Meet The Serial Entrepreneur Making Hiring Fairer Using AI w/ Khyati Sundaram | Applied

00:00
Khyati Sundaram
I've raised a bunch of money, I've managed a team, hired people, I've done investment banking. Like I can build a model in my sleeve. So I would have sent about 600 to 700 applications and I was ghosted 600 to 700 times. 

00:14
Amardeep Parmar
That's Khyati, CEO and founder of Applied. After her first startup didn't work out, she found herself in the job market. 

00:21
Khyati Sundaram
And what he says is, look, I as a recruiter get three shots to send a CV in front of an employer. I'm not going to waste my three shots on you. 

00:30
Amardeep Parmar
She knew something was broken when objectively her experiences would mean she'd make a valuable employee. 

00:36
Khyati Sundaram
The promise of Applied is how do we match people to jobs? How do we create a platform for people who are often very skilled but overlooked? And that's why I think of Applied quite often as like a more of a platform that will allow humans to show their best self regardless of everything else that is noisy and not valu in hiring. 

00:58
Amardeep Parmar
She's had lots of success in disrupting the recruitment market and there's so much more to come. 

01:03
Khyati Sundaram
So we have raised 5 million from VCs, working with the best professors across the world. Going back to decision sciences. I think we need to understand what our pathways will be in the next 50 years. 

01:16
Amardeep Parmar
Join us for a fascinating insight into the future of the job market. So you're building Applied now. What's really interesting is that you had a company beforehand that didn't work out. You were to build on top of that, but couldn't we run a bit further and like, obviously you were born india and then you came across here for university. What was your then career path from there? 

01:39
Khyati Sundaram
Well, it has been quite a bit of a ebb and flow journey. So I trained as an economist at the lse. I came on a scholarship and I think that gives you a little bit of the psyche because when you come on a scholarship you have to conform. And so the whole journey was about conforming and fitting in and doing what needs to be done. And so that journey sort of just went along the path of banking, which is what most of the class was doing. And I did that and I did that for about six years and realised that wasn't my cup of tea. That's not what I wanted to do for the next 30, 40, 50 years. And so I quit one fine day and I didn't know what to do next. 

02:24
Khyati Sundaram
And that's when I went back to, okay, back to the drawing board. What excites me. What am I curious about? What do I want to do? I had none of these answers, like, zero, no idea. And so I was like, fine, I'll take a couple of years out, maybe go back to school, maybe teach myself new things. And I think that's what it started from, just curiosity, understanding that I wasn't willing to do that path of conforming for the next 30, 40 years. And then that started my entrepreneurial journey. 

02:58
Amardeep Parmar
How was, he said, taking a couple years out? Right. So for most people listening, it'll freak them out, right? 

03:02
Khyati Sundaram
It freaked me out. 

03:04
Amardeep Parmar
How was that? When you're in that moment thinking, what am I going to do next? Was it something that you felt, okay, I can take my time and it's okay, or did you feel that pressure, I need to decide what to do next soon? 

03:13
Khyati Sundaram
I think both. It's, it's, it'll be dishonest to say I didn't freak out, I was freaking out, but equally I didn't have a path mapped out. And I've always thought, like, I jump into things before I'm ready. And I've been told that sometimes that's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. You have to jump before you're ready because you're never going to think you're ready. So I jumped into it, quit the banking job, and then woke up this next morning when I didn't have a job and nothing planned. I, I was thinking, that's a lot of time. And I had not slept well in five years, let's say. And were doing really long hours and I did learn a lot, but that's not what I wanted from life. 

03:53
Khyati Sundaram
So I think I spent quite a few days, let's call it, sitting in the corner what I call dead squirrelling, which is being a bit in the moment, being with nature, trying to understand what I want from life. And so that was very uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. I don't sit still, I don't sit and look at nature. I'm not someone who can just be with myself. So I think that moment was interesting because it taught a lot to me about myself. And I was freaking out internally all the time. And parents, of course, right? I come from a background where middle class, working background where parents are always like, you do a job, you stick with it pays you well. That's what you do for 30, 40, 50 years. 

04:40
Khyati Sundaram
And so there was a lot of pressure from family, friends, like, you've got a really good banking job. But I think it was just about being honest with myself and I had no idea. I had no idea how things were going. And now in hindsight, yes, you can connect the dots, but in the moment you can't. And it was just about, what can I learn? That was the only thing going through my mind is what can I learn next that will help me? So that was the main question I sort of went deep into. 

05:08
Amardeep Parmar
I love that. And I think I told you before as well. We're trying to change this podcast a bit more about those real moments rather than just all the highlights. How everything goes well and what was great you said about how the first company you did, it didn't quite work out how you hoped it would. And I think a lot of people will skim over that part of the story. But that's a really interesting part. Right. Because people listen, they need to know that what didn't work out? What were your assumptions going in that you're obviously very excited about and then it didn't quite work out. So could you tell us about, like, what was that company you built and what was the plan and then what were the punches that move took that plan out? 

05:40
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, I think the plan, you write a business plan and goes out the window on the first day. But I remember with my co founder, so we sat. I think the highlights of that for me was finding an idea, a purpose and a team and just going at it. And so I remember one of the main highlights for me was sitting with my co founder in a room and we just like closed ourselves in that and said, these are our aspirations, both life, professional, personal, what do we want to work towards, what do we want to achieve in life and what's the legacy want to leave? And it was very philosophical. And so that was the starting point of building a company. What do we actually want to do in our lives? Rather than, I have this great idea, let's build that. 

06:26
Khyati Sundaram
It didn't start like that. I think we hear a lot of stories about, 'I have this great idea.' I don't think it's true. I think what's true is people come together, they think of a few ideas, they maybe try a few, some fail, some work, and if you're really lucky and you work really hard — both of those things have to be true — then you might make something really big and valuable. So my co founder and I were working on. He was from a supply chain production background. I had done economics and was very good with data. So we're like, okay, how can we use our complementary skills to build something valuable. 

07:02
Khyati Sundaram
So our first business, both of us came together and it was around building a more sustainable supply chain using better quality data, so which in today's world could be classified under green tech or other kind of esg. And so that was this genesis of how it came about. We got lucky, I would say we got some funding, but we didn't get to the path that a VC venture would warrant. We grew in the beginning, but not enough. And I think that was the critical mistake we made instead of chasing that dream of VC funding for that part, we should have probably recognised that were 10 years too early because this was back in 2013 when climate change, say tech or green tech, wasn't even a thing. And so we would go to people and we. Two problems. 

07:54
Khyati Sundaram
One, were too early, Two, we couldn't articulate the problem really well and then we didn't get the traction that we wanted, so it sort of fell flat. We also had lots of lessons in there, like we got the technology built by these group of people outsourced and like someone went off with a code vase. So there was like all these shenanigans happening and I think that was our first baptism by fire, saying this is not as glamorous as it looks. And so, yeah, lots of lessons in there, we can go deep into those. But the idea was let's build something valuable, sustainable, using data in an industry that we understood and it just didn't go to plan. 

08:37
Amardeep Parmar
One interesting thing you said about how you were chasing that dream of VC funding and it's one of the parallels I have, right, because we're focusing mainly on high growth startups, but that's just the niche. It doesn't mean that other companies are bad. And when you're going after VC funding, what was it about it that made you think this is the right path for you? And that was that you needed VC funding. Was it that marker of success or what was the reason to chase it? 

09:02
Khyati Sundaram
If I think back, I think it's stories we tell ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves are of successful companies and those stories are normalised, but they are actually outliers. Like we never stop to say that this company that's become 100 million in valuation or raised $100 million and become 1 billion in valuation. They're outliers. For every such company, there are a thousand other companies that are running along, they're profitable, they're employing lots of people in an organisation and helping the community. And so we don't normalise those stories. Right? So for me it was about, okay, what's the story, what's the glamour? And for most founders, it's like that. It's how do you get the thousand X with the effort and the resources you have. And if you want the thousand X, I still think VC is the right path. 

09:52
Khyati Sundaram
Right, because it allows you for that moonshot. It allows you to get 1000x from whatever you have today. But not every business wants a thousand x scale or journey and not every business person or founder needs that. So I think it's about being honest with yourself, like, what path do you want to build? And I need founders every day and we talk about, do you want VC and for what reasons? And do you not want VC for what reasons? And those parts look very different. So I think if you propel yourself 10 years forward or 20 years forward, and you're thinking about what you really value, what kind of business you want to build, then you should be able to answer whether you would like VC or not. 

10:30
Khyati Sundaram
I think everybody wants vc, but it's not all free rate, it's not all glamour, it comes with stipulations. So I think it's important to normalise that part of the conversation. Like what is real about VC pro and con and what is real about running a non VC business? Pro and con. So, yeah, went after VC in one, did not go to plan, went up to VC in this one, applied. I would like to say it's going okay. So we have raised 5 million from VCs and that's on the normal trajectory of, okay, you get angels, you get friends and families and then you go to VC. And we raised a couple of VCs, so, yeah, yet to see. 

11:15
Amardeep Parmar
When was it that you realised? Because obviously now, in hindsight, he's okay. It wasn't right at the time, but was it really hard to contact realisation in real time? Because it's the grit, it's resilience. You've got to keep going. When do you have that moment of when did you know between you that this is now? Okay, this isn't really going to work out and maybe we need to think about a different path because I think a lot of people struggle with that. You see kind of zombie companies that they're going for a very long time in that limbo zone. How did you make that hard decision to change paths? 

11:44
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, I think it's very difficult, to be very honest. I don't think I've recovered from the first one. So I think there is some hangover from the first One which I'm carrying into the second one. And if I were to go to the third, fourth, fifth one, I probably would carry some parts of this. So it's hard to say like at what point I stopped to realise that. But what I do try to do is talk to many founders, talk to investors, talk to angels, family funds, VCs, and just try and understand what the models are and what the options are. So for example, when I started my first business, I didn't even know what patient capital was. Right. And corporate BHC funds used to work and all of those are different models and they might warrant different expectations from founders. 

12:36
Khyati Sundaram
And it's more about again, going back to my first point of learning, just understand what's out there and what would be most valuable resonant with yourself and what you want to build. So that's my advice I always give to founders. Just what kind of business you want to build and why, that's very important. 

12:52
Amardeep Parmar
When you started winding down that company, right, you've now got to think, okay, what's my next path? What's the next I'm going to do? I'm guessing, was there some more squirrelling there in between? 

13:02
Khyati Sundaram
Yes, there's always some squirrelling. 

13:06
Amardeep Parmar
What, what then? What was the next steps you took? What, what did you look at? 

13:09
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, I think I, I think that was a very difficult period in my life because this is like what, 10 years into my career, having done some economics, some investment banking, having started one company, and at that time I had no clue, like what happens next, no clue. So, but I had all in my head, I had done all these things that I wanted to do and I still wasn't happy. It's like, fine, what happens now? And at least 40, 50, 60 years of a working lifespan and mental faculties, right, that I want to use. So I'm like regressed far into, okay, what is the purpose of life? And we are getting very heavy now. So there was a lot of squirrelling that was just sitting around trying to understand what would be most valuable to me. 

13:59
Khyati Sundaram
And I couldn't come up with an idea and I still had hangovers because if you've killed your first company ever, anyone who's ever done that knows that's a shock. And you take a long time to recover. And I don't think I've really recovered from that. And it's been about eight years, so I think it was more about, okay, I don't have an idea, I still want to add value. Where can I add value? And so I started applying for jobs and that I think that was the moment of truth. I would have spent about six to eight months applying from jobs. I still remember from the flat corner of the flat, sat on my desk, sending 10, 15 applications a day. So I would have sent about 600 to 700 applications in that time period. And I was ghosted 600 to 700 times. 

14:52
Khyati Sundaram
There was no response. And remember, this is not even the bottom of the market. This is not like we're in a recession in 2015. We're not in a recession. 15, 16, 17, like, this is good, buoyant markets. So I didn't understand what was happening. And I think after a lot of doing the usual, right, you go deep and you're like, I'm going to send 20 applications today, okay? It's not, well, I'm going to send 30 applications the next day and you're just in the weeds. And one day I just, I was like, it's been six months, I've not got a job. I don't know what I'm going to do with life. And I have skills, surely have skills, because this piece of paper that is my CV says I have skills. 

15:33
Khyati Sundaram
So I went this recruiter, so for the purpose of this story, let's call him Bob. So Bob sits across me and I was like, look, this is a good cv. I've got all these skills, I've raised a bunch of money, I managed a team, hired people, I've done investment banking, I can build a model in my sleep. What's going on? I'm not getting a job. And so what he said made my jaw drop. And what he says is, look, I, as a recruiter, get three shots to send a CV in front of an employer. I'm not going to waste my three shots on you. And my jaw dropped. I was like, what do you mean? This is a good CV. It's got 2 degrees, it's got startups, it's got funding, it's got what is missing. 

16:24
Khyati Sundaram
And he's like, it doesn't fit the mould, it doesn't fit a pattern. What kind of job can I give you? And that's what blew my mind. I was like, what's wrong with this country? Is it country, is it hiring, is it hr? Like, what's broken? But everything was broken and founders are extremely tuned to what's broken. And so that was. I think that path sort of shovelled me into hiring because I still consider myself an outsider. I don't come from hiring. I don't come from hr, but it was this intense visceral reaction of this is absolutely broken. If this can happen to me, what about the millions of people who don't have two degrees, who have not started a company, who don't understand these things? Surely they have other skills. 

17:10
Khyati Sundaram
You're not going to place them in front of an employer, so they're going to miss out. And so applied, the promise of applied is how do we match people to jobs? How do we create a platform for people who are often very skilled but overlooked? And so, yeah, that's been the journey for the last five, six years now. 

17:33
Amardeep Parmar
One thing is interesting, I think for a lot of people who the first company is the big fear of failure, right? And obviously you left your investment banking job and as you said, your family were like, what is she doing? And people around you. And then when that first one doesn't work out, how much does that play in your mind when you're going in again of what the people around you are thinking like, did that plains your mind? Did people pressure you or try to discourage you or did you just ignore all of that? And actually people were quite supportive. 

18:02
Khyati Sundaram
I'm very good at putting things under the carpet, so I think it's also a reaction to give you some idea. I've changed about nine schools in my life. So when you change nine schools in your life, you have to conform otherwise you won't get through life. So I think later this giving up banking career and going into I don't know what I want to do is an overreaction to that 12, 15 years of a conforming life. And then this part was, okay, now I'm going to do whatever I want to do because it doesn't matter. I just want to be true to myself. And so at that point I just ignored everybody around me. People were saying things but I was very good at putting that under the carpet and saying it doesn't matter. Who are you in my life? 

18:47
Khyati Sundaram
Do I value your advice? Do I not value your advice? Something we talked about before and most of the people, I did not value their advice so I just disregarded it. 

18:59
Amardeep Parmar
Oh, hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about Bay hq. We're the community for high growth Asian heritage or entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally free@thebayhq.com join there. You'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, events and opportunities. You can also get access to our free startup fundamentals course by joining let's get back to the show. And obviously that's a great thing though because you disregarded that advice that was coming from. It's not necessarily coming from a bad place, but it's not understanding you. And then you disregarded that advice and then five, six years later you've proven them wrong. Right. And you've shown that what you wanted and what you believed in can become reality. 

19:50
Amardeep Parmar
And so if you start from this position of people ignoring you, people ghosting you, people like recruiters saying you don't fit the mould, right. How do you then go about trying to create a solution for that? What did you look at that? Okay, you know the problem now how do you solve it? 

20:07
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, that's still difficult. We are still trying to understand how to solve it. Well, because it is an age old problem like hiring. It's the biggest problem in the world. Right. But were trying to give a new lens to it. So bringing my background from economics, behavioural economics, understanding behaviours, motivations, how do we give you the right signals? That's what we are trying to do with applied, right. So think of it very crudely. People say when you ask them who you should hire, they say you should hire someone who's intelligent and hire someone who deeply cares about your company. Even that's like Nobel laureate advice, right? That's not me. How do you map intelligence? Like we are as a society, very good at this. One dimensional thinkers. 

20:50
Khyati Sundaram
I will map Amar's intelligence or Kyati's intelligence when they leave school, when and when they leave uni and enter the workforce. Right. Like the two times. That's very one dimensional. So if you use that by way of a CV or resume, you are limiting human will, human potential, human learning, like all of those things. And so applied is more holistic. And I dislike that word, but I don't have a better word. So it's more holistic in what kind of signals we can give that will create a better view of what this human brings. And so it's not just looking at resumes and CVs because that's one part you have to look at some of the experiences, but it's also looking at potential willingness to learn, adaptability, resilience, all of these things that are not taught in a classroom. 

21:40
Khyati Sundaram
There is no standard test in the workforce for these things. And so it was really going back to the basics and looking at academia, working with the best professors across the world, going back to decision sciences, which is like some of the things we studied of how do you build a solution that could bring out the best information and depress the worst information. Right. And the worst information is whether your name's Amar or my name's Kyati. It should not matter to whether you get a job. That's the worst piece of information. And the best piece of information might be things like what you've done in the past or what you think you can do in this company and your potential and your awareness and your self reflection and all of these things. So we are trying to elevate those pieces, depress the other pieces. 

22:24
Khyati Sundaram
And that's why I think of Applied quite often as like a more of a platform that will allow humans to show their best self regardless of everything else that is noisy and not valuable in hiring. 

22:37
Amardeep Parmar
You mentioned yourself as an outsider before as well. Right. And that mentality of, okay, you've got to try and break into this space. And having this come from like 600, 700 rejections to now building your own platform. And obviously you had the data science background, you knew you could build a big platform, but you now got to convince other people that your platform is valuable and they should buy it. Right. How did you go about that stage as an outsider to this industry? Right. You weren't part of recruitment to then convince recruiters and HR departments that they need your product? 

23:06
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, that's challenging, I think, doing sales. I remember when I used to pick up a call from, let's say, banking. Right. So you pick up a call to someone and you say you're from J.P. morgan. Right. They'll give you five minutes in the day. Yeah. Because they know who J.P. morgan is. You call them. Hello, I'm from Apply. What? Who? And that's normal. So that was challenging. Doesn't mean you wouldn't do it. But I think it's. It's understanding what works for you and what doesn't. Starting from scratch is always challenging, but it was not. It was not the fear of failure. It was more if we didn't give it a shot, we'd definitely not win. And most founders talk like that, like we try to give it the best shot. 

23:49
Khyati Sundaram
And it was really just trying to convince people that this is the right way to do. And sometimes we won and sometimes we lost because were neck and neck with other hiring platforms right in the same room and we're pitching and people were like, but you don't have feature abcd. And I was like, but feature ABCD is not important in understanding whether this person will be good in your job or not. And that Kind of education is hard to do because then suddenly I'm feeling like, okay, I'm not an academic, I should be here showing you the benefits of the product. But now I've gone into a consultative mode and teaching, so that has become true of working with applied. Like a lot of the burden of education is on us. So you'll see me shouting on LinkedIn. 

24:32
Khyati Sundaram
People say, why are you on LinkedIn all the time? Because if I'm not sleeping, I'm on LinkedIn. I have to shout about this. There is a lot of burden of education. I'm talking at conferences, at London Tech Week because we have to tell people that the pieces that we use in hiring are artefacts of some like 1950s version of hiring. All you're using is a resume. That is not enough in many places. It might not even be useful at all. And so how do you give people something new, a new guardrail, a new framework? And that's challenging because I think there's a lot of education we have to do and it's rewarding, but it's very challenging at times. 

25:09
Amardeep Parmar
And we said as well, you're right, six years in. So that educational piece in the beginning was everything you had to do differently, say six years ago, whereas now when it sales, it's a lot different. And well, is it different or actually is it quite similar? 

25:21
Khyati Sundaram
I think it's still the same, it's still challenging, it still feels like you're pushing against a wall. And I think it's because nothing in hiring has changed really in 50 to 100 years, right? You still use the same CV. I remember I had this conversation in a room full of HR leaders and I said, yeah, we've left the CV behind, we should leave the CV behind. We have all these other tools and more useful and more predictive and less biassed and they're like, what do you mean we've left the CV behind? We use CVS in our hiring process and we only use cvs. And I was like, okay, right, wrong crowd. So it's still, I think the applied methodology is still only adopted by, let's say 1% of the world, right? 

26:07
Khyati Sundaram
99% of the world is still using some kind of CV screening or self validation, what we call, okay, LinkedIn so you can get a job by putting your LinkedIn resume somewhere, but it's all self validated. I can say I'm great at X, but do you know, I'm great at X. And there's a lot of research that people embellish their CVs. So there's. There's all that element to real education of what is more predictive. How can I give you better data as a hiring manager to understand you're hiring the right person? Because if you were all hiring the right person, we wouldn't complain about mishires, we wouldn't complain about every time I go out for dinner, the only two things I hear about are one, my job sucks or I can't find a date. And those two are quite comparable. 

26:54
Amardeep Parmar
Are you going to expand Applied? People want us to start a dating platform as well. We're avoiding it. 

27:00
Khyati Sundaram
Maybe that's what is this very high overlap between finding a job match and a dating profile. But that's. Yeah, that's another thing. It's firing in the back of my mind. 

27:12
Amardeep Parmar
And one thing that has changed in the last five years is how much AI is being used in the recruitment process. Right. And how has that affected you? And blood. 

27:21
Khyati Sundaram
But I think it's the best of times to build Applied, it's also the hardest of times to build Applied. So if were completely starting from scratch, I think it'd be a bit easier because we're not starting from scratch. It's a bit of steering the ship in a different direction and that comes with being a bit more conscious about what our existing customers are saying. And there is a lot of nervousness. This is both on the customers organisation side and on the candidates employee side. People don't know and we don't know which way things will land, whether we'll have fewer jobs, whether we'll not have jobs, whether we'll work in our jobs very differently with AI. And all of those pieces are really difficult to answer today. 

28:05
Khyati Sundaram
So what we are doing at Applied is waiting a little bit to see if there's a little bit of a balance rather than shocks. And hopefully things will settle down in 12 to 24 months where people can understand where the balance is. But right now there's a AI versus AI war, which is really difficult for both sides. I mean, applications are being written by AI, employers are using AI to screen them. And so what is end up happening? What would end up happening, and I'm also seeing that is you'll just end up doing multiple rounds of interviews because you are not confident about the signals you're getting in the beginning. So your screening process is pretty much shattered and so you might end up doing six, seven, eight rounds of interviews. 

28:50
Khyati Sundaram
So we're back to like 2000s now where you used to meet seven different people in the company and I think that's a bit wasteful. So there has to be a different way to solve it. We're still figuring it out. 

29:03
Amardeep Parmar
How has the product changed over time? Because if you started right at the start with what you're doing there, then as obviously talking to customers, you're getting the feedback from existing customers. How is the product itself changed? 

29:14
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, so I think that's my challenge because there is a bunch of people out there who are very nervous about AI and do not want AI to be showcased at all in the hiring funnel or in the application, for example. Right. So if I was applying for a job, the employer says I should not use AI to write my application. But I think that's unreasonable because I as a candidate have to send out 100 applications and so why wouldn't I use AI? And that's difficult. So our product has to take account of all of those motivations. So the candidate motivation, the employer motivation, who doesn't want AI, but equally the employer motivation who wants AI because they know the candidate will use AI in their job in the next two, three, four years. 

30:01
Khyati Sundaram
And so building a product for everybody is not going to work. And that's the challenge. Today we're trying to understand which pathway to follow and the market has shifted. We talked about this. Every time the market shifts, startups have to change. I think we rode one wave really hard and now this is the time to ride this next wave and we just have to be careful about which pathway we take. I haven't yet found that out. 

30:30
Amardeep Parmar
So we talked earlier as well, when you were doing your cv, that you had experience leading teams and now that you're on the other side, I guess as a you've got the recruiting platform. How has that changed the way you hire yourself? Because it's always that interesting thing of you're helping other people hire, but then you also have to hire yourself and you have to build your own team. How has that changed the way you hire internally? 

30:48
Khyati Sundaram
It has changed dramatically. So I think of it as layering different signals and this is going back to economics and behavioural sciences. Okay. If you just use resume, what you're really testing for is can they write a good resume, which now everyone can using AI. Did they have some experience in the past which I can use as a proxy for? Maybe they're intelligent or they're hard working. Right. So your grades could be a proxy for intelligence. If you've done some really hardcore stuff like, oh, you were a Navy seal, then you're hard working or something, right. So I'm taking proxies from that, but that's not giving me a full profile of who you are as a person and why you will do better in this organisation, in this team. 

31:29
Khyati Sundaram
And so what we try and do is get other pieces of information at the beginning. So why do you want to work for this company? Are you good at communication? Are you good at prioritisation? Other types of things that might be important to be able to screen at that first stage? Because quite a few people say to me, oh yeah, but I can learn that interview number seven. I'm saying why do you want to waste time learning that interview number seven? Because that is one of the most important things that is a predictor of whether this person will thrive in your job. And so what we are doing is trying to compress what you used to learn later in the funnels up top is will this person actually fit in the job? 

32:07
Khyati Sundaram
So it's a lot of behavioural science and economics baked into that first level of screening with some AI thrown in because whatnot, everybody's using AI, so we have to use some AI, but we try to make it transparent, fair, equitable. And then the idea is, okay, can we not go back to 1950s to have just a piece of resume and seven rounds of interviews and can we give you better data? So we hire everybody using our platform, so that's changed dramatically. And what we do is index heavily on the motivation of the person. Right. So personally when I hire I always look at self reflection, ability to adapt. And people say we often hire in our likeness, which sometimes is good, but most times it's bad. So I'm trying not to hire in my likeness. 

32:55
Khyati Sundaram
And I think the applied platform helps because you want people who are highly motivated, who are intelligent, who care about being in your organisation, but also adaptable because we don't know what the jobs will be in three years, five years, 10 years. I think a majority of our day to day jobs will change. And so what you really want people is to have their resilience and their adaptability to learn. And what is very difficult is to tell someone how to test that doesn't exist. That's why it's hard. 

33:31
Amardeep Parmar
We work with a lot of universities as well and it's always a challenging question when students are asking you what should I focus on? Because it's, I can't predict the future and things are changing so much. And it is like you said, it's that whole people who can show themselves Be well rounded? Can they take on different challenges? Because when you hire them, if the job is completely different two years time, do you think they can move that or not? And as you said, platforms like apply can help people figure that out and looking into. So you're very confident in how you're speaking today. And you've said you've done a lot of thought leadership and speaking at conferences about this. And today a lot of people talk about you need to be a thought leader in order to run a business. Right. 

34:09
Amardeep Parmar
Is that something which you always wanted to do or you're always confident as a speaker, or has it grown by being in these situations and needing to do it for business? 

34:17
Khyati Sundaram
Oh dear. Should I tell you about that one time I froze on stage? 

34:21
Amardeep Parmar
Go on, let's hear it. 

34:23
Khyati Sundaram
I think I had a very bad. I've not been a confident speaker throughout and I think that is also going back to the psyche of conforming. So in school I was always like, I just need to get this thing done and do it well. And a lot of the school I did my schooling india, it was not about speaking. Right. It was doing things on paper. So were. I got really good at that, but I was not great at speaking. And so I think I still remember this was a jarring time in my life. 

34:54
Khyati Sundaram
I went for this speaking competition like Extempore, and I had been given a topic and I had done a lot of rehearsal or practise in front of a mirror, but I was given a topic and I knew that by heart in my brain I knew the topic, so I knew I had the content. I just froze. I just froze. I just froze because it's my first time ever in front of an audience of maybe 30, 40 people. And so that I still remember that. And a lot of the speaking confidence is coming today because I've done enough of that where I've been in really bad situations and really embarrassing situation saying, okay, this can't be worse than that one. So yeah, a lot of it comes from practise, I think, and some coaching because people don't tell you about that. 

35:43
Khyati Sundaram
Like, not everyone is born a fantastic speaker. And so the more you practise, the more you do, the better you get. So I'm just always interested in doing more. And you'd see that if you hear my first podcast, it's absolutely like bottom of the pile. I'm hoping today's is not that. So it's always about improvement with me. 

36:05
Amardeep Parmar
I think so many people would underestimate the Power of reps, where people want the shortcut. Right. And if you want the shortcut, for example, with coaching, you're paying somebody who's a professional to do it. But if you just want to like, oh, what's the hack? What's the hack? So the more you do. 

36:18
Khyati Sundaram
Yes. 

36:19
Amardeep Parmar
The better, more confident you get. So I think. So this will be like episode 252 of this podcast. There's 150 episodes of another podcast before this. So me being able to just do this and relax and chill as I'm going along is because I've done it so many times. 

36:33
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah. 

36:34
Amardeep Parmar
If you watch episode number one, it was not like this. I was not relaxed. I was freaking out all the time and you could see in my eyes how I was acting. Right. 

36:40
Khyati Sundaram
I'm not going to watch episode number one. 

36:42
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. I don't think anybody, like, I don't think it's very good use of anybody's time watching that. But it's interesting to have adaption. Right. And it's one of the key bits about being a founder is putting yourself in situations and then growing with it. And is there anywhere else that you think in the last few years you've really grown as a person, so being able to speak better and more confidently has come through this journey. What are the areas you think when you started out, you never think you are where you are today. 

37:08
Khyati Sundaram
I mean, hiring and motivating a team that's been a real growth journey is when I was in banking, like you were working as part of a team. You've never led a team. You've not really understand what, like, motivates a person. It's like, it's intangible. I can't, I can't articulate it. But having hired people, worked with them, built a team and at the peak, applied 40 people. So hiring 40 people, talking to them, understanding what motivates each one, that's really allowed me to grow and change my management style. Because when you read management one on button books, right? And like, oh, this is the style you should adopt and there is no one style. 

37:49
Khyati Sundaram
And I have only learned that by doing it in practise with 40, 50, 60 people to realise, okay, that style that I just did, that didn't work and that was wrong of me to do that. I'm also very open to take feedback. I might not act on it all the time, but I do take feedback. So I have taken feedback from over 30, 40, 50 people over the last five years who have directly being hired or I've been managing to understand what's working and what's not working. And I don't think I would have been able to do that in any other job. Because what a startup teaches you, at least as a founder, if nothing else, is that really deep motivational ability to engage with people and humans and hopefully AI in the future. 

38:37
Khyati Sundaram
But I think it's that bit that has been really exciting to me. It's the bit that motivates me and I think it's also the bit that I'm most proud of, that I've grown on in the most. 

38:47
Amardeep Parmar
Is there anything you've changed about? So you said obviously listen to people and taking in that feedback. Was there any feedback that really made a big difference to you where somebody says something like, oh, I didn't realise I did that. 

38:58
Khyati Sundaram
Do I have to have acted on that feedback? 

39:00
Amardeep Parmar
Not necessarily. 

39:02
Khyati Sundaram
There's quite a bit and the range of feedback you get as a person. I think it's difficult being a founder and we can say it here, but like it is lonely, right, if you don't have a co founder. So one of the things I would always advise is have a co founder. I had one in the first business, I don't have one here and I desperately miss one. There are days where you can't share anything with anybody and you can only or you would feel comfortable sharing with a co founder. But I think it's about just taking all the feedback in. At least that's what I do. Not having a knee jerk reaction because sometimes I do, and then going and reflecting on it. 

39:43
Khyati Sundaram
So I've got feedback ranging from, you need to be more maternal and I wanted to slap this person in the face. I did not do that. 

39:53
Amardeep Parmar
So good, very good. 

39:56
Khyati Sundaram
To. You could approach this situation more delicately or diplomatically and I did act on that. So it is about just being open to all the feedback, but also having the discretion to understand what you think is valuable, what you want to do, what you don't want to do. And I think my team values that. Even if I say that myself, I'm very transparent, I'm very direct, I'm very open because I take the feedback, but as I said, I will use my discretion to act on it or not. 

40:27
Amardeep Parmar
One thing I think I regret is that when I was an employee, so I used to work for a company, it was about 25, 30 employees and they wish you think like, oh, why didn't this, why didn't they do that? And as a founder, I was like I know like this tiny bit of the puzzle and I think it's always really hard as a founder because you know the overall picture. But then your employees won't necessarily know how everything fits in together and it doesn't necessarily make sense them to know how every bit fits together as well because if they're in one team then you're explaining the entire company to them. It's just inefficient too. And it's one of the interesting things about how do you get that balance right. 

41:03
Amardeep Parmar
I think of you need to let them know enough so they understand okay, this is why we do things in this way. But at the same time just spending all your time explaining yourself and giving like validating. Oh, this is why I do. This is why I do that. Because you have to get stuff done too, right? 

41:17
Khyati Sundaram
Yes. Yeah. And that balance is the right word and that's really hard to achieve in practise because you're absolutely right. We or founders take a horizontal and deeper view and teams have individual views. How we are trying to solve it at Applied is like you have single owners for each type of task or project or department. So we are also small right now. So we haven't done the squad system of Spotify or whatnot. But having an. A project or a task that aligns to the North Star and then just let one person run with it. Right. So that's the accountability that somehow works into the larger Y. But, but I haven't fully solved it. I think it is really hard to do in practise. So if you're really big, you adopt the Spotify model. 

42:07
Khyati Sundaram
If you're really small, like if you're three person, five person team, it probably works because you can talk about it on the fly every day. If you're 10, 15, 30, 40, that's when it gets really difficult because what was working with the 5 is no longer working. You can't really adopt a Spotify HubSpot model. So there is no real mental model of what would happen in that. And I think what's worked for us is just like do work in the open. So we like work in the open. There are no, there's no. What we call hierarchy. Yeah. Silos. Yes. And so it's people just working individually and out in the open with individual goals that ties to one big company goal. And I think we'd keep it that way until we are slightly bigger and to see if that works or doesn't. 

42:58
Khyati Sundaram
But now it's working. 

43:00
Amardeep Parmar
I think it's I always think, wrapped on this stuff as a messy middle is that nobody really helps prepare you for that bit. So when you're massive, okay, you've got all the money in the world, you can do whatever. 

43:09
Khyati Sundaram
Yes. 

43:10
Amardeep Parmar
At the beginning, like you said, you're sitting next to each other, but as you start to expand or you don't have the resources or you don't have the right systems in place, that bit is just like, there's no right answer. And you got to try and figure out something for your own company. Right. And I think I always. Yeah, sometimes it's. People don't necessarily tell you about it. When you start a company where, okay, you want to expand, great. But then you get to this point where it's okay. Now how do I navigate this? Right. 

43:33
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah. 

43:33
Amardeep Parmar
And you said about being like lonely as a sailor founder as well. Right. A bit earlier. Just dive into a bit more. Because I think one of the challenges people sometimes don't see is that what's the public information is also through a lens of I want to be relatable, but also. And I want to be transparent, but also I can't necessarily do that because of what the company's goals are and things like that too. And there's investors, there's all these different stakeholders. And if I say it's one thing that might upset that person. And you, like you said, and even talk to other founders sometimes it's like, okay, can I like trauma dump here? Like, this is a stressing me out or are they going to then not want to talk to me? And it's absolutely. All these different things go through your head. 

44:13
Amardeep Parmar
How have you tried to manage that as a solo founder? Where have you made friends of other founders or what have you done to try to. 

44:19
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, so there's, I think there's two elements. One is the way I frame it in my head, that helps me a little bit dissipate the noise, which is. And I always tell people around me on the team, like, I tried to think this will sound robotic and I'm. I am a human, but I try to live life like a software because a software changes every day. Right. So you had 1.0, you have 2.0, you have 3.0. It changes every day. It doesn't need to explain why it's changing, but it's hopefully changing for the better. And so while we are changing the software, I reserve the right to change my mind. So I will change my 1.0. I've updated my thesis now. It's 2.0. I've updated my Thesis again and now it's 3.0. 

44:58
Khyati Sundaram
And so I think my team, in the beginning it was always okay, are you changing it again? Yes, I'm updating my thesis as I go along. Just like we're updating the software every day based on feedback. So I think that's how I frame it in my head. And people who are close to me sort of understand that. So it doesn't feel like headless chicken anymore, but in the beginning it does feel like headless chicken because you're like you're doing five different things or you're changing every day, but you have to change every day because you're updating very fast, because you're taking lots more information and trying to build a thesis on the go. And that's true for product, that's true for sales, that's true for any other part of the business. And so that's how I frame it in my head. 

45:39
Khyati Sundaram
The more practical pieces are what you said. I am part of other founder groups and I also like, rate certain people that I would go for specific things. So if I had issues with funding obc, I would go to specific people. If I had issues with, okay, I'm having a really bad day as a founder because I can't get things through to the team, then I would go to another founder who I know has had that issue. So having people in the same journey as you or same spot as you a few years later or a few milestones later is how I've practically broached that, which has been very helpful. 

46:17
Amardeep Parmar
So you just said the words there about a few years later. Right? So what we're doing now is that people, when they come on this podcast, then 200 episodes later, so roughly two years later, we'll get them on again. And one thing you mentioned is like you raised 5 million. Now you've been growing, you're adapting to AI, but in two years time, what would you love to come on here and say my greatest achievement the last two years was. 

46:42
Khyati Sundaram
Wow, that's hard. You putting me on the spot. One, I think we are definitely in the middle of a big shift. And so a big achievement to me personally would be if I can preserve the promise of applied in this shifting world. And the promise of applied is we'll still be able to match good people to good jobs. What happens to that if we are not hiring as many humans? What happens to that if the jobs completely change and the hiring managers don't really understand what kind of people we need to hire. I think there's lots of questions that will need to be true for me to be able to achieve that promise. But the biggest achievement would be if we can keep that promise, keep that brand, keep that mission. 

47:29
Khyati Sundaram
And of course then there's elements of my growth and team and all of the things that come with building a good business. But I'd like to think that there is a place for the mission of applied. It's a generational problem. Like the problem of hiring is not going to go away. The problem of matching people who are highly skilled but overlooked is not going to go away. And so it's just about adapting the solution to the different waves, as I said before. And this is the AI wave, which we are going to see for the next two, three, four years. So I'm hoping that, yeah, I'd be successful enough to be back here in 200 episodes time. 

48:08
Amardeep Parmar
So what we're going to do is we're going to get a little TV there and next time we get back on, we'll play that little clip just like during the episode and we can then assess how thinking changed. Right. So longer term, I think the ambition for the next couple of years, like you said, it's a generational idea. Right. So the next two years can be part of that journey of being able to help, as you said, good people get good jobs. Right. And is there anything we haven't mentioned so far that you think is really valuable, that you'd love to just get across? 

48:36
Khyati Sundaram
I think it's one of the biggest shifts we are seeing and I think what I would love people to do is really understand what the purpose of humans is in this shift. And that's because I'm coming off of conversations with people who find it so. So polarising. Like, I was in a conference the other day, well, it was an event really, and there was four generations in that event and everyone came together and they asked the same question, like, what are we doing here? What are we here for? So a person who's going to school is asking, what should I study? The person who's leaving university saying, what should I do well, to be able to get the job? The person who's in the workforce and saying, what should I learn so I can have a job and still have a job? 

49:20
Khyati Sundaram
And the person who's on the verge of retiring is also still asking, how might my mental faculties and skills be useful? And I think we're all coalescing at this point of this is a big shift and I think there will be technological unemployment. I don't think that we are prepared for it. And so just understanding of what that means and how we can all be very useful, happy, skilled humans. This is very philosophical, but that's also because I've been reading the Gita, which is very valuable philosophical and it's been playing on my mind. I think we need to understand what our pathways will be in the next 50 years. 

50:02
Amardeep Parmar
I think one of the huge difficulties for so many people too, is that unless you have the breadth like you have in terms of you being in that, you know, it's like you're in the game, right. When you're just hearing all of the noise on LinkedIn, all of the noise in different places. And I always think people need to think about why somebody posting something in a certain way. Right. Is that right now feeding into AI hype will get you likes, it will get you re shares, it will get you people to want you to speak at stuff. Right? You'll get that things. If you're like, oh, AI is the future, then you're going to get that validation. And they said the other side of things about the technical technological unemployment. That's a hard thing to say. Then it's. 

50:44
Amardeep Parmar
Nobody wants to talk about that because it's sad. 

50:47
Khyati Sundaram
Scary. 

50:47
Amardeep Parmar
Scary, Right? 

50:48
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah. 

50:49
Amardeep Parmar
And. But we have to have those conversations because as you said, if some companies, for example, say, oh, we're going to help you, like, have. Be three times as productive, does that company now do three times the output or do they fire two thirds of their workforce because they don't actually need that much more output? And you can, there's an idea, you can just keep growing and it's going to get out of that thing. But then who are you going to be selling to if people don't have jobs? And there's this whole, like greater economic question. So I did economics as well. So then I've read a bunch of those different paperwork. I think it was. Then what was the old one thinking fast and slow that everybody reads. And like undergrad economics is like. And that's not his favourite book in undergrad economics. 

51:32
Amardeep Parmar
And it's just those things we're not thinking about. So for this being a market for people to buy stuff, there has to be people with jobs earning money to buy this stuff in the first place. And the whole economic system is going to be a challenge for the future. And it's going to be interesting to see how those questions are really actually tackled rather than just saying like, oh, AI will sort it. 

51:50
Khyati Sundaram
Yeah, I think it's because there's been quite a bit of a knee jerk reaction. And you're right, there's a lot of noise. And so there is this bunch of people, camp of people on LinkedIn saying we're not going to have jobs and the other camp saying, no, we'll keep our jobs or just change. Which way does it really settle? We don't know. But if you look at the past, we've had technological unemployment when we moved into automation, past manufacturing and the industrial revolution, but we also found other jobs. But it takes time. So there might be a period of, I don't know, a decade, maybe more where as this shift happens people realise, okay, Microsoft needs only 2/3 of their employees and other organisations are not moving fast enough to hire those Microsoft employees. 

52:36
Khyati Sundaram
And so maybe the Microsoft employees go and start their own businesses. What does that mean? That is clearly great for the economy but equally they might move into other sectors which might be good, may not be good, but I think that's why it's really difficult. And I don't think anybody has answers. I spoke to one of my economics professors and he's won the Nobel Prize. So if he doesn't he said good luck. So good luck to us. But I think it's a big challenge. I think people, many people are sleepwalking because we are so in the weeds. We're in our day to day jobs, we love doing our jobs well. And so probably we need to zoom out and think through, okay, we're here for another 50, our generation, let's say another 50, 60 years off that you'll work 30, 40 years. 

53:27
Khyati Sundaram
What do you want to do? Yeah, and probably a lot of the tasks you're doing today can be done by AI. So what do you really want to do? And that question I think not a lot of people are asking. 

53:38
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. And I think if we just take away from this is if people just keep asking themselves that question and you keep, you have to, in order to get the answer, you have to keep asking the question. Right? Yes. So we're gonna have to need a quick five questions now because of time, but I think I could talk about that forever with you. So first question for the quick fight is who are three Asians in Britain you think are doing incredible work? And you have to shout them out. 

54:01
Khyati Sundaram
Oh, I'd love to shout out Sonia from Talatrive. We talked about being the founder job, being really lonely and she's doing really good work on mental health. So, Sonia, Raji from Learnably, I think he's been on your podcast before. Again, great work on adjacent field to Applied, building like an L and D platform. And then Nikita, of course. How can I forget one of the customers of Applied, Nikita from included VCs, and she's doing phenomenal work in making a more inclusive place for vc. So those three, definitely. 

54:35
Amardeep Parmar
So they love all of them. So if people find out more about you, more about Applied, where they go to? 

54:41
Khyati Sundaram
Well, LinkedIn, apparently. I've been told I'm always on LinkedIn and if you're not on LinkedIn, then you can just type be applied.com or type up my name and they'll find me on somewhere on the Internet. 

54:54
Amardeep Parmar
And is there any way that the audience could help you today? 

54:56
Khyati Sundaram
I think it's understanding two things, really. One, understanding what jobs we want to do. And Applied is trying to bridge that gap between really finding human potential and human will, which comes from the employee and the candidate side, like what kinds of jobs do you want to do and why? So I think the audience would really help me and help themselves if they ask that question and if they ask what kinds of companies they want to work for and then Applied somehow mediates that beautiful pathway. Don't know how, but yeah. 

55:31
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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