Episode Transcript
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Sunil Wadhwani (00:03):
This sounds a
little strange.
Be conservative in good timesand be willing to be a little
adventurous in tough times.
Georgianna Moreland (00:14):
This is
Masterstroke with Monica Enand
and Sejal Pietrzak, and welcometo our special guest host, Ned
Renzi.
Conversations with founders,CEOs and visionary leaders in
technology and beyond.
Sejal Pietrzak (00:37):
Welcome everyone
to our next edition of
Masterstroke.
We are really excited to haveSunil Wadwani here with us, and
I'm going to ask our guest host,Ned, to introduce him.
Ned Renzi (00:51):
Great Thanks, Sejal.
Sunil, great to see you.
Sunil Wadhwani is anentrepreneur, investor and
philanthropist.
He's best known as theco-founder and CEO of MassTech,
also iGate, both of which weremulti-billion dollar public
companies, and Igate wassubsequently acquired for about
$4 billion.
Sunil is also a prolific angelinvestor and I'm proud to have
(01:12):
made some co-investments withhim, including Cvent.
He was born in Delhi, india,graduated from IIT, madras, and
he moved to the United Statesand earned a degree from
Carnegie Mellon University.
Sunil is presently the managingpartner at SWAT Capital.
He's also focused on severalphilanthropic initiatives, two
(01:35):
of which are the WadwaniInitiative for Sustainable
Healthcare and the WadwaniInstitute for Artificial
Intelligence.
He currently resides inPittsburgh, pennsylvania.
Welcome, sunil.
Thanks for joining us.
I know I've known you for 20,pennsylvania.
Welcome, sunil.
Thanks for joining us.
I know I've known you for 20,25 years now, but I think you're
new to Sejal and some of ouraudience.
How about if we start, if yougive us a quick version of your
story?
Sunil Wadhwani (01:55):
Sure René thanks
, and Sejal René thanks for
inviting me.
I'm really happy to be overhere.
So, as you said, ned, I wasborn in India, went to school
over there, went to the IIT, asyou said, the Indian Institute
of Technology came here toCarnegie Mellon, got a master's
degree and, while I was at CMU,great school, but one thing I
(02:18):
decided was I didn't want towork for anyone else, that I
wanted to work for myselfclearly a defective gene back in
those days and so I started myfirst company after CMU, which
was a medical device company.
Five years of blood, sweat andtears later, and all of my life
savings in there, five yearslater, the company didn't
(02:41):
survive, so I went throughseveral weeks and months of some
fairly intense questioning whathad I done wrong, et cetera
Extracted what I thought weresome lessons, and then started a
new company in a completelydifferent field with a friend of
(03:01):
mine, and this was in the fieldof information technology
services, almost killed thatcompany, also in the first
couple of years, but we survived, and then we started growing
very rapidly.
So it took us two years tofigure out our product, our
service, you know, productmarket fit and so on.
(03:21):
Once we did that, though.
We started growing very quickly.
We went from zero to 10 millionin about three years.
We went from 10 million to 100million in revenue in three more
years.
We got on multiple lists these500 lists of the fastest growing
companies.
At about that time I took thecompany public and in the
(03:42):
subsequent four years we grewfrom $100 million to $500
million in revenues by the year2000,.
We had a market cap of about $3billion.
Then, of course, the techbubble burst and dragged all the
tech companies down with it,including us.
We went through anotherwrenching time, in fact at our
(04:04):
peak Ned and Sejal isinteresting in early 2000, our
stock price was at $77 a share.
Literally six or nine monthslater, with the tech downturn,
we were under $2 a share from$77.
Oh my goodness Two bucks.
That's like a 97% drop.
I don't know of any othercompany that survives that kind
(04:27):
of drop.
I know several others at thattime, companies like ours that
went under.
We slashed costs, we reducedheadcount, we pivoted our
strategy and so on.
Long story short, we startedgrowing again, revenues grew
again, and so by about 10 yearsago our revenues were over a
billion dollars and we got anunsolicited offer for our
(04:52):
company to be acquired by thisbig French company called
Capgemini, and they paid us $4.5billion.
So that was a happy ending tothat story to that story.
Ned Renzi (05:12):
Sunil is a friend and
observer of your business
success.
I really admire what you'vealso done philanthropically,
especially with your healthcareinitiatives.
Please tell us how and why youpick those initiatives when you
grew up in India.
Sunil Wadhwani (05:20):
You're always
surrounded by poverty.
It's never that far away, andit always struck me that you
know so much of life is random,and probably the most random
thing in life but that affectsour entire you know, course of
our life is the family intowhich we happen to be born.
And I was very fortunate, likemany of my friends, being born
(05:42):
into a good, middle-class familythat also happened to speak
English at home, et cetera,because of which I went to an
English medium school and I didwell.
Because of that, I was able toget into IIT.
Because of that, cmu and so on.
And I could have been born aquarter mile away, literally a
few hundred yards away from home, in a slum, and life would have
(06:04):
been very different.
I wouldn't have had all thechoices I've had.
So back in the 90s I startedsaying I've been very fortunate
and I should be, you know,trying to help others who don't
have quite the same good fortunethat I've had.
I just got interested inhealthcare because to me it's
one of the two fundamentalbuilding blocks of development
Healthcare and education is theother one, and healthcare was
(06:24):
interesting to me and isinteresting because it's a much
more complex ecosystem.
Any country you go to, there'sso many moving parts.
You know doctors, hospitals,regulators, nurses, you've got
technology.
It's a very complicatedecosystem and trying to make
change in a highly regulatedindustry is very, very difficult
.
So I thought let me try andattack healthcare.
(06:47):
I worked with other nonprofitsin the healthcare space, but I
finally got a little bitdisappointed by their inability
to scale up.
So about 10 years ago I startedmy first nonprofit in the
healthcare space in India calledthe Wish Foundation, and we try
(07:08):
and transform primary healthsystems in low-income
communities using technology andinnovation.
So at this stage we run over1,500 clinics in low-income
areas around India.
We've treated over 35 millionfamilies with free healthcare
since we got started.
So that's going extremely well.
And these models that we'vedeveloped for tech-driven urban
(07:31):
healthcare, tech-driven ruralhealthcare, these models that
we've adopted are nowincreasingly being used by
governments around India.
You know state governments andlocal municipal governments
around India.
So, for example, the wholeDelhi, the healthcare program in
the city of Delhi, with over 30million people in the urban
area.
We have to design that systemand launch it.
(07:53):
The city of Mumbai, also withover 30 million people, two
years back launched a very largeurban health program.
We have designed that program,we have launched it, etc.
So, like that, we work inmultiple places around India and
now we are by next year, we'llbe starting to work in Africa.
So that's one.
Then about five years ago, ned,I had been serving on the board
(08:14):
of trustees of Carnegie MellonUniversity for many years, so I
was able to see up close.
You know, cmu is one of theglobal leaders in artificial
intelligence, so I could see upclose kind of what was happening
.
And it always struck me thatall of this great work in AI
very powerful technology wasbeing basically funded by
(08:36):
commercial companies forcommercial purposes.
Right, nothing wrong with that,that's what companies do.
But it just struck me that noone that I could see anywhere in
the world was applying AI forsocial development.
How do we improve lives of thebottom three, four billion
people in the world in areaslike education, health care,
agriculture and so on, using theapp?
So I spoke to my brother, whois also a tech entrepreneur on
(08:58):
the West Coast very successful,also a Carnegie Mellon grad and
we decided why don't we jointlystart a nonprofit institute of
artificial intelligence in India?
So Prime Minister Modi came toinaugurate that institute and we
now have by far the largestgroup of people anywhere in the
world working on AI for socialdevelopment.
(09:18):
We've got over 300 full-timeartificial intelligence, machine
learning experts, domainexperts in these fields of
education, healthcare and so ondeveloping these applications.
So just to give you then,beyond that, I started this year
a school of AI at my alma mater, which is the Indian Institute
(09:39):
of Technology, madras, todevelop really a top-notch
global level training andresearch program in AI.
So that just got launched 90days ago but we already have
over 65 or 70 faculty members,we have over 300 students and
hopefully within three or fouryears we'll be able to take our
place alongside the CMUs and theMITs in terms of the quality of
(10:02):
research and teaching that wedo.
So that's overall what we'redoing.
But to give you just a quicksense of kind of the power of AI
in these kinds of applications,so in my AI nonprofit, my AI
foundation, we work very closelywith government right, because
government knows what thenational priorities are and so
(10:22):
on.
So in India there's close to abillion people who rely on the
public health system and theyinteract with their first step
into the public health system ifthey have any issue of cough or
cold, a snake bite, a brokenbone, whatever.
You go to a place called ahealth and wellness center and
these are small, you know, likeprimary care clinics.
(10:44):
They're headed by someonecalled a community health
officer, or CHO, who is not aphysician.
Okay, this is a person from thecommunity who's received
training, but, again, who isn'ta physician, and very often they
struggle, you know, when lotsof patients come in.
So middle of last year, thegovernment of India asked us
could we develop an AI-based appto help these 170,000 community
(11:07):
health officers around Indiadiagnose better what their
patient's conditions are, comeup with treatment plans and so
on.
So we came up with version oneof this clinical decision
support system a few months ago.
It's still in pilot, but it'salready being used for over 5
million consultations a month.
(11:27):
Okay, close to 200,000consultations a day.
I don't know of any systemanywhere in the world that's at
that level of scale.
And, like I said, it's stillversion one.
Once we have it and it's in onelanguage six months from now,
once we have it available inmultiple Indian languages, we
voice, enable it, et cetera.
The government is telling usthis could be an absolute game
(11:48):
changer and the World HealthOrganization is telling us in
the global south, this could bea game changer because you know
there's a shortage of goodpeople at all of these places.
Georgianna Moreland (11:57):
That's
saving a lot of lives.
Sunil Wadhwani (11:59):
That's exactly,
exactly so.
We've got 25 very powerfulAI-based platforms we've
developed on how to detecthigh-risk pregnancies early on
and how to make the rightintervention so that these
babies are born without aproblem and the mother doesn't
have a problem.
We have AI apps in the field oftuberculosis, which is today
still by far the largestinfectious disease killer in the
(12:20):
world.
Close to 2 million people ayear die of tuberculosis, and
the biggest challenge is justdetecting tuberculosis.
You know 4 million people ayear around the world go
undetected.
These are the folks who developmajor problems, who often die
of the disease, and detecting TBis fairly cumbersome.
So we've developed an AI-basedsystem that can detect TB from
(12:44):
the sound of a cough into asmartphone.
Now think of how complex thattechnology is.
Right, you or I could cough.
There could be a thousandreasons for the cough, from dust
in the air to a little viralinfection, to whatever.
Ned Renzi (12:56):
And the error bar
false positives, false negatives
, on something like that.
Sunil Wadhwani (13:01):
So we are
getting to a very high level of
accuracy.
Ned Renzi (13:04):
That's incredible.
Sunil Wadhwani (13:06):
Yeah, and so
this is now starting to be
deployed.
We had it in pilot, but now inthe next few months it's going
to start getting deployed inmultiple states, in India, and
again the World HealthOrganization is saying as soon
as you have some scale in India,they want to take this
throughout the global Southbecause this could be used in.
Africa.
So we have a range of solutionsIn education.
(13:28):
As an example, india, like alot of countries, has a very
high school dropout rate, and itturns out that the reason
people drop out from school veryearly on you know when they're
8, 10, 12 years old is lack ofreading fluency.
And if you're not comfortablereading in whatever language
you're being educated in, you'lldo poorly in all the subjects,
(13:51):
and when you're doing poorly,you'll drop out, and then that
affects you for the rest of yourlife.
So we've come up with anAI-based platform for assessing
the reading fluency of kids intheir early grades in school.
And this is like a words perminute or accuracy All of the
above Exactly Words per minuteand we detect, we see which
(14:15):
words the student fumbles withor isn't able to pronounce
clearly.
We detect patterns and then wego back and advise the teacher
on a you know remedial programand so on.
So it's highly customized, youknow it's pupil by pupil etc.
And the government in fact thisgot introduced in a few schools
in the state of Gujarat inWestern India last state.
(14:36):
The state government thought theresults were powerful enough
that they introduced it to allthree million school kids in the
state of Bishak Every singleone is assessed on this tool,
and now the federal government,the central government in India,
is looking to introduce this to10 to 15 states next year, so
(14:57):
it'll be getting used by tens ofmillions of students, and then
again the goal is to take it toAfrica and elsewhere.
So I use these only to show thepower of AI.
Now, these are nonprofitapplications, but equally
powerful commercial applicationsthat are coming up.
Ned Renzi (15:12):
Well, it's not just
the global South here.
We could use that in the UnitedStates, In the United States.
Sunil Wadhwani (15:16):
I agree, I agree
, I agree.
Sejal Pietrzak (15:27):
But you know, it
goes to show that you know you
truly have the trueentrepreneurial spirit, because
everything you're doing is veryinnovative and you're starting
everything from scratch, whichis phenomenal.
But what I love is that it'sreally giving back to not only
(15:51):
India but the world, the globaleconomy, and it's really
impacting so many people acrossso many different areas of
really important needs.
So thank you for everythingyou're doing, sunil, it's really
amazing.
Sunil Wadhwani (16:01):
Not at all.
I just feel very blessed to beable to do something like this.
So thank you.
Ned Renzi (16:08):
Sunil, I want to take
off on one thing you had
mentioned about the healthcareinitiatives and sort of for the
global south, and I think youmentioned building an ecosystem.
Yes, when I hear language likethat, it's kind of foundational
for me that it's going to beself-sustaining, almost from a
capitalistic standpoint, and soat some point these things will
(16:29):
stand on their own and notreceive grant money.
So how are you achieving thator how do you plan that
transition?
Sunil Wadhwani (16:38):
So if you divide
up everything I've said into
two groups, groups, so one groupis the pure non-profit
initiative.
So that's my public healthfoundation, it's my artificial
intelligence foundation and it'smy new school of artificial
intelligence at iit madras,that's in one group and, like I
said, I provide the core funding.
But at least for my twonon-profits that have been
(16:59):
around a few years, they they umgenerate, like I said, three or
four recs what I give them fromother sources, so that to me
provides, you know, long termstability.
The second thing we've we I'vetold them to start looking at is
as we start going international.
So this coming year, in 2025,we'll be taking many of our AI
(17:20):
solutions in healthcare andeducation to several countries
in Africa.
We're already in discussionswith them.
I've told my nonprofits thatwhat we're providing is a
valuable service.
If McKinsey or BCG or someoneelse were doing it, they would
be charging for this.
So I suggested to them thatmaybe, even though we're
nonprofits, we should considercharging governments some kind
(17:40):
of subsidized rate for theservices we're providing.
And then, of course, thebalance of the funds keep coming
from my foundation and fromother folks, like I said, like
Gates and so on, for mycompanies that entrepreneurial
approach to social development.
These, of course, arestandalone companies.
I provide the starting capital,I get these companies going,
(18:00):
but then they go out and raisefunding from other sources.
So, interestingly, these 15 orso companies that I've started
in the last 18 months eventhough it's been a very tough
fundraising environment globallyUS, india, everywhere they've
raised over $200 millioncumulatively from outside
(18:21):
sources, from venture capitalfirms and so on.
So that to me, is a sign thatthey are, you know, now under
their own steam.
I provided the startup capital,I put the teams together, gave
the ideas, but now they'restarting to walk and run on
their own and many of them arenow getting to the $5, $10, $20
(18:42):
million range in terms ofrevenues.
Several of them have gone tothe $100 million plus range in
terms of valuation, and in theshort space of two, three years.
To me, those are pretty goodmetrics to wrap.
Ned Renzi (18:55):
Yeah, congratulations
, that sounds fantastic.
Sejal Pietrzak (19:00):
Can I actually
ask you?
So?
You've done this amazing shift.
I have so many questions aboutyour company and growing that to
a billion dollars in revenuefrom essentially nothing and
exiting at a very successful$4.5 billion of value, but I'll
leave that.
What I was going to ask you isso for those executives who are
(19:25):
listening, who have, you know,maybe gotten to a point where
they're exited companies orthey're looking at the next
stage in their careers, like youhave done, and are now giving
back well, you've got some forprofit, but, you know, in a lot
of what you're doing is givingback to make the world a better
(19:46):
place.
How do you recommend?
They sort of think abouttransitioning.
You know they're close toretirement not really because
you know they're probably ourage, you know, and they're not
really, you know, ready toretire, but they want to stay
relevant.
Like you said, you're busy allthe time and you have to be on
(20:08):
your toes and they want to beengaged and help the next
generations.
What would you recommend?
What is your advice?
Sunil Wadhwani (20:12):
So what I
suggest is, first of all, it is
super important to stay relevant, to continue having a sense of
purpose about life.
I'm at the stage where many ofmy friends have retired and they
used to have very busy livesbeing physicians or senior
corporate executives and so on,and suddenly you go from being
(20:34):
very busy to suddenly having nochallenge In many cases if you
don't have any other interests,not having a sense of purpose in
life, and that can bedebilitating and I've seen, in
fact, unfortunately, some of myfriends go into cognitive
decline because again here yourbrain is pumping at you know,
(20:55):
full speed for like 40 yearswhile you're working and then
suddenly it stops one day and itdoesn't have that much to do.
So A keeping a sense of purposeis, I think, really important,
not just staying busy for busysake, but doing something that
you feel adds some value andthat's worth finding.
And what I suggest to peoplewho are, let's say, late in
(21:17):
their careers or early inretirement but even if you're
late in your career and Irealize how busy things are
don't wait until you're retiredto start something.
Try and develop some interestsin your 50s, in your early 60s,
and it could be anything.
It could be education for younggirls, it could be healthcare,
(21:38):
it could be somethingtechnologically driven.
I have a very good friend ofmine here, also an entrepreneur
in Pittsburgh, who has startedseveral successful technology
companies and two or three yearsback, while running tech
companies, he started anonprofit initiative in
Pittsburgh to provide mathteaching and AI training for
(22:00):
kids in inner city schools andhe's working his organization is
working in multiple schools,etc.
So I use that as an example toshow that how you can take your
day-to-day interest.
So this gentleman's interest istech and entrepreneurship and
so on, and now he's taken thatpassion of his and he's seeing
how do I help young kids fromlower income families, you know,
(22:22):
develop these kinds of skills?
So I mean, the US, for example,has over a million I think I
read nonprofit organizations, sothere's something there for
everyone.
And if someone wants to giveback to their country of origin,
there are fairly simple ways offinding kind of you know, good
organizations in all theseplaces.
So I would encourage everyone,all of your listeners, to just
think about that.
Sejal Pietrzak (22:42):
Yeah, that's
great advice, Sunil.
Ned Renzi (22:45):
Good advice and
perspective.
I think there's.
A Harvard professor wrote abook called From Strength to
Strength.
Yes, and it describes theprocess almost exactly like what
you did, so I'm glad to walk itout, sunil.
Sunil Wadhwani (22:58):
In fact,
speaking of Harvard books, of
course there's the famousHarvard professor, clayton
Christensen, and he wrote thiswonderful book.
Of course he had written aboutcompetition and you know, et
cetera, but then I think maybe10 or 15 years ago, he wrote a
book called how Will you Measureyour Life?
Yes, and a very different book.
It's not about business oranything.
(23:19):
It's about the kind of subjectwe're talking about.
You know, how will you measurewhat impact you had?
And it's a slim book, thin book, very easy to read, and I found
it very instructive.
In fact, my son also read itand it had a big impact on him
too.
Ned Renzi (23:34):
Yeah, now, speaking
of kids, you know you and I have
had some conversations over theyears on, like how do you raise
kids with the values that youcherish?
You know, while you haveachieved affluence and success,
and I know it's worked well withyour kids, and so maybe any
advice for the parents out therewho are trying to balance
(23:55):
running companies, raising kidsand raising them with the values
you cherish?
Sunil Wadhwani (24:02):
Candidly, I
don't think it's that tough.
I mean, as parents, we all havevalues and good values we want
to impart to our kids.
So whether it's honesty orintegrity, or hard work or
compassion, you know, caring forthe family, et cetera.
So I think when all of our kids, when they see us behaving this
way every day, they absorb thevalues.
(24:23):
When they see us working hardevery day we don't have to tell
them to work hard, they can seeus working hard that has an
impact.
When they see us living ourlives with honesty and integrity
, that has an impact on them.
So I think, just number onestaying grounded ourselves.
And it doesn't matter how muchmoney you have or don't have.
We're all essentially the samehuman beings.
We're all trying to do theright things in life and for our
(24:45):
kids.
So I think when the kids seethat on a day-to-day basis, as
they're growing up, they kind ofgrow up with the same values.
The issues I think occur whenand I see this sometimes in the
US, I see this sometimes in theUS, I see this sometimes in
other countries, you know, inthe global south when you have
families, let's say, that havebecome affluent, where you still
(25:09):
have lots of poverty around youand where the family isn't
really doing too much to helpalleviate any of that poverty
for anyone, then I think thekids start seeing a little bit
of a dichotomy.
They see the wonderful lifethat their family is living Also
in some cases in the globalsouth.
(25:30):
Sometimes that money is made ina way that's not totally kosher
.
It's made based on you know,contacts someone has in
government or some unethicalthings people do, etc.
Kids see all of this stuff, yes, and if they see that dad or
mom is making money in thisunderhanded way, they're very
sharp in what's going on andthey're trying to tell me about
honesty, integrity et cetera.
(25:51):
That's when you start havingkind of an issue between the
values that the parents talkabout versus what they seem to
live every day.
Ned Renzi (26:00):
Yes, you know we've
jumped around quite a bit.
You know, back at the beginningyou've told this story of some
tremendous ups and downs in yourentrepreneurial career and sort
of.
You know, we're just coming outof this period, sort of
post-COVID, where you know, alot of the founders I work with
only came into the market post2009.
(26:21):
Right, so everything's been upand to the right and it was
their first recession.
And now we're heading into asituation with, like, massive US
debt, some global hot pointsand things like that.
Any advice for our executivesout there who are listening, one
, just sort of how to runcompanies with all this
uncertainty around you?
Sunil Wadhwani (26:39):
run companies
with all this uncertainty around
you?
Sure, that's a great question.
And I would add to theuncertainty, ned, not just this
kind of increasing level ofglobal disorder that we're
sitting in, which isn't goingaway anytime soon, in my
estimation, and in fact it maywell get worse in the next two,
three, four years.
(26:59):
And, of course, we've hadissues, as you said, in the US
high debt, high level ofpolitical division and so on.
On the good side, as you said,we've had a very buoyant economy
that's been going for 16 yearswithout a major recession.
I don't recall ever seeing astretch this long without a
(27:20):
major downturn, so something maybe coming up.
And then, finally, there's allthe changes in technology and
specifically in AI, that are atthe very, very, very early
stages of having any impact, youknow, in a large scale way in
our daily lives or in ourcompanies.
It'll take three or four yearsmore, but I think beyond that,
(27:44):
we will see change starting tohappen, the AI-driven change
happening at a very rapid paceand, like I said, that's three,
four years away, but then it'llreally skyrocket, it'll really
accelerate very quickly.
So for, like you said, for asenior executive, how does one
navigate at volatile times likethis.
So, to me, the two or threelessons I try and keep in mind
(28:06):
for myself and, like you said,I've been through a fair number
of ups and downs and recessionsand so on Number one good times
are bad, but especially if yousense some bad times coming up,
stay close to your mostimportant customers Absolutely
key.
And that starts at the CEOlevel.
You don't leave it to yourfolks in your sales group or
(28:28):
anyone else.
All the senior executives, butstarting with the CEO, have to
be in very close touch withtheir customers, and the reason
is not just to protect yourbusiness Obviously you're doing
that from competition but it'salso to keep a very close handle
on changing customer needs, andcustomer needs change very
(28:50):
quickly nowadays.
It's not like they're static.
For five or ten years, you know.
Within a couple of years youwill see needs evolve.
And, as important as that,talking to customers also gives
you a very good heads up intowhat your competitors are up to.
So it's a very good way to keeptabs on the competitive
landscape, all of which is veryimportant because, especially
(29:11):
when companies are doing well,we sit back and we tend to pat
ourselves on the back and say,oh look, life is doing great.
That means my strategy is great, my execution is great and we
lose sight of how quicklycompetitive differentiators can
erode.
We lose sight of how quicklycompetition can swoop in and
make life tough for us.
(29:31):
So number one is stay veryclose to competitors.
Number two as I said, keep avery close handle on sorry.
Number one stay very close tocustomers.
Number two keep a very closetabs on the competitive
landscape and what's happening.
Number three is this sounds alittle strange be conservative
(29:52):
in good times and be willing tobe a little adventurous in tough
times.
What I mean by that is when youlook at companies that get into
trouble, like they getover-indebted or they do bad
acquisitions, typically, you'llsee typically that most of these
decisions that got thesecompanies into trouble, big or
small, were decisions that weremade in good times, when you
(30:15):
know revenues were going great,profitability was going great,
the marketplace outside is doingwell and you tend to feel
you're on top of the world andthat's when the mistakes get
made.
You're flush with cash.
You say, sure, interest ratesare low, why don't I borrow, you
know, a whole bunch of money todo this acquisition, forgetting
that 70% of acquisitions don'twork in real life, et cetera, et
(30:36):
cetera.
So that's why, during goodtimes, I caution my people to be
careful not to get carried awaywith all this stuff.
Conversely, when times are bad,to me, in some ways, management
becomes easier.
You know that you've got to cutdown frivolous expenses, you've
got to hunker down, you've gotto stay very close to your
(30:57):
customers, et cetera.
But to me, those are also timesto perhaps take some risks.
So, as an example, anacquisition that you might have
eyed a year ago you know, whentimes were great might have cost
X Today because, let's say, arecession has started or
interest rates have gone up.
That value might be down by 30or 40%.
Well, that might be somethingto look at right now.
(31:21):
So when times are tough is whenI tell my team let's get
creative.
Obviously, we're not going tojust blow money up, but there
are values.
Now you know low valuationsthat we haven't seen for a while
.
Why don't we see what we can dowith this?
So just a little contrarianthinking, both in good times as
well as in bad, with this.
(31:41):
So just a little contrarianthinking, both in good times as
well as in bad, but as aconstant through all of it
staying very close to customers,staying on top of what a
competition is up to, makingsure that your team is always
motivated, no major gapsanywhere and this is a whole
separate subject.
We don't have to go into itright now but, especially for
any startup, you'll find thatevery three or four years, the
(32:06):
senior management team needs tobe starting with the CEO.
By the way, starting with theCEO, one needs to take a fresh
look at okay, these people didwell for us for the last three
or four years.
Are they the right ones for thenext three or four years?
Because the management that youneed, especially at the CEO
level in a brand-new startup,that's at the $2 million, $3
(32:28):
million level, it's kind ofdifferent from the leadership
that you need at the $20 millionlevel.
It's different from theleadership you need at the $100
million $200 million level.
It's different from theleadership you need at the $100,
$200 million level.
It's different from theleadership you need at the
billion plus level and a lot of,I would say the majority of
CEOs aren't able to make allthose transitions which, going
back to something we said earlyin our conversation, to me
(32:50):
that's the single biggest reasonthat startups don't scale, even
the ones that we know.
70% of tech startups don'tsurvive first of all, the first
five years, but what I found is,even the ones that survive,
that five years typically don'tscale beyond 100 to 150
employees, and I found that tobe kind of true, whether you're
in the US or India or China orwherever, and the single most
(33:14):
important reason for that, Ithink, is the inability of that
founder CEO to scale up throughthese different levels of
leadership.
Sejal Pietrzak (33:22):
No, you're
exactly right, Sunil.
We talked about that exactthing in a previous podcast
about how there are differentleadership needed at different
stages of a company's existence.
And you have to do it.
You have to realize, as theinvestor or even as the
(33:44):
executive, if you're there, thatyou do what you can do at the
right stages, but you may not bethe person for that next stage
of business.
Sunil Wadhwani (33:54):
Absolutely,
absolutely, exactly right.
Sejal Pietrzak (33:58):
I was going to
ask you a little bit about the
previous earlier, very early inthis podcast, you talked about
the fact that your first companyfailed completely.
Then you joined, then youstarted the new company and then
you lost 97% of your marketshare.
Sunil Wadhwani (34:15):
essentially,
Market cap yes, seven percent of
your market share, essentiallymarket cap, yes, market cap.
Sejal Pietrzak (34:19):
And then you,
you, you went back up with, with
, uh, you know, suddenly makingthat company so successful, so
ned.
When you were going to askabout ups and downs, I thought
that's what you were going toask about on the personal side.
How did you handle, um, the theups and the downs?
Um, on the personal side, thedowns on the personal side, but
(34:41):
also on the business side, whatwas it that kept that resilience
and perseverance going when youlose 97% of your market cap?
I mean, how do you do that?
Sunil Wadhwani (34:55):
That's a very
good question.
I'm not sure I have a clearanswer, but I think what you do
is number one.
When things are down, I'velearned first of all don't blame
anyone else.
You have to hold yourselfaccountable.
This medical device companythat, like I said, after five
(35:17):
years, it just you know, we ranout of cash and the company
closed up and whatever littlelife savings I'd had at that
stage, you know, went down thetubes.
You know, I've looked at lots ofobituaries of other startup
companies that don't survive etcetera, and you know, and people
ask the founder CEO, why did herun out of you know trouble?
(35:39):
And what I've seen is there'salways a tendency to blame some
externality, like my venturecapitalists wouldn't give me any
more money, or customers didn'tget the value of what they were
trying to sell, or the markethad a recession.
To me, all of that isabsolutely pointless and you
have to look at yourself.
So after my, after that company, my first company died.
(36:01):
I took a hard look and I saidwhat were the key mistakes that
I made?
And it wasn't easy and it tooka while, because even when our
second company got started, thisIT services company, I repeated
some of those same mistakes inthe first year or two.
No-transcript Mostentrepreneurs really don't think
(36:44):
that through well enough, andthat was one of my cardinal
mistakes.
In my medical device company wehad a device that we patented
that cut down the risk ofinfection following certain
kinds of surgery.
Okay, you know,hospital-acquired infection in
those days, 30 years ago andeven today, is a giant issue.
Over 100,000 people even todaydie from hospital-acquired
(37:07):
infections in the US every year.
So I thought this is great.
Doctors will love this medicaldevice.
It, you know, improves outcomes.
Blah, blah, blah.
No, no, no, not that easy Goingout and selling to them,
convincing them to change oldhabits and go for this new thing
.
I hadn't even thought abouthospital procurement systems and
(37:28):
how tough those are to navigate, et cetera.
So lesson number one that Ilearned, like I said, was you
have to hear from yourprospective customers that they
feel what you have, your productor service, is compelling your
prospective customers, that theyfeel what you have, your
product or service, iscompelling, and compelling
enough that they will leavewhatever they're doing currently
.
You know, and switch to yours.
It's number one and number twohow different are you relative
(37:50):
to competition?
And I'll tell you every, everybusiness plan I read that is
perhaps the weakest area acandid assessment of how you are
versus competitors.
I mean, every business planwill have that one slide showing
four or five competitors and agrid and you know, check marks
and of course, the only one withchecks all the way to where is
you?
know the entrepreneur's solution, but if you do an objective
(38:14):
assessment, you suddenly realize, hey, no, there's 20 other
companies out there with similarsolutions.
Ten of them have raised over$10 million from VCs in the last
two years.
Now, in that landscape, howwill I survive?
So that was lesson number one.
Okay, how to be unique andcompelling, how to differentiate
.
Lesson number two to me is tohave a business model that is
(38:38):
both rapidly scalable andeconomically sustainable.
So rapidly scalable is fairlyobvious, right?
How will you grow?
So what's your sales model?
You know.
How will you make gross margins?
What's your LTV, your log tovalue per customer?
What's your customeracquisition cost?
You know ratio of LTV to CAC.
How will you generate profits?
(38:59):
How will you grow those overtime, et cetera.
That's the second big area.
So the first one, again, wasthe product to service needs to
be differentiated, compellingand unique.
Second thing is your businessmodel needs to be rapidly
scalable and sustainable, and bysustainable I mean you have to
get to break even, cash breakeven fairly quickly and after
(39:19):
that you just see plowing theprofits back into growth.
It's not like you pull them up,but once you hit cash
break-even, that's like a babylearning to breathe on its own
Now.
You're not dependent on anyoneelse.
You can do this on your own.
So that's the second big thing,and I find most business plans
that I see are somewhat weak inthat second area also in terms
of thinking through the businessmodel and how it can scale
(39:41):
quickly.
And then the third thing, ofcourse, is the team, and overall
that's the most important.
I've mentioned it last, but thequality of the founder-CEO more
than anything else, and then,to a lesser extent, the key team
below him or her, the next fouror five key people, really
makes all the difference in theworld.
(40:02):
Because very often you'd findin steps one and two, which is
your differentiation and yourbusiness model.
You think you have it figuredout.
When you actually start yourbusiness, raise some capital,
start operating, and you findthat some of your assumptions
weren't quite right.
So you've got to pivot.
Nothing wrong with pivoting, butit's only a really sharp
(40:22):
founder CEO and an agile teamwhich will figure out that a
pivot is needed which willfigure out based on customer
feedback and what they're seeingwith competition.
Here's what we need to dodifferently than what we thought
earlier, and that was mycardinal mistake.
In my first company I could seehaving two or three years in
that the product wasn't sellingas well as I thought, doctors
(40:44):
weren't lining up in spite ofthese infection control benefits
, et cetera.
Hospital procurement systemswere still, you know, really
impossible to navigate.
But I kept plowing away with myoriginal model because I said
at some point this will breakthrough, and you know, and then
we'll start growing.
And it never happened.
Sejal Pietrzak (41:04):
Well, maybe this
advice can really help some of
our listeners who areentrepreneurs.
You know, assess does mybusiness have these three big
areas, and is this somethingthat will allow me to avoid the
downfalls?
And if not, then I better pivot.
Sunil Wadhwani (41:22):
Yeah, correct,
exactly yeah.
Sejal Pietrzak (41:23):
That's really
great advice, Sunil.
Ned Renzi (41:25):
This has been an
awesome conversation.
I've appreciated, like all theadvice, the perspective, the
philanthropy.
If you don't mind, I'm going toend on a lighter note.
I think you have a hiddenmusical talent.
You told me about a long timeago and I know it's sort of how
you wash, dress or just enjoyyourself.
Sunil Wadhwani (41:47):
Maybe tell us a
little bit about your musical
talent, sure so I love music andI play drums with two bands in
Pittsburgh, drums with two bandsin Pittsburgh, and we played
basically classic rock.
So you know Rolling Stones andEric Clapton and Stevie Ray
Vaughan, jimi Hendrix, all ofthat kind of stuff.
So it's just something that Ienjoy doing.
(42:14):
Like you say, it's great forde-stressing, and it started off
back in IIT when I was there.
I had no clue about music.
I still cannot read or writemusic, it's all by ear.
But IIT was just soacademically tough, you know, so
challenging.
Georgianna Moreland (42:27):
Didn't mean
it enough.
Sunil Wadhwani (42:29):
I was talking
with three friends one evening
and they didn't have a clueabout music.
Neither did I, and I said let'sjust start a band.
They said are you crazy?
We don't have time.
Blah, blah, blah.
I didn't have time either, butI said let's just start a band.
They said are you crazy?
We don't have time.
Blah, blah, blah.
I didn't have time either.
But I said no, let's just do it.
None of us could play anything,so we just selected instruments
.
I selected lead guitar, someoneselected drums, someone else
selected bass, blah, blah, blah.
Ned Renzi (42:50):
It's one player gets
all the girls right.
Sunil Wadhwani (42:52):
Yeah, that's
right, exactly.
So we started playing music bythe doors and stones and this
and that.
And the good news was in Madras, at that time, when I was
studying there, there were nobands playing Western music.
So even though we sounded awful, we would get invited to
parties at the US consulate orto play for some function.
(43:12):
No competition, absolutely, andat IIT we played a lot, so
that's how we learned.
I came to the US right afterthat and didn't play for 20-25
years and then somehow I pickedup the drums, and the drums is
what I play nowadays, but I lovemusic of all time.
I still play guitar, I playsome keyboards, but drums is the
thing.
So maybe at some stage I don'tknow maybe we can form a band or
(43:34):
something.
You know a popular listener isin the world.
What should we consider?
Ned Renzi (43:38):
it to something?
Yeah, that'd be interesting.
Well, certainly, when I'm backin Pittsburgh, if you're still
playing, I'd love to come hearyou.
Absolutely, you're very welcome.
Georgianna Moreland (43:54):
Thank you
for listening today.
We would love for you to followand subscribe.
Monica and Sejo would love tohear from you.
You can text us directly fromthe link in the show notes of
this episode.
You can also find us on theLinkedIn page at Masterstroke
Podcast with Monica Enid andSejo Petrzak.
Until next time.