The One Percent Project- Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Resilience

About Billy Naveed:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Billy Naveed. Billy is the Chief Strategy Officer at Smile Group. He has spent 20+ years in finance with Morgan Stanely and Credit Suisse. He was the Head of Strategy at Zilingo, a fast-fashion unicorn, and he is the founder of the Young Founders School. Join our No-Spam WhatsApp groupIn this conversation he talks about:He talks about his 20+ years in finance, including his roles as a founder, CSO, and a Venture-Builder. He describes his career as a process of continuous self-discovery. The willingness to learn, discover and deeply understand things is what drove him to be the person he is today.Leadership Vs People management. Leadership is giving people a sense of purpose rather than micromanaging them with a carrot and stick mentality. His views on disruption in the financial industry. Billy asserts that the financial sector's disruption is much slower in the short term and much faster in the long term than what one would project. That being said, he considers the two most interesting developments to be the mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies and the capacity to buy and sell these digital currencies.Who is a Venture Builder? A venture build helps entrepreneurs focus on building their business by providing them with all the needed resources and removing blockages that might hamper their growth. Venture building is a private equity model in the venture capital space. Building the Young Founders School and what has he learnt from it? The inspiration came from how difficult it was to find good interns with basic entrepreneurship abilities. Putting roughly 4000 children through the programme helped him realize a lot of what he talks about in the conversation.Rapid Fire:The hardest thing about your job? Uncertainty.One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?Shoe DogBitcoin or another cryptocurrency?Etherrum.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Tarun Davda:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Tarun Davda. He is the Managing Director of Matrix, India. Prior to joining Matrix, Tarun was the Co-founder, India CEO and Board Member at StepOut.com, a venture-backed startup. StepOut became India’s #1 online dating site with over 5 Million users. Before that, Tarun established BigRock.com (incubated by the Directi group) - India’s #1 provider of domain name registration and other web services. Tarun started his career at Infosys as an IT consultant. He has an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and an Engineer from VJTI, Bombay.Join our No-Spam WhatsApp groupIn this conversation he talks about:His journey building Matrix India, or rather, reviving and strengthening a brand that was established when venture capital was still in its infancy in the nation. He discusses the opportunities and problems that he confronted while also delivering relatable anecdotes making the conversation all the more captivating.His perspective on how to define disruptive ideas/pitches & highlights how the way venture capitalists think and analyse has changed over time. With a deeper understanding of the matter, he now believes that the most disruptive ideas are the ones that are easiest to dismiss, and that it is only right to hold onto them.How the Indian Founder has evolved over the last decade, and how the crowd has changed radically. Says it's one of the best things that's happened in the last decade; people are more prepared and aware, and Tarun thinks it's just going uphill from here.His thoughts on improvisation and innovation. He believes it is subjective to each individual's interpretation of the terms, but in his opinion, no two marketplaces are the same because innovation is always breaking grounds.What VCs look for in a pitch/ deck: Product, Team, and Market. He believes in a country like India, where everything appears to be a vast market on the surface; coursing through it just serves to highlight how narrow the market is in fact.He discusses the influence of Chinese investments on the progression of entrepreneurship in India. He stresses on how the Chinese have been able to open our minds to accommodate the nuances in the market place. This is because they are benefitted from hindsight and a better outlook on what has worked for the companies in their nations.Key Take-AwayEvery investment is a learning opportunity.The most disruptive ideas are the ones that are the easiest to dismiss.An entrepreneur that can change your predisposed view in one, single meeting is the one you need to back.Rapid Fire:The hardest thing about your job? the toughest one is to be proven wrong.One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?Super Forecasting and 5 AM ClubYour most favourite superhero?Spider-Man.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Mahi de Silva:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Mahi de Silva. Mahi is a serial entrepreneur. His company AdMarvel was acquired by Opera, and within the first month of acquisition, AdMarvel 10xed Opera’s browser monetization. His latest entrepreneurial stint, Amplify.ai recently merged with Triller. Mahi is a University of Kansas and Stanford graduate. He kicked off his career at Apple and later was a part of the core startup team at VeriSign. He eventually became the company’s VP (Engineering) and, later, GM of its Wireless Services. In this conversation he talks about:His journey from Apple to Ampllfy.ai.How he thinks about building a business.Customer Acquisition Vs Customer Retention, which is more important and why?How valuable has it been for him be a business leader with an engineering background?Key Take-Aways:How to identify problems that no one is adequately addressing and how to go about it.How to absorb complex problems and situations and express them in the simplest form so that the consumer is able to understand.Innovation is driven by getting to more and more customers and adapting your offering based on their needs.Rapid Fire:The hardest thing about your job? I'm both a psychologist and a babysitter.One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?Jim Collins, from good to great.Will AI ever take over human interactions?I don't believe so.Your most favourite superhero?Batman.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About William Mcquillan:My next guest on The One Percent Project is William Mcquillan. William is a founding partner at Frontline Ventures. Frontline is an early-stage venture capital fund with €250M under management and over 100 investments across Europe and the US. He was the youngest Partner of a European VC fund when Frontline was founded. In this conversation, he talks about:Why he wears square and circular spectacles? The US Vs European VC industry and how it correlates to the Asian VC landscape.Building a brand: Firm Vs Personal.When should founders reach out to VCs and why timing matters?The learnings from Frontline’s gender study report.Key Take-Aways:Why founders are the actual customers of a VC fund?How one should think about building a brand? The importance of self-awareness and how it helps leaders to build big companies.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Christina Lopes:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Christina Lopes. Christina is the CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, leaders in precision medicine leader for dogs with cancer. The One Health Company is a YC incubated start-up backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Tau Ventures. Christina has been also been recognized as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.In this conversation, she talks about:Building a Bio company in Silicon ValleyLearning from Y Combinator and who should apply?Why have the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Tau Ventures invested in The One Health Company?Building a business in a market with established incumbents.What does it take to build an effective multidisciplinary team?Key Take-Aways:Build business competitiveness by focusing on a hard problem to solve and solving it with the smartest people available.Before you start building something new. First, do it manually and document your observations. Once you have got your head around it bring the tech and other teams to building it.How to think and build a business from available technology and data and create a business distribution. Rapid Fire:The hardest thing about your job? Dealing with folks, that are really negative on us because we're a new thing and don't understand it really. It's for mission people. It's really hard. One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?I love Ben Horowitz's, the hard things about hard things. Chapter Four, and then lots of the a16z blogs and podcasts about creating a market is amazing. More in our field, the bio podcast talking about real-world data versus traditional clinical trials. Goes on and on. But they’re amazing.Your most favourite superhero?Superwomen.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Abhishek Nag:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Abhishek Nag. Abhishek is the Director of Business Development at Netflix, previously with Facebook, Uber, Hike and National Instruments. He is also an Angel Investor in 40+ startups. He is a graduate of RV College of Engineering and Indian School of Business, ISB.In this conversation he discusses:The future of the internet in the next 50 years.How the product is the key driver of Market Entry and Growth?His learning from working at Facebook and how Facebook landed to be a social media giant?What did Scared Games do for Netflix India?Adoption Vs Retention- Which is more important?Experience investing in 40+ seed and pre-seed stage start-ups.Rapid Fire:The hardest thing about your job? It’s the fact that I'm basically now doing these two jobs. And I'm trying to be good at both of them and better and better every passing day. But there are only 24 hours in a day. So, the hardest thing is prioritizing by constantly wanting to do both Netflix and investing really, really well. One book or a blog that has influenced you personally and professionally?Built to Last, I can think of many built to last, Principles by Ray Dalio, Crossing the Chasm.Your most favourite superhero?I probably don't have a favourite superhero. But if I had to pick one, it would be Batman.

About Deboshree Dutta:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Deboshree Dutta. She is Group Product Manager at Paypal, Founder & CEO of RoomPlays and blogger with 150K Instagram followers. In this conversation she talks about:What is product management and how to access product success?How she built her blog Design Play took it to 150K followers?Her experience being an entrepreneur and building RoomPlays.Rapid Fire:One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?Will say two books, one book was lean startup. I think that has been brilliant. From day one. From the time I started into product management all the way till I'm doing everything that I do even today, I treat it as a Bible and I'd recommend that to anybody who if you haven't read it. The other one that I really liked is by Arianna Huffington. It's called thrive and that is essentially about mental wellness, meditation, gratitude. It basically talks about how we define success only by typically just two pillars, which are like money and happiness or money and career success, but there's a third leg to this three legged stool, which is your mental happiness and I think her book speaks to me every day. I think it's I highly recommend if people haven't read it, I highly recommend reading thrive by Arianna Huffington.Hardest thing about your job?Patience. I think a lot of times we try to have these brilliant ideas, and we want to see them in action. But like I said, you need to bring people along with you and you need to work through the kinks. It takes time to make magic happen. So patience is something I'm learning to do to have.Your most favourite superhero?I don't have one. But I would say I love how I built this as a podcast. So every time I listen to one of Kendra Scott, or Kate Spade, or Reid Hoffman, or any of their journeys, and how they've gone from just giving it a shot, like not losing hope that has been that's really why I started replays, like learning from the humility and just for me that they are all superheroes, and I highly recommend how I built this if someone if folks are not listening to that podcast.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Omid Scheybani:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Omid Scheybani. Omid is of Iranian origin who was born and bought up in Germany. He kicked-off his career with Google in Dublin, then moved to Google US and was responsible for Google’s LATAM cloud business, landed up heading international expansion for the Chinese bike-sharing unicorn platform Ofo and now he is with Robinhood, Fintech unicorn in the US. Omid's vast experience across different international markets allows him to draw comparisons between regions in ways few can.In this conversation, he talks about:What does scaling a business mean?What are the various tangible and intangible accepts of scaling a business?His learning from growing Google's cloud business in LATAM, being the global head of international expansion for Ofo and launching this own eCommerce platform Flamingo in China.Why has Robinhood been able to disrupt such an established industry in the US?Rapid Fire:One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?The Monk How Sold His FerrariHardest thing about your job?Making yourself visible in a fast-growing business Your most favourite superhero?My Dad.Three ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Deborah Quazzo:My next guest on The One Percent Project is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures and the Co-founder of ASU Summit, the incredible Deborah Quazzo. Coursera, Course Hero, Guild Education are among a few Edtech unicorn outliers that GSV has invested in over the years and Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George Bush are among the few superstars whom she has hosted over the 11 years of the summit. In this conversation she talks about:Her career: How she got into Venture Capital, after having worked for the likes of JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch and why EdTechThe 5P framework to analysis and valid businesses and ideas. How businesses with Purpose the fifth P, will have a higher outcome.Why is the Asian EdTech market attractive, especially India and Indonesia?How companies are utilising EdTech platforms for upscaling their employees?The impact of Covid on primary, secondary and tertiary education?How the GSV team grooms its portfolio of companies?The key difference between the US and the Asian ecosystemHer learning from organising the ASU EdTech Summit and hosting guests such as Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George Bush, Byju and many other superstarsThree ways to support the podcast:#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Aviral Bhatnagar:My next guest on The One Percent Project is Aviral Bhatnagar, Founder of  “A Junior VC” Community and he is A Junior VC at Venture Highway. Aviral is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Aviral’s Quora responses have more than 30M views and his start-up essays have led to the creation of the 20,000-member strong “A Junior VC” Community and earned him 170,000+ follower on LinkedIn. In this conversation he talks about:Non-Linear Decision Making & How it has benefitted AviralBuilding a community- A Junior VC, AJVC: Why & How?Views on the Indian Venture Capital EcosystemWhat does intellectual honestly mean to Aviral and why is it important in a founder?How has Amazon been able to penetrate Bharat?Are Indian start-ups improvising or innovating?Aviral's views on investing in a bottom-up start-upHow Amul & Haldirams have been able to build multi-billion businesses by listening to the customer at scaleRapid Fire:One book or a blog that has made the most difference to you?Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, Harry Potter series and Alex Ferguson's biography. Hardest thing about your job?Saying No.Your most favorite superhero?My Dad.