [00:48:00] people helps. And I think there is a lot less impedance mismatch now perhaps than before. I mean, there'll still be a bit of a change. But it's not going to be as radical, perhaps, as it was before.
One other thing I would say, and this is to your point about planning forward, if at all, again, if you want to be a little bit more conservative, staying with a US company, even after making the move to India, worked really well for me. So I was with Google in Mountain View in California. And I joined Google in Bangalore. And that actually helped a lot. So even though there were other shocks, in terms of how Google Bangalore functioned differently than Mountain View, at least the parent was the same, right? So the macro environment was not very different. If I'd gone from Google, or IBM in the US Silicon Valley culture, to a "desi startup", I think I would have probably fled back to the US and wouldn't be here in India after 13 years.
Harish Kumar: In fact, that was going to be my next question. Did that make a difference that you were with Google in India? A slightly related question there, these days, we are also seeing that entrepreneurship is not something which is restricted to these college dropouts, or people who have come up with an idea in their hotel rooms, but you also see these 35 plus 40 plus age group, people who have done solid work in a specific area, they're actually subject matter experts, and are now wanting to scratch that itch and want to do it from a position of strength. Do you see that happening? And what is your view when you talk to such people, as VCs, also probably drawing some analogies with your own career arc, do you end up relating to them better than, say, a 22-year-old from a college? [00:50:00]
Amit Somani: Yeah, I think that it's a great question. And I think there are all kinds. Entrepreneurship is ageless, if I may say so. We've met 62-year-old entrepreneurs. We've met 42 year olds and we've met 22 year olds, and they all have their own unique strengths and their own unique weaknesses, so to speak, or blind spots. I actually think and there's some statistics and some study done by the Kauffman Foundation in the US that for some of the most successful companies, the median age, for the most successful founders, I believe, is 38.
Some of the most successful companies that you and I know about today, since we've talked a lot about Intel, Intel was started by the founders in their early to mid-40s. Adobe was started by founders in their 40s. Not Airbnb, I think one of these other travel companies was started by somebody in their 40s, etc. So I think there is a lot of merit to founders who are in their mid-30s, let's call it, so to speak. There are downsides also, because with all that baggage, comes the inability to unlearn. Because you always knew it happened this way.
So when I came to India, 12-14 years ago, mobile internet was a disaster, broadband internet didn't exist, etc. So now I'm like, if I'm stuck in that era, and if I used to be at a Airtel here, or the moral equivalent of that, say, 20 years ago in the US, like AOL, how do you unlearn that dude, AOL is dead, or, you know, whatever, you know, like the world has changed. We don't have to do this. So that is a problem.
On the flip side, young folks like the 22-year-olds, irrespective of how you connect with them or not. They have this magical fearlessness that they demonstrate, I often compare it to cricket analogies, that was my last blog post as well. I mean, they have no fear. And so they are like, whether you can call it they are fearless or ignorance is bliss, or take no prisoners. I mean, they are coming with this, [00:52:00] the world is my oyster, and I'm going to make it happen. So I think there are merits of any and all of these things, I would say, if it's an area where domain expertise is going to be important.
So let's say a regulatory kind of encumbered area or where regulations play an important role, say talk about FinTech, which is one of the big areas we invest in at Prime Ventures. In FinTech, if you're somebody who's worked in the FinTech industry, with banking with NBCs, with regulators, with RBI with SEBI, versus a 21-year-old who just comes and says, I'm just going to launch this and start taking deposits, and then we'll see what happens.
Clearly, the former will do better than the latter. I mean, the latter will learn and catch up. It's not like it's a big deal. But that will be an advantage. Whereas in certain areas, if you're doing the next Instagram killer, if you're already spending 14 hours a day on Instagram, and Snapchat and so on, you will have an unfair advantage over the 35-year-old. So I think to each their own.
Harish Kumar: That's a subject matter expertise there. Right? Another question that popped up in my mind when you were talking about moving from Google, within Google, how has the GIC landscape changed with respect to India and US or headquarters in say, Palo Alto and things like that, we work a lot with these GICs. And we still see that the arc is that okay, the India centre got established for cost arbitrage to start with, then there are people, so the India site head wants a larger political say in the organization. So they now want to have more ownership of the product. But architects are sitting out somewhere else, people here have been hired to execute, and now they want them to suddenly change their [00:54:00] DNA, and actually start coming up with product decisions. So this is a constant tussle and tension that we see. So has this changed? And, do we need to do more from an India standpoint on this front?
Amit Somani: To be honest, I'm not that plugged into that space anymore. So I wouldn't really have much of an idea about that. Some of the larger, more well-known companies that one has seen, just to pick on Google again. So the entire Google Pay and some of the Google FinTech initiatives, they are I believe, being driven out of India for the globe, not just for here. So I think that there will be certain areas where inherently having the India team do innovation for the global kind of world will naturally lead to that.
But in the classic old GIC model of India being either a cost centre or a talent centre for acquiring talent, etc. I think that model is fundamentally broken, in my opinion, right? So either you are inherently coming up with products or technologies or innovations that are relevant to India and to the rest of the world from India right off the bat, and therefore there isn't like, give me your project to run. It's like, I'm already doing this here. But I'm not very familiar with how the other companies are doing and it seems from what you're saying that that challenge still continues.
Harish Kumar: Right. In fact, one thing that we've seen is people in larger companies probably feel they have a better bet of being closer to the customer if they go and work in a startup, even as a product managerial role. Of course, if you are working on a product, which is working for India first, then it makes a big difference, because then the market is [00:56:00] here, the product development is here. But that is something which is a cause of concern, even now that when we are, in our experience with working with some of these GICs.
So on that note, on a product, for a product management kind of a role, people who have had some experience of software engineering, say 5-10 years and would want to move into a product management kind of a role. What is your recommendation to those people who want to make that next jump in their careers?
Amit Somani: I go back to the 101, be curious. Be engaged. Take on responsibilities that other people don't want to take on. Hustle into a sales call, when a salesperson is going on a call, you were an engineer, say I'll come along with you. Like, I'll be the guy who put together the demo, or the pre-sales demo, if it's an enterprise type of situation. Go sit in the customer service call centre and listen to customer calls. Go write a blog post about where you see things going. Go try out a competitor's product and do a comparison analysis between the two.
There are innumerable ways by which you can start building your multifaceted product management skills, and your product management muscle and making yourself more attractive to be employed as a product manager. So I think there isn't a linear path. I would say because if you're coming from an engineering background, you already have an unfair advantage. You know how to build product, you know how to build code, you know how to build features, right? So you're already 80% of the rest of the competition. Now, you need to figure out who's the customer? How do we sell? What is marketing? What problems happen in the field? How do you iterate? How do you make trade-offs? How do you make decisions on whether this comes in or that comes in, etc.? So start exposing yourself to those areas.
I think now, there's also a lot of interesting courses [00:58:00] that are available online on various platforms, right? I was invited by Your Story to help them launch their product management course. But there's enough on Coursera and Udacity and just on YouTube. So you can learn both by learning and by doing. But the main thing is to get out of your shell of like, I just want to sit here and write code. And try to see where does that code show up? And how does it make a difference in the life of the customer?
Harish Kumar: And out here, is there also something about building that perception about what you're doing? Again, that's something which you have been working with some companies with, where building that social capital that Yeah, I have actually done all these things. And you go and write about it, there is this thing of engineers being seen as introverts. So yeah, they may be doing a lot of stuff, but they will not go and talk about it. So they will not go blog about it, they will not start a podcast of their own. So is that also something that people should be more willing to try out?
Amit Somani: Yeah, it would certainly be nice to have. I would not necessarily say if you're coming from that stereotypical introverted engineer sitting at the cube and writing code kind of thing to suddenly say, I have to go and do a public presentation to 50 people, you would just drop off the face of the earth. And that would not be worthwhile. There are many, many, many product managers, who are very good communicators, but may not be great public speakers. Now the magic of social media is so phenomenal.
You write a six-page white paper on something that you believe, and you send it to all your product managers, your head of sales, your GM, your CEO, whatever, your co-founder, and everybody will read that and say, who's this guy who wrote this, I want to talk to them. You don't have to be a public speaking presentation guru, whatever, right? But you do [01:00:00] have to communicate. That's where I would draw a line to say, you do have to get good at communication skills, could be written, could be verbal...
One simple trick that I recommended to a lot of engineers back when I used to mentor engineers is learn to ask questions. That's very simple, still a little daunting, but learn to ask questions in semi-public forums. Because it builds your muscle to communicate, to think, to be vulnerable. And then over time, you will learn to communicate, in terms of the public speaking kind of mindset. So I think learning to ask questions, learning to communicate verbally, I mean, in writing, sorry, not just verbally, can be some easy ways to potentially overcome that. And of course, if you can speak, yeah, by all means, all the things you said. I mean, do a podcast or do a YouTube video, whatever, more regularly and so forth.
Harish Kumar: And any particular books that you would recommend for this, you mentioned the courses, but any books?
Amit Somani: For product management? Unfortunately, it's very slim pickings. I actually have a list of Top 10 books I recommend for product managers. I'll have to dig up that list. Maybe I'll send you, it was a tweet that became quite popular. But a couple that come to mind are The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman, that's a long term classic, timeless book. There's another one called Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. There's one called Inspired by Marty Cagan. He was one of the early founding product heads of eBay. That's a good one. There are quite a few more, there is Nir Eyal, Hooked, which of course now has potentially got into a little bit of trouble with this whole tech causing addiction to people, about how do you make customers engaged? etc. So there are a lot of books, I will perhaps share a link with you later to share [01:02:00] with your listeners and readers.
Harish Kumar: I will add that to the show notes. So, one question that popped up in my mind, and I remember, this actually popped up when you had posted something back in April or May about your workspace? So how did 2020 change your work routine?
Amit Somani: It has actually been a magical experience in a positive way. We often talk about this wheel of balance, that everybody aspires to balance in life. Well, I don't know about everybody, but I would say most people. Certainly I do. And which is to say that I would love to talk to entrepreneurs and help build our portfolio companies. Read a lot, write a lot, talk to smart people like you, spend time with my son, my family dadadada... travel, etc. So, beyond all the constraints that unfortunately COVID-19 brought about, I think it became a lot more about work-life flexibility. Not necessarily balance. I mean, there are pros and cons, and I'm sure it's a somewhat clichéd point of view. Other guests may have talked about it, where, so for example, I'm doing this podcast with you in the middle of the day. But I have calls at night, even with founders in India, but then in between, I might go and play a game of tennis or badminton. And then, I'll have two other entrepreneur calls and portfolio board meeting. All that is not possible in the classic kind of... get up in the morning, wear your pants, I haven't practically worn pants for a year+. And go to the office and then you're like, well, but right now I have like an hour and a half gap right? Now I can go take a stroll, get my vitamin D in the sunshine, walking barefoot on the grass in the middle of the day, while taking a call, which I couldn't do earlier. So I think it has been a boon in many ways, which is to say this whole work-life flexibility, if not balance, ability to integrate [01:04:00] different elements of your work life, by the way, not even work and life, like in the classic sense, even work and work.
There are things you can now do that you couldn't. I mean, we run our own podcasts and it was very difficult to get guests from Delhi or Mumbai or California. Now we've had who's who on our show, because it's like, hey, do you want to get on a zoom call and record a podcast? The downside has been that it has been hard to have an on/off mode. You're kind of always on because of that illusion of like, whereas in the work-life kind of classic old world routine, you would go to work, whatever, at 9 am you come home at six 7 pm. And then you're like, Okay, I'm kind of off. Maybe I'll log in later for half an hour, 45 minutes, just check email, maybe a couple of WhatsApps or instant messaging and then I'm like, caught up. Now I'm like, I'm never really off. And that I think, over time will potentially not be a good thing.
Harish Kumar: So any rituals that you have added to make your work routine better? Optimized for something? I don't know what that something is.
Amit Somani: Yeah. Several things. So, like I mentioned, I will often do if it's just an audio call, not a video one, I will often do a lot of calls on walk and talk. I will put on my ear pods and I will just like step down, literally like if you and I were, this is of course a recording. But if you and I were just chatting, I would just like put on the thing, go for a walk, have the chat and then come back and then take the next zoom meeting. That's one thing.
Another very interesting one is I'm a big believer of sleep and high quality of sleep. And as one gets older, it becomes harder, right? And so for example, Yoga Nidra. And if you don't know, you should google it. Check it out on YouTube, wherever on your meditation app. There's all kinds of routines. So I now try and squeeze in a 20-minute Yoga Nidra every day, which I'm shuddering to think what happens to it once I go back to work, right? Because [01:06:00] people will be like, this guy is lying in his office and napping, like, what the heck, but it just recharges me boom, like I'm back, right? 20 minutes of Yoga Nidra is like two hours of deep sleep. And you actually don't sleep. I mean, it's like a sleep meditation, but you actually are awake and sort of somewhere between the conscious and the deep sleep kind of stage. So that is something that got added, which I have not added for 25 years of my career. And now I'm literally thinking how will I maintain it.
So there are a couple of those kinds of routines that became much easier. I think losing the commute obviously, especially in a city like Bangalore, was a godsend. That was a positive. By the way, the flip side of that thing was that in the commute, I used to catch up on a lot of phone calls and podcasts and audiobooks and all that. So that kind of went away for a first few weeks. And I'm like, wait, life was a little bit more interesting, like what happened, like that commute, two hours of commute went away, which I was using very productively, or sometimes for intellectual stimulation. So of course, I brought that back. But at least in the first month, month and a half of that lockdown, I kind of lost it. I'm like something is not right. Like little reverse engineering to do the bug fixing.
Harish Kumar: And what's the first app that you open in the morning?
Amit Somani: I would still unfortunately say it would be WhatsApp/Signal. We're still a little confused. Because we tried to move all of our work stuff to Signal. But there is enough and more WhatsApp. So communication app is probably the first one that gets opened in the morning.
Harish Kumar: And on this note of what has happened in the last one year, there's this big joke, right, that the Chief Digital Transformation Officer of organizations has been COVID-19. Do you subscribe to that and you know, is it in a good way any industries that you think have seen a fundamental change in how they operate because [01:08:00] of the last one year?
Amit Somani: I think pretty much in every industry. And I think it is more so perhaps in the global markets. But even in India, I mean, the appetite to adopt technology has improved radically. The appetite to even pay for technology and I'm talking SAS software, SAS Enterprise has improved dramatically. India's still pretty early in the journey of adopting technology in this so called COVID-19 as the Chief Digital Officer, new one. But I think the mind-set wise, people are a lot more open now in all elements. I think the globe is going digital. I think India is going digital. I don't think there's any coming back now.
Harish Kumar: In fact, on that note, one of the business leaders who was there on a previous CTQ Smartcast had said that the boundaries are so blurred now, that there is no concept of an India centre anymore, right? You know, why should it be India because if they can hire from anywhere in the world, then what could be the drawbacks of something like this, because you're also suddenly going to lose that cultural identity, if you're going to hire everyone from say Southeast Asia, to South Asia, to maybe Eastern Europe. Does this India centre then what does it even mean?
Amit Somani: I think now this is the Tom Friedman book, right? The World is Flat. I think that thing is also being brought completely to life now in a true sense. It's not just about one country or one geography. So, I think talent has to be both, we started the show with that or somewhere in the middle, we talked about it right. Talent has to be both recruited and retained, anywhere now, because they are going to be anywhere. And so while earlier you might actually have had that advantage of having some proprietary access to talent [01:10:00] in India, or the cost advantage, now, everybody else has that same advantage, globally, and the best talent will be hired globally. And they will have to be retained globally. So it's no longer like oh, you know, such and such left for this large multi-billion dollar or you know a Fang company or whatever because they are all looking and on the brighter side, you as a startup entrepreneur, you can also hire talent anywhere right? So, you are also not stuck to the limitations of Pune or Bangalore, the two cities that you and I are sitting in.
For example, we would fuss a lot about startup being Bangalore based. Now, we're wondering, should we fuss about that, right? Because so long as they can hire talent kind of anywhere and make it work. You know, should we care? We did more deals, more investments in Delhi last year than any time in our history. And I was just reflecting on that, like, why is that? Because we never fly to Delhi and perhaps that's why. So I think talent is going to be global, I think you can acquire talent anywhere and you have to manage them from anywhere.
All that said, I think it's also difficult to make it work. We will see once all this goes away and the physical office or some sort of hybrid office scenario resumes, as to how this kind of pans out culturally, like what does it cause you to build an organization and culture and camaraderie and you know, all that takes some amount of time and engagement and face to face and all that. So, it remains to be seen kind of how that will be and will we go back to that centre of gravity of all the talent in one place all the time, five, six days a week, 12 hours a day kind of mindset or are people able to manage it? Because again, like the org competency, some people have it, and some organizations will have that inherently. And some won't, and they will need a physical face to face set-up to foster that.
Harish Kumar: So, the levers to influence people have changed for sure. And I think they will need to be [01:12:00] harnessed better by these organizations. So before we move to the last section, the final quiz question. Again, this is something which actually sort of referred to through the course of this interview. Alogotransiphobia is the fear of being caught in public transport. Without what?
Amit Somani: Without your smartphone or your technology device?
Harish Kumar: Not... Okay, what technology...
Amit Somani: Say that again.
Harish Kumar: Alogotransiphobia is the fear of being caught in public transport without what? It can be a device; it can be anything else as well.
Amit Somani: Okay, got it. Is it like your sanitation mask?
Harish Kumar: Okay. Not sanitation mask. Not COVID-19.
Amit Somani: Okay. Got it. Okay... in a public transportation setup, so, your... so you said not smartphone, maybe your headsets?
Harish Kumar: It could be a smartphone as well. This has been around... this word, I think it's one of those made up words where they've come up with phobias. But you can actually break it down. So transiphobia is the transport and phobia bit, alogo is what you need to...
Amit Somani: Focus on?
Harish Kumar: Ha
Amit Somani: Got it. Alogotransiphobia, alright. I'm sort of drawing a bit of a blank. Okay, you will have to help me out here. Again. [01:14:00]
Harish Kumar: This is something which I have a sneaky feeling that you do suffer from based on what you said, was the major change for you when COVID-19 hit. So that was a major change for you like you mentioned.
Amit Somani: Is it being disconnected from social media and content, podcasts.
Harish Kumar: Content. So basically, without anything to read.
Amit Somani: Okay, got it.
Harish Kumar: You know, having the time at disposal but nothing to read.
Amit Somani: Interesting. No, no, I definitely suffer from it. For sure.
Harish Kumar: All right. So you've got all three questions.
Amit Somani: This is your worst-performing guest ever. They're like should we run this thing or smartcast or not? No. But no, thank you for all the hints. I think I lived The Onion motto. You are Dumb. All right. I'll live with that for the rest of the day.
Harish Kumar: So we'll finally end this interview with this section where we ask you for your hot-take, it may sound like a rapid-fire, but you can take your time to give your thoughts on what is the future relevance of whatever we are asking about. So the first thing that I want to ask you about is what do you think is the future relevance of nonfiction books?
Amit Somani: I think they're extremely relevant. In fact, if anything, I am unfortunately over-indexed on the nonfiction category. And I think that they will continue to be, like I said earlier, a book is often some years of somebody's thinking and probably decades of their experience encapsulated into one. And as this knowledge explosion continues to happen, as algorithms and computers keep making things [01:16:00] easier, I think that experiential learning that people have lived through, will be very, very relevant. So I think they're here to stay.
Harish Kumar: Okay, and what is the future relevance of social media?
Amit Somani: Again, I think the world is becoming and has already become more and more and more open. So I think the formats may change. So we may go from the moral equivalent of the Kindle and so forth to blogs to a short form post to a clubhouse to whatever. But this notion of an open, collaborative, transparent professional force, human force, I think that is here to stay forever, right. And this is like the second Renaissance after the printing press. Like this is not going to go away for, I'm tempted to say centuries, if not millennia, right? Like, it's going to be here for a long time. The formats will change perhaps. Facebook might become something else, and something else might become something else.
Harish Kumar: Traditional centres of entrepreneurship, like Silicon Valley, or Bangalore. What is the future relevance of that, like you mentioned just now?
Amit Somani: I think a lot more innovation from lots of other parts of the world, it was always happening. I think that will get accelerated now. And part of it is thanks to this whole COVID-19 episode. But the other part of it is also that I think now, the world has just gone through this massive experiment of how to make things work in remote environments. And so now, I think this belief that you can't do a great company from Kochi, or Dallas, Texas or Europe, whatever, Eugene, Spokane, in Washington, or Oregon is somewhat irrelevant. Because sure, you can, right, I mean, assuming that you're doing the right things, and are able to get the right talent. [01:18:00]
That said, I don't think that the importance of Bangalore and Silicon Valley and all that will diminish to zero, I think it will just come down a notch. I think for certain kinds of companies, for certain kinds of entrepreneurs, for certain kinds of innovation, I think there will be newer and more diversified cities and hubs and centres of excellence that will come about.
Harish Kumar: Okay. And the future relevance of product management?
Amit Somani: I think, more important than ever, right? Again, perhaps I'm a little biased, having spent many years there. Product managers are fundamentally about how to solve customer problems, how to solve business problems, consumer problems. How to identify and solve them, with a jack of all kinds of skill set, like the Swiss Army knife. So I think the role is going to become extremely important. Again, the tools that you use in the manifestation may become different. So it may not be about writing a PRD or a BRD. It's already somewhat irrelevant today. But the notion of what to build, what not to build, how to get it out into the market, how to see if it is working or not? How to collaborate, not just with human beings, tomorrow with computers as a lot more AI's in the real world. You will need somebody to champion that cause. And I think product managers are best positioned at least in a functional sense compared to any of the other classical functions like engineering, or marketing or sales or, you know, HR and so forth.
Harish Kumar: Right. Okay. And the last one, I'm actually changing this from what I had prepared based on what I've heard and I can't help asking you this. What would be the future relevance of Bhagavad Gita?
Amit Somani: Yeah, I think it is timeless. I mean, eventually, all this is fine and dandy. But it is back to your centi-books question. Anything that is timeless, that is the [01:20:00] only reason you can read it again and again. And by the way, it is not just that. For somebody, it might be the Quran. For somebody, it might be the Bible. For somebody, it might be Daniel Kahneman's book. Somebody might be searching Man's Search for Meaning, because we as a human race are fundamentally driven by motivation, by purpose, by why are we here? What are we here to do? Like, who are we here to serve? What is the meaning of life? I mean, these questions do happen. And these are eternal, timeless questions. These questions will be relevant 1000 years from now.
I don't know, social media will be relevant 1000 years from now? I suspect it might be. But hey, who knows? You know, printing press people thought it might have been relevant for 20,000 years. But now everything is digital. But it did last 600 years. But I think the Bhagwad Gita and some of these more kind of spiritual texts, if I may, are going to be relevant 1000 years from now.
Harish Kumar: On that note, thanks a lot, Amit. It was fantastic. Almost, we did finish 86 minutes. It was a fantastic conversation. Got a chance to pick your brains on a whole variety of topics. Thanks a lot, Amit.
Amit Somani: Thank you Harish for having me. I’ll prepare better for the quizzes next time. Thank you.
[End of Transcript]