Jeffery: Welcome to Impact Investing, brought to you by the Supporters Fund. From the most multicultural city in the world Toronto, Canada. I’m your host, Geoffrey JP Potvin. Let’s please welcome from the Apple capital of the United States, Redmond, Washington Nataraj Sindam. A product manager for Microsoft with a podcast in the startup called the Startup Project. Welcome, not rush. It’s, pleasure having you join us today.

Nataraj: Hey, thank you. Very thanks for having me. And, thanks for the opportunity.

Jeffery: Well, I’m pretty excited. Oh, of course, I’m pretty excited about this conversation. One, because you’re coming from big business. Well, welcome to the startup side of things. We don’t always get that. And two, you’re heavy into AI. And you also have a fantastic podcast where you really dive into, I think anything and everything to do with startup world investors, you name it. So there’s been a lot of learning there too. So I think there’s a lot of things we’re going to unpack today, but the way we like to start our show off is we want to dive into more of your background, where you’ve come from, from your university days all the way through, from your startups to, of course, where you are today. And then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Nataraj: Sure. So about me, I grew up in South India, in a small town called Warangal. Most of people who visited India would know a town called Goa, which is a beach town and which is very famous tourist destination. That’s where I went to college. At, one of the best universities in the country. I studied computer science and math. And then, you know, so when I studied math, please don’t expect me, you know, me to be good at, in addition and subtraction. That’s not what we did in, when I study math, as a subject in school. It’s mostly about, you know, solving hundreds and hundreds of theorems. And then, so it’s more theoretical mathematics than, you know, what conventionally people think about, what matters. So that was a fun experience. And studying in Goa is itself also a fun experience, because of kind of the place it was and it is, so I got then, you know, I got to sort of a different entry in the United States after that, because, a company called Epic Systems, which, is the healthcare software company, which is probably used by 60 to 70% of US population indirectly. They might not know it, but they might be using it. So they actually hired me from school. And that’s how I ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, one fine day and, winter morning, thinking about where I came and looking at this now is like, how can I survive here? So that was a fun transition experience. Got used to the snow and sort of the Midwest weather. I was there for a while. You know, got to interact with, you know, software being employed in healthcare. That was sort of like my first exposure on how software can be leveraged. You know, when you’re a software developer, when you’re studying computer science, you always have this view of, you know, developing software. But then when you see it in practice and in a in a space like healthcare technology, you sort of, it opens your mind into, you know, what are the all the possibilities. And so that’s, that was a very interesting experience. As part of that, I got to travel and interact with, you know, some of the largest healthcare organizations because at Epic, when as a product developers, we, they are sort of required and encouraged to go and visit and see how our customers are using our software. So you stand by the doctors when they’re using, you know, there’s often a stand by the nurses in stand by, you know, front desk staff and see how they’re using epic software, because epic is sort of like, you know, Microsoft for, hospitals, large healthcare organizations and they provide software from front desk for surgery to inpatient, outpatient, you name the department that they just used. So it was a really fun experience in terms of like, understanding, technology’s impact, in diverse sectors. Then, in between, I did a small startup in e-commerce, which didn’t really go well because I was trying to bring, sort of cater Indian customers in the US and North America, scaled it for a while, but then realized that, you know, marketing costs are way too high and we didn’t find a product market fit and, sort of shut it down. And then, you know, I got hired by Microsoft. But I work, I still work, I was mainly working as a software developer and then transitioned into being a product manager. In between that, I got interested into angel investing, primarily because I wanted to start my own company. So, you know, and that’s how I got into angel investing and investing in general. And that led to me starting a podcast called Startup Project, because I wanted to stay in the ecosystem and sort of continue to become an expert, if not as a, at some time as a founder, but I also want to be in touch with the ecosystem and sort of understand what is happening and, sort of build my own network in that space. So that’s why I started Startup Project and it led me to be venture, being a venture partner. And so, and who, you know, we got connected through as well. And. Yeah, I mean, one thing that people don’t know about me is, I regularly do CrossFit. For the past, three years, I’m doing CrossFit. It might not look at it. I look lean and, Yeah, but I used to be very lean before I started doing, CrossFit. But that is probably one thing people don’t know about me.

Jeffery: Well, that’s a that’s a great story and a great background. And of course, the, the CrossFit thing, we’ll we’ll jump into that. That’s obviously pretty exciting. And, it gets your heart rate going up and down. So, I’m going to say from the video, you look great. I can’t tell if you look different three years ago than you are today, but I’m sure your crush on the CrossFit side, now to kind of go back and unpack some of the story you shared, where you were going to university and where you grew up, and where people would be more familiar with was go, I did spend some time in Goa in the last, I think it was a year ago. I was there, going through India. I spent a month there. I love India, by the way, but really enjoyed Goa. It is more of a tourist hub because everybody goes to Goa. That should almost be the tagline for, for India, it should be everybody goes to Goa because the it doesn’t matter who you are, someone is in Goa that you would never think would be there. It’s it is, the Indian surfing community. So everybody is, very chilled, laid back and, super, super nice and friendly. So I really enjoyed, doing that. And I have many funny stories of, going across that bridge. The big one. Yeah, I went the wrong way. And, on my moped as I was speeding along and I ended up taking the bridge and of course, on the other side where there were a few, police there to charge me for driving on the bridge. So I said to them when they pulled me over because they were blocking the road and making me have to pay, I said, do you think I wanted to go across this bridge? I was so high up. The wind was coming so strong. I was like, I almost felt like I was going to fly down to the next bridge. I didn’t want to be on here. So why are you charged me for my mistake? I said I didn’t see a sign and they had to show me pictures on their phone where the sign was. I’m like, I didn’t see that sign. I still don’t remember that sign. And even when I went back, I still didn’t see that sign. So we ended up working out the details. But they I said, I’m not paying you guys a penny, which I got them down to like five bucks is, unless you let me do a selfie with you guys, because no one will believe this. And they did a selfie with me. So it, it work itself out. It was, it was a great adventure. I advise you to take the lower bridge. If you’re on a bike. So outside of that, beautiful country. So now to kind of go back to, I guess, diving into the, the initial part where you were talking about kind of where you, where you’ve come from, you were an engineer and, you know, started to build out, you created your first company. You know, you mentioned something that I really wanted to kind of dive into, because this is one thing that I, maybe people don’t emphasize enough and maybe Microsoft does, but I think this was before your Microsoft time, and that was, how you interact with the software, how your customers interact with the software. So before we dive into all the business side of things, that is so crucial to any startup or to any business is that they always tend to just build. And maybe there’s, in my mind I’m solving a problem, but I haven’t spent enough time actually solving the problem with my customers and finding out what they like and dislike about their product. You know, it’s kind of like asking someone, what should I do all the time? Is what feedback can you give me on how I can improve the podcast? It’s very much similar. Going through your software and saying, hey, I know we’re early on, how can I watch you? How you interact with this? Have you found that throughout time and throughout the last, duration of, you know, ten years that you’ve been working in the startup space and now at Microsoft, has that always been true to how you operate? Because you’re an engineer, you’re just like to build. What do you find that you’re still putting as much time into learning how people are using your product and spending time in the room interacting and watching them use it.

Nataraj: I mean, there’s this phrase, right? Like, right now I’m a product manager, like I used to be a developer. And there’s this phrase of like, whenever you’re in a meeting as a product manager, you’re really representing the customer. And even like when you’re doing a startup or when you’re building a product, I think one of the exercises that I often say people should do is just log out and not look at your product for a couple of days and create a new user profile in your own product, just to see the pain of the customer that was now currently in design. And you, you almost have to forget your product and the expertise that you have in the product, and all the steps of new users, how they’re using the product to understand the complexity. Because if you are too close to the product, you’re almost, too familiar with it and you’re an expert and you know everything about it. So that sort of, you know, makes you feel that your product is simple to use and it’s easy to use, and you’re solving everything. But I think taking a step back and looking at it in the lens of, like, what? And first time user would, you know, think about what would a user who never has the expertise, you know, how are they looking at the product? What are they trying to see? And we have so many tools like when we go to software. Right. You can literally see, you know, which mouse click is happening. And each website today tracks, sort of, you know, where the mouse is, the mouse is moving. And why didn’t they click on the, you know, action button that you placed. You know, you can clearly see that data, but it always helps to look, you know, product management is, you know, a lot about creativity. I would say you have to like, come up with creative ideas on how to not engage with your product for a while and see it from a fresh lens and attack the problem from different sides. But I think that fundamental frame of reference of, you know, how your customers are interacting with product is, you know, one of the core tenants you need to have as a product manager, doesn’t matter if it is free to be a B2C.

Jeffery: So I love that. And it is a creative position. And you’re right, taking that pull back or that stance that I need to try this all out again, even though if I was logged in for the last three years or two months, whatever that time period is, logging out and giving yourself some space to then go back and try it again and to see what your experience was like. And was it just as easy as you first imagined it? I think sometimes we forget, that we have to treat ourselves as a first time user, because we’re more advanced. And, you know, you kind of push this when you’re pushing your product out. If you’ve got a million bells and whistles, how many of those bells and whistles are being used, like in a car as an example? You know, we’ve got so much functionality into a car that you use 1% of. So is it overdoing it and or, or is it because people just don’t have the time or they don’t understand how to use half of the functions because they’re so complicated to figure out? And and if you were a product manager, would you pull back and come up with a different way to analyze that, usage on that car?

Nataraj: There’s this great line, I think, I forget who said it, but like Japanese automotive lights are made for made with the assumption that the users will never sort of maintain their car. But but the German cars are created. The assumption that everyone here you sort of, you know, do the maintenance, so it’s like it’s you can put this in the product perspective as well. Like how do you think about your user? Like, is he going to maintain audience? Because when you’re designing an onboarding flow or you know, you’re designing something and expecting the user to do certain things, but the user is not always going to do certain things. So yeah, it’s sort of like, perspective on how to think about your own user.

Jeffery: That’s a really good analogy, because I remember when I was in a German car 20 years ago, you had to, like, crank things and push things, like you had to get the car going to do what you wanted it to do. Obviously they’ve advanced a lot more from then, but to your point, it was all about are people are going to work with the car, they’re going to fix the car, they’re going to do those things. And on the Japanese side, you can see the difference, because in Japan everything is so perfect. Everything is fine lined, cleaned up, and it’s done so that you have no stress, no worries. And it makes sense because they’re like, this is how we want to operate. We want to take away all the heavy lifting so that you can enjoy your space. Well, the other one is we want you to interact with it, and we want you to make sure you have to be knowledgeable about how to operate this. So to your point, you need to know your customer, which means that you need to spend more time learning with the customers all about and what they’re trying to achieve. And that comes from sitting in the chair and deciding who you’re solving the problem for, and then how much work are they willing to put in this? Are they a doctor that needs to go fast and they want it right at their fingertips? Or is it a mechanic where they need to be operating inside the machine in order to make it, functional in order to get the outcome that they’re looking for, for their customer? So, you know, I think it’s very critical to learn how that customer operates and who you’re trying to service.

Nataraj: Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Jeffery: So now you you’ve learned all of these things and you’re really focused in on your customer and you’re diving into learning how to build this better product manager and being able to be a spokesperson, as you said earlier, for your customer. And you went in and created your first company and you said you work through that and you decided that this isn’t going to work. It’s not catering. It’s, you know, the focus isn’t there, and we’re not going to be able to scale it. What kind of were the signs that you learned, and is it a good thing that you had this product vision before like that you knew how to run product so that you would shut this down quicker because you didn’t. It wasn’t 4 or 5 years of working on this company. It’s a year. So is that really developed in your mind that, hey, I’m not hitting the focus I need in order to scale this, so I’m going to shut it down. What was the mindset that you learned before and during this? This, the startup.

Nataraj: So when we started that, I started The Friend and the assumption was, that we are going to cater to Indians living outside of India, but we are sort of bringing Indian designs, you know, like, think of accessories to clothing, to everything fashion, basically. And we were trying to acquire customers, you know, it’s it’s an e-commerce business, obviously. So that was sort of like the thesis on what we can do. But then we quickly realized that all the customers that we have, we are acquiring, obviously, you know, once you start doing marketing and try to acquire users and try to make sales, what we realized is this is firstly a commoditized category, right? Fashion is such a commoditized business and everything has become right now about, you know, how much, Instagram ads or how much Facebook ads can you do and how effectively can you do it? It’s not really about the product itself, but 50% is product and 50% is marketing. And if your product is not unique, if it if your product is fully commoditized, that will basically show up in your marketing cost, if you have a unique product, if you have something really that no one has done, if you have providing really a niche customer with a really niche use case, let’s say, you know, you’re providing a paddle for a fisherman. I’m just picking a random example, like how does a niche look like, a specific type of footwear. For example, in CrossFit, you know, there’s a this brand called Nobull, which is being which is used by all the CrossFit, athletes. Right. And they have this because they are making shoes for lifting, not for running. So they have this flat shoe instead of like, you know, a curvature, which is, you know, designed for running. So that was a unique insight. And they scale that brand and that brand is like, has a cult like following within CrossFit community. So if you’re not doing something very, very innovative, everything in e-commerce is about, has it become about marketing and how effectively can you leverage, Facebook or Google marketing to get customers? So my VP initially realized, I mean, within a couple of months into the business, we realized that the hey, we are making sales, but we’re not making sales at last, so there are two ways I could go at that point, you know, go and raise venture money and, scale really up and see if we can turn that loss making machine into, profit making machine, our closet. And as we spent more on marketing, we realized that actually, there’s no, one big customer insight that we gain is really about, you know, about fashion, actually. So let’s say, you know, taking the average Indian, they might want to be Indian when they’re in India, but when they’re around, you know, a multicultural society like us, they’re not trying to be more Indian. They’re trying to be more multicultural. So whatever they like, wearing it probably inside the home is not what they’re like. You know, they like to wear outside the home. An example I would give is if you are in Seattle every Friday, you know, people would wear Seahawks jerseys. They’re not going to wear something and aren’t even Indians want to wear Seahawks services. So the idea of fashion changes with the geography. So your customer is really not interested in the same things, but he was interested when he was in India or when he was migrating. And there are still certain categories within the home, that might be there, but we were not interested in pursuing that category. So at that point Ogilvy said, okay, this is not a road we want to go. And I also have this belief. And I forgot, you know, one of the entrepreneurs who came on my podcast said, which that which I’ve always thought of, you know, use when I experiment with new ideas is that, you know, I wish someone had told me that, great, good ideas sort of have instantly good feedback. And it doesn’t have to be massive, but it will be either, like a few sort of customers are really, really passionate about your product, that you are getting really good traffic to your website. So you have these small, small signals which sort of really give, a sense of confidence that, hey, this is a worthy idea to pursue. And we so we thought that we didn’t have those signals. It was all inorganic versus organic. So that’s why now we sort of decided that, you know, it’s time to shut down. But the customer insight, so whatever experiment that we are the customer. And one of the hypotheses we had was obviously wrong. And markets, I always say whenever I advise any startup, company these days, I always tell them that, hey, you are having a hypothesis. And whenever you’re making a pitch deck, remember that making the pitch deck is also true. Taking exercise. Don’t come up with an idea and say that, you know, I’ll make a pitch for it instead of take a step back. Think of the pitch as the process itself, like making the pitch itself is about finding the right idea. You know, it’s it’s about like, how do you think about next 18 months? You’re actually making a plan with the pitch itself. So often people think otherwise. They think they have an idea. And now we have to convert that into the pitch. But it actually it has to be opposite. You use the pitch itself to come up with the right idea or tweak your idea to make it right. So yeah, those are all like different lessons that I gained. I think it was a very useful experience. It also helped me transition into, you know, becoming a better product manager. It also acted as a proof point for me to tell people that, hey, why do you want to become a product manager? Like, what is your experience? Like, when you do something practical, you can show that, hey, this is how you know, how they think about your customer, how getting a video product, how do you think about marketing, versus me just explaining the theory versus doing something actual. So it helped me in that sense.

Jeffery: I love it. And there’s a couple of things they’re going to unpack there. And what I love, what you just shared, was that you emphasize the unique and niche. And I think what the why I love the you broke this out is because you can tell a company all the time, you know, go after a niche market, a niche in most people’s mind is small. This niche thing, it’s too small. I can’t go after niche. I need to go after large. And they’re like, well, niche really needs to be focused on is unique. So if you create a unique product, it allows you to become niche, which is hyper focused in this space, that it’s a demand that people are looking for. To your point on the shoes is that there was no CrossFit shoes, but there’s hundreds of millions of people doing CrossFit, and they’re looking for something that allows them to lift. So it’s flat and allows them to maneuver quickly. And that is what the value is that they’re looking for. So they created a unique product inside of a niche sector, which grew to be $100 million or $1 billion business. So I think there’s a way to shape your mind around what unique and niche is and how you combine them together to create something large and open up a space. So there’s probably other incumbents of now that have come in to compete, because they see that there’s such a high potential for shoes in this CrossFit world.

Nataraj: Yeah, I mean noble I tried to reach out to the founder investment, but there are two biggest at that point. But, you know, CrossFit itself is like a, like, great brands are like cult. I don’t know if you realize that, but I also like I like the whole religion and cult analogies, like I make them all the time. And great brands of, like, great company, and eventually great brands become great, great religions. They transition from cults to religions. All right. Cults are 1000 people are believing in their own stories. It’s a cult, but. And millions are believing it’s a religion. So Tesla, for example, in 20 1716 was a cult. It’s a religion. Apple is a religion. But noble is still a cult. I would say, because it’s not people people outside CrossFit don’t know about noble. There’s a new, shoe company called on. I don’t know if you’ve seen. You might see your friends waiting for. And shoes. It’s penetrating. It’s. I think it’s $700 million business per year. But they’re taking revenue share from Nike. It’s still at a cult level. But it’s pretty big cult. And it’s getting to a place where it might become a religion. And Nike might acquire them. But always, like, great brands start out as cults and eventually, you know, become religions. But if you find that cultish behavior in any sort of section, like even Lululemon, for example, like it used to be yoga audience, and then it slowly expanded, expanded, expanded, and now everyone wears it. So you always have this, especially in consumer brands, this cultish sort of signal, and not in the negative sense of the word, but I think of it as a positive as it represents, this immense, brand loyalty or passion for, for the product. Like, which was also seen the cult in the cult. But you can sort of extrapolate that and associated with the brand, and then it becomes a positive sense.

Jeffery: I love that analogy. The cult and religion 100%. You have a small group in your building. People love what you’re doing. It starts to spread. The cult spreads across, sharing the message, sharing why this is a value. People like that cool small esque brand. So like Apple was cool until it became not cool. So there’s probably one where you become a religion and then you followed a religion into something else, which is, maybe, where everybody becomes crazy as a pun, like they beat you up because you’ve got too big and you’re not doing things the right way, or you’re doing things too much on the profit side. So there’s probably another sector to talk to. But, I love the fact that you break it down by cultic and religious, get to the point of being religious. And then I kind of when you you were sharing this, you were you meant on the pitch side. You call it the hypothesis. And I love that because the cult is like a hypothesis. It’s I’m working on something that I think is solving a problem. I’m we’re I keep changing the pitch. Every time I hear myself pitch it, I’m changing it and modifying, modifying, modifying. And you keep getting better at that hypothesis because you get closer and closer to what scaling would look like. If you could cookie cutter your business, or you could turn it to a religion. So as soon as that shoe company became the religion, that’s where the pitch deck stopped changing. Now we’re good at this. We’re the best at sales on this, and we can turn and convert everything really quickly. We’re no longer hypothesize on how we’re going to do this. We’re already doing it. We’ve now become a religion. Is that a fair statement?

Nataraj: I wouldn’t phrase it similarly, but I think I think you’re sort of like to accept the cult analogy. Like when two people believe the same things, it’s called love. And if ten people believe it’s a cult and like thousands of people think it’s a religion, right? So initially you are in love with the idea, so you have to convince yourself and then you’re convincing maybe 1%. But then you have to create your cult. Essentially, when you’re creating it the first 50%. Right. That is about creating cult. And you also see like, you know, when people write stories about Uber founder or vivo founder, you know, it’s almost like a cult feeling. They explain it when it’s a disaster. It’s always like a cult. But even when it’s a success, it’s also make a cult like the biggest cult. I think the cult leader, was Jeff Bezos. I mean, he literally had 20 rules. For the longest time, he ran that company very differently. And he was a very strong cult leader. And that’s not a, you know, that’s a compliment. It’s not a, you know, it’s not a negative term. And when I say it’s a cult leader. Right. Because you have to be a strong leader to create such a strong belief system, particularly idea. In the case of pitch. Right, the problem I see often when founders start to, like, try to convince other people, they’re always trying to force with their idea into the structure of the pitch. But what they have to realize is, okay, you have a hypothesis. You’re going into the market to see whether this hypothesis correct. Even the even whoever is investing in you think that, okay, this hypothesis might work. And it will be better if you can iterate that hypothesis faster, as fast as possible, then you are iterating that hypothesis. So you have to approach the mentality of because often people have this idea that, oh, I saw this problem and I think it might be worth solving, but that’s not true, right? That’s not true. Your problem is your problem. Market might not value your problem because your idea when you’re raising a venture scale problem is you want to have an idea that scales to a $100 million business. At least that’s the minimum to become a unicorn, right? Can you generate $100 million revenue? So that means even your idea has to iterate, to get to a position that, okay, this can actually have 100 million, dollar revenue, maybe in five years. So my point with, with the hypothesis is that you come up with a hypothesis that is big enough. That is something that market needs and don’t get attached with the idea that you start with, and often people get attached with the idea they started with, and they’re trying to force fit in the pitch template that, hey, will do this, let’s go to market. Hey, I think and that’s where the story starts to break, because then this force with the market line of, you know, total addressable market is some crazy number. And they have to choose a bigger crazy number to convince your venture capitalists that this is a worthy enough sector to invest in a large and effective investment. But the fact is, we are only looking at $100 million revenue breeding. Right. That is the first step. And from there on, if you can get $100 million revenue sized business, you will definitely find the ancillary business where you can scale to further hundred million dollars on. So it’s sort of like the idea of, you know, trying your, your truth seeking exercise, right? This is all the truth seeking exercise in the market. And think of it like that. So that means you might have to squeeze change your idea, change your thought process around the idea of what your thought is not really what market values. And you don’t have to be so attached with your own idea of what it is. Like, for example, I see like a credible researcher coming to me, but I see that they’re looking at a very small problem because, you know, they’ve encountered in their, you know, personal life for some reason, often it tends to like, okay, because we always tend to see this victory stories of, you know, because the Airbnb founders saw this a problem, it turned out to be very good for them. But it’s not it’s not always the case. Right. Like a smaller problem is a smaller problem structurally. So unless you are seeing a part that this small problem is raised by millions of people, and I can see you leave the path. And don’t make up a vague idea that all people have this problem. Right. So that is sort of like the point I started writing, investment in early stage founders.

Jeffery: No, I love that. And I think if you tie a couple of other things that you shared there, there’s two things I always kind of like to push on a founder when they’re raising funds. If two ways to sell yourself, you either sell the dream or you sell the data. The dream is your hypothesis of where this could possibly go and how big it can be. And your job as an investor is to decide, am I willing to risk at this early stage on this dream and this founder, where you are the hypothesis that you’re working with the other side is that once you have the data, which is the metrics, you’re now selling the data, you can’t sell the dream anymore. You have to sell the data, which is how do the data prove that the hypothesis matched to your data? Did you shift and focus? And I think that once you get into the data side, it changes. The dream is no longer there. It’s the data that drives you to the direction you’re taking. And if your direction is going into this larger, you know, Amazon esque world and you’ve got such a high threshold, then how focused are you in this model that you can pivot and iterate along the way so that you can keep chasing the larger bucket of money that’s in front of you based off of the learnings that you have. So I think the way you surrounded that is, is brilliant. It’s, it really does make a difference when you’ve got a focus, but you also start to understand the product side of it and how you can shift your hypothesis by taking the learning and getting in front of enough people that that will keep shifting. So you, like you said, you went out of love into the cult and into the religion. It’s a great stepping stone way to kind of visualize where your business is going and where you see it. Getting into that scalability side. So now we’re going to kind of shift into, where you are at Microsoft and I, there’s been a lot of learnings. And now you get into Microsoft and we’re going to we will dive too much into the, the whole Microsoft’s side, because really the whole impact side of being a product manager is all the learnings that you’ve got to where you are today, which is obviously helped you scale on investing and investing in, founders along the way and helping businesses and of course, creating the podcast. And some of those learnings have really dived into this whole AI side of things. And I think I it’s kind of become this massive tool that maybe a year ago, 12 to 18 months ago, it really hit a massive impact on the world. Everybody was, talking about it. So Elon Musk had dropped down to number two in the most talked about thing in the world. It was I then maybe Elon and then maybe Elon again. But outside of that it was AI. And I think, you know, it’s been running for ten years. It just didn’t get the same global penetration until ChatGPT came out. So now you have AI that’s out there and everybody has all these fears. And of course you have fears of the unknown and or how something is going to operate and work. So maybe we can dive into maybe sharing a bit of an explanation of what AI means to you and what it means to maybe even Microsoft, because they’re one of the largest players and leaders in this whole space today, the top $3 trillion companies. Where do you see their vision with how AI is being utilized? And then kind of how do you see it in the early stage space? Because they obviously are going to be somewhat different. And how do you see that all kind of unfolding? So what is I mean to you?

Nataraj: A lot talk about, you know, in terms of Microsoft, you know, for obvious reasons, I don’t want to be the spokesperson of the company, but I, I do sort of like a general view of it. I think, you know, sort of from an engineer’s perspective, from people in big tech or, from anyone who graduated from computer science perspective. An ML have always been important. If you have looked at like there like PhDs were happening, there are sort of colleagues or sort of Batchmates went on to do, their masters or PhDs. You’ve always seen that, you know, ML was, you know, 50% of it. ML and the over 50% of it. But even as you know, engineers, you know, most of the engineers spend some time on learning what machine learning is, what our recommendation systems. Right. About obviously they’re not fully looked into what is happening because, you know, day to day, everyone has their own priorities. I think what ChatGPT really demonstrated is that this new technique called lens, and what that potential is, so the way I think of lens and sort of the easiest way to sort of put this in perspective is this is a horizontal shift, and it’s a horizontal intelligence as a service layer that we are provide across all services, across all products. So when you think of other sort of, you know, people are distinct and right now I’m seeing the sort of narrative that there is a bubble in AI. You know, there will be bubble in all of things. Bubble is not actually a behavior. That is a function of whether or not there is value inside the thing. Bubble is a function of social behavior. Bubble is a phenomenon of how we as social beings and information beings. I didn’t acting with information and acting upon it. It doesn’t mean that something is important, more important, or less important. So whenever a new thing comes, I think the information is it’s sort of position itself into creating hype cycles and bubbles. And that should not tell you whether or not a particular technology or trend is actually real or not. You or it’s as important or not important. And especially if you are in the cutting edge and if you’re trying to predict what’s the next thing, you should not actually go with the bubble on how you have to sort of go in a deeper way, find the experts and talk to them and come up with your own conclusions. Why I’m saying this is because the narrative right now I’m seeing, you know, on Twitter or some of the, journalists especially, I think there were some articles who were saying that, you know, AI is a bubble. That does not mean that AI is not AI is not important. Yeah. It doesn’t you know, I it has all the capabilities that it has. Compare that with crypto. Crypto is not upon, foundational or horizontal technology that can be applied everywhere. And that was a misconception. That was, sort of mis guidance. But everyone got caught up in both cases. There are bubbles. So just because something has a bubble doesn’t mean that it’s not important. It doesn’t mean that the claims will not turn into reality. Right. Because the bubble only means that there is a social behavior. There is a mass herd behavior along with it. And but like, you know, the classic example is, the internet bubble. It was a bubble, but it was also all the promises came true. It just that not at that point of time. So even if this cycle is a bubble, it does not mean that, you know, AI is not important. The capabilities are not true. It is still true. Going to be true. Like, let’s say something happens and stock market crashes by 30%. It does not mean that the researchers will stop working on it. It does not mean that the capabilities are, you know, going to change the cable result. Given the capabilities. Vegans go into our AI right now with the existing capabilities and think of all the transformations that are going to come in all the products imaginable. It is literally hard to find a sector where there will not be an impact of AI. You take any other like hype, like let’s say VR, let’s take blockchain, let’s take, any other, you know, like audio devices. Like Alexa was a big hype cycle. Right. Take any other niche or verticals that you can associate a bubble with. You can only pick say that, hey, it will affect in this way, it will affect this industry is the one which will affect everything. It is sort of like a foundational thing. And that is going to stay, persistent. And it has been persistent. I think we, we, we, we needed to get to that stage where there will be pivot to the point. Right. There was one pivotal point. That was one pivotal point. You see more pivotal points. And within the middle we might see that it had taken, you know, some guys out of it will go out of it. It might come back again. It might continue like that is the social behavior or the technical aspects are going to be technical aspects. So there might be a bubble, but it doesn’t matter. For me I think like in my ten, 12 years of being an engineering product, I’ve never taught any new technology where you can just go and shift your career into, like, I never thought, like lab three, or I’ll go and find a job in Web3. Like, I never felt that need, I never felt the need of, like, you know, when Alexa came out to do something, an Alexa or even a writer. Have fun. Alexa, because Alexa had this whole, you know, ecosystem of writing apps, because it was very clear that it was not foundationally transformative, at least from the tech lens, from the people who are closer to the, technology lens. But with the AI, like if anyone 19 year old, one year old asked me, I would say just go into all in AI. That’s the most obvious answer at this point. It’s there’s no question. There’s no, you know, and obviously you have to be inclined towards computer science and all those things. You know, you have to also look at that, that whether you personally, I think playing into that sort of thing. But if you are inclined and if you are already into type in where you have to go, then AI is obvious place to go. It doesn’t matter if it goes up or down, it is going to have a long survival instinct. And even if you are starting a company, dot AI is where you have to look at, yeah, that’s where I think, where new innovative ideas, there’s so many ideas to pick from. I think the reason we have seen this hype in venture markets last for five years was I was and I think you will see in my podcast until we talked about this, is there has been a dearth of good new ideas. So people came up with this niche, very, very niche, smaller market ideas, mostly like features as a company. Right? I can be and please sort of classic AI for you. Buy now, pay later. Like something that has to be a feature of a different company. Became a company and Bnpl at least has big category, big GMV. But we’ve seen a lot of small startups. And the pitch, it’s it’s a feature, not a company. It’s not even a product of a company. So features have become startups. I mean, we’ve seen so many versions of like dark Sense, everyone is creating in a, you know, a link sharing their people can put, upload their decks. So what we’ve seen is like smaller ideas sort of gained momentum and funding because there was a dearth of big ideas. I think with machine learning, I think we sort of unlocked a new way of rethinking a lot of applications. Number one, and we’ve given this intelligence layer to every application. So this was a new thing. Like when you think of, typing something and extracting what someone said was not available before, it allows you to fill gaps and create applications at a much higher abstraction, which is not possible before. So it gives you a new way to think about existing products and remake them, fundamentally improve them. Like, you know, cut costs. Like, you know, cloud and some of the companies have given examples of how they’ve cut down costs and customer support. But that is just one example, the economics of how it will play out with the will, the, you know, billions of dollars of investment and chips. How will they yield? I would say they will yield in the form of productivity of the world. When when I see the question of like, hey, we’ve invested this much dollars and we need X amount of revenue coming out in X number of years, I think that will sort of slowly come up, because even if you see data center investments when storage, I think storage used to cost something like 10,000 per GB 20 years back. Today it’s $1 per GB, right? That means what happened? We are consuming more storage than ever from cell phones to laptops. Everything. Right. So the same sort of cut down of cost routine and email usage and it’s penetration will go everywhere.

Jeffery: So it kind of sounds like the way I has shaped is that when I came out it was just AI and people were like, yeah, we’re working with AI over the years and they’re building on it. And then once the hype machine got behind the larger release, it had more of an impact in Web3 and anything alike, because what you were doing is you were taking a car and you were taking, a manual transmission and making an automatic. So you had a shift in the market, but it wasn’t a massive shift that the whole world had to stop and move over. You now just had two systems running and things were okay. And it was still growing and there was dollars that were going to be generated and there was value. But what I has done is it’s exponentially growing the way your mindset can look at a problem, how fast you can solve a problem, and how much more value you can tie in to the end result of that cost that you’re going to throw on to the customer, that people see that this is a whole different channel of revenue, this potential that come out of it, and it also does a paradigm shift change. So like Google search and everything else, they now become almost old players because they haven’t been, shifting the way their product is working in the sense that everything is AI based and running. We now have to make this shift because people will have more questions. They’re not getting answers. So you have companies like perplexity, where they’re now $1 billion, company, the 10 million users who why did they become so successful? Because they adapted to their customer. Their customer wanted to ask questions and not be fed ads. They wanted to be, getting information at their fingertips, but also using LM models. And they were getting information back that they could consume as that user instead of regurgitated data that didn’t really fit their mindset or where they were as a customer at that time. So you start to see that this layers differently. And then I see that, you know, tying into all the things you shared is that now you’ve got a AI where it’s expanded. If I was just one thing, it’s now, going into self-awareness models. It has, theory, theory models, limited memory reactive, like you’ve got sectors now that have broken out into AI, whereas before it was just AI. So now you’re going to see that they’re going to be more productive and that AI is going to keep branching out into many more things that it can do. And then they’re going to hit a limit. Right. What do I do with how do I start creating my own data now? So now they’re like, we got to make up our own data because we run out of data to feed from. So let’s just start having machines make their own data. So then they’re going to start making up, you know, gobs and gobs of data so that these systems can regurgitate and understand it. And it might have been 90% made up. But the point is that the systems have become smart enough so that they’re actually making their own data so they can start making their own future predictions because it’s needed now. So yeah, you’re really it’s advancing at such a fast pace. Whereas like a blockchain, it was reinventing an old product. It was just saying, hey, I’ve got a financial system and I want to show everybody, so let’s add in blockchain. So it just became more of a bolt on than a real value add. So I’m kind of taking that. I, I has just changed the whole model. Whereas Web3 was like new design, new interaction. But it didn’t change how web worked. And I think it maybe didn’t carry the same impact as an AI has made a Web3 a thousand times more efficient today than it did 2 or 3 years ago, when I was kind of used in Web3, but not so much. And now Web3 is really becoming more important because AI’s backbone to it. So it’s it’s almost to your point where that company that, you said 60% of Americans are using this, the company that you work for, but they don’t know it. Well, today, 90% of companies are people are using AI and they don’t even know it because it’s now becoming so strong that it’s tying into everything that we do. And when you see a flaw, you’re like, oh, must be using AI because it’s not giving me the results I need in order to make my day faster, better and more, successful. So it’s amazing how that shift keeps growing. So now take that kind of quantified spot where you are. Where do you see product managers really enhancing their abilities with AI? Did they become scared of AI because they’re going to lose their job? Or do they see this as an enhancement to making their role even more successful?

Nataraj: I mean, I think in the short term, AI is overestimated. And in the long term, you know, it’s underestimated. So but if you’re looking at a lens of like, how do you look at your own career and job, I would say before AI to please you, someone who knows you, I pretty so, I mean, this is a technology that everyone should try to learn and understand and how can they operate in their product? And if you’re a customer of, you know, B2C product, I think there are tons of assets on average, anywhere that has text, input output, you can, you know, you can summarize it, you can extract insights from it using AI. You can make support easy for you, and for knowledge workers who are like, for example, my product management job, a lot of it is writing and thinking, and both and half thinking is mostly writing. Like when you write, you sort of think and you bet you think better than you write better. That’s how I love thinking is because you don’t really sit there and think, that’s what I feel like. You’re right to think this way. At least that’s how I view my job. So previously you have to sort of think of how you’re writing more and more, but now you can just do a brain dump, and then, you know, the consequence that you can clean up and make it more presentable later. Like, you don’t have to worry about that. So if you have good thought, it doesn’t matter. You know, you’re devoid of this. The drudgery of, you know, how to represent it. Well, right? That is not just a problem. You can use your Microsoft Copilot or a the copilot, whichever your company is optimizing and, you know, just change it and be clever about it. But I think you have to, as a product manager, to leverage it first just for your own productivity, and then think of all the ways where you can leverage it for, product. And you’ll only get that by staying up to date. And that’s one of the reasons why I started the 100 days of AI project, is I felt so strongly that this is a fundamental thing, and you have to really grow and understand it much more deeply than, any other thing. And that’s why I invested my time and energy into it. So I think everyone who’s really understands the importance should go and do that. I think take the heart to invest time and learn more deeply than, you know, product engineering. Like everyone will learn from you and you. You want to be better. You have to do it all a little bit more deeper than that, to understand how you can it, you know, see the examples, what other people are doing or the latest techniques that are coming. And also it depends on, you know, how close you are, or how close to infrastructure, or are you at a pass or you at the application level, audio at the infrastructure level, the product that you’re working on. So it differs on how you can leverage these things. And it also like gives a new sort of, you know, rethink certain products. And I actually think that we haven’t seen a great implementation of AI since Shaggy. ChatGPT. And everyone like, has been trying to create a ChatGPT version of it, like every company is trying to do that. I don’t think that’s really a good strategy. Because I think the mind space on the consumer side has been taken by ChatGPT and a couple of others. When you think of this transition from Google queries to Google Answers, which Google is also integrating, I don’t think unless you have really differentiated, differentiation or high quality improvement in your answer, an existing search engines will do it. I think it’s great that we have perplexity, which is competing with Google and new players always improve the marketplace. And obviously, you know, more companies should try on it. But just in terms of like the variety of products, just purely leveraging AI, we haven’t seen yet a great consumer app that truly uses the new, they have seen features in different products, but we haven’t seen a whole new product. I think the closest thing was Microsoft’s, recall, which, hasn’t been out yet, which is sort of interesting way to look at your own thing. What? I’m personally excited as a copilot that really does your work. And we are really. You can squint your eye and you can see that it’s pretty close. Yeah, we’re about to get there right now. Microsoft, for example, copilot has, you know, you just, like, chat with, like, chatting with it. But in the recent announcement, copilot, which, ChatGPT was a desktop app in Mac. And that is very important. Like being in a stop app is important. What is the reason why it should be a desktop app versus you’re already on the browser and be able to access. That is very important. When you see what is possible in the future. Is right now, you are only asking ChatGPT, hey, rewrite this email, but then the next prompt will be, once you’re satisfied with the output of the email, send this to x, y, z at x, y, z. Time and that is passed by tagged on your desktop. And that’s why being a desktop app is important. So once you get this phrase to, the next pivotal point is where actions start happening. And those that’s when I think you’ll see the next pivotal point of the importance of this is where the action start happening. And I Gmail also hinted on this product improvement, in Google IO. But that is, I think the next phase where you see a lot more action. And I think, developers are calling this a generic workflows, where, you know, you give a task, an agent goes into some work and comes back to it and you review it. So a lot of knowledge work, which is like menial and, you know, not there has this great line of and removing drudgery from your life and the tasks and exciting tasks that you have to do as part of your job. I think those that is really exciting and gives you a lot of productive time back to, you know, beta product manager or generally any knowledge worker. I think that’s really exciting to see.

Jeffery: I love it, and I think what to kind of summarize this is that it comes down to how you leverage it. And you mentioned this a few times how you leverage AI. And I think that if everybody has taught and learns how to use these tools, all the different ones from perplexity all the way across ChatGPT, they can learn how to enhance their role and learn how to enhance their output. And then the back up to that is, to what you mentioned was how to present it better. So, yes, ChatGPT might not be perfect, it might not give you the exact result, but it’s giving you the baseline of how to produce something that’s more productive and come out with something that’s more meaningful. It’s how do you present that back to your audience to make sure that they understand it, and they don’t think that a computer built it. So there is, you know, that coping lating there’s a lot of stuff that ties into it. But the crux of, I think the whole AI discussion is that it’s enhancing your ability to move quicker and do more. It’s kind of like 1999 Google released and everybody’s googling everything, you know, how do I walk, how many steps and this much time? And Google gives you the answer, like what we’ve done is we’ve taken 24 years, 25 years of Google and broke it down into one new structure, which is now I’m going to get fed different information, but it’s going to learn from my everything, and it’s going to come back with a better, better and more enhanced answer. And it’s how do I use that when I’m in school, when I’m in work, wherever I am, two enhance myself, just like Google did for the last 25 years, by enhancing my knowledge base, by being able to search for anything that I had questions on. And today. And now I can search and get even deeper information back. That’s going to allow me to be more productive and quicker, faster as a business and or as a human. So I think there’s a lot of great things that are coming out of it. And to all your points, no matter how you define AI, AI is becoming the backbone to anything that we do. There may be a bubble, and if the bubble is happening, you still got 60% of AI. That’s going to be very functional and utilizing, over the next 5 to 10 years. And it’s a matter of how do we utilize it and present it back better to the audience that we’re going after and try to create that unique audience?

Nataraj: Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right.

Jeffery: So we’re going to transition now after that great conversation. We’re going to dive into the 60s 62nd rant. So you have 60 seconds. I’m going to throw it up on my clock. And I will say that no one has ever done 60s. So let’s break the record and keep it going. But I will, post the 60 seconds and when you’re ready, fire away, rant about anything, and I’m going to see if I can, support it or beat it up. Ready? You’re on.

Nataraj: I think tech media in the US overindex on what Apple does and under indexes on what Android does. I think it’s their own bias of being close to Apple and Apple devices and being in the ecosystem. And sort of is not able to even criticize Apple in a way it should be criticized. Firstly, I think Apple always like copies Android. And also it copies after four years and the feature is out on Android, and the tech media sort of ignores it. And, never seems to point it out. And obviously the users are not aware of it because they don’t use Android. What this has also led to is under coverage of Google in general, which sort of created a market opportunity last year where Google stock was down because, market thought that they were not ahead of. And that’s, I think, only partly true. Because if you have been a user of Google Pixel, as we’ve talked about in the last section, the best AI is the AI that you don’t know that you using the AI and Google has been actually, the Google phone has been the best use case of AI. They’ve learned some amazing features, which I don’t think even Apple, is close to even logical thinking about it. They launched like blurrier background and stuff like that a while back, which I think Apple has recently announced, which is all, you know, machine learning and AI and Google Photos is another great example. So I think, on and on, Apple is sort of on over covered while Google Android is under covered by the tech media, which sort of results in even I think we are seeing that play out in even AI and and little coverage. For example, the Apple’s decision, the strategic decision of outsourcing and GPT was actually a really bad decision. And I, I would have written very critically if I was a tech, I was at TechCrunch or something, about that decision. But everything is, you know, people are saying it’s a genius model. I seem to not understand why it’s a genius move. It is definitely not a genius move. Animal is such a big thing. You cannot outsource this to another company. It only indicates that they don’t have the capability at this point, to launch this. So that’s why they’ve also said, it’s not even about the economics as people are talking about that, because, okay, training animal models is economic is intensive. That’s why, you know, there outsourcing and it’s a CFO, that type decision, I think it’s all false. It’s basically comes down to the fact that they can’t do it immediately. They’re just biting time by doing this. And the concept of that, we’ll have more, choices of lumps in Apple is also, I think, ridiculous. That is not going to happen. They will have on that alarm. They will that will be Apple alarm. They’re just biding their time to do this. Yeah. And it’s such a foundational technology for Apple to not be in it. Right. If I would have said if it’s if you’re doing a Bnpl feature buy now, pay later and you were integrating with Klarna, that’s a different issue. Like I would say, yeah, it’s a fine. You can integrate with them and provide an option or you integrate with Shopify for, you know, using Shopify Pay or something, something like that. I can understand. Yeah, it’s such an integrated, important foundational change. And I’m really surprised that everyone is saying that this is such a strategically important move by Apple, by integrating ChatGPT, and also promising to provide a marketplace like like you will have options for more. And it’s also a bad implementation of the feature. Every time you ask it, it will pop up and say, hey, I don’t know this. Can I ask GPT like again? That’s again a bad feature implementation, which again, no one seems to be criticizing. So that’s my rant on. You know, thanks. Why is to what’s Apple.

Jeffery: Well, it’s a it’s a great rant. And, I’m going to say that I’m a mixed user. I have an iMac and I have an Android. So for a mobile phone and I have a mac MacBook for, and I have been a mac user for, I don’t know, 16, 20 years or something to that effect. So I’m going to share. And of course, it ties on Microsoft as well. So the the I use Microsoft Office services. So the the broad view of how we use products is, is obviously you’re going out to the efficiencies that you find are going to do the best things to enable you as a user. I’m going to think that Apple, who is the best marketing machine in the world outside of Tesla and Elon Musk, you they have built Elon has built a character of himself and a business from it. You have Apple, who had built a character outside of it, lost the character and then became about the business and the innovation and the marketing. And that has taken over the business in the massive way. Google, on the other hand, has just been in your face because all the tools and products we use happened to be in your face, so they never had to really market it. So I find that they are. You’re right. They’re very pulled back on how they operate and what they do, but they have the smartest people in the world working with them. And then on the Apple side, I have a feeling that when they were building the car side, they were really trying to shift where they were going and who they were competing against, and they forgot the markets that they played in and what they were really good at. And when they shut the car manufacturing down, oddly, not too long after that, I became a big boom. And then they had to figure out, okay, what are we going to do here? We seem to have missed the boat, so I think they’ve tied ChatGPT in as their go to while we steal all of this information and learn how to build our own LMS and everything else and catch up. So they. I think they are a little bit lost in that sense. And I don’t know if if that’s why they’re marketing it the way they are and trying to make everybody feel great about it. But I suspect it’ll be like a three year contract while in the background, they rebuild it up like they were doing with the auto for five years, and they’ll build up the biggest punch machine and it’s going to come back bigger, stronger than ever, because that’s what they’re going to see and hang their hat on. And I think that that’s where, Google and the rest of the world will be sitting there thinking, oh, we’ve got this made. We’re going to be able to win in this market. And Apple will come back in 4 or 5 years with something dramatically different, that will change the world. Right. So I do see their innovation being a superpower to their company, whereas Google always seems to be middle ground and obviously, other players where they’re more advanced. To your point, on Microsoft and, ChatGPT. They’re always going to be a dominant player because they were first movers, first to market, and it’s really defined it. Now. I think it comes down to the last two players on how they’re going to move in the market. And to your point, having it inside and having all this knowledge to yourself is so much stronger than leveraging outside parties. So, I’m not sure if it’s for or against, your read, but I do, I think there’s a 90% agree in agreement with how they approached it and why. And I guess it’s, determined to see if, if their play moves and makes itself. But I think they’re trying to find themselves again, which is what? Who are we good at? And what are we good at? Because we keep coming up with new products. Some are working, some hard. And do we have to keep being innovative in order to be Apple? So from there, we’re going to move into our rapid fire questions. We’re getting through there. We’re almost done. All right. From your perspective as an investor, pick one or the other founder or co-founder?

Nataraj: Founder.

Jeffery: Unicorn or a four year ten x exit?

Nataraj: Four your ten exited.

Jeffery: CPG or tech.

Nataraj: Tech.

Jeffery: AI or blockchain?

Nataraj: Yeah AI.

Jeffery: First money in or series A.

Nataraj: Plus money.

Jeffery: Board seat Or observer.

Nataraj: Neither.

Jeffery: Save for convertible note.

Nataraj: Save.

Jeffery: Leade Or follow.

Nataraj: Want to lead? Not have to follow.

Jeffery: Favorite part of investing?

Nataraj: Meeting great people.

Jeffery: Number of and companies invested per year.

Nataraj: 6 to 8 verticals.

Jeffery: The focus.

Nataraj: Verticals as I.

Jeffery: Two qualities for a startup to stand out to you.

Nataraj: The ability and the ability of the founding team to write code or how fast they iterate on writing code and launching the product. Okay. Just, what do you.

Jeffery: Fair. What do you look for when making an investment?

Nataraj: How strong the team is and how fast they’re iterating is the number one, and number two is the idea.

Jeffery: Okay. All right. Personal side. What is a piece of advice you’d give to founders nine out of ten times?

Nataraj: You’re seeking truth in the market, so be flexible.

Jeffery: Do you have any philosophies or rules that you stand behind?

Nataraj: Personally, you know, create, focus, see where your what’s your consumption and turn consumption into creating. So if you’re listening to a lot of podcasts, create a podcast. If you’re consuming a lot of shots, make shots. If you’re reading a lot about stocks, invest in stocks. As I read reading, a lot of startups go and create one. So convert consumption into creating.

Jeffery: I love that. What tech will define the world in the next five years.

Nataraj: Probably I, unless we make some new innovation and nuclear energy.

Jeffery: Who is your hero mentor and why?

Nataraj: Not one hero. I sort of. I’m against, having one hero. I think the problem it becomes, I become part of a cult. But I have, like, people that inspire me in different areas in investing. For example. I view towards the North Coast rappers who’s always stood out in terms of being and investing where the puck will eventually be. Instead of, you know, following others. I like Scott Galloway on his thesis on how to approach things, and in generally his humorous way of putting out things and presentation style. I like, Sam Harris for his, you know, way of thinking about free will and, and, Christopher Hitchens, a little bit about it is, yeah. Whoever else. But I have different people, but I don’t have, like one person that I really admire.

Jeffery: Those are great, great choices. Big fan as well. What is your favorite investment?

Nataraj: My favorite investment. I listen, this Indian company called Newton School, which takes, which which basically takes new students without any fee or the mindset to change them model, but initially without any fee, and they guarantee them a job. So they trained and made them ready for a software engineering job and, basically get them hired. I mean, India has a 1.4 billion population and unemployment is a huge, huge, huge problem right now. I can’t underestimate I mean, it just blows my mind every day. I keep thinking, how can you employ this billion people? And this is a small drop in the bucket, but I think I like what they’re doing, and they’ve been quite successful at it.

Jeffery: I love it. All right, now we’re gonna move the personal side real quickly. Favorite movie? And what character would you play?

Nataraj: Favorite movie? Any Disney movie recently? Dune. Dune one. I would play the character of the director. Probably not in the movie. Big fan of science fiction. Three-body problem, was amazing. Sicario by anyone and everyone was, I mean, I watched that like ten times. And some of my.

Jeffery: Great, great flicks. Favorite book?

Nataraj: Couple of them. One is Racial Optimist by Matt Ridley. Basically, it’s important for me because when you grow up in India, you grow up with the mindset of scarcity. But I think the Western markets are about, you know, abundance. So it made me sort of shift my mental model on thinking from scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, from a zero sum game to playing positive some games, sort of being not collaborative to be becoming collaborative with others. So it’s a fundamental shift in the way of how to be an optimist. So that’s my to my book. I mean, there are other great books like, superintelligence is a book which is a collection of mental models. I think it’s a great book for anyone who’s thinking for the thinking. You know, there are other classics like, you know, Charlie Munger’s, you know, like a lot of the book. I haven’t read that fully yet, because each mental model I try to sort of live with. So I never get to complete the book, actually. But, what else? Yeah. I’m not remembering other books, but yeah, those are top of mind.

Jeffery: Perfect. Favorite sports team.

Nataraj: Unfortunately, I don’t follow any sports.

Jeffery: There’s not even a cricket. It’s fair.

Nataraj: I’m actually surprised why my friends are still following cricket. I actually don’t like. I mean, I’m not into any sports, to be honest. Except for CrossFit. Yeah, I really don’t watch any sports that that makes me socially sometimes puts me in a different significant situation. And sports is a great way to.

Jeffery: Interact.

Nataraj: And I know, like, friends who follow sports primarily strategically for that reason. But I tried doing it. I couldn’t get to it. I mean, I tried,

Jeffery: I it’s just consuming data. It’s more data rich cake or fortune cookie.

Nataraj: Okay. Good fortune cookie. Fortune cookie.

Jeffery: Superman or Batman?

Nataraj: Batman.

Jeffery: DC or Marvel? Marvel football or football?

Nataraj: No. For luck. Right. Well, the same thing.

Jeffery: Well, in football or football, but football. All right. Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey neither. All right, last question. What is your superpower?

Nataraj: My superpower is being orthogonal. I’m into I take different things from different fields. And, applying it into different things. I learned what I learned from startups and applying big tech. I learned one what I learned in Big Tech and take it to startups. I can, things from storytelling books and apply it in the product management job. So I, I think that’s sort of like the metal theme. I don’t know if it’s superpower, but I try to do it.

Jeffery: I think it’s a superpower. It’s, you’re also very inquisitive and, great at diving into, subject matter and then sharing a lot of subject, subject matter expertise. So, it’s been,

Nataraj: I would say curiosity. That’s a curiosity and fresh eyes on me.

Jeffery: And I think that all ties together. So it’s, it’s a it’s a great, collection of, to add into your toolbelt. But I want to say is, not a rush. It’s been brilliant getting the opportunity to chat with you today and to dive into, everything from AI to your background to everything that you’ve been able to, to do up until this point. And it’s very exciting. And, we’re big fans, of course, of all the things you’re doing and the way we like to end our show is that we like to give you the last word. So anything you want to share to investors or to founders, we turn it over to you and please share how people can, find you as well online. And again, thank you for your time.

Nataraj: Thank you. Be thanks for having me on the show and giving me this opportunity. Folks, anyone who wants to, reach out to me, you can go to my website, the startup project.io, where you can find all the details about all the books that I do and also my contact information. You can reach out to me, on LinkedIn, Twitter. My email is and I’m not Roger gmail.com. It’s my, last name for the.com. And I’m always looking to, you know, invest in new companies. Have great guest on my podcast. So if you think you’re that person, feel free to reach out. Or if you just want to have a fun conversation, people to reach out. That’s what I think internet is made for. I believe in meeting, you know, like minded people. So me, I am always open and, you know, I’m getting giving my time for that.

Jeffery: I love it. Well, keep being a rock star. And thank you for your time.

Nataraj: Thank you. From.