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 si