Spark of Ages
In every episode, we interview B2B Marketing leaders, executives, and innovators about their successes and challenges, asking them how they broke through and what spark in their careers took them to the next level.
Spark of Ages
The Innovation Leap that's happening in India/Kumar Ganapathy ~ 3iPartners, Deep Tech, Impact - Spark of Ages Ep 31
This episode with Kumar Ganapathy "dives" (yes we know AI loves this word) deep into the realm of deep tech in India, exploring impactful investment strategies and the entrepreneurial spirit necessary for success in this complex landscape. Listeners gain insights into the challenges faced by founders, the importance of resilience, and the unique opportunities that lie within the Indian market.
• Introduction of Kumar, his background and 3i Partners
• Explanation of deep tech and its significance
• Investment strategies focusing on India as a starting point
• Resilience as a key trait among successful entrepreneurs
• Case studies of 1090 and advanced battery technology companies
• Importance of understanding market needs and refining messaging
• Exploration of AI's role in transforming drug discovery
• Reflection on India's evolving tech investment landscape
Join us on the Spark of Ages podcast as we chat with Kumar Ganapathy, the visionary founder and managing director of 3i Partners. Kumar takes us on his riveting journey into the realm of deep tech investing, focusing on the critical role of health and climate tech for upcoming innovations. He shares his strategic vision of beginning investments in India with the goal of expanding globally, seeking the brightest minds in science and technology to lead the charge. Kumar's unique insights stem from his rich experience in tech entrepreneurship, providing a fresh perspective on how deep tech can create defensive moats and tackle significant societal issues.
We explore the importance of creating a "wow" factor that captures market attention, starting with accessible market segments, and building a world-class team. Kumar shares a powerful example of an Indian company that developed affordable gel packs for temperature control, revolutionizing cold chain logistics. This innovation illustrates how transformative technologies can drive efficiency, sustainability, and lasting industry impact. Additionally, we touch on the promise of India's green hydrogen economy and cutting-edge battery technology, which could potentially transform the nation's energy landscape.
Our conversation also highlights the entrepreneurial spirit of India, exemplified by companies like PadCare, which pioneers sustainable recycling solutions. We discuss the importance of frugal innovation, and how India's approach can offer a strategic edge in tech development. Kumar reflects on his personal journey and investment choices, emphasizing the significance of finding one's ikigai in entrepreneurship. Throughout the episode, we explore the balance of passion, skill, and market needs as a pathway to career satisfaction and success.
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Kumar Ganapathy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumar-g-9342742
Kumar is currently a founder and Managing Director of 3iPartners, an early-stage impact fund that invests in promising social entrepreneurs in India. 3iPartners focuses on deep tech startups in the areas of Tech Bio, Climate Tech, and Frontier Tech, seeking to support visionary founders who are disrupting industries with innovative technologies and scalable business models.
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Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. Today's guest is my good friend, kumar Ganapati. Kumar is currently a founder and managing director of 3i Partners, an early stage deep tech impact fund that invests in promising entrepreneurs in India. 3i Partners focuses on deep tech startups in the areas of tech, bio, climate tech and frontier tech, seeking to support visionary founders who are disrupting industries with innovative technologies and scalable business models. Kumar has founded multiple successful startups, including VXTel, which was acquired by Intel for voice or IP technology. Verident, acquired by Western Digital for high-performance flash storage, and AcroData, a current AI startup that specializes in solutions for visual data processing and computer vision applications.
Speaker 1:Kumar holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MS from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a bachelor's in technology from IIT at Chennai that's India Institute of Technology. We have a lot of those great folks here in Silicon Valley. He's also a recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Madras and a fellow at Connexion slash Rockwell. Some of the key takeaways you can expect from this episode go-to-market strategy in India, impact investing in India, the differences in perspectives on innovation and scaling in the US versus India, how deep tech creates moats, along with the insights from the mind of a serial entrepreneur. So Kumar, welcome to the Spark of Ages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, Rajiv. That sounded like a mouthful. It didn't sound like me, but good to be here.
Speaker 1:That's you. That's why you're here. We're going to make this show a lot like our car rides up to Tahoe it's going to be a little shorter, but it'll be just as interesting. So I've known Kumar for a long, long time, so excited that you're here with me today. Let's go into where you are, where you're going and some of your thoughts. Let's start with a little bit about deep tech. Often when we talk to investors and entrepreneurs, they're looking at the world and they're trying to find a problem to solve. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were inspired to launch 3i Partners.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't quite understand what deep tech is. The companies we used to start 20 years ago, which were founded by Silicon Valley VCs, were all tech companies and today's partners deep tech companies. So deep tech simply is a startup that has a science-backed or a technology-backed IT mode that's hard to build, usually first of a kind in technical difficulty or engineering difficulty going into known or emerging markets. So think about it as a two by two matrix right Technical complexity or technical difficulty, and market risk or market difficulty. Deep tech is in the quadrant four, typically High technical difficulty, low market risk, whereas traditional tech like SaaS, b2c all of those have high technical difficulty, low market risk, whereas traditional tech, like SaaS, b2c all of those have lower technical difficulties but tend to have higher market risk, which means they would create new markets. B2c markets are more complex or SaaS is more of a go-to-market motion and so on. So we don't go after quadrant one, which is really high technical difficulty and high commercialization difficulty. That tends to be more research and tends to be in labs and we need to wait for the application of the use cases. Our venture fund is a 10-year time horizon, so we need commercialization in five to six-year timeline for these companies right. So that's the definition of deep tech.
Speaker 2:So for us, what it means it translates as really the few sectors you mentioned. We think of it in broad terms. As you know, health and climate are the two biggest challenges for investors and startups going forward. And in that health space we are looking at, you know, new molecules, microbes, you know proteins, protein engineering, biopharma, plastics all of that that could come together in interesting ways, from enzymes to plants to human drugs, right All across the spectrum. We also look at med tech and diagnostics in an interesting way. India is an emerging country. Largest population in the world, by the way, it's one and a half billion now.
Speaker 2:Just surpassed China, right Just surpassed China, and in that context, diagnostics play a very critical role. It's very different from the US and low-cost accessibility of diagnostics through tech innovation is something we look for. So that's simply put. I'll say start in India, go global is our basic strategy and we are trying to find the next generation of scientists and technologists who are subject matter experts, who want to build these interesting companies.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. When you think about deep tech. It's a very complex technology, tends to be lower go-to-market risk because it's complex technology that solves very specific problems. You see that as something that's really interesting to you and the reason you liked that, versus going into something like a SaaS sort of thing or regular sorts of technology is yeah.
Speaker 2:So a couple of reasons. First, I'm trained for it. It's a sparse space. You see a lot of capital going into traditional go-to-market risks and go-to-market motions. You have traditional SaaS companies, b2c companies are all trying to figure out how to improve or decrease the market risks. Lots of capital there Almost, I would say, 80% of today's venture capital, or 75%, is in that bucket already in the world. A lot more, over 90% of the funds are there.
Speaker 2:So deep tech in the sense, our biggest challenges going forward are going to be how to improve society, quality of life, quality of health, climate change all of that through new tech innovations and they have to be done all over the world. And we have a specific thesis around India we can get into. But that's what excites me. I'm a PhD, as you mentioned. I love tech. I like complex things that can apply in a simple way to the world. So, for instance, if you find, you know, like we are looking at a company that does gas turbines right, these are complicated turbines but when they work they go into jet engines to diesel generators, to all the way down to missiles and turbines or propulsion systems. So it's very simple to adopt, but it's a magic when the product works.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. So that gets you to the point of India. So on the product board, it's amazing, so that gets you to the point of India. So how has your perspective on innovation and scaling changed? Your companies that you've started were primarily companies where you made your market in the US. You might have worked with folks that were overseas. I know you did a lot of work with folks in Asia for flash drive obviously fast flash storage, but the market was in the US right. So talk about how that experience about innovation and scaling has changed between the US versus India, and how does that help you in terms of your approach or inform your approach at 3i Partners, the firm that you started?
Speaker 2:Just to clarify right Even at 3i, our thesis is just the originations happening in India. We think about 60% of those companies, or roughly a little over half, will go global. How to start in India and go global? They will attack US markets in their second step. That's part of our interest in these companies, where we could help them connect race capital, risk capital and help them scale in the US. And the other 30% 40% will scale in India and do what we call import substitutions. Today India imports a lot of technology. So that's our thesis In general. We're not trying to exclude the global market. They are the biggest observer of tech. It's just where the tech is originating. Is what we are looking at at this point.
Speaker 1:Right as a fund.
Speaker 2:Now, why India? Right, it's a complex country, it's a big country, it's an exciting country, but I'll tell you three reasons at a high level. All of you know like I'm a product or beneficiary of the immigration systems in the US. I came here for my PhD, I got my green card within six months and I was able to start companies here. I've been doing it for 26 years. I've been fortunate, funded by big VCs. We've got a couple of good exits. I've been investing in the US for the last almost 20 years now. So far, what I have seen is two or three secular shifts here. Now immigration the green card cycle is now 24 years in the US and it's now going to be indefinitely more complex in the new administration, so a lot of founders are no longer coming out of India.
Speaker 1:Yeah, coming from India to the US, it's not as easy as it used to be so that qualified high-tech, deep-tech, founder flow is going to be dramatically reversed.
Speaker 2:Right, we've looked at the data out of IITs. Iits are the premier institute in India. Up to 15 years ago, 95% of the graduating class used to immigrate to the US, almost for higher studies and then subsequent jobs here. Now, under 2% are immigrating now. Wow, so it's dramatically shifted in the last decade. That's one Number two India is a country of youth dividend. Right, when the mean age is 28, there is a sense of optimism in the air and there is a term we use called frugal innovation. These entrepreneurs. India is a tough, tough country.
Speaker 1:Oh it's. Yeah, it's not going to be simple to start up something there.
Speaker 2:No, it's bureaucratic, it's slow, it's complex, it's hard to win and build businesses. It's hard to raise money. So all of that is complicated. So these entrepreneurs, when they start a company, they're put through the ringer, so to speak. They get hardened and if they can create a business, they are on average. What we find is these companies raise between one-fifth to one-tenth the capital of equivalent counterparts in the US to achieve close to similar milestones. Right, so think about a fifth lower capital for about the same milestones and they take about twice as long to do it roughly, or 80% longer to do the same effect. So net capital efficiency and frugality is very high in India. It's one of the best ecosystems. Actually it's better than Israel in terms of efficiency. It's actually.
Speaker 1:yeah, and this is, I think, part of your differentiation, right, where you're saying they're actually in India. Right, you were funded by Excel and even Excel India at one point for your companies. In India, the startup ecosystem for software startups is actually pretty robust, pretty amazing, like Lightspeed is there, sequoia is there, excel is there. All these great funds have started up, but not so much in the deep tech area, not like this complex technology. So you're kind of getting a bit of both, right, you're getting these great IAT folks who previously would have gone to the US. They're sticking around in India. They're willing to pound it out and grind it out, which is a challenge in and of itself, and there's not as much funding out there for them.
Speaker 1:So there's that part of the opportunity, right. So, of course, ai is rising and one of your companies is in the area of AI, right, more of the mathematical AI side as opposed to the gen AI side. But I'm sure you're using techniques of everything. Yeah, we're using gen AI as well. So, with the rise of AI and other cutting edge technologies, what advice would you give those deep tech entrepreneurs navigating the complexities of this to bring their innovation to the world?
Speaker 2:It's a big question. We can break it down into a couple of things, right. So, look, I look for sort of the advice I give entrepreneurs in three areas. You have to go to your area of expertise. You have to have a unique, world-class capability on something to do a company, and that is an introspection. You have to do so. You have to combine your passion and your expertise in a particular subject matter to do deep tech startups. So if you have been working in AI for 10 years, then you can do an AI company. If you have been working on robotics for 10 years, do a robotics company. So that heritage we look for in our investment.
Speaker 2:When we look at founders, we know we call the founder market fit. Right. Is this founder the right fit for the market? Can they solve complex problems? Because a lot of the problems are internal.
Speaker 2:First, you have to commercialize this thing. You have to take it to market and the bar is pretty high. You need a big wow factor to make the jaws drop here. So that's the first rule. So work in your area of expertise. And the second is which is less frequent I see in founders which is less frequent I see in founders that pick the area of commercialization that is the easiest to start. It doesn't have to be a massive market to start. Every new technology needs what we call adoption ramps. Right, it needs a helpful market, early customers, friendly customers to round out these products because it'll be great technology but the user experience will be off. You're going to have to localize it in different ways in different countries. You may have a $20 million market. I want the first proof of commercialization to be in an easy segment, right Before we tackle the biggest, baddest incumbents in the world.
Speaker 1:Right, because these are. Yeah, because, like, you're going to somebody who doesn't have an established presence as a company, you're taking a big risk.
Speaker 2:If you're on the other side, you're taking a risk on hey, this company may be here today or tomorrow, plus big markets, like a billion dollar markets, are hard to penetrate for any startup, let alone a deep tech startup that has like 90% of the product there. So you want forgiving, you want pulling customers, you want helpful customers. So that's what we look for. It doesn't have to be big markets, but your first 10 customers have to help flush the product out in a deep way. Okay, big markets, but your first 10 customers have to help flush the product out in a deep way. That's second. And the third thing, which is equally important, is the team you build around you.
Speaker 2:Deep tech startups are not done in isolation. You need to build a world-class team. We want founders who are capable of attracting other strong science leaders, be able to bring in these people into the fold and work with them constructively, because lots of twists and turns along the way you're going to hit and the ability to have a think tank under your roof is going to differentiate your winning versus losing. And the fourth thing in general this is true for startups, deep tech startups is resilience. Right, it turns out the the outcome in startups is more defined by the resilience of the founder than the intelligence of the founder. There's a lot of studies by tier one VCs here. So how do you detect resilience, which means in the face of trouble? How do you go through it, the valley of death? You're going to have a few extra valleys of deaths in the deep tech world. So that's the reality. You have to deal with.
Speaker 1:I know you've dealt with that before, so even your first, I know, was probably hard, and so resilience, the ability to fight, is probably one of the most important things. One of the things we talk about with 3i and the focus on deep tech is transformative technologies. You want to create a healthier, safer and more efficient world, so what's a specific example of a company in your portfolio that embodies this mission, and what's the approach that they had that made it particularly compelling to you, beyond just a financial opportunity?
Speaker 2:I'll give you a couple of different examples of the difference in the spectrum, different in the sectors. Start with a simple sector, what we call the energy sector in India. Okay, energy and commercial. Today, india is a net importer of energy and it's the biggest drag on the GDP of India today. Okay, so this is a company in our fund, one that we did called 1090. Okay, so it's a company that is built.
Speaker 2:A very simple product. At the end of the day, these are gel packs that are water plus salt concentrations. The founder is a phd out of iot madras. He's a thermal thermal scientist, material new age materials and thermal scientist. So this gel pack today can keep a narrow temperature range very, very, very efficiently for days on, as opposed to hours on. So cool it for four hours and keep it in the field for 48 hours. It's a very simple product. That way on the cold side, that way on the cold side, same way on the hot pack. Also, you can keep the temperature range very narrow by building these phase change materials that are built into these gel packs. He adjusts the thermal phase changes of these materials with no salt concentrations.
Speaker 2:Now you look at coal chains in India. Coal chains are where produce or things are shipped all the way to the grocery stores or even to home home delivery, and all of that it's very broken. Today it's run on diesel. 40% of the energy in India, energy usage is spent in cold chain. Today, almost half of India's small businesses and these are street vendors who don't sell. By the end of the day they're not able to keep the product in a hot and humid climate for the next day or the next two days.
Speaker 2:Today, to drive the export economy, we have to send it in big refrigeration tanks and ships, driving the cost of logistics. We can net export to UAE or Indonesia. It's a three-day freight, but we have to still put it in cold storage for it. All of these structural issues cold chain is very hard to do in India and it uses diesel today or diesel refrigerated trucks today. With this technology it solves a very unique Indian problem very, very, very efficiently. It's one-tenth the cost of any other competing technology. This is the number one thing in India If cost is cost and cost.
Speaker 1:Well, in India, cost is everything. That's the bottom line with that right.
Speaker 2:So he solved that very well because, compared to any other cold chain technology, his cost is very low. Cost base is very low. Then he has hit a very, so he had a broad market. But what he did well was he went after a very unique point in time. I don't know if you've noticed these days India is very big on quick commerce now. It used to be 40-minute delivery times, now we're down to 10-minute delivery, right like for folks who are listening to this.
Speaker 1:We're used to the old days like Domino's delivering a pizza in 30 minutes. In India, you can get a hot meal in like eight minutes or less.
Speaker 2:Yes 10 minutes for any hot or cold.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter, ice cream's in 10 minutes too.
Speaker 2:So for these major companies, there's about 18 or 20 cities in India, which is where bulk of the business gets done and he has set up interesting. So he picked that as a segment and has really executed well as an entrepreneur, so he's a scientist. But what he picked up well was he picked an underserved segment where the customer is able to pay and he was able to provide them a product, which is gel packs and so on, that allows them to be very, very efficient in their delivery operation. And then the third is the business model he did. He set up cooling as a service. So in these big cities, instead of the customer buying the product, because these are Two and a half years, he's increased his revenue from less than one crore to about 26 crores now, so 26x growth in less than two and a half years.
Speaker 1:And similarly, valuation tracks is around 15, 18x, so it's one of the better successes for me, it's a really amazing one, Because one thing is you have to deliver medicines right and instead of putting it in a refrigerated area, you have to deliver medicines right and, instead of putting it in a refrigerated area, you have to get it. You know, this allows you to put it in a train or a truck.
Speaker 2:that doesn't have to spend as much. You can put it in a backpack with a gel pack, it doesn't matter. You can transport it very easily. You can transport it anyways.
Speaker 1:But this amazing innovation he found was now with the quick service thing he can deliver it. And then he innovated even further by saying each company doesn't have to set up its infrastructure that wants to be a delivery service. You could just go to them and they'll offer cooling as a service, as you call it CAS. I love it. I love it. That's super cool. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:But from here he's expanding to other segments slowly and systematically. But that's it. That's a very complex technology, simple use case, underserved segment.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Those three line up with the resilience of the entrepreneur. It's usually a good fit. Okay, that's a good example that I have some experience with awesome. Do you have another one? Yes, yes, I have many, many. I can talk on for hours here, right? So what's the what's? Another one of the more recent ones I'll tell you. I have another company called limano, coming out of indian institute of science, which is the premier research institute here. Right at a simplistic level, they are building better membranes. That's the innovation. They have built a new nanomembrane or a picomembrane that allows better transport efficiencies for electrolytes and batteries and electrolyzers and so on. It's a sleepy market for 50 years. Nobody has innovated on these things for a long time. If you look at the battery world, that is, you know the older lead acid and redox batteries and new lithium ion batteries Lithium ion is very expensive, okay, lead acid is too imperfect or too not dense. So redox battery sits in the middle, has been around, being used, but it's never improved its efficiency.
Speaker 1:What is a redox battery?
Speaker 2:It's a type of a battery that is being invented 50 years ago. It's a chemical electrolyte that allows you to it's got longer better efficiencies than lead-acid batteries.
Speaker 1:So is it like lead-acid, like there's lead-acid, nicad, nickel, metal hydride.
Speaker 2:It's an older battery Lithium ion.
Speaker 2:So this is a different chemistry. Lithium ion is a new energy lithium cell base. These are all electrolyzed-based chemistry-based batteries. But in all of these things the efficiency is determined by the membrane that sits inside between the cathode and the anode. So the circuit gets completed through the membrane and the rate at which this membrane can work and the discharge efficiencies determines the strength of the battery and the life of the battery and the cost of deployment.
Speaker 2:So the end game here again is really in the green hydrogen economy in India. If you know, india is very big on green hydrogen. Government incentives are lined up. There's huge capital coming up. Green hydrogen economy is coming up. That's the end game. But, however, it's a few years away. So what the founders have found is this is applicable to a niche it's a smaller niche again, but heavily underserved that we can go today, commercialize it, get it to work before we go to the green hydrogen segment. So it fits my deep tech quick, underserved market and longer, bigger disruption that's possible in a relevant structure for India. So it's an example of a new innovation in the energy sector that we are interested. We're coming together with another VC firm and putting together almost $3 million into this company.
Speaker 1:So the idea of this technology is that, because it enables, like, how much greater efficiency do you get out of this type of battery?
Speaker 2:We're talking I mean, these are old structures, right we're talking like 50 to 100% efficiency, which is magical. For these guys In the energy world, 5% is magical. These guys are talking 50%, If you look at the performance curve, right.
Speaker 1:Lead acid doesn't get better. Nickel metal hydride is like 1%, right. Lithium ion is like 5% a year. So if someone's going to enable you to jump 100% or even 50%, that's huge 50% is what they're claiming.
Speaker 2:Wait, 50% is their claims right now on paper. There are certain cases in which they can go even higher. But let's even take 30%. Jump in this thing. It's a dramatic shift in the economics of the industry If we can take an old technology and give it brand new legs because the cost goes, very well understood.
Speaker 1:So if you get this, what thing would you be able to do that you couldn't do before?
Speaker 2:So I'll give you an example of an immediate use case. India is very big in energy consumption. Today Electrical grids in India have huge brownouts. I don't know if you guys visit India or not. You will see load shedding for two to three hours a day in most of the metros today because demand outstrips the supply.
Speaker 1:Renewables are coming online but there is no energy storage mechanism to drive it during the periods of the day where there is not enough supply Right Usually if anybody goes to India, one thing they'll get familiar with is, all of a sudden the lights go off and then all of a sudden it comes back on because someone goes to another part of the building and flips on the generator. Correct?
Speaker 2:Usually manually, but they are all diesel generators.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right, and they are extremely polluting. So what we are trying to do is the Indian government has a bunch of tenders, so all the utilities in India want to build grid-scale energy storage. Which means how do we build 100 megawatt storage or 1,000 megawatt storage, that it has a cost point that's acceptable with efficiencies that are decent, and that is where this redox battery with this membrane could be very compelling for an initial use case, I see. And then it floats right into the green hydrogen on the hydrogen economy for India, I see.
Speaker 1:So when you say green hydrogen, at that point it could be either green hydrogen feeding into a generator-.
Speaker 2:Hydrogen fuel itself is the end game, right or?
Speaker 1:it's in transport right. In the end it's still. Having big batteries and big trucks is really hard. So if you can make it way more efficient, you can enable hydrogen.
Speaker 2:Hydrogen has a thrust-to-weight ratio that is four times better than lithium-ion. Today it's turquoise. There are people working on making it green. Once you make it green, then it's actually cleaner, better and more efficient than lithium-ion. Pretty amazing, I mean. You see, here Toyota has built cars called Mirai. I don't know if you've seen the Toyota Mirai car.
Speaker 1:It's a hydrogen fuel cell. Every now and then, when you're following it as it changes something, all of a sudden you see a little burst of water vapor. I don't know if you've noticed that, but I've seen that.
Speaker 2:You will see, the output is just water. It leaves water at the end of the day. But in the US it cannot take off, given already the lithium ion penetration. But in an emerging country like India we can leapfrog, just like how mobile networks leapfrog landlines in India. We think this energy will not leapfrog dramatically the whole lithium ion adoption, at least for the big energy utilities and big consumers of India. So that's a company yet to come.
Speaker 2:Now, something in the middle I'll tell you. You want to talk about PadCare. Yeah, yeah, we'll do PadCare. Since you brought it up, it's a great example of a company. Again, that is a combination of the three things I told you.
Speaker 2:So again, padcare's founder is basically solving a simple problem how do we do sustainable recycling of fibers in the world Today? If you look at India, even the rest of the world, you know feminine hygiene products, menstrual pads and diapers are beginning to really consume a lot of the landfills going forward. So what he is solving is basically how do we do that? Just recycling of that and build a business model around it that's super scalable. So in a simple way, he's able to extract 97% of the fibers out of these pads and be able to use it for downstream applications and sell it and recycle it back into the value chain.
Speaker 2:But what he has done well is he's also set up the front end service for it, which means he has signed up about 600 corporations in India and he runs a full service to collect these out of the bins in the women's bathrooms typically both diapers and menstrual pads in the women's bathroom and runs a full service, collects them and runs it very, very economically. So these customers come to him for the service. But he also has a big tech component. That's a second adder to his financial statement and his process that we awarded is a very simple process net energy positive in the sense it consumes less than what would be put into it. So all of the checks are on what we think is carbon neutral to carbon negative. The whole is good. Plus, he's able to recycle these things from the landfill at a 90 plus percent or 95 percent.
Speaker 1:And he has a brilliant go-to-market right.
Speaker 2:Which is you?
Speaker 1:go to large companies they call MNCs, multinational companies and he goes to those companies which have in India these multi-thousand person offices and, as part of their what they call CSR corporate social responsibility he goes and sells them on. Hey, this is how you solve a disposal problem you build up your social responsibility and you really make the world better. So it changes even the business model. They pay him to do this work.
Speaker 2:Correct. They pay him to do it, they promote him to advertise it and then he makes money on the back end. So it's a brilliant business model.
Speaker 1:Tom Sawyer, make someone paint your fence. These are great companies Now you've looked at. In doing this fund, even in doing your other companies, you looked at tons of other, maybe thousands of other businesses. I think something like in your process. Every month you guys look at a hundred different companies, right that you interview. What's the biggest? As you know, I'm big into go-to-market, so what's the biggest mistake you see in companies today with their go-to-market strategy?
Speaker 2:I mean this is going to take a long time, but I'll simplify it into a few big buckets. Okay, the biggest mistake I see is not understanding what again what I call the easy go-to-market path or where is the best fit for the current product. So I see founders are not as market savvy as we see in the US. Okay, they are more technical. They are more sheltered from the market. In India they used to work in larger companies or in university labs, right. So here entrepreneurs are a little bit more market size.
Speaker 2:The mistake they make is typically they don't pick the segment right. The price discovery is wrong, which means they're trying to get into a market where they have to beat the incumbent on cost before they can penetrate the market, which is very hard to do in real life, whereas you want to go into a market where, at a premium, you can sell and the value adoption has to happen in the initials. So that's the first adjustment we make when we go into a company. We audit the technology separately. Then we try to talk to the founder and say, look, let's start trying these market segments and try to find the best fit for you, because if you don't have initial proof points, the downstream fundraisers will become much harder. So that's the first mistake they make.
Speaker 2:The second is really their sophistication around go-to-market mechanisms and messaging are still well behind the US counterparts, is what I would say. I mean, I look at their deck. You know like their value deck will be like eight pages long with extremely complicated formulas and so on. They need to simplify it to a customer. You buy this, you get it. You know. You buy X, you get Y. Literally that simple, right. How do we dump it down?
Speaker 1:That is what we try. They're putting their PhD thesis in their deck. All of them make it way more complicated. And, by the way, this is kind of an Indian thing. They want to prove how smart you are, and that's part of that right.
Speaker 2:I want to show my expertise, so it doesn't matter how smart you are, it's how easy is it for somebody else to adopt? So that's the. We have to take that ego out of the equation most of the time. So that's the second part of it. It's extremely complicated messaging and collatals they prepare. And the third is really the team and training. They don't put enough value into awareness and marketing. They all believe that once you build a product, the genius of the product is going to sell itself. Oh, and I'm guilty of that personally. So I'm not saying that, but it is that I've been beaten over my career. To take these more seriously, I'm trying to do the same.
Speaker 1:They're bringing lots and lots of experience to folks so they don't have to replicate some of your mistakes, right?
Speaker 2:There's a lot more mistakes than a lot less corrective things we have done in life. I know I can tell them what not to do. I will not be able to tell them what to do.
Speaker 1:That's great, that's really interesting. This is great to learn about mistakes people make and go to market, because I think that's really important. I mean, you build a technology and one of the reasons I started Position Squared was you build this great innovation. How do you get it to the right customer? Right, I mean that's the so many great technologies go nowhere. So now, if you look at the broader landscape of tech investment, especially in India, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for disruption and growth over the next five years that are not being addressed or being overlooked by other investors? Good question.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'll tell you the uniqueness in my own domain, right, compared to the other VCs we see. So I'll give you at least one example. That's clear that we are contrarian here. Okay, if you know very well, here in the US, pharma and medtech are smaller segments. Very specialized people invest here. They are supposedly 15-year cycles. Nobody wants to. I mean, you have to be a postdoc with 10 years before you even become an investor who understands these things at some level, right?
Speaker 2:So we are taking a slightly different view of things. I mean, we are solving this problem. There's a massive problem that the cost of drug discovery is out of control, especially diagnostics. Also, how do you get affordable diagnostics? So what we are trying to do is go after tools and platforms for pharma. So how do we use AI to generate better leads, better in vitro optimizations, better way to get to phase one at a fraction of the cost and fraction of the time? And we believe these companies are going to be so efficient in capital that we'll still get a 10x return on our investment. So that's one of our counter theses we are running in India. So new molecules, new antibodies, ai driven from our discovery, and we have a bunch of examples here I won't get into for the short of time, but that's an area that we think that's been underlooked. How do we create efficient tools and platforms for drug discovery?
Speaker 1:So you believe that because of the ability now with AI and other ways to simulate outcomes and visualize or simulate or run scenario analysis with molecules, that the typical cycle that would like a pharma company, you got to look at at least 12 years before something goes from an initial platform that you take out of someone that's already done the basic R&D and turn it into a company. What can you compress that timetable to based on what you see?
Speaker 2:I mean we might not be able to compress that time dramatically, but what we can improve is efficiency through this process significantly. Because there are two parts of the cost. The discovery phase up to phase one is low cost and then the cost spirals from phase one, phase two and especially phase three. So most startups, especially Indian ones, cannot do phase two and phase threes but you need hundreds of millions of dollars to do that. So what we are taking is a counter thesis to say how do we use AI?
Speaker 2:But not just AI front end, but we also try to couple it with biological back ends. Right, how do you do high throughput screening? So if you have the ability to generate a trillion molecules, you have to be able to match it with some wet lab technology on the back end or some other form of high throughput screening that allows you to pick and screen these trillion down to a million or a thousand very, very efficiently. Otherwise just the AI front end is useless. So how do we combine the two? That allows me the quality of the leads, quality of getting to phase one, much, much, much higher probability at lower cost. So that's one. So it may not reduce the time, but it'll improve the success probability significantly.
Speaker 1:So instead of spending like a typical drug we'll take like a billion dollars to get to market because of all the issues that go between phase one to phase two, phase three, which is initial safety, to human tests and human trials and human safety. So you think you can make that whole process much more efficient, less capital intensive, so then you can then introduce more things or make it more personalized.
Speaker 2:Correct. So I'll give you an example. We have two. A company called Sygenica that's in the cancer drug delivery space. She's a postdoc from India. She has been able to build up to phase one under $6 million so far, just mind blowing Up to phase one. Right now she doesn't have full phase one Under $10 million. We'll get to phase one data. She's a preclinical, so it's still limited, but 10 to 12 million dollars versus, you know, 60 to 100 million dollars in the us, yeah, so it's a huge dramatic difference huge difference, right so that's, that's what our values.
Speaker 2:And she, I don't think she will go all the way to build drugs, but now she can license these after phase one at a lower level and after phase two at a much higher level. So we think the our bet is the valuations will catch him after phase two. That's pretty cool All right.
Speaker 1:So now, kumar, we've gotten through all kinds of great stuff about these incredible deep tech innovators. We're now going to go to this game called the spark tank. Here we go, welcome to the spark tank, where we spark unexpected connections in the mind of technology's most innovative thinkers. And today we're joined by Kumar Ganapathy, a serial entrepreneur who's turned silicon dreams into billion-dollar realities. This isn't just a tech discussion. This is where deep technology meets deep thinking, where artificial intelligence collides with human intuition and where the next breakthrough might emerge from an unexpected word association.
Speaker 1:Our brains are pattern-matching machines, constantly drawing connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. Sometimes the most groundbreaking innovations come from these spontaneous neural leaps from quantum computing to climate tech, from biotech to AI, and today we're going to tap into that creative chaos. This is the ultimate word association challenge, where every response could unveil a new perspective. Here's how it works I'll start with a tech-related word and, kumar, you'll respond with the very first word that pops in your mind. No filtering, no second guessing. Then I'll respond to your word and we'll keep this neural chain going. The only rule is spontaneity. So let your mind make those unexpected leaps. Are you ready to see where your synapses take us, kumar?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I might need some artificial intelligence help, but yeah, Well, I'm the closest thing you're going to get to it, so you're at model zero with me. Okay, the first word, I think in this game I have to actually do it with you, so this will be fun.
Speaker 2:IP.
Speaker 1:Data.
Speaker 2:Storage.
Speaker 1:Level one.
Speaker 2:Analog Chips. Silicon PNP Diodes.
Speaker 1:Transistor.
Speaker 2:Shockley.
Speaker 1:Tesla.
Speaker 2:Energy Nuclear Lener Low Lener, low energy nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1:Small module nuclear reactor. Like ASMR All right, we're going to do the next one. So, according to my producer, we're going to call it, because Kumar and I are still in that car ride and we could go on forever. All right, that was a lot of fun. We started with packet and we ended up with nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's at the top of my mind. I'm looking at nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1:Nuclear reactors. I mean, come on Next term Disruption.
Speaker 2:Biopharma RNA Antibodies.
Speaker 1:Cell membrane, cancer, drug delivery oh, I like that Personalized medicine.
Speaker 2:Yet to come future.
Speaker 1:Love it. Great answer Next term emergence.
Speaker 2:Green hydrogen.
Speaker 1:Efficiency.
Speaker 2:Better than lithium ion. I'm going to pin you down. Better than lithium ion.
Speaker 1:Solid state.
Speaker 2:Storage technologies New age storage technologies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I already did solid state. I know Plasma.
Speaker 2:Reactors Next-gen reactors.
Speaker 1:Oh, thorium.
Speaker 2:Isotopes.
Speaker 1:All right, we've gone down the nuclear path. It ends up in nuclear.
Speaker 2:We're going to do U35.
Speaker 1:Are we going there next U35? This game is just not going to end. You want to?
Speaker 2:do a couple more, or you're done One more.
Speaker 1:One more Synthetic.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll try to take you in a non-tech path. I'll try my best. No, no, this one's tech.
Speaker 1:Synthetic Synthetic biology.
Speaker 2:That's where it comes from my brain immediately. Synthetic biology how about data? Synthetic data? Restart, restart, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, start again. Synthetic Data Populations AI or generative AI. Proportional iterative proportional fitting.
Speaker 2:Gradient descent, better gradient descent.
Speaker 1:You read the same damn paper, didn't you? All right, you know what sparked this one for me. My daughter did her PhD in creating synthetic populations, so apparently you and I read the same paper.
Speaker 2:You didn't read the paper, but you were thinking the same paper. Everybody reads the same thing. Don't worry, I thought you'll end up with deep seek. Everybody reads the same thing. Don't worry, I thought you'll end up with DeepSeek.
Speaker 1:That's what I wanted to take you. You want to take me to DeepSeek, all right, what would you say about DeepSeek?
Speaker 2:One word, I mean look, frugal innovation. It is my entire bet on India. Okay, frugal innovation. What has not been possible here? Everybody had an inclination.
Speaker 1:It's possible, but between NVIDIA and the big model companies, they overbuilt this right, yeah, I think the amazing part is we tried to put export controls on China, so these folks who win almost every math competition decided to out-algorithmize us.
Speaker 2:Correct. What you don't do is you don't keep technology out of the hands of the smartest people in the world, right? So if you do that, they will find a different path around. That's the brilliant part that's going to disrupt you typically. So regulations for technology is not a good thing unless you have clear controls around it, and it is clear.
Speaker 1:Right, it's the application of it. That's where you catch people, not in the underlying technology. Actually, one area that's not in my script is India going to the moon. Yeah, $72 million.
Speaker 2:It took in fact interesting point here less money for India to go to Mars than it for the Martian movie. That's right, that was Mars.
Speaker 1:Martian movie, that was Mars, that's right.
Speaker 2:Mars took less than $75 million actually for the mission, but the Martian movie took over $120 million.
Speaker 1:Most of that's marketing probably.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter. That's what I know.
Speaker 1:And the guy in India got free marketing for it. Okay, we'll do one more of this and I will say growth, marketing, scale, commercialization.
Speaker 2:AI Explosion One-to-one buyer journey, commercialization, ai Explosion.
Speaker 1:One-to-one buyer journey. Abm the best company in the world.
Speaker 2:Position Squared.
Speaker 1:You got it All right, kumar. You win my award.
Speaker 2:I know I have to come on this podcast. I have to sell Position Squared. I know that, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go to some. We're going to do what we call the final fast four, and it might even be fast five. Let me ask it a different way. You started two companies it's not like you needed the cash and you started a VC fund. Why?
Speaker 2:It's a question I ask myself every day almost, but I'll give you a simple logic here. Right, ultimately, I've been a player for 26 years. I enjoy startups, especially tech startups. Right, I was a founder. I am being an angel investor. Got a lot of expensive t-shirts, in fact. Ironically, I started my deep tech investing journey with your first startup, rajiv, april on Buyer Systems.
Speaker 1:That's right, okay, that's why we argue so much about the value of going into medical Correct.
Speaker 2:Correct, but anyway, not just you after about 70 investments mostly I have t-shirts, expensive t-shirts so I said, okay, if I'm going to invest, because I don't think I can stay idle, I'm going to do this in a systematic way, at least to the best of my ability. So I said, okay, we're going to find a strategy, a tactic and an execution around it. So that's why I picked deep tech, because my strengths are aligned to it. India, because it's the next emergence where it's underserved, and the execution is really our ability to select and mentor these entrepreneurs. So that's the trifecta.
Speaker 2:I thought it was because your mom Also it allows me to go back to India very often. So I mean you go back to India for two reasons for your kids or your parents. Asians are more family connected In general Asian upbringing, you know that. So my mom is in her 80s. She lives alone in India. I can't move her to the US, she'll be miserable. So I make it a point to go see her every two to three months and this combines both for me in a nice integrated way.
Speaker 1:So yes, and nobody knows Cricket any better than her. I will say that Awesome. What's your anti-portfolio?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's way too many. Pit two, I'll give you a biggest anti-portfolio is a company called Workday. Workday I looked at it at the seed stage and I said who is going to do this? So I said, okay, that was a bad call. I would have made a billion dollars on it. There is lots of smaller ones, but in general I mean I didn't have a venture fund so I didn't miss any of the bigger outcomes like Google or Uber or Airbnb or any of those things In the world of angel investing. Workday was my largest mess. I saw in the early days, right, but there is a bunch of smaller exits. There's companies. I can't even remember the name. Google used to buy these companies for $10 million $15 million during 2010 to 2020 or 2018. Kind of aqua.
Speaker 1:Irish we call it tuck-ins.
Speaker 2:So they are not big hits but they are okay. But I basically didn't subscribe into that. So I did invest in two guys with a dog and a PowerPoint and say in 18 months get acquired. So I wanted them to build something that's right, that's awesome. So I miss making money. I would agree, but it's okay.
Speaker 1:That's good, all right. What's your personal moonshot? Personal moonshot.
Speaker 2:I did. The biggest personal moonshot was my marathon. Okay, I ran a marathon, 26 miles, in the middle of my second startup. I had to train for it and do it. It took six months. I was slow as a dog but I managed to finish it because I just wouldn't quit. So it took me four and a half years but, uh, many pulled hamstrings and calf muscles and everything later. That was a, you know, personal achievement from a huge one, huge one.
Speaker 1:Um took me years to write, friend, my first one, and I went to the same kind of journey. I think that was the same for you. That was the san diego rock and roll marathon yes, san diego, yes, do you have a favorite life motto that you come back to often and share with your friends, either in work or life I mean, I'll tell you what sort of you know shapes my life going forward.
Speaker 2:I call it the Japanese ikigai concept. Okay, if you don't know what ikigai is, it's a very beautiful term to say there are four circles in everybody's world. You know, what are you good at, what does the world need, where can you make money and what do you love doing? And you want to be at the center of those four. Ideally, that is what I'm trying to get to with my last stage, currently as an venture fund right now. So I'm good at startups. I love working with entrepreneurs and early stage companies. I think the world needs it to some extent. Technology and deep tech innovations the only thing is I'm not going to make too much money in the short term, but that's okay, it gives you something great to do for 10 years with a whole bunch of your friends.
Speaker 1:Okay, did you always know you wanted to work in technology? Was there a specific moment or project that sparked your passion for entrepreneurship and away from traditional engineering? How did you discover that passion and what got you sparked?
Speaker 2:So I grew up in India, right? I mean in the 70s and early 80s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you must have gotten a high enough score on your exam to become a doctor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have only two choices. You either become a doctor or an engineer. That's what my parents told me. That's it. You can pick one of the two. I'm happy with it. In fact I've even got it narrowed to one. My dad was a doctor. He said you try being a doctor. If you can, let's make you an engineer. That's what my life plan was. So in fact, I couldn't get into medical school without paying bribery at some point. In India you have to pay capitation fees to get in. If you are what we call forward class, in those days you might have 96%, 98%, but it's not a free access for everybody. They're a quota system. I said that's against my philosophy. So my dad was in the same board. So I tried becoming a doctor for two years in a row after I joined IAG.
Speaker 1:Very few people know this. You kept studying.
Speaker 2:Yes, I kept writing the freaking entrance exam and I keep missing it every year for three years in a row. After the second year, I told my dad this is not working. We have to take a plan B. That's my plan B here. So I became an engineer.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was at IIT, which is one of the best institutes in the world electrical engineering and then, once I get down that path, I come from a deep family of educationalists. My uncle was a PhD. He was a big influence in my life. So he basically said look, I give you again two choices you have to do a PhD in this area or this area. We can pick one of the two. So I said okay. So I went down a path, got my.
Speaker 2:I almost quit multiple times in my PhD, but anyway, that's part of the formation. I think I almost quit multiple times in my PhD, but anyway, that's part of the formation. I think that's what hardened me to do the startups better. But it was actually the most introspective part of my life. My most self-growth happened during my PhD years. Lots of dark days, okay. Well, what the hell I'm around? What am I doing in life? You know why am I sitting around making like $12,000 a year, so whatever, it might be right. So all of those questions sat around for a while but I managed to finish. It took me four years, five years, and so I finished it. And then I said I came into the job market and then I got it. I mean, after that I just want to decompress for a few years.
Speaker 2:I got into it for a few years, but what got me in the startup world is an interesting coincidence. I'm an accidental entrepreneur, so to speak. I mean, he's not my. I mean I'm a south indian descent, so I was trained not to take any risk in life, right. So, yeah, that's true, it's hard for me to do a startup at that point, right. So I went and joined a company called rockwell semiconductor, southern cow. Uh, main reason I went there was his idm was like it was. That's it. It is not that complicated.
Speaker 2:After six years in Urbana-Champaign I said okay, forget it, I'm a Chennai boy. I got to go to where my body feels a little warmer. So I spent five years at Rockwell. I became a fellow there. I designed something that actually took off in the market, but along the way, actually, my dad passed away in 96. And I was only 28 years old. He was always worried that I wouldn't make money anymore. But I said, okay, I got to try something in my life that couldn't work. I had no idea if it was going to work or not, but that was the passion. I took the plunge in 98 and landed well. So far, I mean I got lucky. Honestly, the first startup was more luck than skill. We were in the right place the right time. Telecom startups Well.
Speaker 1:I mean Intel bought VXTel for $550 million. It's not bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we were there. It was easy to raise money. I thought I could walk in 45 minutes later, walk out with a $20 million check and then I do my second startup with all the arrogance and I got my ass whooped completely.
Speaker 1:That was a hard one. That was a hard one, yeah.
Speaker 2:I had to reset it, I had to fire all my friends you know once through, and then I had to recap the company twice. But again, you know, it built a different type of cap.
Speaker 1:And eventually that one sold to Western Digital for 685 million. So it's not bad, you got over 1.2.
Speaker 2:On those two In return for a few.
Speaker 1:It's a good return, hopefully, for you and a bunch of your investors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean it was in fact my second startup was the highest multiple or the fastest IRR in the storage space ever. Unbelievable, yeah, For a bunch of investors. So anyway, it worked out well, I can't complain. And then again I got a little carried away.
Speaker 1:I started doing this studio model called Enterprise Labs. Yeah, you thought you could run four companies at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought you know I could be a mini Musk here, right? I mean, how hard can it be? Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Along comes COVID and I got my ass whooped. Okay, along comes COVID and I got my ass whooped. Okay. So I said okay. So this is how it works, right, it's that every other one succeeds in my life. So right now I'm on 3i Partners, which is hopefully the success.
Speaker 1:Second fund for 3i Partners. It's an amazing fund. It's a great concept. I think you've built it in a way we didn't go through all the mechanics, but you've built it in a way that it's very inclusive of the investors. It's not like a typical fund where you write your checks and they do all the work.
Speaker 2:In this one you are an active participant as an investor, so it's a really exciting way to build and run a fund. Look, in our fund there's going to be 50 founders and executives of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley and in the United States who are actively involved with it on a monthly basis. It's the one leaf fund of its kind where you get your voice before the selection is made.
Speaker 1:It's not like a typical angel group where it's kind of throw here or throw there. It's actually you're voting to move an investment, and what I love about it is you guys look out of the 100 companies, you bring two or three to the investor group, they mull it over, you take votes and then you make investment decisions. So it's really cool, really cool way of doing it. So, kumar, thank you for joining me today. I thought this was a lot of fun, tremendous amount of learning and lots to share about what great entrepreneurship is like and in unique spaces. So I really appreciate you coming in today. I know you're suffering from a bit of a cough and a cold, so I know you gutted it out. But I've known you for so many years and when I take you skiing, even if you don't have the right form, you'll gut down any mountain. So you'll gut down back diamonds, your thighs will be burning, but you'll keep fighting.
Speaker 2:It's the entrepreneurial training, is the adversity training in my life. I'm still recovering from it.
Speaker 1:Sorry, no yes, you're the ultimate frugal entrepreneur. You're the only guy that I would go skiing with. That would say ajiv. Uh, we paid 150. We must do 15 runs, so get it down to 10 bucks a lift and 10 bucks a run awesome. Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me, rajiv. It was fun to have a chat with you, awesome.
Speaker 1:That was just an amazing conversation and I just want to share a few things that I took away from it. Every conversation I have with Kumar is a blessing. He teaches me so much. I mean every time I meet a person like Kumar who comes from a place like India. They come to the US. They don't have initially a lot of people. They know and they come into a different environment and they make their way and that's what he does.
Speaker 1:He has this undeniable spirit. I was joking about him and skiing, but you go down any trail. I'm a pretty good skier. I started skiing when I was seven.
Speaker 1:He started when he was in his twenties and he'll go down any, almost any slope. Even those form is terrible. Like he's still doing the. You know, he's still doing the pizza thing as opposed to the french fry thing, and it's just because he thinks that he can accomplish anything. Like he'll get punched and he'll just keep punching back, and that's the one thing that really appeals to him. I've had multiple punches and failures and whenever I sit with him I feel like I can keep going.
Speaker 1:That spirit that he's bringing to entrepreneurs like as an entrepreneur myself who've worked with various investors, there's nothing more disheartening than when your investor says they want to give up, and that might actually be a good thing, but Kumar's not going to be the one that tells you to give up. He's going to be the one that will always find another way, and I think that's what he believes about anybody he works with, and he really is rigorous about how he decides to work with his investments, just like how he was with how he started his companies. He would just keep looking for the right open spot for the fundamental technology that he's looking to build, and I think that he's looking for that in people, and I think when you're building these types of companies, that's what you got to pick. It doesn't mean that a go-to-market style company won't work. It just means that there's always a way and he'll show you that way. And I think where he thinks about things, where there's multiple like he talks about that model the ultimate Venn diagram of do something you love, do something you can make money with, do something you can persist with a long time, or do something people really want, putting that perfect Venn diagram together. That's the way to think about him and his life, and I think what he didn't tell you today was one of the reasons he started the fund was because his mother said to him Kumar, you've made a lot of money for a lot of wealthy people. Now you need to do something for the folks at home. You need to show them some of that path. I think that's what motivates him and drives him where he doesn't after he can hang out at the beach and instead he does this. So that's what I got out of this.
Speaker 1:I really want to thank everyone for listening and sharing in this conversation that I hope felt like one of our ski trips to Tahoe. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and everywhere podcasts can be found. And if you know me, text me and tell me that you're listening and why you're listening, because I just love hearing from you. It makes such a difference in my life. The show was produced by Sandeep Parikh and Anand Shah. Sandeep again is dealing with the LA fires and there's so much going on there and the aftermath of that, and I just deeply appreciate all those great, creative people that are out there that are trying to get their lives back together. Production assistance is by Taryn Talley, edited by Sean Maher and Aidan McGarvey. I'm your host, rajiv Parikh from Position Squared. We are a top-notch AI-oriented growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Come visit us at position2.com. This has been an effing funny production and we'll catch you next time. And remember folks be ever curious.