May 10, 2025 • 46 mins
Joel Palathinkal chats with Balaji about his journey from founding Snapstick to its acquisition by TiVo. Balaji delves into career transitions, CEO roles, and tech industry compensation, sharing lessons from Vinod Khosla and Larry Ellison. They discuss Snapstick's scaling, CES success, and investor relations. Balaji offers book recommendations, discusses valuations, and the value of advisory boards and mentorship. He shares insights on starting a new venture, overcoming challenges, and transitioning to a venture studio model. The episode wraps up with thoughts on future tech, wearables, and the venture studio approach.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So okay.
(00:00):
So the first company was called Snapseed.
We were the first company to do mobile to TV.
Mhmm.
What you see today in different castingdevices, we were the first company to do mobile
to TV.
But, again, I did not actually start that as acompany.
I was still at Oracle.
And, when I was at Oracle, that was the firsttime I got Comcast Mhmm.
Action.
(00:21):
And then, I was trying to watch some moviesfrom the Comcast TV Guide.
Welcome
to The Investor, a podcast where I, JoelPalafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
(00:42):
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
All right.
All right.
So really excited to have my guest today,Balaji.
I've gotten to know him for the last couplemonths now and just we've been doing some
really cool collaborative stuff together.
So Balaji, just welcome to the show.
(01:04):
I'll just do a quick intro and then I want youto kind of go a little deeper.
But I given Balaji a little hard time because Isaw a blog post somewhere saying that biology
is the next Steve Jobs.
That for me, I don't really have any friendsthat have been given that reference.
But from my understanding, he's built somereally unique hardware technologies, which he's
(01:29):
going to go deep on.
I've looked at some of the products and thewebsites that he's built.
So super innovative, it looks like more on theconsumer hardware tech, but some of them are
much more large scale products that are out ofthe box.
So we're going to talk about just how you cancome up with number one, one venture that's
successful.
But how do you build multiple businesses thatare generating revenue?
(01:53):
And how do you manage your time?
Making sure all those businesses are successfulall at the same time as a portfolio.
It's tough enough for many startup founders tojust launch one business and focus on that.
So, you know, that's where the concept of aventure studio model comes about, where you're
essentially doing company creation.
So I think that's a very innovative thing tothink through.
(02:18):
But that's my high level intro biology.
Welcome to the show.
Let's do some serious reflection, Let's goback, way, way back.
Tell me about your family, your upbringing.
What did you believe when you were kind ofgrowing up and what did you think you wanted to
do?
And tell me about this path and this journeythat you went on.
(02:38):
And then, you know, we can just take it fromthere and do this together.
Yeah, cool.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I grew up in India.
My dad was a mechanical engineer, so he was aprofessor.
So he's a very organized, very well known,educated professor in India.
And so he used to teach mechanical engineering,and then he also did a lot of organizational
(03:03):
research.
There's a lot of in the mechanical side andmechatronic side as well.
And I have two older sisters, they are allengineers.
As you know, Indian families
are engineers.
Either an engineer or doctor.
Yeah, I'm an engineer and I got a doctorate.
There And
(03:23):
then I got married.
So I'm the golden child now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have no other option.
Engineer or medicine.
Yeah, it doesn't stop them and you got to getyou got to either be an engineer or doctor,
maybe a lawyer now, you know, because we're inmore modern times and then you definitely have
to probably get married at a certain time andhave kids.
(03:43):
I'm like, that, are you happy now?
Like I've done everything you wanted me to do.
Right.
That is a standard path.
Yeah.
But I would be a terrible doctor.
I cannot actually even stand needles or blood.
So Yeah.
I I went down the path of engineering.
But then the reason I chose computer sciencewas because that was the only left out
department in my family.
(04:03):
Mhmm.
My dad was mechanical.
My sisters were electrical and electronics,then computer science was the only left So I
thought I'll I'll choose that.
So yeah.
So I did my engineering in India, and then Imoved to The US to work for Sun Microsystems.
So that was my first company.
And this was like during the .com boom when Sunwas at its peak.
(04:28):
So did you meet the note?
This is how like the note left way beyond
after Actually, the note was there when I Wow.
Yeah.
I joined Sun way early.
But That's easy.
Early, it was not like the starting point, butYeah.
It was at its peak.
But Vinod was not CEO by then.
So But I joined when it was all like 199s and2000s when it was a .com boom.
(04:56):
But I joined here in The US.
But by the time I left Sun, the stock pricewent down significantly lower.
So I moved from Sun.
But I was a Solaris engineer.
I was building Solaris operating systems atSun.
And then after Sun, moved to HP.
(05:16):
And HP, I was building operating systems aswell.
So I was in the HP UX team.
And then I joined Oracle.
And Oracle, was an engineer too.
I was a transaction processing developmentteam.
But after Oracle is when I started my firststartup.
It was called Snapstick, and that was acquiredby TiVo after after two and a half years.
(05:43):
And then I started another startup calledDabkick, was acquired in 2021 by a public
company.
And then I started all these other startupsthat I'm running now and the Vega Studio.
But the the surprising thing is, like, know, myengineering career at Sun, HP, and Oracle, they
(06:06):
were all at the system system side on the onthe back end side.
Yeah.
All my startups are consumer hardware softwarestartups.
So that it just happened because, you knowYeah.
I was building it for myself and then it justbecame a company.
So
Yeah.
One thing that's really interesting is, youknow, Elon Musk, you know, he shared multiple
(06:26):
times that he just, you know, he he he's aproduct person.
So, know, when you he's mentioned this a fewtimes too.
When you when you become a CEO, you have allthese chores, right?
You gotta do the, you know, you you gotta dothe audited financials.
You gotta make sure that there's a greatcompany culture.
Like there's a lot of these kind of chores thatyou got to do.
(06:47):
And especially if you like building product,you it just you can't do it, you know, so he
was just like, look, I'd rather just be aproduct person.
And he's hired CEOs to run most of hiscompanies.
Right?
Twitter, I think he hired the woman from NBCUniversal Yeah.
Who understands monetization.
Right?
Yep.
Yeah.
And he's just found people to kinda do thosechores and kinda be the operating person to do
(07:09):
the day to day running of the company.
And then I think it's a great outcome if youown these portfolios of companies and you get
some type of, you know, monthly p and lreporting in terms of how the company is doing
as, like, maybe like a a chairperson.
So, you know, there's a lot to unpack here.
So tell me like how the culture was when youworked at these different tech companies in the
(07:32):
Valley as an engineer.
Because I know like probably in 2014, you know,engineers are making crazy money.
But I think back in that time, don't thinkengineers were like earning that well.
And I'm only saying this because like my uncleworked in the Valley, I think way before the
2000s.
And he was kind of one of the foundingengineers of like, you know, the WiMAX
(07:55):
technology.
So like wireless technology, like five gs.
And then he ended up Yeah.
And then his company, he ended up like movingto Bangalore and that company got acquired by
like Broadcom or something like that.
So then, you know, he essentially ended upbecoming a broad Broadcom employee and then,
you know, as you know, big companies, theyhave, you know, probably a lot of different
bureaucracies.
(08:16):
But but but, you know, how was it there?
Was the compensation and obviously, you don'thave to tell me how much you're making, but
just in general, like, we're tech employees,the praised kind of like high paid people.
I know for me, like, I was working in tech inprobably two thousand and eight.
And like, you know, the people that weregetting paid the most was still people in
(08:37):
finance.
And I'm from New York.
I'm in New York, right?
So I mean, people on Wall Street, Bankers, PEpeople, those were really the top people.
And then after the recession, a lot of thosepeople left, They got burned out from finance
and they got into tech.
And then now tech started to be those jobs thatare paying like half a million to like 800 ks
if you're working at Google.
But like how was it back then?
(08:58):
Was it like
Yeah.
The salary was not that bad.
I was at Oracle, so it also depends upon whichteam you work for.
So I was at the Kernel development team, whichwas pretty heavily compensated.
But Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a funny story because when I was at HP,I was looking for a change.
And then I applied.
(09:19):
So I got into Microsoft and I got into Oracle.
I got an offer from Network Appliance.
So Network Appliance was pretty close to myapartment where I used to live back then.
And network appliance salary was the highestcompared to Oracle and Microsoft.
So Microsoft, I didn't wanna actually move toRedline, so I I declined the offer.
But then I had to choose between Oracle andnetwork appliance.
(09:41):
And then finally, I chose Oracle because of Iused to drink a lot of soda back then.
And Oracle said they'll give me free soda.
There's like free soda.
What It's hell?
It it was I I I stopped drinking soda afterthat, but Yeah.
It was too much soda back then.
But that was the reason I chose Oracle, butbut, you know, Oracle was one of the best teams
I've actually ever worked with.
Oh, yeah.
(10:02):
That was a really, really strong, very smartpeople that that also it's called server
technology team.
Mhmm.
People you meet there, are like ridiculouslysmart people.
Yeah.
That is one of the best teams in Oracle.
And they they are pretty good in terms ofcompensation.
Mhmm.
When it comes to startups, of course, now whenyou do your own startup, you have to sacrifice
(10:27):
all of those things.
You're not going be paid that much.
So that was actually as you know coming from anIndian family that was a big concern from the
family side when you quit like in a well payingjob and then So
like what happened?
Biology, what what's going on, man?
What what happened?
Well, I mean, everyone was upset because when Iwhen I quit or
(10:48):
Doug, you're throwing throwing your life away.
They're like, you you had this greatopportunity.
You came to America, the American dream.
And so did you meet Larry Ellison as well?
I've seen multiple times because Larry is blue,every quarter he'll be coming and giving a
speech.
And I've never met him in person, like Pretty,like, on a personal side, but but I've seen him
(11:11):
giving, like, demos and talks and all thestuff.
So yeah.
So, you know, I'd love to hear any maybe lifechanging or just groundbreaking leadership, you
know, lessons from Larry Ellison or just Imean, I guess, how are your maybe talk about,
like, your interactions with Bennoed.
What were some things that you learned fromthem as leaders?
(11:32):
Because those are, like, you know, obviously,tier one tech tech leaders.
Well,
we know that I've I've I've talked really,like, a few times when I was at Sun
Microsystems.
But then after that, I actually had anopportunity to meet with him a couple of times
for the startups.
I actually pitched one of the startups.
I don't know if I don't know if he if heremembers that, but but we I mean, the kind of
(11:59):
feedback I would get from people when you pitchideas, even before you have a product and it's
invaluable because now I always like love tobasically get feedback from people who have
done this before, but not in terms ofdirectional, but in terms of inspirational.
Right?
So you could just take it and then you coulddecide what you want to do with that feedback.
(12:25):
It's not like an advice, but they will sharetheir opinion, but everyone has an opinion and
then you can actually your own opinions andthen you can form a decision.
But that was something that I heard when I waspitching the first version of my first startup
to Node.
The feedback that I got from him was veryhelpful.
(12:46):
And I've never interacted personally with LarryEllison or any other top leaders.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Mean but even in the tech industry, you know,there were a few people at Oracle.
They were, like, highly technical and at toplevel.
When you talk about some technical ideas, thekind of feedback that you get from them, is
really invaluable.
(13:07):
Yeah.
What's interesting too is, I forgot who's theCEO of Salesforce, it's Mark Benioff, right?
I think he worked, know, one thing that I thinkis interesting about, you know, the successful
entrepreneurs, you know, they're not the MarkWahlberg.
I mean, Mark
Any off.
(13:27):
Yeah.
What's wrong?
No.
I mean, why am I
why am
I, you know, having a brain brain issue today?
But the founder of Meta.
Right?
I mean, they're not the Like about They're notthe Harvard.
Yeah.
They're not the Harvard dropouts.
We're seeing a lot of people that have workedin industry for a long time.
Mark Minioff worked, I think he worked atOracle or worked at another cloud based
(13:50):
company, but they built some real seriousindustry experience.
They really understand how to work withclients, how to follow processes, how to deal
with hierarchy, because I think that's going tohelp you over time.
If you're trying to build a multi generationalbig huge organization, some of those
disciplines I think help, the email etiquetteversus just kind of being a scrappy founder,
(14:13):
Eating Raman, right?
Kind of like back from the 02/2006 era wherepeople were building startups as their first
career.
So I think you kind of fit in the samesituation as Mark.
And I think the node just went in and startedSun, right?
(14:38):
Or did he work somewhere else?
No.
Vinod was already like an achieved entrepreneurbecause he created a company called Daisy
Systems, I guess, before Oh,
that was his first company.
Okay.
That was his first company.
And then he sold the company and then hestarted Sun along with Started Sun.
Yeah.
Along with, I think, a bunch of Stanford guys.
(14:58):
Yeah.
No, that's interesting.
So tell me what was going on.
So you told your parents that you're gonna gooff and start a company.
They pushed back and then what was the firstthing that you did and how did you come up with
the idea?
Tell me like the origin story and remind mewhat was in the audience?
What was the first business?
(15:20):
So the first company was called Snapstick.
We were the first company to do mobile to TV.
What you see today in different castingdevices, we were the first company to do mobile
to TV.
But again, I did not actually start that as acompany.
I was still at Oracle And when I was at Oracle,that was the first time I got Comcast Mhmm.
Action.
(15:40):
And then I was trying to watch some movies fromthe Comcast TV Guide.
Mhmm.
I don't know if guys remember.
Back in those days, Comcast TV Guide used tobe, like, really bad interface.
And so I could not actually find because I youhad to go through this matrix of the TV guide,
right, and then use using the remote control.
And I could not find anything that I wannawatch.
And I had a TiVo box with me.
(16:01):
So what I I started building was this was thetime Myspace was getting you know, was was very
popular.
And then Yeah.
Twitter was also up and coming.
So I started building a kind of recommendationalgorithm Mhmm.
Based on these kind of social networks.
So I was extracting all, like, profiles andtweets and all this stuff and then try to
(16:26):
understand, you know, what sentiment if someonesays, I watched Gladiator.
I loved it.
Then what is the sentiment behind that?
So Mhmm.
I started creating this interest graph from allthese people that are for the social network,
and then you apply your own social networkaccount into that one and then combine that
with Comcast TV Guide.
Then I was wondering if it can spit out, hey,here are the movies that you might like to
(16:49):
watch that is going to be played at this time.
And then I fit that into people to record thosemovies.
So it was more like
a
So you built the software first.
I guess you were what language was that writtenin?
It was all Python and C, C plus plus so it wasit was all software.
(17:09):
Yeah.
But just but I actually ran everything in theLinux operating system.
Mhmm.
I built a custom Linux operating system on oneof the mini PCs.
Yeah.
And then I fed all these, you know, softwarethrough that so that mini operating system the
(17:29):
mini PC operating system is what will becoordinating between TiVos and Comcast TV Guide
and all the stuff.
So it was more like a hack, like, you know, funproject.
Mhmm.
That that actually worked, because
Then how did you feed that into the Comcastbox?
So I had to feed the Comcast out into my miniPC.
(17:52):
Oh, got it.
Okay.
And then my mini PC will be feeding into theTiVo.
So I had to do some hacks with that.
So straight up like electrical engineering.
Yep.
Yep.
Kind of integrating in.
Yeah.
Okay.
Got it.
That was the only hardware part I was doing.
Yeah.
But it was more like a hack.
Yeah.
Then the But
it was still transmitting and receiving thedata.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Had to I had to take the Comcast out and then Ihad to convert that into IP protocol.
(18:17):
Right?
Because it was was a different protocol thatwill be coming in.
So that was that was something that I wrote.
And then and then again, it will be feedinginto TiVo and it'll be communicating with TiVo.
And TiVo was also TiVo was also a Linux box.
So it was Yeah.
You know, it was also more like a hack.
How do you communicate the TiVo box?
So then
you built that and then you built that foryours, I guess, as an experiment?
(18:39):
For myself.
Yeah.
So because I actually I wanna I wanna recordall the movies that I might like to watch that
So you got some sentiment almost because backthen, didn't have, like, I don't think they had
a rotten tomatoes.
Right?
So you gotta
Oh, they they had rotten tomatoes, but What didit?
It will so if I tell the the recommendationalgorithm saying that I like Gladiator
(18:59):
Mhmm.
Then can it actually start recording all themovies that I might like to watch?
This is what TiVo was doing a little.
Right?
Because But based off of social networks, canyou create a new type of recommendation
algorithm that will actually bring this to you?
So that worked.
Then I started applying that to online videos.
So then I actually go find great Vimeo videosor YouTube videos.
(19:22):
And
Yeah.
So that was also working.
So this is the time when Apple opened theirthird party developer platform for iPhones.
Mhmm.
So then I thought, okay.
Let me bring this recommendation algorithm theiPhone so that
Onto the App Store.
On the App Store.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But didn't you get any I mean, there's stillyou're still kinda bootstrapping this
(19:44):
technology.
There's probably wires sticking out, with, theTiVo.
What are the devices?
So it's a Comcast device and then the TiVodevice as well, right?
The Comcast device, TiVo device and then mymini PC with operating system in the center.
How do you sell that with like, I guess thosepeople not coming after you, right?
Because you're kind of because now you'reintegrating.
(20:05):
Yeah, this was just for me.
I was just for you.
Yeah.
And then I gave it to my friends and they usedit and they liked it.
And then they started using it.
Yeah.
So then I had to switch from that kind of ahacking mode to actual product.
So this is when I met one of my really goodfriends now.
His name is Craig Seidl from this is thecompany called MovieLabs.
(20:27):
So MovieLabs is more like an innovationventurearm from movie studios.
And he was the head of innovation back then.
And then he wrote me the first check toactually convert this into a product.
And I had to remove the Comcast.
I had to remove TiVo from the picture.
So the whole the product that it became was Iwill be able to find content on my mobile
(20:53):
phone, and then I can I can tap on the content?
It will be handing it over to the mini PC thatI the the operating.
Yeah.
The mini PC will be directly plugged into theTV.
That will play the content.
Got it.
Okay.
Is what the is.
The stick plugs into the HDMI of the TV.
Right.
Got it.
Okay.
(21:14):
And you understand, mean, lot of them are Linuxboxes, so you understand how to kind of do the
wiring and the hardware, electrical design,which is very difficult to do.
So that definitely helped you to do that.
And then you and then I guess how did you scalethat to like, I guess product market fit?
(21:34):
Yeah.
So even with that small check that I got fromMovieLands, it was still like 25 ks or
whatever.
Don't remember.
That helped me actually make the actualhardware that I had to basically plug into the
TV and then do all the communication.
It was still just me.
And then I met a couple of angel investors andthey invested and then we took the product to
(22:01):
CES.
So CES twenty eleven is when we actually showedthe fully functioning product.
And we won the best of CES.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
So that is when I quit Oracle.
I gave you a lot of exposure too and gave youvalidation as Yeah,
exactly.
So once we won the best of CES, then had toquit Oracle and then I had to do this full
(22:24):
time.
Then we actually started working with- So evenwhen you told your parents that you're like,
hey, you know what, I won this award.
This has promise.
Guess they still got probably worried as well,right?
Because it's always a risky thing.
It's risky.
Yeah.
It's a risky thing and zero salary.
It's it's it's a lot of complications there.
(22:45):
But that's the culture that would but the goodthing is you're around culture.
I feel like if you lived in Oklahoma or if youlived in Florida or something, I did, it would
be a different scenario.
But I feel like the DNA, especially at thattime, everyone was probably leaving at some
point to build something.
Exactly.
Bay Area culture, like you said, Bay Areaculture is very attuned to this kind of Yeah.
(23:09):
People who want to build products.
Risk everywhere.
But my main thing is, even though I loved theteam that I worked for, you know, for Oracle
and the kind of technology that they werebuilding, they were a lot.
But they were still B2B.
And I I really enjoy the consumer products.
So because I can actually use it.
(23:30):
For me, if I become a I become one happycustomer, at least there'll be one happy
customer even if
they Yeah.
That's a good point.
Something that you use.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I am I mean, since then, I've always been afan of consumer products.
I'm not a good B2B business person because Idon't think I can just sell to businesses.
(23:52):
I would rather just try with consumers.
And then if because you can actually get aquick feedback, whether they like it or not.
So that was the main reason I I left Oraclebecause I really wanted to build this product
for myself.
Then and then, yeah, it it it worked out goodafter that.
Yeah.
I actually followed the node for a long time.
(24:15):
And I look up to him.
I mean, he's someone that's definitely superinspirational.
But one of his quotes that comes to mind islike your willingness to fail is what will let
you succeed.
And a lot of times he was talking about SunMicrosystems isn't just saying, look, you know
what, like there was a couple of times when wedidn't even know we make payroll.
Yeah.
So a lot of people think it's sexy to build acompany.
(24:35):
But there's a lot of dark sides that you haveto kind of go through, right?
Mean, cash flow is always a thing that you'rebalancing, right?
Should you take outside money and scale orshould you bootstrap and go slowly and be
profitable?
Those are things.
So what are some things that go back and forthin your mind?
You took in some money, right?
(24:55):
So once you take money in there, you know, youhave investors that you have to kind of, you
know, deliver milestones and and communicatewith.
Right?
So what's kind of going on in your mind?
Yeah.
That is a good point because all my company oneof the actually key differentiating factors for
the Venture Studio as well that that I'mrunning now is even my first company, even
before we got the 25 k from MovieLabs, I wasputting my own cash, my own money.
(25:22):
And because I felt so much comfortable using myown money to play with some ideas and doing
some experiments.
As soon as you take someone else's money, thenyou are obligated to answer them.
And because it's your fiduciary duty toactually tell them what's going on, whether the
ideas worked or not, right?
(25:42):
So then you to spend time in actually answeringpeople who actually give you money.
I would rather put my own money and then get toa point where you see the product working.
Then you'd actually see that point onwards ifyou want to, you know, take some of this money,
then you'll be in a better position to actuallyanswer them.
(26:05):
So that was my thesis behind every product,every company that I built.
And my first company, I invested heavily.
I was actually in the cap table.
I was close to 30% off the investment I did formy first company.
And my second company, I did 50% of theinvestments in total.
(26:28):
I did my own investment.
And then currently, I'm doing all bootstrapped.
Everything I'm investing in.
So except one company, but but everything elseis is all bootstrapped.
So, yeah, you're you're you're right.
As soon as you bring external investors, thenyou have to basically carve out some of your
(26:48):
time to basically answer and or or or updatethem.
I mean, nobody nobody can harass you, butstill, it is your duty to basically update
them.
Yeah.
But then then you're not gonna be spending thatmuch time to build the product.
Right?
So So when you're in the product building mode,then I would rather really focus on building
the product.
(27:08):
Yeah, I'm going to post a book recommendationhere.
There's a guy that I look up to his name isMark Ackler.
I think he deployed like three funds.
But before that he had a couple exits and he coauthored this book called Exit Right.
Really amazing book.
(27:28):
I think the forward was written by Brad Feld,but Mark Ackler is someone who I just like
really look up to.
He's like an OG, you know?
But like he this book is really good because ittalks about and we'll get into this too, like
things you need to think about.
Right?
Like what is an earn out?
Like, If you have an exit, could you havemultiple exits?
(27:50):
What are the terms of the exit?
Is it cash and stock?
Is it cash only?
And all of those things too.
Obviously one great exit, what are some thingsthat you learn from that?
Just in general exiting, what advice did yougive to new founders that are maybe on that
(28:10):
path?
Yeah.
I mean, there is a famous saying in the Valleythat don't try to sell.
You should be bought.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I I think that is very, you know, very true.
If you try to sell your company, then you'regonna be getting nothing.
Mhmm.
But if you are if you keep building theproduct, if you keep getting traction, then you
will get a lot of inbound interest.
(28:31):
And that's what happened even for my firstcompany.
The inbound interest were good and always keepthe doors open.
Don't say no to anyone.
Just evaluate it.
And then if it's good, then take it.
Otherwise, just keep moving forward.
The exit wise, I always believe the multiplematters.
(28:51):
It's not about valuation because I wouldstrongly I always prefer not to raise the
valuation super high in the initial phase.
Keep it low so that if you want to exit, it isgoing to be a lot easier when things are not
going well.
So if things are going really good, then you'reawesome.
(29:11):
But 99% of the time, the things will not gowell in the startup in a company.
In my first startup, I think the multiple therewas pretty significant because we raised only
1.25.
And so the multiple was pretty good both forinvestors and for the the team and the
(29:32):
founders.
So so if you operate lean and keep a very smallteam and don't raise too much capital and keep
the valuation low when you raise the capital,then you will be able to exit even at like
$20,000,000 or $30,000,000 right?
There's a
lot of companies that can acquire you at thatpoint than raising
(29:53):
a
raising a first round at $20,000,000, you know,pre money.
Then you have to exit at hundred milliondollars for you to see meaningful returns.
Hundred million dollar exit is gonna be really,really hard unless you create significant
revenue or significant traction.
And there are only few companies that will bewilling to acquire a hundred million dollar
(30:15):
exit.
So when things are not going well, if you canbe falling in the sweet spot of 20 to
$30,000,000 or 20 to Mhmm.
So which means you have to keep the valuationlow initially.
Yeah.
No.
Absolutely.
And you know what what should people thinkabout when they have different options like a,
(30:36):
you know, like a a stock sale versus like acash sale versus a hybrid?
Who have you looked to for advice kind ofnavigating?
Obviously, got your attorney, right?
But you need mentors.
Asking business advice from an attorney isdefinitely great, but then sometimes the
attorney can only go so far when it comes toactually making strategic business decisions.
(31:01):
So did you build a little advisory board ofmentors to help you that hopefully essentially
have also gone through that same experience?
Yeah.
Have a lot of even now, have a lot of adviserson the advisory board, they're all my friends.
Good friends because these are the people thatI actually met through some connections.
(31:22):
And of my really good friends who was on theboard of my previous company, and he's also one
of the advisors now, his name is Ranjit.
He's a serial entrepreneur, and he has soldmultiple companies.
So I actually met him for some kind ofpartnership that I wanted to actually when he
was running a different company.
And then we became really good friends.
And he was one of the advisors because lastcompany's exit, we'd had some issues.
(31:46):
So he was actually helping me a lot this.
And then my attorney, of course, now he he'salso a really good friend.
I've been working with him for the past, like,ten years now.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of people that you canactually get advice or even, like, inputs.
And then Yeah.
Like I said, at the end of the day, you have toput your own opinion and then see what you
think is right and then go for it becauseeveryone will have different opinions.
(32:10):
Everyone will be having like different kinds ofthoughts as to what I should be doing.
Right?
So someone might say, oh, you know, this is apretty low valuation.
Don't take all stock, don't take all cash orfour year vesting versus three year vesting.
So all these things, I think if you feelcomfortable, then go for it.
Sure.
Then tell me about the next venture, kind ofthe next business and what motivated you to
(32:35):
kind of start the next company?
And I guess like, what did you do afterwards?
I guess, did you still have to spend some timewith that company?
Because a lot of times too, like when there'san exit, you have to obviously run and operate
the company for some time.
And then there's usually like a term wherethey'll hire a CEO.
Yeah.
So when my first company got acquired, I didnot join that startup.
(32:56):
I left some money on the table because peoplewho joined, they actually had some more cash
coming in over a period of vesting period.
But I did not join because was going throughsome personal life situation, so I had to deal
with that.
So I started my next company after one and ahalf years after the exit.
(33:16):
Mhmm.
First first first company.
What did you do in that time?
Did you
just take some time off and just Yeah.
Like I said, no.
Was dealing with the the the personal lifeYeah.
So I was I was going through that.
But then I was also actually ideating for thenext startup.
And the next startup was more like an extensionto my first startup.
It's in the same space.
It's in the TV entertainment space.
(33:37):
But this was a little bit better than what Iwas doing before with all the lessons learned.
This was also a streaming device that I wasbuilding.
So this is the TV that's like super thin.
That is what I'm doing now.
That's new one.
Okay.
Got it.
Yeah.
That's a new one.
Yeah.
So the last That's this place.
Right?
That's this place.
Yeah.
That's right.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
But the my last company was called Dabkickwhere we built an AI powered streaming device.
(34:03):
It was called Dabby.
So Dabby was a kind of a universal searchengine that we created, and it will navigate
through all the subscriptions that you have.
So we want to actually create this kind of aone subscription manager because people have
HBO subscriptions, and then they watch Game ofThrones, and then you forget to basically
cancel the subscription.
(34:23):
Subscription.
So the platform that we created was it willunderstand what you're watching.
It will know you're not using HBO, and it'llautomatically go cancel it for you.
And then when you want to watch Game of Thronesagain, it'll automatically re enable for you.
So it will do everything in the back end.
And then you are not going be switching betweenapps.
You just say, I want to watch Maverick.
(34:45):
And then it will find the best source for you.
And it will immediately play, instantly play onyour TV.
So was
the How is it play without you paying for it,though?
So you we were charging subscriptions.
So
Okay.
Got it.
Okay.
So you pay us a flat subscription fee, amonthly subscription fee for unlimited
So you're like almost like a separate Paramountpretty much.
Exactly.
(35:05):
Yeah.
But because a lot of those there's a lot ofthose streaming services, it's the same price
for a lot of those movies.
I mean, we we change them up all the time, butif you get Paramount, sometimes some of those
movies are already on Amazon as well.
Right.
Exactly.
So people would they may not know that thismovie is available on TV for free.
(35:26):
Yeah.
But you may wanna watch, like, a couple of ads.
Yeah.
And people may be okay with that.
Right?
So that that that was the whole search enginethat we created where it will navigate through
different sources that you may not be evenactually aware of.
And then it will but you don't have to knowwhere it's coming from.
All you care about is, is it four ks?
Is it high quality?
(35:47):
And is it going to be paying for free?
And with no ads, right?
That is the ideal combo.
So we will try to find that ideal combo for youand then it will instantly play.
Did you meet any of those people that wouldprogram those boxes?
Because it's kind of like in your area.
I knew a guy when I was in Florida, and I don'tthink this was 100% legal, but he would take
(36:08):
those boxes.
They're like these little mini, I think it wasactually the Apple TVs.
And they would reprogram it and essentially youcould pretty much watch anything.
And I think they also added a new thing whichwas games.
And I actually bought one from him but the onlything is it wasn't really working all the time.
You might have seen Maverick or something.
(36:29):
I was like, this is not reliable.
So I'm just going to pay for Netflix.
It's only $9 like a month.
So it wasn't worth it.
But he was doing pretty well.
I mean, would handle shipping and send it outto people.
I know there's some people and what he wassaying apparently that it was legit, I think
(36:50):
because it's open source.
But I don't know if you came across it.
It sounds like something that's similar to yourWell, there
were a few jailbreaking companies.
That's what they do.
Basically, they they get these streamingdevices, and they'll do they'll do the
jailbreaking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But but there were other companies where likelike Plex, for example.
(37:10):
So Plex is actually a legal open sourcesoftware that will be bringing all these
content together.
And so Plex was one of the competitors that wewere actually dealing with.
But nobody was actually having a device thatyou can buy.
Because ours was so one, the device will beconnecting to the TV through HDMI.
(37:32):
And then we also believed that the secondscreen experience is very important.
So we were shipping a touch screen along withthat.
So that is where you'll be browsing, not on theTV.
So you'll be browsing on the touch screen, andthen you tap on the content that you want to
watch, and then it will instantly play on theTV.
So similar concept to my first startup, butthis is more like an advanced search engine.
(37:55):
And, you know, we applied a lot of subscriptionmodels into that.
And so you don't have to deal with differentapps and different content switching.
So that was the whole idea.
Plus, how do you bring the entire web?
Because today, if you look at the TV, there arethere are streaming apps.
Right?
So but what if you wanna watch TikTok?
What if you Mhmm.
(38:15):
Wanna basically watch Wall Street Journalvideos?
Yeah.
The problem with those things is now WallStreet Journal has to create a TV app for their
video content, and they don't have engineeringresources for that.
Sure.
The TV ecosystem is also so fragmented.
Now you have Roku operating system.
You have Samsung operating system, LG.
So everyone has their own operating system,which provider,
(38:39):
you
have to create apps for all these platforms.
Yes.
Will be incredibly harder to manage.
Mhmm.
So but if you look at the web web, there isonly a thing called website, and pre people
create just for website, like, you know, andWall Street Journal, wsj.com, if you go and
then you can watch all the videos.
And that website can play in any browser.
(39:00):
So that is the whole model that we used forDabby where it will be browser based operating
system.
And so that we can play any content that isavailable on the web, but you will see it is
more like an app.
So you as a consumer, you will not see any URLbar or nothing.
So so that that was a big difference that wemade in Dabby.
(39:21):
And, again, we launched Dabby 2020 just beforeCOVID, and and we won the best of CES again for
Dabby.
And and that then we started shipping duringCOVID time.
You know, that was a hard time becauseeverything was shut down.
Were not able to manufacture.
And so we had to take PPP loans and all thesethings.
And then we started shipping and we turned thecompany around and then we got acquired in 2021
(39:45):
by a public company.
Wow.
Yeah, that's crazy.
And then, so then after that you realize maybeyou can kind of grow a business of just kind of
building these consumer.
And then do now have like pods of teams likemaybe a mini CEO that kind of runs?
For all this, got product development, you gotmarketing, you got distribution, supply chain.
You probably had to build teams.
(40:09):
And you got how many now?
You got six under your belt that you'remanaging?
Seven of
your active companies.
So, you know, that is the main reason Iactually started the Venture Studio because all
these companies so the the the seven companies,the commonality between these seven companies
is AI for consumers.
So that is so we strongly I I strongly believethat no there will be no AI product, but AI
(40:33):
will be living in other consumer products.
Because consumers don't care whether it is AIor not, are they getting value from the
products?
I think it's a very well known user experiencenow.
A lot of times when I do stuff now, when Isearch, I'm looking for a prompt.
I was doing this thing with my son.
(40:54):
I think I told you this a while back, but weprinted these T shirts and I was expecting a
prompt.
Was like, that'd be cool if I could just use AIto generate it.
I think it's going to be just the next, theprompt is just going be as common as the next
search bar.
Whenever you want to do something, be like,hey, you know what, pull up the top searches of
(41:16):
military movies from 1980 and it'll give you alot more context as a prompt versus search.
So I think it would be like a native userexperience everywhere.
And then look, you've made hit after hit, thesecompanies are doing well.
Tell me like a next level product that you'vebeen thinking about.
(41:38):
I got one and maybe you're going to tear itapart, but I just think it's still a pain.
Like when I'm taking photos of my family, Istill gotta go like this and take a photo and
like, hopefully they don't I imagine if therewas like a piercing that I had and like, it was
like a camera and it was like a gimbal wherelike even if I'm turning it any side, it would
(41:58):
still be focused.
Because in that way, like I get the truefeeling of like my memory that I had because
like usually all the memories that we have iscoming from our eye our eyesight, right?
So I feel like you can capture that same memoryif there's a camera or something here.
And obviously you can turn it off, butespecially if there's like I've seen some of
(42:19):
these crazy videos on YouTube where people getabused by cops.
Cops are like kinda wrongly using theirauthority and abusing their authority on
people.
And people are trying to pull out their cameraand then the cops are like, hey, you know what?
They just snapped the phone out of their hand.
But if they know they're in real time, you tapyour ear and they're real time recorded for
(42:41):
their behavior, they may actually behave.
Yeah.
I think that accountability, but don't knowwhat your thoughts are on that around privacy
and even if you think it's a good product orbusiness.
Mean, wearables is definitely something thatit's been going on for the past, like, a
decade.
So if you look at Google Glass, was the firstkind of AR expert, what what they talk about.
(43:06):
And then I actually bought recently the MetaRay Ban glasses.
Yeah.
How are those?
It's pretty good.
I wear prescription glasses, so I don't wearsunglasses.
But I I just wanna see how well it is.
But it's very well made.
I would say that it's it I was even surprisedto see how well it works.
Mhmm.
(43:26):
So that you can actually use to take videos,and you can take pictures.
And it also has this meta AI, so you canactually ask a question.
Yeah.
You can say that, no, what am I what what am Ilooking at?
And then it will say, no, I'm looking at someorange or whatever.
So it has a speaker that tells you kinda talksto you.
Yeah.
It has a speaker.
But the problem is, like, you know, the batterylife and you have to charge.
So I keep it in the car, but I don't chargethat all the time.
(43:50):
So Yeah.
And they have done a really good job inthermals because all these variables, the
problem is the battery life and then the theheat.
The heat.
Yeah.
So but I would say that the Meta AR glasses byfar I'm not a big fan of wearables except the
Apple Watch that I wear.
And even that, I'm I would I would consider myphone to be much better than my Apple Watch.
(44:12):
But Yeah.
I'm not a swimmer.
I'm not a kind of a, you know, like a like aworkout health man.
But Apple Watch, I kinda like.
But any any wearable, like, you know, whereyou're piercing or you put on the face Mhmm.
That I I still call that as an kind of an ondemand computing.
Right?
You have put on your face.
But your idea of, like, always having apiercing on your ear Mhmm.
(44:36):
That is that is that could be more like anambient computing.
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, if you figure out how to get thatbattery life and how to remove the heat, then
Yeah.
It could be something interesting.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, hey, man.
This hour flew by.
Really just appreciated learning from you and,you know, enjoyed your story and congrats on
(44:56):
all the success.
And, know, I just think it's a unique model.
I've been talking to a lot of venture studios,as you know.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think some of the otherbenefits to his ownership, right?
You own more of the company.
And, you know, essentially, if you'vebootstrapped everything, then you can really
have the true direction of where you wanna takeit.
And
Yeah.
The biggest, yeah, the biggest difference inthe major feature lab that I'm running now is
(45:19):
before because the traditional venture studioswill be ideating within the venture studio, so
they'll be charging the LPs as managementmanagement fee and then use those management
fee to form a team to come up with ideas.
Yeah.
At Kija Lab, I put my own personal capital to Ito do the ideation phase.
So I'll take from ideation to seed stage.
Then once it gains traction in the market, thenwe bring those companies as portfolio under
(45:42):
Kijalab.
So which means we are derisking the wholeinvestments from LPs.
But the ownership of Kijalab in all thesecompanies is still significant, but it is a
venture studio.
So the return of investment on these companiesfrom venture studio point of view, it is still
the same.
Yeah.
That that that is a big difference and I thinkvery unique compared to any other venture
(46:07):
studio.
Yeah.
No.
Well, that's exciting, man.
Really appreciate you sharing that.
And I think, like I said, you know, super happyto hear all these amazing accomplishments.
And happy to have you as a friend and hopefullyI see you soon in New York or in San Francisco.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thanks, George.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Bye.
Thanks.
(46:27):
Bye.
Bye.
So okay.
(00:00):
So the first company was called Snapseed.
We were the first company to do mobile to TV.
Mhmm.
What you see today in different castingdevices, we were the first company to do mobile
to TV.
But, again, I did not actually start that as acompany.
I was still at Oracle.
And, when I was at Oracle, that was the firsttime I got Comcast Mhmm.
Action.
(00:21):
And then, I was trying to watch some moviesfrom the Comcast TV Guide.
Welcome
to The Investor, a podcast where I, JoelPalafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
(00:42):
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
All right.
All right.
So really excited to have my guest today,Balaji.
I've gotten to know him for the last couplemonths now and just we've been doing some
really cool collaborative stuff together.
So Balaji, just welcome to the show.
(01:04):
I'll just do a quick intro and then I want youto kind of go a little deeper.
But I given Balaji a little hard time because Isaw a blog post somewhere saying that biology
is the next Steve Jobs.
That for me, I don't really have any friendsthat have been given that reference.
But from my understanding, he's built somereally unique hardware technologies, which he's
(01:29):
going to go deep on.
I've looked at some of the products and thewebsites that he's built.
So super innovative, it looks like more on theconsumer hardware tech, but some of them are
much more large scale products that are out ofthe box.
So we're going to talk about just how you cancome up with number one, one venture that's
successful.
But how do you build multiple businesses thatare generating revenue?
(01:53):
And how do you manage your time?
Making sure all those businesses are successfulall at the same time as a portfolio.
It's tough enough for many startup founders tojust launch one business and focus on that.
So, you know, that's where the concept of aventure studio model comes about, where you're
essentially doing company creation.
So I think that's a very innovative thing tothink through.
(02:18):
But that's my high level intro biology.
Welcome to the show.
Let's do some serious reflection, Let's goback, way, way back.
Tell me about your family, your upbringing.
What did you believe when you were kind ofgrowing up and what did you think you wanted to
do?
And tell me about this path and this journeythat you went on.
(02:38):
And then, you know, we can just take it fromthere and do this together.
Yeah, cool.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I grew up in India.
My dad was a mechanical engineer, so he was aprofessor.
So he's a very organized, very well known,educated professor in India.
And so he used to teach mechanical engineering,and then he also did a lot of organizational
(03:03):
research.
There's a lot of in the mechanical side andmechatronic side as well.
And I have two older sisters, they are allengineers.
As you know, Indian families
are engineers.
Either an engineer or doctor.
Yeah, I'm an engineer and I got a doctorate.
There And
(03:23):
then I got married.
So I'm the golden child now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have no other option.
Engineer or medicine.
Yeah, it doesn't stop them and you got to getyou got to either be an engineer or doctor,
maybe a lawyer now, you know, because we're inmore modern times and then you definitely have
to probably get married at a certain time andhave kids.
(03:43):
I'm like, that, are you happy now?
Like I've done everything you wanted me to do.
Right.
That is a standard path.
Yeah.
But I would be a terrible doctor.
I cannot actually even stand needles or blood.
So Yeah.
I I went down the path of engineering.
But then the reason I chose computer sciencewas because that was the only left out
department in my family.
(04:03):
Mhmm.
My dad was mechanical.
My sisters were electrical and electronics,then computer science was the only left So I
thought I'll I'll choose that.
So yeah.
So I did my engineering in India, and then Imoved to The US to work for Sun Microsystems.
So that was my first company.
And this was like during the .com boom when Sunwas at its peak.
(04:28):
So did you meet the note?
This is how like the note left way beyond
after Actually, the note was there when I Wow.
Yeah.
I joined Sun way early.
But That's easy.
Early, it was not like the starting point, butYeah.
It was at its peak.
But Vinod was not CEO by then.
So But I joined when it was all like 199s and2000s when it was a .com boom.
(04:56):
But I joined here in The US.
But by the time I left Sun, the stock pricewent down significantly lower.
So I moved from Sun.
But I was a Solaris engineer.
I was building Solaris operating systems atSun.
And then after Sun, moved to HP.
(05:16):
And HP, I was building operating systems aswell.
So I was in the HP UX team.
And then I joined Oracle.
And Oracle, was an engineer too.
I was a transaction processing developmentteam.
But after Oracle is when I started my firststartup.
It was called Snapstick, and that was acquiredby TiVo after after two and a half years.
(05:43):
And then I started another startup calledDabkick, was acquired in 2021 by a public
company.
And then I started all these other startupsthat I'm running now and the Vega Studio.
But the the surprising thing is, like, know, myengineering career at Sun, HP, and Oracle, they
(06:06):
were all at the system system side on the onthe back end side.
Yeah.
All my startups are consumer hardware softwarestartups.
So that it just happened because, you knowYeah.
I was building it for myself and then it justbecame a company.
So
Yeah.
One thing that's really interesting is, youknow, Elon Musk, you know, he shared multiple
(06:26):
times that he just, you know, he he he's aproduct person.
So, know, when you he's mentioned this a fewtimes too.
When you when you become a CEO, you have allthese chores, right?
You gotta do the, you know, you you gotta dothe audited financials.
You gotta make sure that there's a greatcompany culture.
Like there's a lot of these kind of chores thatyou got to do.
(06:47):
And especially if you like building product,you it just you can't do it, you know, so he
was just like, look, I'd rather just be aproduct person.
And he's hired CEOs to run most of hiscompanies.
Right?
Twitter, I think he hired the woman from NBCUniversal Yeah.
Who understands monetization.
Right?
Yep.
Yeah.
And he's just found people to kinda do thosechores and kinda be the operating person to do
(07:09):
the day to day running of the company.
And then I think it's a great outcome if youown these portfolios of companies and you get
some type of, you know, monthly p and lreporting in terms of how the company is doing
as, like, maybe like a a chairperson.
So, you know, there's a lot to unpack here.
So tell me like how the culture was when youworked at these different tech companies in the
(07:32):
Valley as an engineer.
Because I know like probably in 2014, you know,engineers are making crazy money.
But I think back in that time, don't thinkengineers were like earning that well.
And I'm only saying this because like my uncleworked in the Valley, I think way before the
2000s.
And he was kind of one of the foundingengineers of like, you know, the WiMAX
(07:55):
technology.
So like wireless technology, like five gs.
And then he ended up Yeah.
And then his company, he ended up like movingto Bangalore and that company got acquired by
like Broadcom or something like that.
So then, you know, he essentially ended upbecoming a broad Broadcom employee and then,
you know, as you know, big companies, theyhave, you know, probably a lot of different
bureaucracies.
(08:16):
But but but, you know, how was it there?
Was the compensation and obviously, you don'thave to tell me how much you're making, but
just in general, like, we're tech employees,the praised kind of like high paid people.
I know for me, like, I was working in tech inprobably two thousand and eight.
And like, you know, the people that weregetting paid the most was still people in
(08:37):
finance.
And I'm from New York.
I'm in New York, right?
So I mean, people on Wall Street, Bankers, PEpeople, those were really the top people.
And then after the recession, a lot of thosepeople left, They got burned out from finance
and they got into tech.
And then now tech started to be those jobs thatare paying like half a million to like 800 ks
if you're working at Google.
But like how was it back then?
(08:58):
Was it like
Yeah.
The salary was not that bad.
I was at Oracle, so it also depends upon whichteam you work for.
So I was at the Kernel development team, whichwas pretty heavily compensated.
But Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a funny story because when I was at HP,I was looking for a change.
And then I applied.
(09:19):
So I got into Microsoft and I got into Oracle.
I got an offer from Network Appliance.
So Network Appliance was pretty close to myapartment where I used to live back then.
And network appliance salary was the highestcompared to Oracle and Microsoft.
So Microsoft, I didn't wanna actually move toRedline, so I I declined the offer.
But then I had to choose between Oracle andnetwork appliance.
(09:41):
And then finally, I chose Oracle because of Iused to drink a lot of soda back then.
And Oracle said they'll give me free soda.
There's like free soda.
What It's hell?
It it was I I I stopped drinking soda afterthat, but Yeah.
It was too much soda back then.
But that was the reason I chose Oracle, butbut, you know, Oracle was one of the best teams
I've actually ever worked with.
Oh, yeah.
(10:02):
That was a really, really strong, very smartpeople that that also it's called server
technology team.
Mhmm.
People you meet there, are like ridiculouslysmart people.
Yeah.
That is one of the best teams in Oracle.
And they they are pretty good in terms ofcompensation.
Mhmm.
When it comes to startups, of course, now whenyou do your own startup, you have to sacrifice
(10:27):
all of those things.
You're not going be paid that much.
So that was actually as you know coming from anIndian family that was a big concern from the
family side when you quit like in a well payingjob and then So
like what happened?
Biology, what what's going on, man?
What what happened?
Well, I mean, everyone was upset because when Iwhen I quit or
(10:48):
Doug, you're throwing throwing your life away.
They're like, you you had this greatopportunity.
You came to America, the American dream.
And so did you meet Larry Ellison as well?
I've seen multiple times because Larry is blue,every quarter he'll be coming and giving a
speech.
And I've never met him in person, like Pretty,like, on a personal side, but but I've seen him
(11:11):
giving, like, demos and talks and all thestuff.
So yeah.
So, you know, I'd love to hear any maybe lifechanging or just groundbreaking leadership, you
know, lessons from Larry Ellison or just Imean, I guess, how are your maybe talk about,
like, your interactions with Bennoed.
What were some things that you learned fromthem as leaders?
(11:32):
Because those are, like, you know, obviously,tier one tech tech leaders.
Well,
we know that I've I've I've talked really,like, a few times when I was at Sun
Microsystems.
But then after that, I actually had anopportunity to meet with him a couple of times
for the startups.
I actually pitched one of the startups.
I don't know if I don't know if he if heremembers that, but but we I mean, the kind of
(11:59):
feedback I would get from people when you pitchideas, even before you have a product and it's
invaluable because now I always like love tobasically get feedback from people who have
done this before, but not in terms ofdirectional, but in terms of inspirational.
Right?
So you could just take it and then you coulddecide what you want to do with that feedback.
(12:25):
It's not like an advice, but they will sharetheir opinion, but everyone has an opinion and
then you can actually your own opinions andthen you can form a decision.
But that was something that I heard when I waspitching the first version of my first startup
to Node.
The feedback that I got from him was veryhelpful.
(12:46):
And I've never interacted personally with LarryEllison or any other top leaders.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Mean but even in the tech industry, you know,there were a few people at Oracle.
They were, like, highly technical and at toplevel.
When you talk about some technical ideas, thekind of feedback that you get from them, is
really invaluable.
(13:07):
Yeah.
What's interesting too is, I forgot who's theCEO of Salesforce, it's Mark Benioff, right?
I think he worked, know, one thing that I thinkis interesting about, you know, the successful
entrepreneurs, you know, they're not the MarkWahlberg.
I mean, Mark
Any off.
(13:27):
Yeah.
What's wrong?
No.
I mean, why am I
why am
I, you know, having a brain brain issue today?
But the founder of Meta.
Right?
I mean, they're not the Like about They're notthe Harvard.
Yeah.
They're not the Harvard dropouts.
We're seeing a lot of people that have workedin industry for a long time.
Mark Minioff worked, I think he worked atOracle or worked at another cloud based
(13:50):
company, but they built some real seriousindustry experience.
They really understand how to work withclients, how to follow processes, how to deal
with hierarchy, because I think that's going tohelp you over time.
If you're trying to build a multi generationalbig huge organization, some of those
disciplines I think help, the email etiquetteversus just kind of being a scrappy founder,
(14:13):
Eating Raman, right?
Kind of like back from the 02/2006 era wherepeople were building startups as their first
career.
So I think you kind of fit in the samesituation as Mark.
And I think the node just went in and startedSun, right?
(14:38):
Or did he work somewhere else?
No.
Vinod was already like an achieved entrepreneurbecause he created a company called Daisy
Systems, I guess, before Oh,
that was his first company.
Okay.
That was his first company.
And then he sold the company and then hestarted Sun along with Started Sun.
Yeah.
Along with, I think, a bunch of Stanford guys.
(14:58):
Yeah.
No, that's interesting.
So tell me what was going on.
So you told your parents that you're gonna gooff and start a company.
They pushed back and then what was the firstthing that you did and how did you come up with
the idea?
Tell me like the origin story and remind mewhat was in the audience?
What was the first business?
(15:20):
So the first company was called Snapstick.
We were the first company to do mobile to TV.
What you see today in different castingdevices, we were the first company to do mobile
to TV.
But again, I did not actually start that as acompany.
I was still at Oracle And when I was at Oracle,that was the first time I got Comcast Mhmm.
Action.
(15:40):
And then I was trying to watch some movies fromthe Comcast TV Guide.
Mhmm.
I don't know if guys remember.
Back in those days, Comcast TV Guide used tobe, like, really bad interface.
And so I could not actually find because I youhad to go through this matrix of the TV guide,
right, and then use using the remote control.
And I could not find anything that I wannawatch.
And I had a TiVo box with me.
(16:01):
So what I I started building was this was thetime Myspace was getting you know, was was very
popular.
And then Yeah.
Twitter was also up and coming.
So I started building a kind of recommendationalgorithm Mhmm.
Based on these kind of social networks.
So I was extracting all, like, profiles andtweets and all this stuff and then try to
(16:26):
understand, you know, what sentiment if someonesays, I watched Gladiator.
I loved it.
Then what is the sentiment behind that?
So Mhmm.
I started creating this interest graph from allthese people that are for the social network,
and then you apply your own social networkaccount into that one and then combine that
with Comcast TV Guide.
Then I was wondering if it can spit out, hey,here are the movies that you might like to
(16:49):
watch that is going to be played at this time.
And then I fit that into people to record thosemovies.
So it was more like
a
So you built the software first.
I guess you were what language was that writtenin?
It was all Python and C, C plus plus so it wasit was all software.
(17:09):
Yeah.
But just but I actually ran everything in theLinux operating system.
Mhmm.
I built a custom Linux operating system on oneof the mini PCs.
Yeah.
And then I fed all these, you know, softwarethrough that so that mini operating system the
(17:29):
mini PC operating system is what will becoordinating between TiVos and Comcast TV Guide
and all the stuff.
So it was more like a hack, like, you know, funproject.
Mhmm.
That that actually worked, because
Then how did you feed that into the Comcastbox?
So I had to feed the Comcast out into my miniPC.
(17:52):
Oh, got it.
Okay.
And then my mini PC will be feeding into theTiVo.
So I had to do some hacks with that.
So straight up like electrical engineering.
Yep.
Yep.
Kind of integrating in.
Yeah.
Okay.
Got it.
That was the only hardware part I was doing.
Yeah.
But it was more like a hack.
Yeah.
Then the But
it was still transmitting and receiving thedata.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Had to I had to take the Comcast out and then Ihad to convert that into IP protocol.
(18:17):
Right?
Because it was was a different protocol thatwill be coming in.
So that was that was something that I wrote.
And then and then again, it will be feedinginto TiVo and it'll be communicating with TiVo.
And TiVo was also TiVo was also a Linux box.
So it was Yeah.
You know, it was also more like a hack.
How do you communicate the TiVo box?
So then
you built that and then you built that foryours, I guess, as an experiment?
(18:39):
For myself.
Yeah.
So because I actually I wanna I wanna recordall the movies that I might like to watch that
So you got some sentiment almost because backthen, didn't have, like, I don't think they had
a rotten tomatoes.
Right?
So you gotta
Oh, they they had rotten tomatoes, but What didit?
It will so if I tell the the recommendationalgorithm saying that I like Gladiator
(18:59):
Mhmm.
Then can it actually start recording all themovies that I might like to watch?
This is what TiVo was doing a little.
Right?
Because But based off of social networks, canyou create a new type of recommendation
algorithm that will actually bring this to you?
So that worked.
Then I started applying that to online videos.
So then I actually go find great Vimeo videosor YouTube videos.
(19:22):
And
Yeah.
So that was also working.
So this is the time when Apple opened theirthird party developer platform for iPhones.
Mhmm.
So then I thought, okay.
Let me bring this recommendation algorithm theiPhone so that
Onto the App Store.
On the App Store.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But didn't you get any I mean, there's stillyou're still kinda bootstrapping this
(19:44):
technology.
There's probably wires sticking out, with, theTiVo.
What are the devices?
So it's a Comcast device and then the TiVodevice as well, right?
The Comcast device, TiVo device and then mymini PC with operating system in the center.
How do you sell that with like, I guess thosepeople not coming after you, right?
Because you're kind of because now you'reintegrating.
(20:05):
Yeah, this was just for me.
I was just for you.
Yeah.
And then I gave it to my friends and they usedit and they liked it.
And then they started using it.
Yeah.
So then I had to switch from that kind of ahacking mode to actual product.
So this is when I met one of my really goodfriends now.
His name is Craig Seidl from this is thecompany called MovieLabs.
(20:27):
So MovieLabs is more like an innovationventurearm from movie studios.
And he was the head of innovation back then.
And then he wrote me the first check toactually convert this into a product.
And I had to remove the Comcast.
I had to remove TiVo from the picture.
So the whole the product that it became was Iwill be able to find content on my mobile
(20:53):
phone, and then I can I can tap on the content?
It will be handing it over to the mini PC thatI the the operating.
Yeah.
The mini PC will be directly plugged into theTV.
That will play the content.
Got it.
Okay.
Is what the is.
The stick plugs into the HDMI of the TV.
Right.
Got it.
Okay.
(21:14):
And you understand, mean, lot of them are Linuxboxes, so you understand how to kind of do the
wiring and the hardware, electrical design,which is very difficult to do.
So that definitely helped you to do that.
And then you and then I guess how did you scalethat to like, I guess product market fit?
(21:34):
Yeah.
So even with that small check that I got fromMovieLands, it was still like 25 ks or
whatever.
Don't remember.
That helped me actually make the actualhardware that I had to basically plug into the
TV and then do all the communication.
It was still just me.
And then I met a couple of angel investors andthey invested and then we took the product to
(22:01):
CES.
So CES twenty eleven is when we actually showedthe fully functioning product.
And we won the best of CES.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
So that is when I quit Oracle.
I gave you a lot of exposure too and gave youvalidation as Yeah,
exactly.
So once we won the best of CES, then had toquit Oracle and then I had to do this full
(22:24):
time.
Then we actually started working with- So evenwhen you told your parents that you're like,
hey, you know what, I won this award.
This has promise.
Guess they still got probably worried as well,right?
Because it's always a risky thing.
It's risky.
Yeah.
It's a risky thing and zero salary.
It's it's it's a lot of complications there.
(22:45):
But that's the culture that would but the goodthing is you're around culture.
I feel like if you lived in Oklahoma or if youlived in Florida or something, I did, it would
be a different scenario.
But I feel like the DNA, especially at thattime, everyone was probably leaving at some
point to build something.
Exactly.
Bay Area culture, like you said, Bay Areaculture is very attuned to this kind of Yeah.
(23:09):
People who want to build products.
Risk everywhere.
But my main thing is, even though I loved theteam that I worked for, you know, for Oracle
and the kind of technology that they werebuilding, they were a lot.
But they were still B2B.
And I I really enjoy the consumer products.
So because I can actually use it.
(23:30):
For me, if I become a I become one happycustomer, at least there'll be one happy
customer even if
they Yeah.
That's a good point.
Something that you use.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I am I mean, since then, I've always been afan of consumer products.
I'm not a good B2B business person because Idon't think I can just sell to businesses.
(23:52):
I would rather just try with consumers.
And then if because you can actually get aquick feedback, whether they like it or not.
So that was the main reason I I left Oraclebecause I really wanted to build this product
for myself.
Then and then, yeah, it it it worked out goodafter that.
Yeah.
I actually followed the node for a long time.
(24:15):
And I look up to him.
I mean, he's someone that's definitely superinspirational.
But one of his quotes that comes to mind islike your willingness to fail is what will let
you succeed.
And a lot of times he was talking about SunMicrosystems isn't just saying, look, you know
what, like there was a couple of times when wedidn't even know we make payroll.
Yeah.
So a lot of people think it's sexy to build acompany.
(24:35):
But there's a lot of dark sides that you haveto kind of go through, right?
Mean, cash flow is always a thing that you'rebalancing, right?
Should you take outside money and scale orshould you bootstrap and go slowly and be
profitable?
Those are things.
So what are some things that go back and forthin your mind?
You took in some money, right?
(24:55):
So once you take money in there, you know, youhave investors that you have to kind of, you
know, deliver milestones and and communicatewith.
Right?
So what's kind of going on in your mind?
Yeah.
That is a good point because all my company oneof the actually key differentiating factors for
the Venture Studio as well that that I'mrunning now is even my first company, even
before we got the 25 k from MovieLabs, I wasputting my own cash, my own money.
(25:22):
And because I felt so much comfortable using myown money to play with some ideas and doing
some experiments.
As soon as you take someone else's money, thenyou are obligated to answer them.
And because it's your fiduciary duty toactually tell them what's going on, whether the
ideas worked or not, right?
(25:42):
So then you to spend time in actually answeringpeople who actually give you money.
I would rather put my own money and then get toa point where you see the product working.
Then you'd actually see that point onwards ifyou want to, you know, take some of this money,
then you'll be in a better position to actuallyanswer them.
(26:05):
So that was my thesis behind every product,every company that I built.
And my first company, I invested heavily.
I was actually in the cap table.
I was close to 30% off the investment I did formy first company.
And my second company, I did 50% of theinvestments in total.
(26:28):
I did my own investment.
And then currently, I'm doing all bootstrapped.
Everything I'm investing in.
So except one company, but but everything elseis is all bootstrapped.
So, yeah, you're you're you're right.
As soon as you bring external investors, thenyou have to basically carve out some of your
(26:48):
time to basically answer and or or or updatethem.
I mean, nobody nobody can harass you, butstill, it is your duty to basically update
them.
Yeah.
But then then you're not gonna be spending thatmuch time to build the product.
Right?
So So when you're in the product building mode,then I would rather really focus on building
the product.
(27:08):
Yeah, I'm going to post a book recommendationhere.
There's a guy that I look up to his name isMark Ackler.
I think he deployed like three funds.
But before that he had a couple exits and he coauthored this book called Exit Right.
Really amazing book.
(27:28):
I think the forward was written by Brad Feld,but Mark Ackler is someone who I just like
really look up to.
He's like an OG, you know?
But like he this book is really good because ittalks about and we'll get into this too, like
things you need to think about.
Right?
Like what is an earn out?
Like, If you have an exit, could you havemultiple exits?
(27:50):
What are the terms of the exit?
Is it cash and stock?
Is it cash only?
And all of those things too.
Obviously one great exit, what are some thingsthat you learn from that?
Just in general exiting, what advice did yougive to new founders that are maybe on that
(28:10):
path?
Yeah.
I mean, there is a famous saying in the Valleythat don't try to sell.
You should be bought.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I I think that is very, you know, very true.
If you try to sell your company, then you'regonna be getting nothing.
Mhmm.
But if you are if you keep building theproduct, if you keep getting traction, then you
will get a lot of inbound interest.
(28:31):
And that's what happened even for my firstcompany.
The inbound interest were good and always keepthe doors open.
Don't say no to anyone.
Just evaluate it.
And then if it's good, then take it.
Otherwise, just keep moving forward.
The exit wise, I always believe the multiplematters.
(28:51):
It's not about valuation because I wouldstrongly I always prefer not to raise the
valuation super high in the initial phase.
Keep it low so that if you want to exit, it isgoing to be a lot easier when things are not
going well.
So if things are going really good, then you'reawesome.
(29:11):
But 99% of the time, the things will not gowell in the startup in a company.
In my first startup, I think the multiple therewas pretty significant because we raised only
1.25.
And so the multiple was pretty good both forinvestors and for the the team and the
(29:32):
founders.
So so if you operate lean and keep a very smallteam and don't raise too much capital and keep
the valuation low when you raise the capital,then you will be able to exit even at like
$20,000,000 or $30,000,000 right?
There's a
lot of companies that can acquire you at thatpoint than raising
(29:53):
a
raising a first round at $20,000,000, you know,pre money.
Then you have to exit at hundred milliondollars for you to see meaningful returns.
Hundred million dollar exit is gonna be really,really hard unless you create significant
revenue or significant traction.
And there are only few companies that will bewilling to acquire a hundred million dollar
(30:15):
exit.
So when things are not going well, if you canbe falling in the sweet spot of 20 to
$30,000,000 or 20 to Mhmm.
So which means you have to keep the valuationlow initially.
Yeah.
No.
Absolutely.
And you know what what should people thinkabout when they have different options like a,
(30:36):
you know, like a a stock sale versus like acash sale versus a hybrid?
Who have you looked to for advice kind ofnavigating?
Obviously, got your attorney, right?
But you need mentors.
Asking business advice from an attorney isdefinitely great, but then sometimes the
attorney can only go so far when it comes toactually making strategic business decisions.
(31:01):
So did you build a little advisory board ofmentors to help you that hopefully essentially
have also gone through that same experience?
Yeah.
Have a lot of even now, have a lot of adviserson the advisory board, they're all my friends.
Good friends because these are the people thatI actually met through some connections.
(31:22):
And of my really good friends who was on theboard of my previous company, and he's also one
of the advisors now, his name is Ranjit.
He's a serial entrepreneur, and he has soldmultiple companies.
So I actually met him for some kind ofpartnership that I wanted to actually when he
was running a different company.
And then we became really good friends.
And he was one of the advisors because lastcompany's exit, we'd had some issues.
(31:46):
So he was actually helping me a lot this.
And then my attorney, of course, now he he'salso a really good friend.
I've been working with him for the past, like,ten years now.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of people that you canactually get advice or even, like, inputs.
And then Yeah.
Like I said, at the end of the day, you have toput your own opinion and then see what you
think is right and then go for it becauseeveryone will have different opinions.
(32:10):
Everyone will be having like different kinds ofthoughts as to what I should be doing.
Right?
So someone might say, oh, you know, this is apretty low valuation.
Don't take all stock, don't take all cash orfour year vesting versus three year vesting.
So all these things, I think if you feelcomfortable, then go for it.
Sure.
Then tell me about the next venture, kind ofthe next business and what motivated you to
(32:35):
kind of start the next company?
And I guess like, what did you do afterwards?
I guess, did you still have to spend some timewith that company?
Because a lot of times too, like when there'san exit, you have to obviously run and operate
the company for some time.
And then there's usually like a term wherethey'll hire a CEO.
Yeah.
So when my first company got acquired, I didnot join that startup.
(32:56):
I left some money on the table because peoplewho joined, they actually had some more cash
coming in over a period of vesting period.
But I did not join because was going throughsome personal life situation, so I had to deal
with that.
So I started my next company after one and ahalf years after the exit.
(33:16):
Mhmm.
First first first company.
What did you do in that time?
Did you
just take some time off and just Yeah.
Like I said, no.
Was dealing with the the the personal lifeYeah.
So I was I was going through that.
But then I was also actually ideating for thenext startup.
And the next startup was more like an extensionto my first startup.
It's in the same space.
It's in the TV entertainment space.
(33:37):
But this was a little bit better than what Iwas doing before with all the lessons learned.
This was also a streaming device that I wasbuilding.
So this is the TV that's like super thin.
That is what I'm doing now.
That's new one.
Okay.
Got it.
Yeah.
That's a new one.
Yeah.
So the last That's this place.
Right?
That's this place.
Yeah.
That's right.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
But the my last company was called Dabkickwhere we built an AI powered streaming device.
(34:03):
It was called Dabby.
So Dabby was a kind of a universal searchengine that we created, and it will navigate
through all the subscriptions that you have.
So we want to actually create this kind of aone subscription manager because people have
HBO subscriptions, and then they watch Game ofThrones, and then you forget to basically
cancel the subscription.
(34:23):
Subscription.
So the platform that we created was it willunderstand what you're watching.
It will know you're not using HBO, and it'llautomatically go cancel it for you.
And then when you want to watch Game of Thronesagain, it'll automatically re enable for you.
So it will do everything in the back end.
And then you are not going be switching betweenapps.
You just say, I want to watch Maverick.
(34:45):
And then it will find the best source for you.
And it will immediately play, instantly play onyour TV.
So was
the How is it play without you paying for it,though?
So you we were charging subscriptions.
So
Okay.
Got it.
Okay.
So you pay us a flat subscription fee, amonthly subscription fee for unlimited
So you're like almost like a separate Paramountpretty much.
Exactly.
(35:05):
Yeah.
But because a lot of those there's a lot ofthose streaming services, it's the same price
for a lot of those movies.
I mean, we we change them up all the time, butif you get Paramount, sometimes some of those
movies are already on Amazon as well.
Right.
Exactly.
So people would they may not know that thismovie is available on TV for free.
(35:26):
Yeah.
But you may wanna watch, like, a couple of ads.
Yeah.
And people may be okay with that.
Right?
So that that that was the whole search enginethat we created where it will navigate through
different sources that you may not be evenactually aware of.
And then it will but you don't have to knowwhere it's coming from.
All you care about is, is it four ks?
Is it high quality?
(35:47):
And is it going to be paying for free?
And with no ads, right?
That is the ideal combo.
So we will try to find that ideal combo for youand then it will instantly play.
Did you meet any of those people that wouldprogram those boxes?
Because it's kind of like in your area.
I knew a guy when I was in Florida, and I don'tthink this was 100% legal, but he would take
(36:08):
those boxes.
They're like these little mini, I think it wasactually the Apple TVs.
And they would reprogram it and essentially youcould pretty much watch anything.
And I think they also added a new thing whichwas games.
And I actually bought one from him but the onlything is it wasn't really working all the time.
You might have seen Maverick or something.
(36:29):
I was like, this is not reliable.
So I'm just going to pay for Netflix.
It's only $9 like a month.
So it wasn't worth it.
But he was doing pretty well.
I mean, would handle shipping and send it outto people.
I know there's some people and what he wassaying apparently that it was legit, I think
(36:50):
because it's open source.
But I don't know if you came across it.
It sounds like something that's similar to yourWell, there
were a few jailbreaking companies.
That's what they do.
Basically, they they get these streamingdevices, and they'll do they'll do the
jailbreaking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But but there were other companies where likelike Plex, for example.
(37:10):
So Plex is actually a legal open sourcesoftware that will be bringing all these
content together.
And so Plex was one of the competitors that wewere actually dealing with.
But nobody was actually having a device thatyou can buy.
Because ours was so one, the device will beconnecting to the TV through HDMI.
(37:32):
And then we also believed that the secondscreen experience is very important.
So we were shipping a touch screen along withthat.
So that is where you'll be browsing, not on theTV.
So you'll be browsing on the touch screen, andthen you tap on the content that you want to
watch, and then it will instantly play on theTV.
So similar concept to my first startup, butthis is more like an advanced search engine.
(37:55):
And, you know, we applied a lot of subscriptionmodels into that.
And so you don't have to deal with differentapps and different content switching.
So that was the whole idea.
Plus, how do you bring the entire web?
Because today, if you look at the TV, there arethere are streaming apps.
Right?
So but what if you wanna watch TikTok?
What if you Mhmm.
(38:15):
Wanna basically watch Wall Street Journalvideos?
Yeah.
The problem with those things is now WallStreet Journal has to create a TV app for their
video content, and they don't have engineeringresources for that.
Sure.
The TV ecosystem is also so fragmented.
Now you have Roku operating system.
You have Samsung operating system, LG.
So everyone has their own operating system,which provider,
(38:39):
you
have to create apps for all these platforms.
Yes.
Will be incredibly harder to manage.
Mhmm.
So but if you look at the web web, there isonly a thing called website, and pre people
create just for website, like, you know, andWall Street Journal, wsj.com, if you go and
then you can watch all the videos.
And that website can play in any browser.
(39:00):
So that is the whole model that we used forDabby where it will be browser based operating
system.
And so that we can play any content that isavailable on the web, but you will see it is
more like an app.
So you as a consumer, you will not see any URLbar or nothing.
So so that that was a big difference that wemade in Dabby.
(39:21):
And, again, we launched Dabby 2020 just beforeCOVID, and and we won the best of CES again for
Dabby.
And and that then we started shipping duringCOVID time.
You know, that was a hard time becauseeverything was shut down.
Were not able to manufacture.
And so we had to take PPP loans and all thesethings.
And then we started shipping and we turned thecompany around and then we got acquired in 2021
(39:45):
by a public company.
Wow.
Yeah, that's crazy.
And then, so then after that you realize maybeyou can kind of grow a business of just kind of
building these consumer.
And then do now have like pods of teams likemaybe a mini CEO that kind of runs?
For all this, got product development, you gotmarketing, you got distribution, supply chain.
You probably had to build teams.
(40:09):
And you got how many now?
You got six under your belt that you'remanaging?
Seven of
your active companies.
So, you know, that is the main reason Iactually started the Venture Studio because all
these companies so the the the seven companies,the commonality between these seven companies
is AI for consumers.
So that is so we strongly I I strongly believethat no there will be no AI product, but AI
(40:33):
will be living in other consumer products.
Because consumers don't care whether it is AIor not, are they getting value from the
products?
I think it's a very well known user experiencenow.
A lot of times when I do stuff now, when Isearch, I'm looking for a prompt.
I was doing this thing with my son.
(40:54):
I think I told you this a while back, but weprinted these T shirts and I was expecting a
prompt.
Was like, that'd be cool if I could just use AIto generate it.
I think it's going to be just the next, theprompt is just going be as common as the next
search bar.
Whenever you want to do something, be like,hey, you know what, pull up the top searches of
(41:16):
military movies from 1980 and it'll give you alot more context as a prompt versus search.
So I think it would be like a native userexperience everywhere.
And then look, you've made hit after hit, thesecompanies are doing well.
Tell me like a next level product that you'vebeen thinking about.
(41:38):
I got one and maybe you're going to tear itapart, but I just think it's still a pain.
Like when I'm taking photos of my family, Istill gotta go like this and take a photo and
like, hopefully they don't I imagine if therewas like a piercing that I had and like, it was
like a camera and it was like a gimbal wherelike even if I'm turning it any side, it would
(41:58):
still be focused.
Because in that way, like I get the truefeeling of like my memory that I had because
like usually all the memories that we have iscoming from our eye our eyesight, right?
So I feel like you can capture that same memoryif there's a camera or something here.
And obviously you can turn it off, butespecially if there's like I've seen some of
(42:19):
these crazy videos on YouTube where people getabused by cops.
Cops are like kinda wrongly using theirauthority and abusing their authority on
people.
And people are trying to pull out their cameraand then the cops are like, hey, you know what?
They just snapped the phone out of their hand.
But if they know they're in real time, you tapyour ear and they're real time recorded for
(42:41):
their behavior, they may actually behave.
Yeah.
I think that accountability, but don't knowwhat your thoughts are on that around privacy
and even if you think it's a good product orbusiness.
Mean, wearables is definitely something thatit's been going on for the past, like, a
decade.
So if you look at Google Glass, was the firstkind of AR expert, what what they talk about.
(43:06):
And then I actually bought recently the MetaRay Ban glasses.
Yeah.
How are those?
It's pretty good.
I wear prescription glasses, so I don't wearsunglasses.
But I I just wanna see how well it is.
But it's very well made.
I would say that it's it I was even surprisedto see how well it works.
Mhmm.
(43:26):
So that you can actually use to take videos,and you can take pictures.
And it also has this meta AI, so you canactually ask a question.
Yeah.
You can say that, no, what am I what what am Ilooking at?
And then it will say, no, I'm looking at someorange or whatever.
So it has a speaker that tells you kinda talksto you.
Yeah.
It has a speaker.
But the problem is, like, you know, the batterylife and you have to charge.
So I keep it in the car, but I don't chargethat all the time.
(43:50):
So Yeah.
And they have done a really good job inthermals because all these variables, the
problem is the battery life and then the theheat.
The heat.
Yeah.
So but I would say that the Meta AR glasses byfar I'm not a big fan of wearables except the
Apple Watch that I wear.
And even that, I'm I would I would consider myphone to be much better than my Apple Watch.
(44:12):
But Yeah.
I'm not a swimmer.
I'm not a kind of a, you know, like a like aworkout health man.
But Apple Watch, I kinda like.
But any any wearable, like, you know, whereyou're piercing or you put on the face Mhmm.
That I I still call that as an kind of an ondemand computing.
Right?
You have put on your face.
But your idea of, like, always having apiercing on your ear Mhmm.
(44:36):
That is that is that could be more like anambient computing.
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, if you figure out how to get thatbattery life and how to remove the heat, then
Yeah.
It could be something interesting.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, hey, man.
This hour flew by.
Really just appreciated learning from you and,you know, enjoyed your story and congrats on
(44:56):
all the success.
And, know, I just think it's a unique model.
I've been talking to a lot of venture studios,as you know.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think some of the otherbenefits to his ownership, right?
You own more of the company.
And, you know, essentially, if you'vebootstrapped everything, then you can really
have the true direction of where you wanna takeit.
And
Yeah.
The biggest, yeah, the biggest difference inthe major feature lab that I'm running now is
(45:19):
before because the traditional venture studioswill be ideating within the venture studio, so
they'll be charging the LPs as managementmanagement fee and then use those management
fee to form a team to come up with ideas.
Yeah.
At Kija Lab, I put my own personal capital to Ito do the ideation phase.
So I'll take from ideation to seed stage.
Then once it gains traction in the market, thenwe bring those companies as portfolio under
(45:42):
Kijalab.
So which means we are derisking the wholeinvestments from LPs.
But the ownership of Kijalab in all thesecompanies is still significant, but it is a
venture studio.
So the return of investment on these companiesfrom venture studio point of view, it is still
the same.
Yeah.
That that that is a big difference and I thinkvery unique compared to any other venture
(46:07):
studio.
Yeah.
No.
Well, that's exciting, man.
Really appreciate you sharing that.
And I think, like I said, you know, super happyto hear all these amazing accomplishments.
And happy to have you as a friend and hopefullyI see you soon in New York or in San Francisco.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thanks, George.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Bye.
Thanks.
(46:27):
Bye.
Bye.
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