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Building a business is tough. It takes grit, never-ending days, missed family birthdays, and more coffee than you thought it was possible to drink.
Unfortunately, many business operators do all of this and see initial success but then - crickets! They hit a plateau or, worse, fall off the cliff entirely.
This is The Business OS, a show powered by JustCall dedicated to ensuring that you don't get lost in that Bermuda Triangle of irrelevance.
Join us as we talk to entrepreneurs, business leaders, and real-world operators - folks who know your struggles better than anyone else. They are also the ones with the knowledge and playbooks to help you succeed. Through candid conversations with our guests, we make sure you’ll walk away with actionable takeaways to help you think ahead and pivot fast.
True, building a business is tough - and you have to hustle. But it does get easier when you have a Business OS.
Transcription
JUSTCALL | THE BUSINESS OS | GAURAV SHARMA
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
Gaurav Sharma [00:00:00]:
As a founder, you have to grow faster than the company or as a professional. So, if you are not doing that, then probably you are not the right fit for the job and probably have to go to the market. So just keep pushing yourself to move faster than, like for example, if you are at x million today, what a CEO will look like at two x million. So I should start preparation for that right away. What are all the decisions I'll be taking at that number? What I'll be taking at a billion dollar error? Something like that. Right. Moving few steps faster than the company. I think that's important.
Kushal Kakkar [00:00:30]:
This is The Business OS, a conversation powered by JustCalll, dedicated to giving you the tools and knowledge needed to win your business.
Hi there. Welcome to The Business OS. Our guest today is a man who has started a business or two in every decade of his life, starting right in his teenage years. Inspired by the OG Sabir Bhatia, he discovered his passion for coding and building products in school and had already made his first sale by the time he graduated college. Sure, he may have started his official professional career at an investment bank, but it took him just three months to realize that it was not the life for him. Since then, it has been entrepreneurship or bust. I am so happy to welcome for the first-ever episode of The Business OS, lifelong entrepreneur, Obsessive Tinkerer, and my boss, CEO of SaaS Labs, and JustCall, Gaurav Sharma.
Kushal Kakkar [00:01:22]:
Gaurav, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here.
Gaurav Sharma [00:01:24]:
Thank you, Kushal, and thanks for that amazing intro. I'm going to be using that here and there for sure.
Kushal Kakkar [00:01:30]:
Awesome. Moving on, really to a lot of the main questions that we want to cover with you today. You've obviously built and sold enough companies to really retire to the Bahamas or any other destination of your choice. Why keep doing this?
Gaurav Sharma [00:01:44]:
Absolutely, I think, and this question actually came to my mind just after selling the second business back in 2015. So, I never started any business with the idea of making a lot of money. It was always, and whatever business I started with the idea of making money, I think they never worked. Whenever the business got started with a genuine excitement about an idea, I think that business always sort of worked primarily is driven by this whole excitement about you building something out of nowhere. Like, you know, because I used to write code and I'm still writing some code on the weekends. You start this blank page and then you start writing something on it, and then it starts working and it starts solving some problem or people start finding it very useful and these people are not affiliated to you. Like, they're very unknown people of one of those 8 billion sort of folks, right? And you have never met them, and somehow you. You are impacting their life, being a part of their life.
Gaurav Sharma [00:02:38]:
And that feeling is, I mean, you cannot match that feeling by anything else. So that's what keeps me going, I guess.
Kushal Kakkar [00:02:45]:
I'm no business owner, Gaurav, but I feel like that's a really solid reason to sort of keep going in a journey and building things for people. Right. And just the sheer impact that you'll be driving with what you're building. So I think that's super powerful. You are, of course, famously an advocate of bootstrapping, and that really runs counter to the growth at all costs sort of mindset that we see with a lot of VC-run businesses as well, or something that we've seen with many major unicorns over the past few years. Did you ever feel like you were not, like you were missing out on aggressive growth by not having that growth at all?
Gaurav Sharma [00:03:18]:
Cost of mindset initially, it's 100% function of your mindset, like what exactly you're trying to build. Because I always believe that business is all about generating value where the cost price is lower than the selling price. Simple as that. And just growing, growing, growing without having an eye on the health of the business and the quality of the business. I never sort of fell into that. And partly, probably, it comes from having, like, two successes before. So, it was never a financial sort of game for me. So it made it slightly easier to not to think about that and just work upon building something highly high-quality kind of business where the fundamentals of business are intact.
Gaurav Sharma [00:03:57]:
It's the kind of learning that you sort of get over a period of time that all the paper valuations are nothing till you sort of make them, sort of take the company public or sell it off. Only then you'll realize that paper sort of big numbers and also having that three months of experience investment banking. I also know, like, how real or fake these numbers and valuations are. So it's better you build something if you're spending a lot of your time into it. Like, just better build a good business that generates actual value for you and for your colleagues and everyone. So, yeah, so I think it's. It's. Yeah, so it's a mindset thing. People can have different mindsets.
Kushal Kakkar [00:04:34]:
Fair enough. And I think focusing on creating value above all else seems like the best North Star, really, to have. I'm curious, though, that Jaskol and of course, SaaS labs have been VC-funded in recent years. Right. Has it been easy enough to sort of have the same alignment when it comes to mindset and value creation with RVC partners as well?
Gaurav Sharma [00:04:52]:
No, I think. Okay, so why this shift from bootstrapping to VC in the first place? So another reason for. For me to keep. Keep pushing for bootstrapping is like you're taking someone else's money, although the VC question is different from a debt. But still, I mean, probably this comes from the upbringing itself that you don't like taking money from someone. Or if you. If you are taking that money, you have to give it back. It just comes from the values that you've got from a family.
Gaurav Sharma [00:05:18]:
Right. So that was another probably reasons why I didn't take the money or bootstrap the business for the longest period, like almost four and a half years. So I think the right time to raise capital is when you have this engine ready where you put x amount of dollars and it generates more than x amount of dollars, or at least generate that kind of value, which is justifiable. So once we had that engine, it became kind of easier for us to sort of have that alignment with the VC's where they expect you to just grow like anything. And we have been like growing really well, like back to back, you know? I mean, you have done some of those campaigns, right? The Delaware 500, fastest growing company in 5000, all those things. So we've been growing. We have been growing really well. Last year, the whole market was in a bad shape and even in that market, we were able to grow without spending money.
Gaurav Sharma [00:06:03]:
So I think VC's are definitely, hopefully they're very appreciative of the work we have done as a team. So, yeah, so I think once you have that engine that's working, I think that's a good time to push the pedal.
Kushal Kakkar [00:06:15]:
Got it, got it. I'm just switching gears a little bit here, right. Coders and builders are famously known to be loners, right, or people who enjoy the quiet space. And as you have said, you were a bit of an introvert at some point as well, right? But as an entrepreneur, obviously you have to be, you know, the face and really the voice of the company, at least initially. How were you able to reconcile these two parts?
Gaurav Sharma [00:06:35]:
Not a bit of an introvert. I was like, proper introvert, you know, like, I could have got a certificate for that. So when my mom, dad dropped me at the. At the college 20220 zero six, I actually cried when they left that kind of introvert or a loner or whatever. I was not a loner, but introvert. Well, I spent like, how will I talk to other people? Like, I just cannot. I just only talk to my parents and my family and all that. Right.
Gaurav Sharma [00:06:58]:
So yeah, that's where I was. So, there's a difference between founder and CEO. I think that's a bridge. I mean, that you have to sort of cross. So as a founder, you can be a coder who's running and building, who's just building things and just launching it till the MVP, let's say, or to a very small mark, like a million dollars or something. And then you start building teams. And that's where you have to realize that CEO and founders are totally different place. So what I did, and I think what worked really well for me in this case is that been always been self-reflecting on things.
Gaurav Sharma [00:07:31]:
So I realized that there is something missing here, like where I should be more communicative with people. I know that I still have a lot of work to do, but I've had come a long way just realizing that that CEO's need to be that motivator in the company and should be communicative, should be giving feedback regularly. And for that, an introvert can't work. So, I always admit this to anyone I'm sort of talking to about this topic. Like, even today I'm still that introvert. But because my job calls for being a bit more open, so I have to work upon it. So it's a muscle-building process. You go to gym every day and build a muscle.
Gaurav Sharma [00:08:11]:
That video to do with this as well. So what worked really well for me was obviously books and then just pushing myself out of the comfort zone. There's no other way around it. You cannot hack it by hiring someone to do this job. You just cannot delegate the CEO's job to a non-CEO or you just hire another CEO. Right.
Kushal Kakkar [00:08:30]:
Very fair points, Gaurav. And I think, you know, thinking of building up a communication muscle, really as just as, you know, working out in the gym, for instance. Right. For our physical muscles, I think that makes a lot of sense. It's actually a muscle that you need to exercise and build up over time. I think you said something really interesting, right? Which is that there's a difference between a founder and a CEO. And I just like to dig into that a little bit more. You obviously come from a builder's mindset, right? Where you've wanted to build a business yourself and code and create value, and you've done that.
Kushal Kakkar [00:08:55]:
Indeed. What made you decide that being a CEO was also the right path for you, and that's the path you wanted to also go on.
Gaurav Sharma [00:09:03]:
You see, it comes from the whole drive and the motivation to build this organization into a. Into a huge organization. And if I sort of step back, this motivation is actually coming from making a lot of success stories within the company. So this, you know, so this keeps you driving, and then you start questioning yourself, like, what is that one thing that I'm not doing today that I should be doing? And that sort of start giving you answers that, hey, you cannot sit in your room and just write code and just hope customers will come. And a lot of customers will come. Having that fear of failing pushes you to do what you're not doing. And, yeah, so that's where it sort of begins and then you sort of work upon it.
Kushal Kakkar [00:09:46]:
I think there are definitely many different career paths that clearly all of us can take at different points. Right. And even if you're a founder, I think there clearly still some career decisions to be taken, even there in terms of what we want our output or our sphere of influence, really to be. Even as a founder versus a CEO versus a business owner.
Gaurav Sharma [00:10:02]:
Right.
Kushal Kakkar [00:10:03]:
So, I think that's super helpful for folks who are listening in.
Gaurav Sharma [00:10:06]:
I think one thing you have to learn that the, I think it's true for everyone in the company, but as a founder, you have to grow faster than the company as a professional. So if you're not doing that, then probably you are not the right fit for the job and probably have to go to the market. So just keep pushing yourself to move faster than, like for example, if you're at x million today, what a CEO will look like at two x million. So I should start preparation for that right away. What all these things I'll be taking at that number, what I'll design at a billion dollar error, something like that. Right. So, moving few steps faster than the company, I think that's important. And that's true for everyone actually in the team, not just the founder and the CEO.
Kushal Kakkar [00:10:46]:
Yeah, that's very true. And I think just saying that about the CEO, I think it clearly shows that it's not so easy being a CEO because you have to sort of think two steps ahead, right. And not just understand what you're building and what you want to acquire and who your ideal customers are, but really understanding what the future of the company and the business really looks like. So it sounds like being a CEO is nothing. All rainbows and butterflies. Right. And there's clearly a lot of much more work that goes in there. Just talking of all of that.
Kushal Kakkar [00:11:12]:
Right, Gaurav, clearly for the journey of building SaaS labs and JustCall, there must have been a lot of highs and lows and successes, etcetera. Let's maybe just talk perhaps a bit about the genesis of JustCall and SaaS labs. If you could take us through really the ideation and growth, maybe during the first year or the first few initial years.
Gaurav Sharma [00:11:31]:
Yeah. So, where should I start? 2015. I sold the previous business, 2016, and decided to start SaaS collabs. This time around I was pretty clear that I'm not going to sell a business. So I need a really long term business idea for me so that I can run it for next 30, 40 years or so and till the body sort of permits. So for that I was looking for a, for an, for an idea that sort of outlives me. And for that I started looking at companies that I really admire, Adobe, Atlassian Arms, and a bunch of other companies. And the commonality among these companies I saw was that they all are champions of different job profiles.
Gaurav Sharma [00:12:07]:
So that became a mental model in a way. Like if you build something for a job profile, you can actually build a really big business. For example, Adobe is a champion of designers. So till the time there is business on earth or people are building something creative, Adobe will be used here and there in some shape and form. If you're a product manager or if you're doing some sort of project management, they'll be using something like Jira or confluence for your, your product, again in different font shape. So that gave me some, the idea, like, okay, let's, let's focus on some sort of job profiles. In all my previous businesses, I not, I not just did the coding piece, but also did the first zero to one journey of sales and support as well. So I was pretty close to what all these agents go through.
Gaurav Sharma [00:12:53]:
It's a high anxiety work. The SMB's, especially the SMB's don't, the agents in the SMBs don't get the right tools to do their job and everything. Right. So that became like the idea for me. Like, can we solve for agents who are working in the small businesses and give them the right tools so that we can help them get better at their job if we can help them lower their anxiety as well, because it's a very thankless kind of job. So that became the broader idea for, for SaaS Labs because I was always into building a lot of products. And probably I was just thinking that I sold all these companies because probably I got bored really quickly. And that's one of those weaknesses that a lot of programmers have.
Gaurav Sharma [00:13:35]:
Like they, they have so many ideas all the time and they can, because they know that they can build anything they're sort of thinking about. So they get bored pretty easily. So, I felt that probably I sold my previous companies because I got bored. And this time around I don't want to sell it. So let's, let's have a platform where we can actually build a lot of products within the same umbrella. So, that's why SaaS Labs became like a multi-product company from day one without a single product. And then JustCall happened, because JustCall happened. Why? Because again, we were trying to solve our own problems.
Gaurav Sharma [00:14:05]:
So, under Sass Labs, we build couple of tiny, tiny products. And just to bootstrap the business, to support the business, and to grow those businesses, we needed a, so our salesperson asked us like, hey, can you give us an international number or us number so that I can just double the sales? And we got this person a Skype phone number. And after two months on the line, nothing changed really. Then I was the salesperson that would like what you did, would love to understand like what you're exactly doing, but sales have not gone up. You were saying that the sales will double, even 10% increase will, will be helpful. And he gave me the usual answer. So we decided on a weekend to just hack around and just build something so that we can just track phone calls. That became the idea of a JustCall, which today is our biggest product.
Gaurav Sharma [00:14:51]:
So we hacked around, build this product where our salesperson can get phone numbers, make the calls, and we can listen to the recordings. Simple as that. And that's how we launched it. JustCall IO, very basic, very simple. And, yeah, so that was the starting point for us.
Kushal Kakkar [00:15:08]:
Got it, got it. And it sounds like listening to your customers from the very early days, I guess, is a cornerstone, really, for any company that wants to create value. But that definitely cannot get easier as you scale. Right. Because initially you're probably working very closely with customers themselves and building directly with them. But as the business scales, it can't be that easy to stay in touch with your customers. How do you sort of bridge that challenge for yourself today?
Gaurav Sharma [00:15:31]:
No, definitely. I think you have to just put it in your schedule, just make it part of your calendar itself. And if you're doing that, it's a fundamental way of how you time manage. Right, so manage your time. So if you put, if this thing is high priority for you, you'll have to put it in your time management schedule. So what I'm doing today is like, obviously I'm, I'm chatting with our leaders in the CX teams. Also, what I'm doing today is probably, it's different for different companies. So at least for me, every single email which is going to the helpscore IO also comes to me.
Gaurav Sharma [00:16:05]:
So that just keeps, keeps it easier for me just to have an eye on what's, what's happening. I'm not reading every single email, but I just, I mean, from the subject line you can see like where there's an urgency, right. So I keep on looking at some of these emails, I jump in some of these, these queries and just tell them that, hey, sorry, it was a bad experience. I'm happy to help here. So one is that like having some, some form of visibility in what's happening in the support and the other thing I'm doing is just taking a couple of days where I'm just going on customer support chat and just looking, because within like 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours, you'll see a pattern like where the support stands and that gives you an idea, like what are some of those most common problems customers are facing? And then you can just take it back to the support leader and the engineering teams and the product teams that, hey, this is what I found, you know, like, so, so, absolutely. That also keeps the, the teams always, you know, alert about giving great customer support because you never know when I'm looking at some of these customer queries.
Kushal Kakkar [00:17:12]:
I think that's a very important lesson, right? To sort of stay very close to the business and the customer, even as you sort of scale the business and you hire different levels of people and different teams to come and do this for you. Right. So I guess it's equally important to stay hands on, but to also stay hands-off. Which sort of brings me to the next part. Right. I'm guessing that especially as a bootstrapper, you have to be very careful about every person that you really hire and you bring on board the team, right. Because you're literally building up the culture and the values of every person you really bring on board. Do you have a hiring philosophy, you know, a hiring compass? How do you think about hiring?
Gaurav Sharma [00:17:45]:
No, absolutely. I think over a period of time, like I used to read, like growing up as a, as an entrepreneur founder, I used to read about these blog posts and all these podcast of amazing sort of entrepreneurs, and they all used to say that hiding is the most important thing. You know, it was difficult for me to understand exactly that. Like in the early days, but now I also like under percent, 200% agree to that. Like it's all about hiring great people, products and everything. It all are like side products of great hiring or bad hiring. So my mental model has obviously evolved over a period of time by making a lot of mistakes and a lot of right calls, right decisions. So normally what I've started looking for is not just the, what's written on the cv or the resume.
Gaurav Sharma [00:18:29]:
I actually, what I do is if I'm hiring for some specific role, I first deep dive into what are some of those natural abilities that you cannot coach a person but are required for this job. So that has become a great feature for me. For example, let's say, let's say customer support agent, I'm hiring for that person. The obvious answer will be like, hey, he should be empathetic. But that's true. Then that's fine, everyone should be empathetic. For me, I think comprehension skills is really important. Like if person is reading the chat query or the email, is this person comprehending the whole para correctly or not? So, comprehension skills become super important for me.
Gaurav Sharma [00:19:10]:
And that's what I make sure that people are asking those kind of questions or putting that sort of question that in the test. Right. For a leader, being humble is really important. If someone is just bragging the hell out of their previous successes, it's a, it's a big red flag for me. So, yeah, so I think all these, all these mistakes and successes have created a mental model that I cannot really codify and put it on the paper. But, but it just comes naturally to you now that you are able to read people and some of those things. So, for leaders, being humble is really important. The third thing is ask question just for the depth check.
Gaurav Sharma [00:19:46]:
A lot of people have done a lot of thing on their resumes, but what they have really done on field, I think that you have to really, really check. So you have to be really smart with asking those questions. That sort of checks the depth of their understanding and the work they have done. Other than that, I think that's pretty, pretty straightforward. Asking about the failures is also one of those great questions I've found in all my sort of hiring questions. Like that's where people stumble a lot of time. People say that no major failures, but if that happened, then it's a no go for me.
Kushal Kakkar [00:20:18]:
And I think for whoever's listening in, right. And if they want to get hired here, they clearly know some of the things that they must be speaking of including their failures. Right. And it honestly reminds me of our own very initial hiring conversations, even between you and I. Right. And I think even in those, there's a very equal distribution of, you know, a talk-to-listen ratio where I think you definitely had your own questions and you were obviously analyzing what I was saying. Right. But I think I was also able to ask you a lot of questions, and I'm sure that the questions that someone asks you, any candidate asks you would also be telling I on the kind of things that they're interested in, how they think, their research, their thought processes.
Kushal Kakkar [00:20:54]:
Right. So I'm sure that both of those play a part there.
Gaurav Sharma [00:20:56]:
Yeah. So nowadays, like, I'm not the first person interviewing the person. Right. I normally do these either culture checks or in some cases, some sort of technical set of things. So normally I start my interview by that only, like, hey, let's start this interview or this chat. Do you have questions for me? So I normally start with that, and I'm fine with 50% of time the person asking me questions because. Because I know a lot of people in the, in the pipeline are great folks. They must be having a lot of opportunities in the market.
Gaurav Sharma [00:21:27]:
So hiring is both selling and buying. So you have to have a balance of that. So that's also one of the roles of the CEO to sell the opportunity to a lot of great talent in the. In the market. So that's also where I'm spending a lot of time. I'm talking to a lot of people who are not in the market today, but probably will be. So it's always selling them the opportunity. So I think that's also one of those jobs.
Gaurav Sharma [00:21:51]:
Yeah.
Kushal Kakkar [00:21:51]:
And I think a lot of clearly communication, whether that's with customers or prospective candidates, employees, investors, that large universe clearly is a large part of the work for any CEO or founder. And having worked closely with you, I've obviously seen you put a lot of stake on communication and really over-communicating overall as well. And as you've said multiple times, even engineers here at our company need to be good communicators. Right. Why is communication so important for you to begin with?
Gaurav Sharma [00:22:19]:
I think communication is really important. For first, no one can build a whole business alone and single. Right. Single-handedly. So you need a team to build everything. And for team to work together really well, they should all be on the same page, even if they agree or disagree, but they should be committed to something they have to achieve together. And that's where clarity of thought is really important. Like where exactly we all stand, and that's where communication plays super important role.
Gaurav Sharma [00:22:50]:
So communication can be used for, obviously, clarity among the team members. But also a lot of times what happened, like when company starts growing, there are so many levels in the company and a lot of chatter happens at the leadership level. And the why never reaches to the folks in the ground or in the field. Right. So, missing that why is the biggest problem a lot of companies face with respect to alignment. People are okay to do the job. I mean, but if you're not telling the why, then they'll do a hard job or they just don't do it, or they'll just question the decision itself. Right.
Gaurav Sharma [00:23:24]:
So this is what I've learned, like, how to make sure that y reaches to everyone because it becomes really easy for you. So a lot of times there's a lot of change management you have to do in the company. That's, again, you don't have to just tell them that what to what, what is required to be done. You have to also tell them why we are doing this thing. Right. So, because we face this problem after our series A, when we raise our series A. So coming out from bootstrapping to series A funded, we see sort of funded company, and we got some people from outside. From the leadership point of view, I didn't do a great job at communicating and combining the two.
Gaurav Sharma [00:24:00]:
So they became, they became two kind of companies in our company itself. It was like pre pre-funded bootstrap company folks. And the folks who came out after the funding, the pre-funding folks or bootstrap folks were like, hey, we have built everything there and we know everything, right? And the people who came after series A, they were like, great job what you have done, but we come with experience, so we know more and more things, right. So I think that's why communication was really important. Like we should. I should have done some decent job at. I should have done that actually, to, to tell the bootstrappers, the bootstrap folks, that, hey, amazing work. We have reached here, but probably we are lacking these things and that's why we're gonna be going to the market.
Gaurav Sharma [00:24:42]:
It will be great opportunity for you guys to understand and learn new things and grow as a professional. And to the leaders, incoming leaders, I should have told them that we are not going to do a organ transplant here. We'll be doing surgeries first. I think this is something I told you also probably when you joined or someone, someone, I told you this, this thing. So I should have done that, but I didn't do that. And there was some sort of chaos for two months or so. Then I started communicating big time, basically. Right? So even.
Gaurav Sharma [00:25:11]:
Even in all my leadership hiring, I made sure I mentioned that. So, yeah, so avoid chaos. Make things clear for people for better collaboration. I think that's why communication is super important.
Kushal Kakkar [00:25:23]:
Yeah, really, Gaurav, sharing the why of what, you know, why are we doing something is super important. Right. And we definitely see this across all of our teams, across all of my experiences as well.
Gaurav Sharma [00:25:34]:
Right.
Kushal Kakkar [00:25:34]:
People are far more likely to give something than 100 and 120% if they understand what you're trying to achieve and why you want to do that. Right. Versus just taking marching orders and taking it from there. And I think there's also a generational sort of aspect to this, I think. And we ourselves will see people of different generations in the workplace today, right, where we've got some folks who are literally just out of college and maybe in their very early twenties. You've got people on the other end as well. Right? So there's a large spectrum of, I think, generational differences as well, and how we sort of. And how much we value communication and understanding the why.
Kushal Kakkar [00:26:06]:
So there's definitely maybe that aspect to it as well. Have you seen that yourself? The differences in how generations operate in the workplace?
Gaurav Sharma [00:26:13]:
Oh, definitely, yes. Is this one of those questions that you can make a small clip of and make it viral so that I, you know, I say something controversial?
Kushal Kakkar [00:26:22]:
Only your reply will tell us. Only your answer will tell us.
Gaurav Sharma [00:26:26]:
No, I think definitely, definitely seen a lot of changes, both good and bad, I would say. I guess start with the good and probably one with the feedback. Nothing bad. No, I think the good one is new-gen folks. Like, where are we? Like we are at Gen Z now or like, yeah, I think we're at millennials at least. Okay, so, yeah, no, I think they asked for more wise than the previous gen, right? I mean, earlier. I mean, if I. If I remember my sort of days of working in that investment bank for three months, I never asked why.
Gaurav Sharma [00:27:01]:
Like, they just told me to do something. I just did. But. But now the, the, the folks are asking questions, which is great. Which is great. I mean, the kind of confidence they bring on the table, I think that's great. I was not there at all. In some cases, my almost three-year-old seems more confident than me in doing some things.
Gaurav Sharma [00:27:17]:
Right. So that's amazing. And that's going to take us forward for sure. The feedback piece would be like, probably we're not too serious about our professional life. I think that's one thing I've noticed. I'm nothing speaking for the whole generation, but I think the. The balance is slightly off there, but it's also a function of, like, generation after generation. The largely, you get well off and everything, and it becomes easier for you to experiment in your sort of career and everything.
Gaurav Sharma [00:27:46]:
So, yeah, that's also fine. So, yeah, so nothing, nothing bad here. All good. You?
Kushal Kakkar [00:27:53]:
Controversial clips for us, clearly.
Gaurav Sharma [00:27:55]:
Yeah, yeah. No, I think the confidence piece is definitely one of those things where I sort of myself, get a lot of energy from, like, when you hang out with these folks in your office, right? I mean, you're like, man, I have to learn so much from them, so much energy they have.
Kushal Kakkar [00:28:11]:
Yeah, yeah, no, I think there's definitely. And I think that's the right way to look at it. Right. There's clearly a lot that different generations can learn from each other. I think we can definitely learn to be more assertive, perhaps, from these other folks. Right. And I'm sure there's learning across the table, of course, coming towards almost the end of this segment. In a lot of ways, the podcast itself is something that you've been really excited about in all of the conversations and chats that we've had around it.
Kushal Kakkar [00:28:35]:
In a world where every time even three people get together, they can create a podcast. It's just that easy today. What's your vision for the business west for this podcast? What do you think we can bring to the table that's actually different?
Gaurav Sharma [00:28:48]:
Absolutely. Thanks for taking the initiative. I've been thinking about this for forever now. I think let's start with the first question itself, right? I mean, the one you asked, like bootstrapping or like, why, why not vc funding thinking or all those things, right? I think these are the questions going through every single first-time entrepreneur or a small sort of company founder. I meet so many founders at different events and everything, and a lot of founders reached reach out to me for investment, and I can clearly see that there is a clarity piece missing in the market today, where from the content piece, there's a lot of playbooks available in the market. But I think playbooks don't sort of really work work. We need to make. Make it.
Gaurav Sharma [00:29:26]:
We need to just give people some ingredients to create their own mental models. Playbooks won't sort of work for everyone. So I think I look forward to this podcast series as basically helping you build that mental model for themselves, which is different from giving you an easy way out, you know? So I think that's. That's definitely 1 second is like a lot of, most of the podcasts are all focused upon very small segment of the whole business. Basically, like we say, like tech tech only. We really want to make it. There'll be a good amount of tech folks involved here, but. Or like startup or software kind of folks involved here, but we really want to make it a slightly bit open and talk more about the business building piece, which can be true for every single industry, not just a software industry.
Gaurav Sharma [00:30:16]:
Right. So I think that. So because if you go to market Laminar, you won't see a lot of podcast or content around running, I don't know, a franchise business, you know, in Detroit, let's say. So, yeah. So I think that there is a void there for sure from gap perspective. And the last one is like just sticking to our own DNA where we believe in building a good, high quality business without any B's, basically. Am I allowed to say B's?
Kushal Kakkar [00:30:42]:
Yes, you are.
Gaurav Sharma [00:30:43]:
Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, so I think we'll keep it very simple. First principle, that's, that's our idea about the podcast. What, what I saw missing in the market. We had this chat and here we are.
Kushal Kakkar [00:30:56]:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Gaurav. And I think, you know, really, if I had to sum up a lot of this, it really sounds like building a business is not always easy. It's not always sexy, it's not always pretty. And there are a lot of things that clearly, you know, business owners go through that they perhaps don't even share very openly. Right. So I'm hoping this podcast, this swarm, is the place where we're able to get people together and talk very, very transparently about their learnings, their experiences. And that's how we're able to really sort of help each other as well.
Kushal Kakkar [00:31:22]:
And yeah, get some really laugh-worthy bloopers, perhaps some controversial bits along the way as well, but definitely add value to those folks who are trying to build a business. Thanks so much, Gaurav, for taking our time for us today and for, of course, sponsoring the show. Overall, so great to have you here.
Gaurav Sharma [00:31:37]:
Thank you, Gushan.
Kushal Kakkar [00:31:41]:
Thank you for listening to The Business OS. If you're looking for more resources on how to navigate growth, please go to JustCall.io/thebusinessos. And don't forget, the journey is easier when you have a business OS.
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