July 15, 2025 • 34 mins
🎙️ Bala Parthasarathy - Chairman & Co-founder, Freo, Director at People+AI, Senior Adviser, EMK Capital (London) - joins us for one of our most insightful episodes.
In this full conversation, Bala discusses:
🔹 Snapfish’s dotcom-era growth, crash, and acquisition by HP
🔹 Building Aadhaar from the ground up with Nandan Nilekani
🔹 The truth about raising and deploying venture capital
🔹 What’s broken (and what’s working) in fintech
🔹 The founder's mindset in the age of AI
If you're a founder, investor, or operator, this episode is packed with lessons, stories, and perspective.
đź“Ś Episode Timestamps:
00:00 – Bala’s background & Snapfish origins
03:00 – Dotcom boom, bust & Snapfish acquisition
06:30 – Understanding VC: what founders often get wrong
10:00 – Building Aadhaar at scale with Nandan Nilekani
13:00 – Freo, fintech & operating in regulated markets
16:00 – AI disruption & founder readiness
23:00 – How every function is being reshaped by AI
28:00 – Founder life: balance, energy & playing the long game
đź“Ś Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in
👇 Subscribe for more insights from top founders & investors.
#BalaParthasarathy #Startups #AI #VentureCapital #Aadhaar #FintechIndia #Entrepreneurship #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcastÂ
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I did Snapfish along with two other co-founders where
we raised like a shitload ofmoney and blew it up.
They had a lot of very goodparties.
I've had good co-founders whoput up with my shit.
I wish somebody told me this inthe beginning.
Surprisingly, this informationis there everywhere but nobody
knows it.
$30 million, $50 million to$1.5 billion of revenue
(00:23):
companies.
A lot of people are usingChatGPT but don't want to tell
their bosses that they're usingit because they're worried.
Like you know, they'reconsidered cheating.
You should be very scared.
I'm an AI advisor to a privateequity fund in Europe.
I'll tell you about thepositives and negatives.
What happens in a veryconservative Islamic country
stays in the conservativeIslamic country.
As they say Islamic countrystays in the conservative
(00:45):
Islamic country, as they say.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Hi everybody, welcome again to the next episode of
the Prime Venture Partnerspodcast, and today I have, you
know, quite often you look forgood guests and then you realize
you have one in living in plainsight or hiding in plain sight
my good friend and partner atPrime Venture Partners, bala
Parthasarathy, who's been anentrepreneur, vc and went back
(01:15):
to becoming an entrepreneur andis now probably one of the
messiahs of the brave new worldof AI.
So, bala, welcome to the show.
Thank you, sanjay, and you knowyou've done so many things over
the course of, I guess, arelatively short career and
still sort of innovating all thetime.
(01:37):
It'd be great for our audienceto know a little bit about what
your journey has been, fromgrowing up to various
entrepreneurship stints, toworking together and then coming
back to India and working onAadhaar, and you know things
that we have done together, sowould love to if you could share
some of that.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Sure happy to.
I'm relatively young, I'm onlylike 32 years old.
But I'll try to compress mylife story.
So the short of it, sanjay, isthat you know I grew up in
Chennai, went to IIT Madras,actually didn't get into IIT
Madras the first time but thentried again and got in, which
(02:16):
was kind of lucky because I metour common partner, sripati, at
IIT.
So I think if I'd gotten in thefirst time, I probably I don't
know what I'd be doing.
And so I went abroad, likeeverybody did at that time we
all did and I got my degree incomputer science in the us.
But I was super lucky to be inthe valley in the early 90s.
(02:37):
It was kind of the right place,right time.
Long story short, I did a bunchof startups, mostly in the
enterprise space.
Um and uh, in late 99, sripatiand I started uh, snapfish along
with two other co-founders.
Um, you know, we did the usualsort of silicon valley thing at
the time, dot com thing, wherewe raised like a shitload of
money and, uh, blew it up.
(02:58):
Um, we had a lot of very goodparties.
So that's what you get whenthree partners three of your
co-founders are from harvardbusiness that is true, and and
one or two of them are gooddancers.
And then there was neitherSripati nor me.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The other two, sripati is learning, though, but
off the record officially.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So anyway, long story short, the dot-com boom was
great.
We raised a shitload of moneyand then, luckily, we didn't
burn all of it when the marketcrashed.
But then we had to shrink thecompany from whatever 200 people
to 20 people.
But we turned the companyprofitable and eventually sold
it to Hewlett Packard.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What a pretty package .
That was all right.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So we did fine and uh wanted me to run the global
business.
So, uh, they said, where do youwant to go?
Um, I said, let me go tosingapore, which is where hp
headquarters was.
But uh, my wife said, no,singapore is too boring, let's
go to india.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So that's where I ended up and, uh, you know, the
second sort of coincidencehappened um, where I happened to
rent a place, um, in palmmeadows, right next to you so uh
, since then, uh, you know,we've been together in a, in a
journey and sort of propheticthat you named your son after me
, um, and which is sort of whatstarted our conversations.
(04:19):
Actually, there's a little kidcalled sanjay.
I was nine months old.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Now he's like the reason I named him is that I
realized, like you, this guy'sgoing to be a part of my future,
and if I need to yell at Sanjay, I needed a good excuse.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Now I know why he used to keep yelling at me.
It wasn't directed at me Stopit.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So yeah, so we were neighbors.
My son's name is Sanjay.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
And so we started brainstorming ideas at the time.
But you know, both of usstarted at Aadhaar, which I
think I've seen.
A great break that many of ushad at the time to be working in
the ground floor of Aadhaar yep, absolutely, in fact.
This morning, uh, I kind ofreluctantly agreed to give a
lecture on the in the universityof washington school of
business because of my almamater, and I woke up at 5 am and
did a class at 5 30 and Italked about adar and india
stack and the impact it's had,and I think we didn't have
enough time for for all thequestions.
(05:21):
There was just so much ofinterest here and that, I think,
was certainly a seminal momentfor all of us and for the
country and perhaps the world aswell.
So you're supposed to say goodthings about being an
entrepreneur and being frugalabout things.
So I hope people don't take allthese stories about you're
blowing up all the cash.
It did happen once again, Ithink, in the world in the 2020
(05:44):
era a little bit, but that musthave been quite a journey in
itself, right?
The one way of building acompany.
And then you know, the worldsuddenly imploded and then you
had to completely get back tobasics and do things sort of the
right way.
Tell us a little bit about thattransition, because a lot of
companies go through that right.
You start off, you have veryambitious plans, things start
(06:06):
going reasonably well, you startraising rounds of funding and
we're seeing that now with theAI era as well and at some point
, reality will strike, and itwon't be a soft landing if at
all.
There is a landing for people,right.
So maybe you can talk a littlebit about what are some of the
steps you all had to take.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I wish somebody told me this in the beginning in
the.
Surprisingly, this informationis there everywhere, but kind of
nobody knows it.
It's also you have to followsort of the the cycles of how
venture capital.
First of all, understand howventure capital works.
If you're going to take venturemoney, right, if you're one of
those rare people who canbootstrap themselves and we have
some great examples in indiawho have done that uh, that's a
different journey.
But if you want to bootstrapyourself, if you're not going to
(06:48):
bootstrap yourself, you'regoing to take venture money you
need to understand how theventure capital works, which is
you need to fuel growth rightNow.
Here is the catch.
So you need to fuel growth, youneed to.
Growth is the elixir.
If you don't grow, then thereis no game and venture capital
aids the growth, right.
So this is where people alwayshave a mistaken idea that you
know vcs are whatever vulturecapital is and vcs are, you know
(07:10):
, fueling this boom.
They're like you know, spoilingyou, so on and so forth.
It's kind of like not like that, it's more like you know
they're taking a bet and we, asventure capital, when we started
prime ventures, we can alsolearn.
This is that you need to fuelcompanies which have high growth
Now.
At the same time, for theventure capitalists, it's you
know you bet on 10 companies andif two of them are blockbusters
, you know you've earned yourreturn.
(07:31):
So you want to fuel growth onall the 10 companies, but as an
entrepreneur, you have only onecompany you can fuel.
Growth is great Growth.
Everybody loves growth.
Entrepreneurs love growth, vcslove growth, custom love growth.
Vcs love growth.
Customers love growth.
Everybody likes growth.
But you also have to watch thecycle and if you blow out right,
the VCs will say okay, you knowtough luck yeah.
(07:53):
Right and they'll move on.
You, as your entrepreneur, youhave only one company, right, so
it's your baby.
So, understanding this balanceand also where the world is
going, I think in 1999, if youwere too conservative, that
would have been a bad move, andI think even in India, you know,
in 2020, 21,.
I think if you did not grow,that was not a good move.
But in 2023, 24, you know, whenpeople are going IPO and
(08:18):
finding out the market likesprofitable companies, then if
you don't watch profitability,that's a bad idea, right, you
kind of also have to watch thecycle and, as an entrepreneur,
you have only yourself to blame.
Right, the venture capitalistswill give you money for growing,
uh, but as an entrepreneur, youhave only one company and you
need to sort of watch where theworld is going and act
accordingly.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
it's my big learning, which is again obvious in
retrospect, but not so obviousif you're in the in the race
yeah, yeah, no, and and you know, I think one of the things we
set out to do when we startedoff and we have continued to do
here at prime through subsequentfunds, when you went back to
(08:59):
becoming an entrepreneur, andthen again and and in exploring
that side again, which is thebright side this is the, as
people call it but it was reallyto be close enough but far
enough and sort of be that earlywarning system, if you will,
that, hey, you know the world ischanging, we're better to focus
(09:22):
on the basics.
You know the world has changedand it is better to focus on the
basics.
You know, or you know the worldis has changed and it is maybe
not growth at all costs, but youknow growth is important and
you can't sort of be you knowtoo much, too conservative,
right, I think these are somesome important indicators that
one needs to, because you alsoget this window of opportunity
(09:42):
to build these companies and youget these few opportunities to
get to the next level of orbitand RSC velocity, so Maybe you
can talk a little bit about yourexperiences with Aadhaar right
and some of that journey and howthat, you know, fostered your
thought process as well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I know we started working together there and then
continue to work together, butyour thoughts and insights
Honestly, the overall takeawaywas very humbling for me because
I mean, I had, you know, I'vebeen in the US for 17 years.
I'd done many startups, beforeSnapfish and then Snapfish was a
great hit.
I was kind of riding ratingpretty high.
And you know, coming back toIndia in 2007, you know this
(10:23):
flip card was, you know,fledgling and the startup
ecosystem was not there and Ihad like kind of no idea about
really how India works and, Ithink, working in other, going
to understanding how governmentworks and, of course, with
Nandan Nelakani being an amazingshining star and what his
perspective was.
(10:43):
I think it was very lucky andalso not only Nandan, but a
whole bunch of other people thathad attracted all of us.
Most of us are volunteersworking on this and the people
we have met, like people likeMashruwala and so on and so
forth, from promote, promotevarma, so it's been
life-changing um, uh, from fromus.
But, most importantly, I thinkI could understand how one could
(11:06):
see scale when it was not veryobvious.
Right, nandan set out a goalsaying we're going to do 50
crores, 500 million others infive years and that sounded
ridiculous, honestly, at thattime.
But to actually see it happenand the effort of so many people
and the machinery that it tookwas humbling.
And then, of course, what cameafter, aadhaar and UPI and so on
(11:28):
and so forth.
And now I'm back working withNandan at People Plus AI and
we're trying to explore what AImeans to India in the future.
It's all been very humbling, aswell as also learning for me
Still learning.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right, yeah, no, and it's just amazing to think that
I keep reminding people.
You know, you sometimes get abit insensitized to large
numbers in India and we say, oh,we enrolled 1.4 billion people
in six years.
Yeah, okay, fine that sounds,but when you translate it, that
is Singapore every week for sixyears in a row, right, and that
(12:05):
is like wow, you know the wholecountry.
You are with the country ofAustralia every month, but
anyway, so you know of, we workclosely together in the first
fund at Prime, some greatcompanies out of it, happy
Quizzes, and of course we'restill actively working on
several of them EasyTap, yes,and of course EasyTap and
(12:25):
ZipRile right at the start ofthe journey.
Then you went off to startingMoneyTap and it's now Frio and
you know, certainly a secondstint as an entrepreneur,
perhaps your first stint inIndia as an entrepreneur.
Maybe you can do a little bitof comparison of your, you know,
experiences in the valley inthe 90s versus building,
certainly a regulated fintechcompany here in India yeah, I
(12:49):
will tell you about thepositives and negatives.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So the the positives are, I think you're solving sort
of you know, basic, fundamentalproblems and in the US you're
solving very small esotericproblems.
Here you're solving some verybasic thing.
And also the access to demand.
I mean it's fairly clear, likeyou know, with Frio, what the
demand is, what the customerswant, and we have millions of
customers using it.
(13:12):
So that was very clear.
The talent pool is easy hereand accessible.
In the Valley it's a littleharder to get and also the
satisfaction of doing somethingwas much more profound, I would
say, at Frio, because you'rekind of making a difference in
people's lives, not to say thatwe didn't do important things at
(13:32):
Snapfish, but photos it was alittle bit of a higher order
need on the Maslow's hierarchythan credit, which seemed like
more basic, so I would say, moresatisfying at some level.
The negatives are it's muchless regulated.
So here, especially in fintech,regulation plays a huge part
and understanding thecomplexities and the nuances of
(13:54):
that uh is, uh is not.
It's not easy and also youcan't go at the pace you need to
go because especially inindustry like fintech.
I think it's true in all mostindustries, and it has been a
little choppy as well.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Right, because the regulator has been literally a
regulator and, you know, makingsure that we don't run into a
situation that the country can'tafford to be in.
Right and therefore.
But the startup gets thiswindow of opportunity to become
big.
That is correct.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So it's understandable and at a macro
picture level, they're right.
You know we need to make surewe don't blow up, and we have
not.
India has not had the crisislike China had, for example,
touch wood.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Or US or UK, despite COVID and everything, but it
comes at a price.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
But overall I would say it's very satisfying.
It's just a different game toplay.
We're a lot more people-centric, so it's much more human, I
would say at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Bala, one of the things that's been keeping you
busy and you've sort of jumpedin to the deep end of the pool,
at least compared to me is thiswhole new space of AI.
And as I talk to people, youknow, there's various levels of
understanding, including sayingthis is not yet real, which is
partly true by the name.
To the other extreme of this isyou know, the world,
(15:13):
everybody's world, has alreadychanged completely and
permanently, right?
So maybe for an audience ofentrepreneurs who are, I guess,
entrepreneurs, fall in twocategories right, there are the
those who say, look, this isgame changing and it's, you know
, I'm going to be destroyed if Idon't embrace entirely.
Or another category that says,oh wow, you know, finally,
(15:37):
something is possible.
It wasn't possible, and nowthis creates a new opportunity
to the other extreme of you know, sticking their head in the
sand and saying this is not real, right, and this is a long ways
to go.
My startup is is not going to beimpacted by this, right?
So would be good to hear yourviews on the space itself.
What's really happening?
(15:57):
Uh, what excites you?
How should entrepreneurs reactto what they're seeing right now
?
How does one ensure that one isnot?
Um, you know, a lot of thesethings sort of we tend to
overestimate the impact in theshort run, but underestimate the
impact in the long run as well.
So it would be great to hearyour views on the topic.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Sure.
So, sanjay, I came to AI and Ido so broadly three things in AI
just as to why I can talk aboutAI, at least how I'm.
That's my bias, where I'mcoming in.
So number one is just sort ofeducating myself in AI.
I did a BTEC project in AI many, many moons ago, which is
completely invalid now, butsince then I've been kind of
(16:38):
curious about AI.
So when Gen AI came on, I kindof went very deep and started
reading it, started evangelizingabout it.
I run a closed WhatsApp groupwhich you and many other prime
founders are on, just to educatemyself and also tell people
what I like and don't like andtalk about what is the news in
AI, and I send it to people likeNandan and others, like
(17:00):
whatever bits that I've learned.
That's more for like purelypersonal educational.
The second thing I do in AI isthat I'm an AI advisor to a
private equity fund in Europeit's one of the $7 billion PE
fund and I work with multiplecompanies in Europe and US in AI
(17:22):
transformation.
So I get to see companies whichare a little bit more scaled,
so anywhere from $30 million,$50 million to $1.5 billion of
revenue companies.
So what are they doing in AI,so I have some visibility and
understanding of what works,what doesn't work.
And, lastly, I help out PeoplePlus AI, which is a Nandan
(17:45):
Nilakan initiative, part ofXSTEP, as to what AI means to
India, right?
So I get to view this from likesort of three lenses
educational, just personaleducation, and sort of running a
close group, actual, inpractice, at PE funds, and and
and what it means to India.
And on top of that, I am, ofcourse, part of some boards of
(18:08):
AI companies and so on and soforth.
So my view of AI is that, toanswer your question question,
is it like, is it all bullshit,or is it like, you know, I
should be very scared?
So I would say you should bevery scared.
So this is my analysis afterabout two and a half, you know,
(18:30):
ever since Gen AI came out,basically since November 2022.
Not like really really runawayscared, but like on a scale of
one to ten, I would say youshould be at eight, right.
If you're sitting at two, uh,you're going to get buried,
right.
So this is like.
This is like using, you know, afeature phone nokia feature
phone in you know 2010 andsaying, yeah, iphone is there,
(18:50):
but it's slow and apps are notthere, etc.
It's all true, uh, it is justthat that's not where the future
is.
So I would say that is my broadperspective on where you should
be now.
Certain areas will get moreimpacted than others, right, I
just gave a.
I did a workshop at the Manipalgroup last couple of weeks ago,
(19:14):
talking to the CEO.
So there are some groups whichare, but even they are like very
up to speed on AI.
They are like seriously doing alot of initiatives on AI, right
, and they are like a, you know,a more industrial kind of a
group.
So it is here, it is now.
Everybody is already on it.
(19:35):
Whether they want to telleverybody about it or not
depends on the culture of thecompany.
A lot of people are usingChatGPT but don't want to tell
their bosses that they're usingit because they're worried
they're considered cheating.
But it's already here.
What impact is it going to haveis a more detailed question,
depending on which industryyou're in, but there is no
question in my mind that youshould be really really taking
(19:58):
it seriously if you're notalready doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So let's look at it from the tech startup ecosystem,
and the way I'm looking at itis there are three buckets.
There are startups that have aproduct where the product itself
might not necessarily beimpacted that much, but their
entire experience with theircustomer base, whether it's from
(20:24):
the marketing side of it, theacquisition, the um, the service
delivery, etc.
And then frerio would probablybe an example of that, right, I
mean the core customerunderwriting and lending part
may or may not initially bedramatically impacted, but you
know the marketing andacquisition and service and all
of that, right.
So that's one part.
Then there are businesses thatthat that were not possible in
(20:51):
the past, products that weren'tpossible but suddenly become
possible, right.
And then there's the thirdextreme of companies where it's
a large, established business,it's running on its own, but
something new is going to comeand disrupt them completely,
right.
So if you think about thosethree buckets and many startups
sort of fall in that thirdcategory also right where they
(21:12):
think that they're, you know,completely secure, but they
might get, as you said, you knowthey better be worried here.
Um, what are your views on someexamples of what founders can do
to remain nimble?
Right, because they have caughtup with running their business
on a daily basis and they reallycan't be even reading your
whatsapp group, right, that youhave set up.
So how does one educate oneself?
(21:35):
How does one, you know, stayabreast of what's going on?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
things are moving so fast that's sort of really
intimidating as well I've beenan entrepreneur most of my life,
except for our stint at adharand and my stint at prime
ventures.
So I fully get, like you know,as an entrepreneur, you're
solving like 50 problems everyday.
So, uh, and and you know, it'sanything which is nice to have
(22:01):
usually gets like deprioritized,right, anything that is, uh,
not immediate.
And as a founder, you also needto think about long term as
well as short term.
Right, you are thinking all.
It's not an option to say, uh,you know, only I'll think only
short term, because then you'llget destroyed.
Or only long term, right, I Iused to call it like you know,
you have to have your.
You know you have to have yourhead above the clouds to see the
big picture, but also feet onthe ground so that you don't
(22:23):
like miss what is happening.
Right, and so you don't have achoice to do both.
So as a founder, especially forthe founder of the founders,
right, the founders, founderceos you don't have an option
but to not look at this.
Right, you can't say, hey, man,this is not immediately
impacting me, so, you know, letme come to it.
I just have more pressingproblems.
And I speak that with a lot ofyou know empathy, because I've
(22:47):
been in that shoes many timesand I I get it right three hours
of sleep.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You're getting cut it down to two.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, and sadly you need to pay it because this is
going to impact you one way orthe other.
Now, how it's going to impactyou is going to depend whether
you are in this category numbertwo, which is you're saying that
the AI is the disruptor, or AIis like a nice to have, right,
or you know, know, I'm reallyfine, but you know, maybe I
(23:13):
should watch out for adisruption, right?
These are broadly the threecategories.
You said so for the cat.
For all these categories, onething is common and one thing
there is an actionable thingevery founder can do, which is
start using the tools right,because in every category there
are low-hanging fruits todaythat ai can do right.
So we can go across the board.
(23:33):
Sales.
Marketing is changing.
Digital marketing is completelychanging.
So I'm deeply involved with,for example, what's happening
with SEO and search in general.
Right, search is a big sourceof customers for most people.
Meta is also changing, not asmuch as Google searches, right,
costs are going up.
(23:53):
Sales is changing right.
How you're selling is changingwith AI, ab, testing and
marketing.
So marketing we can go in adeep topic Creatives, so on and
so forth.
Sales is changing.
Product is definitely changingright.
How product managers should useAI is changing.
Coding is changing.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Give an example on product managers.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So product managers, can you know, are really the
product management andengineering, at least the
prototyping design.
Product management is allfusing right, Because AI is the
best writer you can have, it'sthe best brainstorming partner
you can have, right?
So, writing very detaileddocuments and using AI you must
be doing it, otherwise you'renot doing something.
And then you should be usingvibe coding, which is a whole
(24:34):
topic we can talk about, tocreate mock-ups and prototypes
right Before even goingsomething to the engineer.
So product managers need to domuch more, but they can do it
much faster and better.
Doing competitive analysisno-brainer, right.
You can go scrape every websiteof your competition and get me
all the features.
Right.
I did this live demo for themin that seminar that I did.
(24:57):
You just go pull competitionand tell me the best features
that they have I don't and keepit current.
Sentiment analysis you knowthere's an endless number of
things that product managers cando Much faster, much better,
much better.
Coding whole new topic inalmost every phase, from
definition, design, architectureto DevOps and coding.
There's a whole topic of howyou can use AI and, of course,
(25:21):
in customer service, it'salready there.
You should be using it soacross the board, stepping back
in terms of productivity, ofwhat a startup can do.
You ought to be using ai, right, and that, I would say, is a
good start, whether you're incategory one, two or three in
your bucket, and that, I wouldsay, is actionable because it's
going to give you some benefit.
And but the change is very hard,right?
(25:42):
Uh, it's very hard fororganization, whether you're a
startup or a large company.
So this has to be led by thefounders.
Yeah, right, if your foundersare not bought in, this is not
going to happen.
So you are as a founder.
This, in short, you have todecide hey, is this something I
want to take seriously or not?
You know, balance is it's aeight?
You know I don't buy it, right,I think it's a two and that's
(26:03):
fine, that's your choice.
But if you believe that it's aeight, right, then you need to
put in those few hours in nomatter which category you are in
, right, and the best ideas arenot going to come from me, or
even uh, you know, uh, sanjay,you are vcs like you, even
though you're pretty close tothe company I have the best
ideas.
It's not the matter they mightnot take your best idea you
(26:24):
always have a humble yeah, butuh, but the, the founders and
ceos are going to have the bestideas on how to use it, right,
what you need to start using it.
And there is only one thing youneed to know about this
hallucination, et cetera, andthis is the reason for the AI
skeptics right, it's kind of a?
You know, it's a stochasticbeast, right, so I call it.
(26:44):
It's like riding.
I ride motorcycles, as you know, for fun, and it's like riding
a motorcycle in a desert, right,so you know, um, for fun,
that's, and it's like ridingmotorcycle in a desert, right,
so it's.
It's, the sands are shifting.
You're going up a dune, right,it's.
It's not.
You can't.
You need to roughly know I'mgoing in that direction, but
you're going to be going here,you're going to be going there
and you need to steer it.
And whether you're coding vibe,coding is very much.
If you, if you wipe code andsanjay, I know you, you're
(27:07):
playing with lovable and so onand so forth you get the feeling
like that.
Right, I know I roughly need togo there, but this beast is
going to take me in thisdirection.
Right, this bike is going toshift Suddenly, it's going to
stall.
Right, you need to kind of pushthe bike back right.
You need to get off the bike.
You're going to fall down a fewtimes, right?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
All of this is going to happen there, right in these.
As you say, it's a broaddirectionality is more or less
there, and certainly to gettingclose to what might feel like a
destination.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
You know, one can do it much faster and there are a
number of techniques to make itbetter, especially in live
coding, where you're doing it insmall steps, right, don't go
from here to there, plan thenext step.
If it doesn't work, backtrack.
So there are some people areputting in some rigor on how to
do better, prompting and so onand so forth, right, but it's
fundamentally you're riding abeast that you don't completely
control, right, and and whetheryou're a product manager,
(27:55):
whether you're a coder, this iswhat you need to internalize,
right, it sounds perfect, butit's not perfect, right, and
it's wild, but it's also kind oflike the fun.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
So I like the other day I did something fun on this
uh with my wife.
Actually we were talking aboutsomething fun about your wife.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Let's not talk about it too much.
It's a family audience here.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, absolutely, but I'll tell you some secrets.
So what we did?
We were discussing some projectwe wanted to embark on.
I said you know what, let'sturn on Granola.
And we just started chattingand it summarized whatever and I
copied and pasted that into twotools.
One was Gamma and I said createa presentation and create a
(28:35):
website for this initiative.
And then I copied it intoLovable and I said, okay, this
needs to be an ongoinginitiative, create an
application or obviously,mockups of an application.
But then I later even triedconnecting it to Superbase and
you know, having a database atthe back end also, right, my God
, the level of sophistication ina 20-minute version that you
(28:59):
can get.
It is stunning.
In fact, even yesterday I waschatting with one of our other
founders about you know how arethey using it, and then I went
to his website, as we were sortof in this WhatsApp chat, and I
copied and pasted thedescription of one of their
products into lovable and at theend of a 20-minute chat I said,
okay, by the way, here's yourproduct all built.
There was obviously it's amock-up of a product the fact
(29:23):
that you can get pretty farright and conceptualizing it.
So, as you said A, b, testingall of these things, or meeting
customers and saying would youbuy this?
It almost seems that thereshould never be any founder
pitching you an idea stage thinganymore.
They should be able to at leastshow you a mock-up of saying
this is what we're going to do,right?
So look, this whole AI thing.
(29:46):
We're super excited and I think, as you said, you just have to
start playing around with it.
You talked a little bit aboutmotorcycling, so tell us a
little bit about the Bala.
That is not working.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I do a bunch of stuff .
I just went to Oman last weekfor diving.
I just went by myself and itwas good fun Scuba diving.
So you're going to talk aboutwhy you go by yourself scuba
diving, but you're going to talkabout why you go by yourself.
What happens in a veryconservative Islamic country
stays in the conservativeIslamic country, as they say but
(30:19):
it was dry I didn't know thatOman had no alcohol except in a
few hotels.
So, but no, I like biking.
That's my big weakness.
This year we're going toCentral Asia with a bunch of
guys.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I have to tell you all a little bit of my two
favorite Balapar Sarthi moments.
We were interviewing a personfor a role at Prime and Bala
told me well, you know, at 9.30am my time, which will be around
like 7 pm your time I will beavailable for 20 minutes and
(30:55):
I'll do this interview, right?
And so the interview happened.
And then this candidate callsme back later and said he was on
some highway shack in Peru Areyou guys serious about this
interview?
Right?
But he had grilled thedaylights out of her in that 20
minutes and I said how did theinterview go?
(31:15):
She was really.
He asked me all these questionsbut, you know, was he really
serious about this thing?
And then, of course, 10 secondslater, I got a whatsapp message
from him saying these are allthe things I did.
Is that?
thumbs up, let's go ahead rightand and that's the one thing I
really admire about you, bala,because you, because you, can be
doing all these things.
The other episode was also veryinteresting.
We had a term sheet with a 5pmdeadline that we were trying to
(31:37):
sign and I have not heard fromBala for three days.
Hey, what the heck do we dothis or deal or not?
And at 4.57, I get a plus 977number ringing on my phone and a
call from Nepal.
Sanjay, this is Bala, almost nocoverage here.
That's the other set of amazingthings you've done around hiking
(31:59):
and things like that.
But your ability, I think, tointertwine hardcore business
with personal time and pleasureand family and things like that,
I think is really somethingthat you know people who work
with you take for granted, butyou know it's something that
most people struggle to balance.
(32:21):
Maybe you can end with a littlebit of any anecdotes from your
side or some tips on how peopleshould balance all of these.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Look, especially if it's a founder audience.
You know, balance is like not agood word, you know, because
all founders are imbalanced bydefinition.
Uh, whenever I was very deep inthe company, I was usually
imbalanced, uh, but uh, and Iwas, you know, maniacally doing
only one thing.
The truth is, uh, you know thatit the, you know to use the
(32:50):
cliche, it is kind of a longrace.
It's not like, oh, I'll do thisfor two years and I'll sell the
company.
It's an yoga.
It's a minimum 10 year race.
Uh, and 10 years is a big partof your life, you know, if you
start, if you are, you know, 25or 35 or 45, it becomes more and
more critical.
So, uh, you know, you do needto take care of your family
number one.
Uh, and then, uh, and then youdon't want to have regrets.
(33:11):
Like you know, you do need totake care of your family number
one, and then you don't want tohave regrets.
Like you know the cliche that Inever see my kids grow up.
You definitely need to takecare of yourself as well,
personally and whatever.
That fun be right.
So I've been lucky.
I've had, you know, goodco-founders who, you know, put
up with my shit to be able topartner.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Exactly.
But you know they'll rememberfond stories, like you did, and
some nasty stories.
They won't talk on a podcast,but life goes on, and you know.
But you have to live your lifeand that's my philosophy Awesome
Play hard.
You know, work hard butdefinitely play hard.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
It's super important, Terrific Bala.
Thank you so much, and on thathigh note we shall end.
Work hard, play hard when newepisodes are available.
Just search for Prime VenturePartners Podcast in Apple
Podcast, Spotify, CastBox orhowever.
You get your podcasts, Then hitsubscribe and if you have
enjoyed the show, we would bereally grateful if you leave us
(34:21):
a review on Apple Podcast.
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
I did Snapfish along with two other co-founders where
we raised like a shitload ofmoney and blew it up.
They had a lot of very goodparties.
I've had good co-founders whoput up with my shit.
I wish somebody told me this inthe beginning.
Surprisingly, this informationis there everywhere but nobody
knows it.
$30 million, $50 million to$1.5 billion of revenue
(00:23):
companies.
A lot of people are usingChatGPT but don't want to tell
their bosses that they're usingit because they're worried.
Like you know, they'reconsidered cheating.
You should be very scared.
I'm an AI advisor to a privateequity fund in Europe.
I'll tell you about thepositives and negatives.
What happens in a veryconservative Islamic country
stays in the conservativeIslamic country.
As they say Islamic countrystays in the conservative
(00:45):
Islamic country, as they say.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Hi everybody, welcome again to the next episode of
the Prime Venture Partnerspodcast, and today I have, you
know, quite often you look forgood guests and then you realize
you have one in living in plainsight or hiding in plain sight
my good friend and partner atPrime Venture Partners, bala
Parthasarathy, who's been anentrepreneur, vc and went back
(01:15):
to becoming an entrepreneur andis now probably one of the
messiahs of the brave new worldof AI.
So, bala, welcome to the show.
Thank you, sanjay, and you knowyou've done so many things over
the course of, I guess, arelatively short career and
still sort of innovating all thetime.
(01:37):
It'd be great for our audienceto know a little bit about what
your journey has been, fromgrowing up to various
entrepreneurship stints, toworking together and then coming
back to India and working onAadhaar, and you know things
that we have done together, sowould love to if you could share
some of that.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Sure happy to.
I'm relatively young, I'm onlylike 32 years old.
But I'll try to compress mylife story.
So the short of it, sanjay, isthat you know I grew up in
Chennai, went to IIT Madras,actually didn't get into IIT
Madras the first time but thentried again and got in, which
(02:16):
was kind of lucky because I metour common partner, sripati, at
IIT.
So I think if I'd gotten in thefirst time, I probably I don't
know what I'd be doing.
And so I went abroad, likeeverybody did at that time we
all did and I got my degree incomputer science in the us.
But I was super lucky to be inthe valley in the early 90s.
(02:37):
It was kind of the right place,right time.
Long story short, I did a bunchof startups, mostly in the
enterprise space.
Um and uh, in late 99, sripatiand I started uh, snapfish along
with two other co-founders.
Um, you know, we did the usualsort of silicon valley thing at
the time, dot com thing, wherewe raised like a shitload of
money and, uh, blew it up.
(02:58):
Um, we had a lot of very goodparties.
So that's what you get whenthree partners three of your
co-founders are from harvardbusiness that is true, and and
one or two of them are gooddancers.
And then there was neitherSripati nor me.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The other two, sripati is learning, though, but
off the record officially.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So anyway, long story short, the dot-com boom was
great.
We raised a shitload of moneyand then, luckily, we didn't
burn all of it when the marketcrashed.
But then we had to shrink thecompany from whatever 200 people
to 20 people.
But we turned the companyprofitable and eventually sold
it to Hewlett Packard.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What a pretty package .
That was all right.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So we did fine and uh wanted me to run the global
business.
So, uh, they said, where do youwant to go?
Um, I said, let me go tosingapore, which is where hp
headquarters was.
But uh, my wife said, no,singapore is too boring, let's
go to india.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So that's where I ended up and, uh, you know, the
second sort of coincidencehappened um, where I happened to
rent a place, um, in palmmeadows, right next to you so uh
, since then, uh, you know,we've been together in a, in a
journey and sort of propheticthat you named your son after me
, um, and which is sort of whatstarted our conversations.
(04:19):
Actually, there's a little kidcalled sanjay.
I was nine months old.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Now he's like the reason I named him is that I
realized, like you, this guy'sgoing to be a part of my future,
and if I need to yell at Sanjay, I needed a good excuse.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Now I know why he used to keep yelling at me.
It wasn't directed at me Stopit.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So yeah, so we were neighbors.
My son's name is Sanjay.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
And so we started brainstorming ideas at the time.
But you know, both of usstarted at Aadhaar, which I
think I've seen.
A great break that many of ushad at the time to be working in
the ground floor of Aadhaar yep, absolutely, in fact.
This morning, uh, I kind ofreluctantly agreed to give a
lecture on the in the universityof washington school of
business because of my almamater, and I woke up at 5 am and
did a class at 5 30 and Italked about adar and india
stack and the impact it's had,and I think we didn't have
enough time for for all thequestions.
(05:21):
There was just so much ofinterest here and that, I think,
was certainly a seminal momentfor all of us and for the
country and perhaps the world aswell.
So you're supposed to say goodthings about being an
entrepreneur and being frugalabout things.
So I hope people don't take allthese stories about you're
blowing up all the cash.
It did happen once again, Ithink, in the world in the 2020
(05:44):
era a little bit, but that musthave been quite a journey in
itself, right?
The one way of building acompany.
And then you know, the worldsuddenly imploded and then you
had to completely get back tobasics and do things sort of the
right way.
Tell us a little bit about thattransition, because a lot of
companies go through that right.
You start off, you have veryambitious plans, things start
(06:06):
going reasonably well, you startraising rounds of funding and
we're seeing that now with theAI era as well and at some point
, reality will strike, and itwon't be a soft landing if at
all.
There is a landing for people,right.
So maybe you can talk a littlebit about what are some of the
steps you all had to take.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I wish somebody told me this in the beginning in
the.
Surprisingly, this informationis there everywhere, but kind of
nobody knows it.
It's also you have to followsort of the the cycles of how
venture capital.
First of all, understand howventure capital works.
If you're going to take venturemoney, right, if you're one of
those rare people who canbootstrap themselves and we have
some great examples in indiawho have done that uh, that's a
different journey.
But if you want to bootstrapyourself, if you're not going to
(06:48):
bootstrap yourself, you'regoing to take venture money you
need to understand how theventure capital works, which is
you need to fuel growth rightNow.
Here is the catch.
So you need to fuel growth, youneed to.
Growth is the elixir.
If you don't grow, then thereis no game and venture capital
aids the growth, right.
So this is where people alwayshave a mistaken idea that you
know vcs are whatever vulturecapital is and vcs are, you know
(07:10):
, fueling this boom.
They're like you know, spoilingyou, so on and so forth.
It's kind of like not like that, it's more like you know
they're taking a bet and we, asventure capital, when we started
prime ventures, we can alsolearn.
This is that you need to fuelcompanies which have high growth
Now.
At the same time, for theventure capitalists, it's you
know you bet on 10 companies andif two of them are blockbusters
, you know you've earned yourreturn.
(07:31):
So you want to fuel growth onall the 10 companies, but as an
entrepreneur, you have only onecompany you can fuel.
Growth is great Growth.
Everybody loves growth.
Entrepreneurs love growth, vcslove growth, custom love growth.
Vcs love growth.
Customers love growth.
Everybody likes growth.
But you also have to watch thecycle and if you blow out right,
the VCs will say okay, you knowtough luck yeah.
(07:53):
Right and they'll move on.
You, as your entrepreneur, youhave only one company, right, so
it's your baby.
So, understanding this balanceand also where the world is
going, I think in 1999, if youwere too conservative, that
would have been a bad move, andI think even in India, you know,
in 2020, 21,.
I think if you did not grow,that was not a good move.
But in 2023, 24, you know, whenpeople are going IPO and
(08:18):
finding out the market likesprofitable companies, then if
you don't watch profitability,that's a bad idea, right, you
kind of also have to watch thecycle and, as an entrepreneur,
you have only yourself to blame.
Right, the venture capitalistswill give you money for growing,
uh, but as an entrepreneur, youhave only one company and you
need to sort of watch where theworld is going and act
accordingly.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
it's my big learning, which is again obvious in
retrospect, but not so obviousif you're in the in the race
yeah, yeah, no, and and you know, I think one of the things we
set out to do when we startedoff and we have continued to do
here at prime through subsequentfunds, when you went back to
(08:59):
becoming an entrepreneur, andthen again and and in exploring
that side again, which is thebright side this is the, as
people call it but it was reallyto be close enough but far
enough and sort of be that earlywarning system, if you will,
that, hey, you know the world ischanging, we're better to focus
(09:22):
on the basics.
You know the world has changedand it is better to focus on the
basics.
You know, or you know the worldis has changed and it is maybe
not growth at all costs, but youknow growth is important and
you can't sort of be you knowtoo much, too conservative,
right, I think these are somesome important indicators that
one needs to, because you alsoget this window of opportunity
(09:42):
to build these companies and youget these few opportunities to
get to the next level of orbitand RSC velocity, so Maybe you
can talk a little bit about yourexperiences with Aadhaar right
and some of that journey and howthat, you know, fostered your
thought process as well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I know we started working together there and then
continue to work together, butyour thoughts and insights
Honestly, the overall takeawaywas very humbling for me because
I mean, I had, you know, I'vebeen in the US for 17 years.
I'd done many startups, beforeSnapfish and then Snapfish was a
great hit.
I was kind of riding ratingpretty high.
And you know, coming back toIndia in 2007, you know this
(10:23):
flip card was, you know,fledgling and the startup
ecosystem was not there and Ihad like kind of no idea about
really how India works and, Ithink, working in other, going
to understanding how governmentworks and, of course, with
Nandan Nelakani being an amazingshining star and what his
perspective was.
(10:43):
I think it was very lucky andalso not only Nandan, but a
whole bunch of other people thathad attracted all of us.
Most of us are volunteersworking on this and the people
we have met, like people likeMashruwala and so on and so
forth, from promote, promotevarma, so it's been
life-changing um, uh, from fromus.
But, most importantly, I thinkI could understand how one could
(11:06):
see scale when it was not veryobvious.
Right, nandan set out a goalsaying we're going to do 50
crores, 500 million others infive years and that sounded
ridiculous, honestly, at thattime.
But to actually see it happenand the effort of so many people
and the machinery that it tookwas humbling.
And then, of course, what cameafter, aadhaar and UPI and so on
(11:28):
and so forth.
And now I'm back working withNandan at People Plus AI and
we're trying to explore what AImeans to India in the future.
It's all been very humbling, aswell as also learning for me
Still learning.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right, yeah, no, and it's just amazing to think that
I keep reminding people.
You know, you sometimes get abit insensitized to large
numbers in India and we say, oh,we enrolled 1.4 billion people
in six years.
Yeah, okay, fine that sounds,but when you translate it, that
is Singapore every week for sixyears in a row, right, and that
(12:05):
is like wow, you know the wholecountry.
You are with the country ofAustralia every month, but
anyway, so you know of, we workclosely together in the first
fund at Prime, some greatcompanies out of it, happy
Quizzes, and of course we'restill actively working on
several of them EasyTap, yes,and of course EasyTap and
(12:25):
ZipRile right at the start ofthe journey.
Then you went off to startingMoneyTap and it's now Frio and
you know, certainly a secondstint as an entrepreneur,
perhaps your first stint inIndia as an entrepreneur.
Maybe you can do a little bitof comparison of your, you know,
experiences in the valley inthe 90s versus building,
certainly a regulated fintechcompany here in India yeah, I
(12:49):
will tell you about thepositives and negatives.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So the the positives are, I think you're solving sort
of you know, basic, fundamentalproblems and in the US you're
solving very small esotericproblems.
Here you're solving some verybasic thing.
And also the access to demand.
I mean it's fairly clear, likeyou know, with Frio, what the
demand is, what the customerswant, and we have millions of
customers using it.
(13:12):
So that was very clear.
The talent pool is easy hereand accessible.
In the Valley it's a littleharder to get and also the
satisfaction of doing somethingwas much more profound, I would
say, at Frio, because you'rekind of making a difference in
people's lives, not to say thatwe didn't do important things at
(13:32):
Snapfish, but photos it was alittle bit of a higher order
need on the Maslow's hierarchythan credit, which seemed like
more basic, so I would say, moresatisfying at some level.
The negatives are it's muchless regulated.
So here, especially in fintech,regulation plays a huge part
and understanding thecomplexities and the nuances of
(13:54):
that uh is, uh is not.
It's not easy and also youcan't go at the pace you need to
go because especially inindustry like fintech.
I think it's true in all mostindustries, and it has been a
little choppy as well.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Right, because the regulator has been literally a
regulator and, you know, makingsure that we don't run into a
situation that the country can'tafford to be in.
Right and therefore.
But the startup gets thiswindow of opportunity to become
big.
That is correct.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So it's understandable and at a macro
picture level, they're right.
You know we need to make surewe don't blow up, and we have
not.
India has not had the crisislike China had, for example,
touch wood.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Or US or UK, despite COVID and everything, but it
comes at a price.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
But overall I would say it's very satisfying.
It's just a different game toplay.
We're a lot more people-centric, so it's much more human, I
would say at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Bala, one of the things that's been keeping you
busy and you've sort of jumpedin to the deep end of the pool,
at least compared to me is thiswhole new space of AI.
And as I talk to people, youknow, there's various levels of
understanding, including sayingthis is not yet real, which is
partly true by the name.
To the other extreme of this isyou know, the world,
(15:13):
everybody's world, has alreadychanged completely and
permanently, right?
So maybe for an audience ofentrepreneurs who are, I guess,
entrepreneurs, fall in twocategories right, there are the
those who say, look, this isgame changing and it's, you know
, I'm going to be destroyed if Idon't embrace entirely.
Or another category that says,oh wow, you know, finally,
(15:37):
something is possible.
It wasn't possible, and nowthis creates a new opportunity
to the other extreme of you know, sticking their head in the
sand and saying this is not real, right, and this is a long ways
to go.
My startup is is not going to beimpacted by this, right?
So would be good to hear yourviews on the space itself.
What's really happening?
(15:57):
Uh, what excites you?
How should entrepreneurs reactto what they're seeing right now
?
How does one ensure that one isnot?
Um, you know, a lot of thesethings sort of we tend to
overestimate the impact in theshort run, but underestimate the
impact in the long run as well.
So it would be great to hearyour views on the topic.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Sure.
So, sanjay, I came to AI and Ido so broadly three things in AI
just as to why I can talk aboutAI, at least how I'm.
That's my bias, where I'mcoming in.
So number one is just sort ofeducating myself in AI.
I did a BTEC project in AI many, many moons ago, which is
completely invalid now, butsince then I've been kind of
(16:38):
curious about AI.
So when Gen AI came on, I kindof went very deep and started
reading it, started evangelizingabout it.
I run a closed WhatsApp groupwhich you and many other prime
founders are on, just to educatemyself and also tell people
what I like and don't like andtalk about what is the news in
AI, and I send it to people likeNandan and others, like
(17:00):
whatever bits that I've learned.
That's more for like purelypersonal educational.
The second thing I do in AI isthat I'm an AI advisor to a
private equity fund in Europeit's one of the $7 billion PE
fund and I work with multiplecompanies in Europe and US in AI
(17:22):
transformation.
So I get to see companies whichare a little bit more scaled,
so anywhere from $30 million,$50 million to $1.5 billion of
revenue companies.
So what are they doing in AI,so I have some visibility and
understanding of what works,what doesn't work.
And, lastly, I help out PeoplePlus AI, which is a Nandan
(17:45):
Nilakan initiative, part ofXSTEP, as to what AI means to
India, right?
So I get to view this from likesort of three lenses
educational, just personaleducation, and sort of running a
close group, actual, inpractice, at PE funds, and and
and what it means to India.
And on top of that, I am, ofcourse, part of some boards of
(18:08):
AI companies and so on and soforth.
So my view of AI is that, toanswer your question question,
is it like, is it all bullshit,or is it like, you know, I
should be very scared?
So I would say you should bevery scared.
So this is my analysis afterabout two and a half, you know,
(18:30):
ever since Gen AI came out,basically since November 2022.
Not like really really runawayscared, but like on a scale of
one to ten, I would say youshould be at eight, right.
If you're sitting at two, uh,you're going to get buried,
right.
So this is like.
This is like using, you know, afeature phone nokia feature
phone in you know 2010 andsaying, yeah, iphone is there,
(18:50):
but it's slow and apps are notthere, etc.
It's all true, uh, it is justthat that's not where the future
is.
So I would say that is my broadperspective on where you should
be now.
Certain areas will get moreimpacted than others, right, I
just gave a.
I did a workshop at the Manipalgroup last couple of weeks ago,
(19:14):
talking to the CEO.
So there are some groups whichare, but even they are like very
up to speed on AI.
They are like seriously doing alot of initiatives on AI, right
, and they are like a, you know,a more industrial kind of a
group.
So it is here, it is now.
Everybody is already on it.
(19:35):
Whether they want to telleverybody about it or not
depends on the culture of thecompany.
A lot of people are usingChatGPT but don't want to tell
their bosses that they're usingit because they're worried
they're considered cheating.
But it's already here.
What impact is it going to haveis a more detailed question,
depending on which industryyou're in, but there is no
question in my mind that youshould be really really taking
(19:58):
it seriously if you're notalready doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So let's look at it from the tech startup ecosystem,
and the way I'm looking at itis there are three buckets.
There are startups that have aproduct where the product itself
might not necessarily beimpacted that much, but their
entire experience with theircustomer base, whether it's from
(20:24):
the marketing side of it, theacquisition, the um, the service
delivery, etc.
And then frerio would probablybe an example of that, right, I
mean the core customerunderwriting and lending part
may or may not initially bedramatically impacted, but you
know the marketing andacquisition and service and all
of that, right.
So that's one part.
Then there are businesses thatthat that were not possible in
(20:51):
the past, products that weren'tpossible but suddenly become
possible, right.
And then there's the thirdextreme of companies where it's
a large, established business,it's running on its own, but
something new is going to comeand disrupt them completely,
right.
So if you think about thosethree buckets and many startups
sort of fall in that thirdcategory also right where they
(21:12):
think that they're, you know,completely secure, but they
might get, as you said, you knowthey better be worried here.
Um, what are your views on someexamples of what founders can do
to remain nimble?
Right, because they have caughtup with running their business
on a daily basis and they reallycan't be even reading your
whatsapp group, right, that youhave set up.
So how does one educate oneself?
(21:35):
How does one, you know, stayabreast of what's going on?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
things are moving so fast that's sort of really
intimidating as well I've beenan entrepreneur most of my life,
except for our stint at adharand and my stint at prime
ventures.
So I fully get, like you know,as an entrepreneur, you're
solving like 50 problems everyday.
So, uh, and and you know, it'sanything which is nice to have
(22:01):
usually gets like deprioritized,right, anything that is, uh,
not immediate.
And as a founder, you also needto think about long term as
well as short term.
Right, you are thinking all.
It's not an option to say, uh,you know, only I'll think only
short term, because then you'llget destroyed.
Or only long term, right, I Iused to call it like you know,
you have to have your.
You know you have to have yourhead above the clouds to see the
big picture, but also feet onthe ground so that you don't
(22:23):
like miss what is happening.
Right, and so you don't have achoice to do both.
So as a founder, especially forthe founder of the founders,
right, the founders, founderceos you don't have an option
but to not look at this.
Right, you can't say, hey, man,this is not immediately
impacting me, so, you know, letme come to it.
I just have more pressingproblems.
And I speak that with a lot ofyou know empathy, because I've
(22:47):
been in that shoes many timesand I I get it right three hours
of sleep.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You're getting cut it down to two.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, and sadly you need to pay it because this is
going to impact you one way orthe other.
Now, how it's going to impactyou is going to depend whether
you are in this category numbertwo, which is you're saying that
the AI is the disruptor, or AIis like a nice to have, right,
or you know, know, I'm reallyfine, but you know, maybe I
(23:13):
should watch out for adisruption, right?
These are broadly the threecategories.
You said so for the cat.
For all these categories, onething is common and one thing
there is an actionable thingevery founder can do, which is
start using the tools right,because in every category there
are low-hanging fruits todaythat ai can do right.
So we can go across the board.
(23:33):
Sales.
Marketing is changing.
Digital marketing is completelychanging.
So I'm deeply involved with,for example, what's happening
with SEO and search in general.
Right, search is a big sourceof customers for most people.
Meta is also changing, not asmuch as Google searches, right,
costs are going up.
(23:53):
Sales is changing right.
How you're selling is changingwith AI, ab, testing and
marketing.
So marketing we can go in adeep topic Creatives, so on and
so forth.
Sales is changing.
Product is definitely changingright.
How product managers should useAI is changing.
Coding is changing.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Give an example on product managers.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So product managers, can you know, are really the
product management andengineering, at least the
prototyping design.
Product management is allfusing right, Because AI is the
best writer you can have, it'sthe best brainstorming partner
you can have, right?
So, writing very detaileddocuments and using AI you must
be doing it, otherwise you'renot doing something.
And then you should be usingvibe coding, which is a whole
(24:34):
topic we can talk about, tocreate mock-ups and prototypes
right Before even goingsomething to the engineer.
So product managers need to domuch more, but they can do it
much faster and better.
Doing competitive analysisno-brainer, right.
You can go scrape every websiteof your competition and get me
all the features.
Right.
I did this live demo for themin that seminar that I did.
(24:57):
You just go pull competitionand tell me the best features
that they have I don't and keepit current.
Sentiment analysis you knowthere's an endless number of
things that product managers cando Much faster, much better,
much better.
Coding whole new topic inalmost every phase, from
definition, design, architectureto DevOps and coding.
There's a whole topic of howyou can use AI and, of course,
(25:21):
in customer service, it'salready there.
You should be using it soacross the board, stepping back
in terms of productivity, ofwhat a startup can do.
You ought to be using ai, right, and that, I would say, is a
good start, whether you're incategory one, two or three in
your bucket, and that, I wouldsay, is actionable because it's
going to give you some benefit.
And but the change is very hard,right?
(25:42):
Uh, it's very hard fororganization, whether you're a
startup or a large company.
So this has to be led by thefounders.
Yeah, right, if your foundersare not bought in, this is not
going to happen.
So you are as a founder.
This, in short, you have todecide hey, is this something I
want to take seriously or not?
You know, balance is it's aeight?
You know I don't buy it, right,I think it's a two and that's
(26:03):
fine, that's your choice.
But if you believe that it's aeight, right, then you need to
put in those few hours in nomatter which category you are in
, right, and the best ideas arenot going to come from me, or
even uh, you know, uh, sanjay,you are vcs like you, even
though you're pretty close tothe company I have the best
ideas.
It's not the matter they mightnot take your best idea you
(26:24):
always have a humble yeah, butuh, but the, the founders and
ceos are going to have the bestideas on how to use it, right,
what you need to start using it.
And there is only one thing youneed to know about this
hallucination, et cetera, andthis is the reason for the AI
skeptics right, it's kind of a?
You know, it's a stochasticbeast, right, so I call it.
(26:44):
It's like riding.
I ride motorcycles, as you know, for fun, and it's like riding
a motorcycle in a desert, right,so you know, um, for fun,
that's, and it's like ridingmotorcycle in a desert, right,
so it's.
It's, the sands are shifting.
You're going up a dune, right,it's.
It's not.
You can't.
You need to roughly know I'mgoing in that direction, but
you're going to be going here,you're going to be going there
and you need to steer it.
And whether you're coding vibe,coding is very much.
If you, if you wipe code andsanjay, I know you, you're
(27:07):
playing with lovable and so onand so forth you get the feeling
like that.
Right, I know I roughly need togo there, but this beast is
going to take me in thisdirection.
Right, this bike is going toshift Suddenly, it's going to
stall.
Right, you need to kind of pushthe bike back right.
You need to get off the bike.
You're going to fall down a fewtimes, right?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
All of this is going to happen there, right in these.
As you say, it's a broaddirectionality is more or less
there, and certainly to gettingclose to what might feel like a
destination.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
You know, one can do it much faster and there are a
number of techniques to make itbetter, especially in live
coding, where you're doing it insmall steps, right, don't go
from here to there, plan thenext step.
If it doesn't work, backtrack.
So there are some people areputting in some rigor on how to
do better, prompting and so onand so forth, right, but it's
fundamentally you're riding abeast that you don't completely
control, right, and and whetheryou're a product manager,
(27:55):
whether you're a coder, this iswhat you need to internalize,
right, it sounds perfect, butit's not perfect, right, and
it's wild, but it's also kind oflike the fun.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
So I like the other day I did something fun on this
uh with my wife.
Actually we were talking aboutsomething fun about your wife.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Let's not talk about it too much.
It's a family audience here.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, absolutely, but I'll tell you some secrets.
So what we did?
We were discussing some projectwe wanted to embark on.
I said you know what, let'sturn on Granola.
And we just started chattingand it summarized whatever and I
copied and pasted that into twotools.
One was Gamma and I said createa presentation and create a
(28:35):
website for this initiative.
And then I copied it intoLovable and I said, okay, this
needs to be an ongoinginitiative, create an
application or obviously,mockups of an application.
But then I later even triedconnecting it to Superbase and
you know, having a database atthe back end also, right, my God
, the level of sophistication ina 20-minute version that you
(28:59):
can get.
It is stunning.
In fact, even yesterday I waschatting with one of our other
founders about you know how arethey using it, and then I went
to his website, as we were sortof in this WhatsApp chat, and I
copied and pasted thedescription of one of their
products into lovable and at theend of a 20-minute chat I said,
okay, by the way, here's yourproduct all built.
There was obviously it's amock-up of a product the fact
(29:23):
that you can get pretty farright and conceptualizing it.
So, as you said A, b, testingall of these things, or meeting
customers and saying would youbuy this?
It almost seems that thereshould never be any founder
pitching you an idea stage thinganymore.
They should be able to at leastshow you a mock-up of saying
this is what we're going to do,right?
So look, this whole AI thing.
(29:46):
We're super excited and I think, as you said, you just have to
start playing around with it.
You talked a little bit aboutmotorcycling, so tell us a
little bit about the Bala.
That is not working.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I do a bunch of stuff .
I just went to Oman last weekfor diving.
I just went by myself and itwas good fun Scuba diving.
So you're going to talk aboutwhy you go by yourself scuba
diving, but you're going to talkabout why you go by yourself.
What happens in a veryconservative Islamic country
stays in the conservativeIslamic country, as they say but
(30:19):
it was dry I didn't know thatOman had no alcohol except in a
few hotels.
So, but no, I like biking.
That's my big weakness.
This year we're going toCentral Asia with a bunch of
guys.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I have to tell you all a little bit of my two
favorite Balapar Sarthi moments.
We were interviewing a personfor a role at Prime and Bala
told me well, you know, at 9.30am my time, which will be around
like 7 pm your time I will beavailable for 20 minutes and
(30:55):
I'll do this interview, right?
And so the interview happened.
And then this candidate callsme back later and said he was on
some highway shack in Peru Areyou guys serious about this
interview?
Right?
But he had grilled thedaylights out of her in that 20
minutes and I said how did theinterview go?
(31:15):
She was really.
He asked me all these questionsbut, you know, was he really
serious about this thing?
And then, of course, 10 secondslater, I got a whatsapp message
from him saying these are allthe things I did.
Is that?
thumbs up, let's go ahead rightand and that's the one thing I
really admire about you, bala,because you, because you, can be
doing all these things.
The other episode was also veryinteresting.
We had a term sheet with a 5pmdeadline that we were trying to
(31:37):
sign and I have not heard fromBala for three days.
Hey, what the heck do we dothis or deal or not?
And at 4.57, I get a plus 977number ringing on my phone and a
call from Nepal.
Sanjay, this is Bala, almost nocoverage here.
That's the other set of amazingthings you've done around hiking
(31:59):
and things like that.
But your ability, I think, tointertwine hardcore business
with personal time and pleasureand family and things like that,
I think is really somethingthat you know people who work
with you take for granted, butyou know it's something that
most people struggle to balance.
(32:21):
Maybe you can end with a littlebit of any anecdotes from your
side or some tips on how peopleshould balance all of these.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Look, especially if it's a founder audience.
You know, balance is like not agood word, you know, because
all founders are imbalanced bydefinition.
Uh, whenever I was very deep inthe company, I was usually
imbalanced, uh, but uh, and Iwas, you know, maniacally doing
only one thing.
The truth is, uh, you know thatit the, you know to use the
(32:50):
cliche, it is kind of a longrace.
It's not like, oh, I'll do thisfor two years and I'll sell the
company.
It's an yoga.
It's a minimum 10 year race.
Uh, and 10 years is a big partof your life, you know, if you
start, if you are, you know, 25or 35 or 45, it becomes more and
more critical.
So, uh, you know, you do needto take care of your family
number one.
Uh, and then, uh, and then youdon't want to have regrets.
(33:11):
Like you know, you do need totake care of your family number
one, and then you don't want tohave regrets.
Like you know the cliche that Inever see my kids grow up.
You definitely need to takecare of yourself as well,
personally and whatever.
That fun be right.
So I've been lucky.
I've had, you know, goodco-founders who, you know, put
up with my shit to be able topartner.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Exactly.
But you know they'll rememberfond stories, like you did, and
some nasty stories.
They won't talk on a podcast,but life goes on, and you know.
But you have to live your lifeand that's my philosophy Awesome
Play hard.
You know, work hard butdefinitely play hard.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
It's super important, Terrific Bala.
Thank you so much, and on thathigh note we shall end.
Work hard, play hard when newepisodes are available.
Just search for Prime VenturePartners Podcast in Apple
Podcast, Spotify, CastBox orhowever.
You get your podcasts, Then hitsubscribe and if you have
enjoyed the show, we would bereally grateful if you leave us
(34:21):
a review on Apple Podcast.
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
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