Bae HQ Compilation Episode 2: A Year-Ender Special | Bae HQ

Amardeep Parmar: 0:05

Hello, hello. If you're at a moment in your career where you're not sure what the next step is, maybe things are hard right now. You're struggling. This is an episode for you. We're taking some of the best lessons and struggles from people who've been on this podcast in over 200 episodes and got them down to bite-sized little clips for you to give you a little bit of inspiration and a little bit of a kick. You need to go towards more purposeful work that matters to you. We've got lots of different people featuring today, so I'm going to rattle through the names here and I really hope you enjoy and then we get on to all those different clips and as well from the BAE HQ. Have a great new year and I really hope you achieve all your goals. Okay, let me rattle through who's on this episode and then you get straight into these clips and let us know as well which ones did you enjoy the most? Who do you really resonate with? So today we have Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, Rina Newton, Rahul Patil, Ishveen Jolly, Praveen Vijh, Deepak Ravindran, Anushka Patchava, Priya Downes, Dr Karan Rajan, Karan Jain, Dr. Farzana Rahman, Sakshi Chhabra Mittal,  Sandrine Zhang Ferron, and Kanu Batra.

Natasha Ratanshi-Stein: 1:12

It wasn't really what I was going after, because I felt like that was a bit of like a halfway house of where I wanted to be. And I just felt more and more as I was attending board meetings and spending time with portfolio companies, that I had this envy of them. Where we talk about something, we talk about like, oh, could you think about trying this acquisition to make the unit economics better? Or what if you launched in this geography? Or what if you launch this new vertical? But I would never see it end to end. It would be the ideation and then the follow-up of like, oh so how did that go?

Natasha Ratanshi-Stein: 1:41

And I think, because of that arm's length distance you have as an investor, I I just felt like I wanted to be in the weeds, on the ground, really getting my hands dirty on that execution. And so I spoke to Andrew and Greg at Peton and they were extremely supportive. Both of them had been operators and entrepreneurs previously, and so they brainstormed with me. You know, the right stage business, the right type of business, and then the rest is history. I joined Bulb um in April 2019. 

Amardeep Parmar:

And making that big step as well there. How was that so obviously going from investment background, going into that new environment, did you find like you? Did you find your feet quickly? Or was it the adjustment period?

Natasha Ratanshi-Stein: 2:17

I was daunted when I first joined. I think that was probably the most daunted I've ever felt in my career, because I had this imposter syndrome where I was like, am I just someone who is able to thematically come up with things, but when it actually comes to push, comes to shove and getting things done and having these meaningful results, can I do it? And so where I was quite lucky in my time at Bulb is that I knew I had a skill set in finance. I had told Hayden, the CEO, at the beginning I didn't want to be spending most of my time on finance because I really wanted to broaden equity, other forms of financing, given the uniqueness of the operating model of being a utility company, and so, because it was relatively comfortable, I felt like that was a good opportunity for me to show the company and show Hayden and Amit, the founders, that I could add value without pushing myself to unknown terrain or unknown territory.

Rina Newton: 3:30

Again, I think it's I don't know whether it's our culture or what have you but I know that people can feel very worried, very jittery, like it's a bad thing, but it was the biggest thing, the positive thing that happened to me. It was such an opportunity because it made me realise that I could just do things the way I wanted to do. So I did love my time at Pharma. I worked at loads of different pharma companies and, again, because of the boredom, I was skipping about doing lots of roles, getting promoted, moving companies, all very good, but I still hadn't found my kind of groove until the age of 39, which again, I think is another point to make to the listeners who sometimes feel that they hit the 30s and it's too late to start a business. I didn't start Compliment, my first business, until I was 39. And I'd been on maternity leave with my third child and I was made redundant. I mean it couldn't have been lower, and yet I had enough excitement and energy to start a business.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:28

So I've got a friend I'm talking to right now who's 25, I think, and just got made redundant and they're in this kind of stage of it's the end of the world and I'm lost. So if they're listening to this, I'm going to tell them that this is coming out so they don't feel too attacked. But it's our idea. It's like there's so much more life to go, even at, say, 39, right, you've still got a huge career ahead of you, but we're having this head towards certain 30, all these different things that you need to by a certain age. By that there's some kind of age expiry on that.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:57

When so many of the people who've heard, or some of the big global companies like kfc, things like that, started from people, old entrepreneurs and our challenges I think in recent times we've had google, like meta and those kind of companies started by people a bit younger, but that's actually an anomaly. A lot of the actual large companies. You might not even know who founded them, because maybe they're not in the public eye.

Amardeep Parmar:

When it came time to sell it. How was that? Because obviously it was your baby, right, you built it yourself. Yeah, you've grown it so quickly and then when you let go of it? Was it, was it, did it feel good? Was it like now it's the next stage, or was it? What do I do next?.

Rahul Patil: 5:33

I mean if I, if I look back, I mean the, the exit wasn't planned in a way that one day someone gonna acquire my company. And and even even now as well, when I, when I build the business, I always think acquisition do happen. But you cannot build a business with the mindset of one day you're gonna sell that company. I mean you need to be open if acquisition happens, but, uh, you cannot build something, otherwise you cannot pour your kind of like your love, emotion, sweat, tears, everything into it, like you know. Um, so similarly, it just happened, more like organically, that I was uh, I mean, we were doing pretty good as business wise, but way where we reached to the, uh, the tier where we were operating and I was trying to like break through that tier, come into slightly in the bigger boys club, uh, and we tried a few things but somehow it wasn't happening.

Rahul Patil: 6:26

And although we were making a good amount of money, like after four years that's a question back of my mind was like, is this something next, 10, 15 years? I wanted to continue doing exactly the same thing or I want to do it slightly different, bigger, better, and I wasn't able to find the answer. So just money-making wasn't the idea when I started building the business, so it happened organically. It got exited. I mean, one of the competitors. They sort of had an eye on us and they gave us a good offer and I thought, okay, let's do, it's a good time to exit. 

Amardeep Parmar:

What happened next then? So you've just exited a company so young?

Amardeep Parmar: 7:07

What do you do next?

Rahul Patil: 

It's a good question. So I was totally blank in the sense. What I'm gonna do next, uh, no idea. So good amount of money, but then what's the next plan in terms of what next company I wanted to build? I had no clue that one time. But one thing was clear that I want to build another company soon. Uh, but I don't know which problem that you know I'm gonna fix it. So I thought I had two options either just to take a break, just just go around, and this was happening in india. So one option was just travel around, man and see, and, and the other option then, back of my mind, was I did not have job experience by that time. I did everything as my own business. But you know, sometimes like something which you haven't done it, always you feel excited about it.

Amardeep Parmar:

And what was that tipping point? Was there a moment where, like, because I guess you've got the little idea of, okay, I'm going to do this, this and this, when was like a fully formed okay, here's what I think can solve this problem.

Ishveen Jolly: 8:03

I think I was living in New York at the time and Uber was really growing. There was a company in New York whose founder I had met called. The company was called ZocDoc. It was like a booking service for doctors. I was using LinkedIn, so I think it was like that early. All of these websites. You were like seeing their ability, and then I would think about my own day job and think this is so archaic, like this doesn't make sense. So and it took me a minute, I have you know, I think I got to the point. I think I say the same where'm like when you start dreaming and waking up and thinking like if someone, if there was a text on my phone and it's like, oh, someone's doing the idea that you've thought of, then it's a good time to like. If you're actually nervous about someone else doing it, it's probably a good time to do it.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:58

And then can you tell us, like, what was the idea at the beginning?

Ishveen Jolly: 9:01

It's kind of similar to now, but this is very much more folk. At the beginning it's kind of similar to now, but this is very much more folk. I think what's pivoted is the messaging and the positioning, but the idea is like the same. So, um, essentially like an airbnb for sports sponsorship. Um, sponsorships like a 60 billion dollar industry so it's huge. Sports is about 70 and so I just was like there must be actually one of the big things I was doing for hero. Uh, they want, they were expanding into South America.

Ishveen Jolly: 9:26

So I had been to like Columbia and to find deals for them. And you know, sit across team people and they'd be like, well, how much money do you have? And it's like, well, how much does it cost? And they're like, yeah, how much money do you have? And you're like this doesn't seem right. And then you go back and tell the client and they like, yeah, we'll revisit in three months. And you're like, oh, I'm gonna have to do the whole.

Ishveen Jolly: 9:50

So I just remember thinking how is there no efficiency in this? And so the idea was essentially a you have a platform where every, every sponsorship opportunity in the world is listed. Everyone can go and basically go teams, shirts. You know, let's say, bay is like all right, I want to sponsor the IPL team for that amount of money. But of course there's a lot of nuances that you know marketplaces are hard to solve. We've seen them over and over again, and so really, where we're at right now is where it started with like team and events and everything. It was the athlete side that really took off.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:28

Hello, hello. Quick interruption to let you know about bay hq with their community for high growth british asian entrepreneurs, operators and investors. And you can join completely free at thebaehq.com/join there. You get our ceo pillars so that's content, events and opportunities direct your inbox every week so you can get involved and it can help you to further slash. Join there, you get our CEO pillars so that's content, events and opportunities direct to your inbox every week so you can get involved and it can help you to further your business and your career. We also have a free startup course called BAE Startup Foundations where, if you think about starting a business someday or at the early stages, it gives you all the information to help you hit the ground running and to thrive in this new world. Back to the show.

Praveen Vijh: 11:06

And she said, oh great. I said, look, I've been thinking about it. I just don't want to work. I don't want to be that person who works at it, doesn't do anything for me, it's not interesting to me. Please can you give me a chance? I've got this opportunity to import 6 million tonnes of rice into the UK and just play with that for a while, and they were very gracious. I'm very grateful to my parents for having the, the trust and the and the ability in me, or the feeling that they gave me, which was that okay, fine, try it out, see how it works, and they supported me very well, supported me financially for some time, and they allowed me to be able to pursue this. I will only describe it as a, as a burning desire. There was nothing else that could possibly that I could possibly have done.

Praveen Vijh: 11:59

I couldn't have worked with somebody else.

Amardeep Parmar:

And once you created the bars, right. So there's one thing to create the bars, but you also need to get people to like them, stores to stock them. There's all these different steps in trying to, like, now, make this into a business. How did you go about that at the beginning? Because if you've created this yourself and now you need stores to take you seriously, you need people to try something which maybe they weren't used to as well, right, maybe they weren't used to as well, right, to get consumers to be like yeah, this is a new concept in some ways. How did you go about that early stages? Just get it off the ground.

Praveen Vijh: 12:29

Well, how complicated can this be? I will get bars, I'll talk to Holland and Barrett and it'll be in their stores. I mean, of course Holland and Barrett are going to take it. Why would they not take it? Yeah, so when you're finally hit again with rejection and you realize you can't get through to the buyer, when you realize that I don't even know the telephone number, I don't know how it's. How easy.

Praveen Vijh: 12:53

I've never done this process before. You have to start making the most of everything you've got. So we took our bars out, we shops in our local area around where we built up what we call our makery, around Halstead in Essex, in central London. We went round to all of the convenience stores, the health food stores, and if any store said that they wouldn't want to stock it because they didn't think they could sell it, our product was expensive. It was selling for 70ence, 80 pence or 90 pence, which is twice or three times the price of a Mars bar at that time. It was a lot of money. So if they thought that well, they're never going to sell this, we said to them please just take a box, put it on the shelf. We'll come back a week later and we'll see how much you sold.

Deepak Ravindran: 13:42

There's money for me to spend. But there was no real clear follow through plan on what contentment and happiness truly meant. And that's when I knew that was not the right place for me and I kept changing banks, thinking surely this is the bank right. So I did the whole, all the different banks, and I went this is not it, it's not it. And yeah. And then I knew I had to quit this place where I was and do something else. Now again, I didn't know what that something else was, so I just quit. Much to my mom's, you know, like shock, I'd say, when I spoke with her, and much to my other friends as well, who just all kept telling me this is the silliest decision they've ever come across. Why would I do that? It's a proper job, you know, earning a lot of money. Why would I quit all that and do something? Well, do something which I was not really sure about. And a lot of people said look, think about this commonsensically. Why don't you do something on the weekend? Why don't you do something in your evenings?

Deepak Ravindran: 14:47

So I create feelings of desperation, people get inspired and start something. I create desperation. Right. So I create that state in myself where my mind, I almost trick my mind to say what? We don't have a job, Deepak, so you've got to do something else now and there's no other option. Failure is not an option, right? Failure for me then was going back to my job in banking, and that was the one which kept pushing me to say try new things, get out there and do something else.

Anushka Patchava: 15:22

You feel like you talk to people every day in what you do, but you're never interacting outside of that healthcare ecosystem. And networking outside the ecosystem is the only way you allow yourself to grow and discover. And the more curious you are, the more you get to that point where you realize what works for you, and not only just in terms of the things you do, but how you do it and who you do it with. And that was the first time I recognized the thing that we always said at Business 3.0 when they did performance reviews, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And I recognize that you feel like you talk to people every day and what you do, but you're never interacting outside of that healthcare ecosystem. And networking outside the ecosystem is the only way you allow yourself to grow and discover. And I went to headhunters. A couple of them tried to recruit me to be a headhunter. So I did a three month stint being a headhunter, um, and then got my next job through doing that. But I think one of the things about talking or being a headhunter allowed me to talk to lots of different people and ask people what they wanted to do, which made me think about. What do I want to do, um, and who do I want to be, um and recognized.

Anushka Patchava: 16:26

At the time, you know, I couldn't let go of the science. I really liked helping people, but maybe not in that physical clinical setting. I still liked reading scientific journals and papers. You know we always got told before university interviews tell everyone you read the new scientist. But I was still reading the new scientist back then. It wasn't the economist, it was definitely the new scientist back then. It wasn't the economist, it was definitely the new scientist. So I basically ended up, uh, falling into a pharmaceutical consulting strategy role and and that made sense.

Amardeep Parmar:
‘
So did it make sense at the time? But did it make sense like once you're in the job as well?

Anushka Patchava: 17:00

Both, actually both. Um. The only thing that didn't make sense in the job was it was like 80 to 90 hours weeks and at that point I'd made this pledge to myself, which I haven't lived out. But I said at the age of 38, which is this year I'm going to be retired and I don't want to. You know, I wanted to, kind of capitalizing on the fact as a medic you work really long hours. I wanted to carry on reducing each year how much I worked and obviously, strategy consulting. You don't reduce how much you work and you travel a lot.

Amardeep Parmar:

Why 38? That's really specific.

Anushka Patchava: 17:29

I don't know, I think. I think I had it in my mind that 38 was the year that people got old let me just say, that's not true anyone who's out there? 38 is definitely the new 18, but yeah, I just think.

Anushka Patchava: 17:40

I think I had it in my mind and I thought you know, before my 40th birthday, I want to, I want to be retired, I want to be, you know, doing charity work or philanthropy or whatever it is. Um, I still believe I'm doing a lot of what I want to do now, but obviously I'm not retired.

Amardeep Parmar:

So you spotted the gap there yeah but then what was the trigger to say like, okay, I'm going to do it, this is going to be like the full-time thing.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:04

I've got the skills, because obviously what's interesting as well, the different things you've done. Like you said, you had the product experience, you had the finance background yeah you had the fashion passion as well, so all these different things add up to it. But was it easy for you to decide okay, I'm now going to build this myself or was it a difficult decision for you?

Priya Downes: 18:21

Very difficult. I think you know I'd, I was, I'd say like I'm kind of an old founder. So at this point I was 37. And I guess the older you get, the more risk averse you get. And having only ever worked at corporate, you know been employed, my instant reaction was like, well, why don't I just do this part-time? I'll get a part-time job and you know we'll start that way. And it was actually my husband who said to me what are you doing? And I said well, you know, I feel like I need to have this. You know he's like. I said I need to have something going on to keep me, you know, just in case I need to fall back. He's like why? And then literally he kept going why, but why, but why? And in the end, when you boiled it down, it was because I was a slave to my CV. I was like, but what if I have a gap on my CV?

Priya Downes: 19:13

What does that mean?

Priya Downes: 19:13

And he's like, really that's what's holding you back. And when he, when we broke it down like that, I realized how stupid I sounded. And then it was then when he basically said look, if you're going to do it, just do it, give it, do it full time, don't and don't look back. And then, and actually I've never looked back from that point. And now, honestly, when I think about that moment, I just think I cannot believe that it took me so long to have that mental switch, because had I actually had that conversation with him, even two or three years earlier, I could have started my business earlier because I probably was ready.

Priya Downes:19:48

But I was holding myself back because I was so kind of I need to have a job, I need to have a job and best decision. Because I think if you, if you want to really give your business the best shot as a founder, you need to be in it full time, and it particularly for raising money, particularly for all of those things. I think it's really important to be in it full time. And you know, I credit that moment to being where I am today, because I don't think Nudea would have succeeded had I had only done it part time, like the way I was intending to do it, I'd probably still be sitting here like trying to get the business off the ground.

 20:31

That impact you can have on 12 people, on one person even, is way more important than getting a million views or 10 million views. Who cares? What's the price of saving someone's life? It's worth more than a million views. So for me, that is the underrated metric that I care about now, every video I make. I don't really care about the views at all. Can it have an impact on someone's life? And for me that keeps me going. Now, no matter even really care about the views now.

Dr Karan Rajan:Amardeep Parmar: 20:52

So, as you're saying that, I'm now thinking in my head wait, I've got something here, I've got something there, so I'm going to get myself checked out now. I think I'm a little hypochondriac myself, not going to lie and I think that's an interesting journey because it happens to so many people where, whether it's the vanity metrics of followers or money, whoever it is where you can tell them that the followers don't matter, the views don't matter, and people ignore you until they get to that stage and realize it's not made them happy as well. And I've always wondered, like, how do you break that cycle where people go through the same pain all over again, even though you've said that, I'll say that, and people still do the same thing? And it's that challenge. Sometimes people have to go through that journey of seeking that extent of validation to realise that's not the problem or that's not the solution.

Dr Karan Rajan: 21:41

Yeah, I think it's like you can't skip puberty. To get to being an adult. You have to go through the hormonal acne, the weird thoughts in your head, the embarrassment, all that kind of stuff. You can't avoid it, it's inevitable. And similarly, I think this seeking approval or external validation is also inevitable as well. I mean, this is human nature to want to be loved by other people and I think that's part of the journey.

Dr Karan Rajan: 22:02

The same, when you know if you lose a loved one, you can't tell someone not to grieve. They will have some low mood for X number of months or years and it's just about going through that and then adapting. You know, when I lost my grandmother in the middle of my finals exams, she was one of the closest people I had in my life and I was devastated and I still think about it to this day. But I've adapted. It's just a scar that is well healed and I've learned from those things.

Dr Karan Rajan: 22:32

And same way with the social media stuff. I wouldn't have been so well adjusted about my thoughts about social media had I not gone through that period of near burnout and frustration and angst about not getting the same views as I wanted. You got to go through it. You know those moments of failure. It's not just failing, because I always used to think that failure was the opposite of success. Failure is just a building block on the way to success. You fail and you learn, and then you fail again and you learn more things, and then eventually you get to success.

Karan Jain,: 23:07

Basically I set up like an agile consultancy shop, you know, hired a bunch of people. I scaled that up to like 50 people and this is before like I'd heard the word VC or any capital. So it was like pure bootstrapped and it was a people business. It was a consultancy business. Like, again, I had not clocked the margin difference between a consultancy business versus a software business. Yeah, so that's that. So that was my first entrepreneurial thing, again not knowing how to exit a business. So I was like, oh, I'm getting a bit burnt out because I was traveling around, you know, uh, you know different cities and I'm like, okay, and, mind you, I was like 26 at that point. So I'm like I'm getting burnt out, like I want a break. A typical child this way, I want to. I want a break. So I'm like I sold the business, go back, get a job. So I did that. But then at that point I kept one of my clients that I was working with and did a bunch of work with them.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:57

At that point, at 26, right? So scaling companies that kind of size and then obviously deciding you're burnt, now you're going to sell it, you want to sell it. How is that, from like a mental perspective, right of thinking I've done this at such a younger age? Obviously it must have been doing pretty well to then be like, okay, I'm gonna now go back and work for somebody else. Was that an easy transition or is it quite just a I'm done?

Karan Jain: 24:16

I don't think you understand that at 26 you're like I just want to do that now. Okay, cool, you go do that. And it's like because of that, at that point you're well, is there something you can't do? But what do you want to do next? It's like, okay, well, you know what, I haven't done that, so I'm going to go do that. So I guess my mindset's always been about learning, so it's not about.

Karan Jain,: 24:37

I think a lot of people get caught up on two things, and I've been there myself, so it's the titles and money. Right, titles and money. Right, titles and money both are important, um, but once you accept that titles don't mean anything, it actually comes down to the level of influence you can execute. You know, have titles, like once you operate at that level, your titles zero, and then you actually have a much better influence for the right reasons. You know you're able to operate as a human much better. And and once you accept that money is just a currency and it's okay, you'll make it and don't get me wrong, I chased it, yeah. And after a while, like, okay, I can make it.

Karan Jain,: 25:15

It's like then I kind of have that mindset okay, it's not about the money, because you'll ever there's. There's 100 ways to make money. You can do that on putting ai videos on youtube these days. Right, like it's not about that, but it's like so it's like what then drives you is okay. Well, what impact can you have? What do you want to learn? How do you, you know, how do you spend your day and I was getting a bit philosophical here, indeed, but the reality is to your point, how do you go from you know, how do you change that mindset at 26? It's like, well, it wasn't even a question, like you're not mature enough to think about those things. But equally, I guess I've always just prioritised learning. The rest will just come a bit like product people, like oh how many. But just solve the right problem for the right reasons, the rest will just fall in place.

Dr. Farzana Rahman: 26:05

And I had this like brilliant advice from this other radiologist I worked with when I was a registrar. He was a consultant and he said something. He said he said if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. And that was the first question you've got to ask yourself. And so at that point it was if we don't believe in this enough to take a leap, then no one else ever will. And it's got to cost you something. You've got to. They've got to be stakes right. You can't. You can't create something, but it'd be so safe that it's just a side project. If it matters, it's going to cost you something. And so I left my job, the first one and we decided that's when we were going to raise some investment and actually fully focus on it. And that happened in about 20, like around COVID time, around 2019, 2020, that when we decided, right, we're going to focus on this, this is going to be the thing. I left my job then, and then we raised our first investment round shortly after that.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:54

What's interesting as well, we're four co-founders. How did you decide the different roles you're going to take on, because obviously you'll work together, which is quite good because you know a bit about each other's working styles, how you interact under pressure, but it must have also been quite a difficult decision about maybe two of you wanted to do the same thing. How do you resolve that, and I think that sometimes stops some people from starting something because they just don't know about interpersonal dynamics. So how do you think about that? How did you work out who's going to do what?

Dr. Farzana Rahman: 27:19

What's really interesting is that we all naturally fitted into specific roles really early on and you know, a few years later we've done all this leadership training and we've done all these like gazillion personality assessments that you have to do and we each have four very distinct personalities which fit. I think in our first investment round we had this. Big part of due diligence was assessing this, and so we each our kind of core strengths very clearly fit with certain roles, so we didn't actually have much debate about this. Very clearly fit with certain roles, so we didn't actually have much debate about this. It was really obvious to everyone who would be good at what, and it still is. So I think I'd love to say that was strategic, but I think we got lucky.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:00

And then how did that work for you, what was your personality type, and how does that make your role easier or your role more effective?

Dr. Farzana Rahman: 28:06

Yeah. So I think as CEO, I think I always had the kind of big picture vision thinking and this kind of like unwavering belief that we could do it and very good at taking rejection. So that is all stuff that I think you need as CEO and you know, and I like people, I like talking to people, I like listening to people. So I think that that was, you know, really clear early on. Amy's like really good at relationship building. She's very kind of creative and commercial, and so her being chief commercial officer was, again, a natural fit. Sam, because of his finance background, he's amazing at numbers and so he very clearly fit into that. And Jay is very, you know, kind of can see the big picture, so can see, like you know, can understand the vision that I want to get to, but he will figure out how we get there. So he is kind of a natural chief operating officer and like in charge of product.

Sakshi Chhabra Mittal:

And so, yeah, I realized that actually what I'm doing is not niche.

Sakshi Chhabra Mittal: 29:08

There's a lot of people who are suffering and, unfortunately, the food around us is wrong and it's pushing us towards chronic diseases. There is a new way of eating which is delicious, but also cleverly designed foods, so this is where you can bring in technology to like help you get there. So, both professionally and personally, it was pushing me towards food hak, it wasn't. If I think it was, when am I going to like launch this company?

Amardeep Parmar: 29:30

And obviously, once you go full-time, also quite scary right, because, as you said, throughout your career you've got these huge names on your cvu, upfires and Softbank. And then building your own brand from scratch is obviously a new challenge and you mentioned before when you're at university you tried to start something. Then were any of the lessons that you took from way back then that helped you in those early days of food hak?

Amardeep Parmar: 29:51

Yeah, I mean, look, I think one of the things that we were trying to do at university was we were trying to force feed a problem with a solution that maybe didn't need a solution. So we were looking at the pager and we were like you know what? It's an age- old technology. It needs to get disrupted. If you ask me that statement today, is that true or false? I'd say not necessarily. Not every technology has to get disrupted. Right, like? It's got great battery life, it's got bluetooth capabilities, it conveys the message without distracting the doctor from the surgery. It's like whatsapp. Does it need to get disrupted? I'm not sure, right?

Speaker 14: 30:29

So I think the learning was that if I ever do my own business again, right, I am I'm not going to do it to flip it, because I think somewhere you know some of the other people involved they definitely, I think somewhere there must have been some intention that listen, let's just try and do this thing and then let's just flip it we'll be called an exited entrepreneur, you know, and I'm like I don't want to do this venture game of exited entrepreneur second time serial. If I want to do something, I want to do it for the rest of my life and I want to dedicate myself to a cause. 

Amardeep Parmar:

How did you feel at that point?

Amardeep Parmar: 31:04

Did you were you because I remember when I quit my job, but then there was that stress at the beginning of have I made a good decision? And then I was lucky that people supported me, but at the same time you're like I don't know what I've done. But when you started that COVID bootcamp did it feel like, yeah, I've really done the right path here, or was there?

Sandrine Zhang Ferron: 31:24

Yeah, I mean I tend to. You know I had some savings from finance and I was really excited to learn more about the opportunity and I had this idea, this vague idea, of a marketplace. I had read this book about the origin story of eBay and I found it fascinating and you know, having worked at a brokerage firm as well, you know it was quite familiar, this idea of matching demand and supply and so like, yeah, it's going to be a learning opportunity and I'll figure it out. And I mean it's not a massive issue if I fail, like there was no really consequences for me at this stage. You know I didn't have a child, had some savings from finance, so I just went for it and, you know, didn't question it, I loved it.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:19

And when you were building that product initially. So I'm guessing you built the first product version yourself in MVP?

Sandrine Zhang Ferron:32:24

Yes, correct.

Amardeep Parmar:: 32:25

How was that experience?

Sandrine Zhang Ferron: 32:27

Yeah, it was really fun because, you know, I think this part where you build something from nothing and everything is possible I guess that's what I mean. I really enjoy being a founder because nothing is possible and obviously I was on my own so I didn't have to, you know, discuss with anyone about it or report to anyone. So, you know, just went for it. I think the challenge was to actually fight the procrastination because there was no deadline. And at some point I talked to a friend like just set a random date. So I set a random date, said like I need to have 200 listings by that date and work on it.

Sandrine Zhang Ferron: 33:09

So, you know, building the website took three months. I had a friend who were from the bootcamp who helped as well. That was really fun. And then spend a few weeks really doing a sales job, cold calling antique dealers in London and once I got 200 people just launched. But you know, like it just launched, I was the only one to celebrate like no one knew it was happening. So, yeah, so it's um, just how it started.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:37

As you said, you were there for 12 years, very happy, but then you decided, okay, now it's time to do something different. What, what made you leave that job which you love so much?

Kanu Batra: 33:46

Oh, it was really difficult. Actually, the decision happened in year nine and it happened thanks to one of my managers then who at some point told me you got to do something of your own. He's like you know, I didn't leave a name. You come to my desk and you're like I'm done for the day. Like you know, we're not doing enough work and you know there was a lot of I think I was, which is also my personality that you know.

Kanu Batra: 34:16

At some point I was like I'm in myself and was very frustrated, and it's not the organization.

Kanu Batra: 34:18

The people were lovely, people were happy, people had a work-life balance. I'm a workaholic, that's my problem. I was like, oh, this is too easy. And you know, when you to call myself a glorified leave approver, I'm like that's what I am, so, yeah. So at some point that was, and I decided to then actually start my master's in LSE because I was like, okay, you know, at this point I'm emotional, let me not take a plunge. And it is big right, because I am on a visa in Singapore, so making any decision would mean that it would impact where I live, right, so, like, if I'm not doing my job, so, because of those kind of, you know, technicalities, I took my time, did my master's.

Kanu Batra: 34:55

Like I said, entrepreneurship is a way of being from where I come, so I think for me it was kind of fitting in. And also you reach that point in your career where, okay, you're not working for money anymore. You've earned that, you've done good works, but now what you're looking for is, uh, you know, solving that one thing that irks you. And I think that passion around the problem. And it is interesting in my journey because I left my job wanting to start something, like you know, I wanted to work on young people's mental health for India. I got an opportunity to work with a very skilled um scientist on a diagnostics business and I was like, okay. You know, my entrepreneurial mind was like, okay, this is a good opportunity, I can start with that. It didn't work out. It is so hard that if you are not passionate about the problem, no matter how great the opportunity is, it won't work out. Because entrepreneurship is not a job and I learned that the hard way.

Kanu Batra: 35:47

After leaving a fabulous job and, you know, losing my visa and everything, I was like brilliant!

Amardeep Parmar: 

And I think that's one interesting thing that you said, because people often talk about the skills they have and this and this, but it doesn't matter how good you are, entrepreneurship is hard and you've got to be obsessed with that problem because otherwise you're going to give up and it's. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that. It just means that you don't have the right. Is it founder problem fit, right? And if you've got that right, you can weather the storm, but you can keep going.

Kanu Batra:

On the days, you still gotta love what you're doing, and that only comes when you love the problem, yeah, because otherwise you're like oh, you know what, I have these three job offers coming, or I have this opportunity or I have that. And that is why I came back to young people's mental health, because I was like, okay, no, this is why I left my job and this is all I should be doing. Everything else is great and you know. But, as you know and that is where I think it's also that classic difference between like that's when you know that, okay, you have that heart of an impact entrepreneur, because I was like okay, you know what I was like, okay, you know what. The excitement of the fact that it is actually a really like my previous venture was a really big opportunity. It was a diagnostic for young people, but in allergy and stuff, and it's still meaningful and purpose. Like you know, you're in healthcare and all that, but it was not the problem that I wanted to solve.

Speaker 1: 37:00

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