Mahesh Guruswamy
Appearances
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And their pitch deck doesn't have a competitor slide. I'm like, wait, you haven't thought through this fully. Yeah.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I think the single biggest lesson that I've learned is don't start with the no.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right. And going back to Amazon, like that was drilled into my head. So if I ever presented or anybody presented an idea with the competitive aspect of it like left out, you would get skewered because the question would be, well, we know Google is doing this. We know Microsoft is doing this. Why is this not in this proposal?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Like, what are you doing against, you know, to compete against these competitors?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, exactly. I think it's not copying it. One, it shows that having a competitor is actually a good sign that the market is healthy. There's space for you to compete. That's number one. Number two, it shows that you have done your research. And I think you mentioned that phrase when we were talking. What is the blue ocean here? If it is a competitive market.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
what are you doing to like navigate this this path to find like a blue ocean in this in this you know in this like sort of ocean you're in so i think it's just like i think it's common sense i think like most entrepreneurs not most but many entrepreneurs they feel like their idea is so cool and so awesome that there's nobody else doing it but chances are somebody is doing it somewhere
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Well, A, they don't start with a no. So I think that's the first thing you want to look for. And B, you don't need to hire a super senior experienced person as your first tech hire. I think if you're hiring your first engineer, you want to look for kind of cultural match. Does this person like match your speed? And that's what you're looking for. And do they believe in AI, like speeding them up?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's number two you want to look for. And number three, do they understand the realities of the world we live in?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
right that that's exactly right this is exactly right and you know the the most successful companies that i work for amazon kajabi kickstarter have all been you know slightly crazy right he had to be a little bit crazy to believe that he can do the things that these companies pulled off really have to be crazy i sound delusional because i believe in my ideas so much it's a borderline insane
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
you know engineering software development is not as sacred as a cow as it was 10 15 years ago so do they understand the dynamic and they're more geared towards you know i want to get this product out so that we can get customers to use it and make some money versus i want to do something for puristic integrity or something like that right so and there are many engineers and things like that um so obviously like those three are what i would recommend like people look for
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, that's exactly right. Like what you need is a first tech hire is a plumber, right? Who can just like jam things together, duct tape stuff together and get the water to go from A to B.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's a good one. I think the release of my first book, I would consider that as my kind of big win. It sort of indicated that I sort of made it. Again, like I don't, you know, made it is very subjective, but in my mind, I feel like I made it with my first book.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think another thing that will be interesting for your viewers is I was never academically talented. I was always, like, the average student in class. And I think back to my class, I was like, oh, I think I beat, like, 90% of them. So, you know, I feel good about it.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I was broke once. I think right after my son was born, you know, we were living on, we were both, my wife and I were making tax salaries, but we're spending way too much living above our means or living paycheck to paycheck. And one month we just were flat out broke. And I think that day we decided that we're never going to be like this again. So I think it was a good lesson learned.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's what I tell up-and-coming leaders, up-and-coming executives. Don't start with the no, especially if you have aspirations to get into the executive C-suite. You cannot tell a founder no. You cannot tell a successful CEO no, you can't do this. With enough money and time, I can move the planet, right? And that's the attitude you should have.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And advice to younger people that I give is don't live above your means. Save every dollar. I think you can spend it once you get to a comfortable level financially. So yeah, that would be the biggest failure.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Oh, yeah, 100%. That car ride back home, I will never forget it. I keep reminding myself that, yeah, you were broke once. So never forget that and ground yourself, be humble and keep learning.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, the name of the book is How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away With It. You can find it anywhere where books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, etc. And you can find me on LinkedIn or on my personal site, MaheshGuruswami.com.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
It's so funny. Yeah, it's so funny because I've used the exact same analogy with my teams too. You said, if somebody tells me, this takes me six months or nine months, Elon has spent rockets to space in that time. So why can't we get this thing done sooner? So I'm with you.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right. That's right. I think Archimedes said this, right? The long enough lever, you can move the earth. So I believe in it.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Well, I think my usual MO is doing a little bit of research upfront with customers because, you know, I have a thousand ideas and like 90% of them could be garbage. Right. That's the thing. That's the thing. So I don't like mobilize my team to go build something. until I have some level of conviction that this is going to work for our customers. So I talk to customers.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I always have a small group of motivated customers who I can go to and ask feedback from. And if directionally the feedback is positive, then you build something which is like an MVP. It's like duct tape and a small thing that you get it out, test it. And if it works, then you release it to the entire world and keep scaling. I don't believe in building the Ferrari and then trying to sell it.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I'll like build a Pinto and then see if there's an interest in it and then like scale it up to something much more expensive.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I think it comes down to prioritization is what I would say. There's always going to be a thousand different things to do. So as leaders, you have to realize what is most important and figure out what to put it in the top of the list and what to put at the bottom of the list. I think the other dynamic that's playing out, and I know my network will hate me for saying that, is leadership.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Software development is becoming commoditized faster and faster and faster, right? It is not a hard-to-learn skill as it was 10, 15 years ago. And if engineers and product managers and everybody else in tech feels like they have special skills, I think a reckoning is coming.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right. That's right. And I think software teams have aversion to sometimes buying something off the shelf and deploying it. And I actively tell my teams, let's get it out. Let's get feedback and see how it behaves in the market before investing too much time in it. So it's 100% right. I think as long as the US is a consuming economy, it's always going to be, I want stuff today.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I don't want to wait. I think it's always going to be that case.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, I'll start with Amazon because I think Amazon had a profound impact on me as a person and as a leader. The secret sauce for Amazon is its leadership principles. So I think everybody looks at the output of what Amazon produces, but the way the teams behave is...
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, sure, sure. So my name is Mahesh Guruswamy. I'm currently the CTO of Kickstarter. Been in the software development space for about 20 some years. First 10 years was individual contributor, middle level management. Last 10 years have been in executive roles. So work for pre-IPO companies, IPO companies, early stage startups and everything in the middle.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
is in lockstep and a lot of it, like 100% of it is guided by the leadership principles, which is if you go to the Amazon's career site, there's like a 10 or 12 leadership principles. I think they've changed it over the years, but like dive deep, deliver results, think big, Disagree and commit like every single person at Amazon behaves the same way.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And it makes it very, very easy to ship software. Everybody thinks the same way. So I think the leadership principles were a reflection of Jeff from the early days and his executive team. And a lot of that is funneled into like the way Amazon behaves and builds products.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
So that's number one, have a strong set of, you know, like, like for example, you have a company, so you should have like a list of tenants for your team. This is how Rudy thinks. This is what made me successful. And I want all of you to behave like this. And you will even recruit people who will sort of show those skills. That's number one.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
The other one that I think you mentioned, Kajabi's secret sauce is its community. There are raving fans who gather together to talk about Kajabi and how to use the product and how to make your first sale, how to build your first email list, etc. And Kajabi pays a lot of attention to that community.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
So any entrepreneur, if they want to be successful in selling products or services or their own time, they have to build a community. Without community, nothing exists today. So that, I would say, is Kajabi. And Kickstarter, I think the biggest takeaway for me is... Kickstarter came about in a time when it was hard to fund arts projects, music projects, etc.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And Perry and the founders, they're like, well, we don't believe in traditional venture capital funding, so we're going to do this other thing. And so think outside the box. You don't have to pattern match because every other leader or executive or company is doing the same thing. And resist against pattern matching and do something which is creative. So I would say...
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
Have a strong sense of what made you successful and make sure you build your team the same way that exhibits those same principles. Pay attention to community and threes go against the grain is what I would say.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I would say obsess over customers is what I would say is the common theme across all these companies that have made them successful. Start with the customer and work backwards. What does your customer want? What are their pain points? What do they wake up thinking? What do they go to bed thinking? And if you understand that, then you can basically build a billion-dollar brand.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And that's how Amazon did it. That's how all these other companies did it.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
I would say, you know, I advise a lot of startups on the side. So people ask me advice on, hey, I'm building this product. Like, what do you think about this? And my advice to all of them would be talk to your customers first. If you can't find 10 people to give you feedback on your idea, you're probably not going to be super successful as an entrepreneur, right?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
So find those 10, 20, 50 fans of yours or for your idea who are like behind you. And I do the same way for my network too. So you find your fans, ask them for feedback, draw them like a little sketch of this is what I'm thinking. What do you think about this?
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And you'll be surprised how many people will volunteer their time to come talk to you because they're passionate about the project you're working on. So I would say like that's the number one thing. Talk to your customers before investing any time or money into an idea or
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
And you have limited time on this planet, so you have to make it count.
Living The Red Life
Inside the Mind of Tech Leader Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right. That's right. That's right. Most people, and it's kind of interesting to observe it, most people will not Google their product idea to see if there are competitors in the market. That's the very first thing I do when somebody reaches out to me for advice or venture capital funding. I will Google their product, their ideas, if there are other competitors.