How to Partner with Tech Giants and Make Your First Startup Hires with Ravi Bhatt

from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt Hunker CEO at powderkig and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined by co-host Christopher Toph day CEO at Elevate Ventures and today's guest is Ravi Bhatt founder and CEO at Folia and so we want to create an environment where people are excited to close the gaps right like maybe there's a new opportunity we have a new partner that we didn't even think about ravibot is the founder and CEO at Folia a company focused on making digital productivity apps he started his career as a lawyer and consultant in Chicago then identified a need and pursued entrepreneurship full-time their product I annotate has over 1 million users and he just has a knack for product I've really enjoyed learning from him vicariously through all the Articles I've read about him so in today's show we're going to talk about growing a startup with transferable skills creating Global Partnerships with global Brands building and developing unique teams all kinds of things really excited to dive in and Robbie thank you so much for being on the show today yeah thanks for having me really excited to be here it's going to be amazing Ravi we're gonna crush it today let's crush it I'd love to just get a little bit of background and and learn a little bit more from you Ravi where did you grow up what was your childhood like yeah I actually grew up in Indiana uh so I grew up in depending on how you think about it rural Indiana Warwick County for those Indiana County aficionados tidy town about 6 000 folks living there but it was great what was it like there so 6 000 people is this like a One-Stop light Town Ten stop light town did you have a Walmart like paint paint us a picture or yeah we don't want to disparage people from from Bloomington especially not all the great friends that I have there so I want to be careful how I say this by the way it may be shocking looking at me but my parents are from India so we're we're not long time Indiana people they were in New York City doing residency actually they're both Physicians and moved to Indiana and randomly chose Bloomington sorry not Bloomington Booneville I really liked it loved the feel of the small town it's a close-knit community kind of place where people will help you out it's more than one stoplight I think there's at least eight something like that um pushing ten that's right yeah yeah I think it was like sometime in middle school when McDonald's first opened there and and that was a bit of a town eventually it was an actual parade it was parade adjacent yeah something like that it sounds to me like you're from a metropolis because the town I grew up in had three a three-way stop sign not even a stoplight three-way stop oh all right so this is the competition now all right great for us I grew up in West Lafayette we had lots of stop lights uh unfortunately I I lose this contest I know you both have way more street cred than I do street street light cred I guess I should say tell me a little bit about your entrepreneurial Gene you mentioned both your parents were Physicians it's not always the most easiest having friends lots of friends who are entrepreneurs it's not always easy to break into entrepreneurship and do something other than what's in the traditional family uh career how did that work out for you I don't know check in with me in another 10 years or so and I'll listen it's fair you know I I don't know I we were talking before the show about authenticity but I think the key to it in my mind is to figure out how to be yourself how to be comfortable in your own skin make the jokes you want to make the comments you want to make see the things that your eye wants to see and be willing to improve yourself and the people around you all the time if you can play that game then that basically demystifies it right it's about adding value to the world and I think once I figured that out and I'm embarrassed to say it took me a little while right that wasn't like day one all right cool I got it all that was more like year five right that for me has unlocked it and people talk about this or that being a game so once I figured out it's a game I'm gonna say the same kind of BS right I mean I think it is a game once once you get into that game space but it's a game about real life right it's a game about real people and it's a game about real impacts if you can get into that mind space it's a heck of a lot of fun I love that perspective is that the way you think about it because you guys are all both of you are entrepreneurs in your own and I've seen it through many different stages of companies small and big um how do you think about it I think about entrepreneurship and The Game of Life in The Game of Life yeah I you know I think it's a really interesting point you bring up Robbie um I I think life is about choices if there's books out there about choices that are meant for kids right it's all about choices you make in life and so I think everybody has a different comfort zone some people want to sit in a front row seat some people want to sit halfway back some people want to sit in the back seat all those seats are great right and they're not not everybody prefers the front row seat but I think it's it's about choices and just trying to make whatever it is that you're doing in the world just trying to make it a little bit of a better place I think positivity breeds positivity negativity breeds negativity and I don't know that's how I can think about it high level yeah yeah and I think for me it wasn't as much of a risk in the sense that my father my grandfather my great grandfather all entrepreneurs all Indiana entrepreneurs and so it was I think I do think that there's some genetic piece to this that I've been fascinated by just generational all the generational things like generational trauma generational momentum and my mom's a mental health counselor so that of course is part of her practice too so like understanding what did we get from our parents and our grandparents both good bad yeah and both of those things are subjective right because you say I got something bad for my parents maybe maybe you're learning something from that and actually the way you apply it is the thing that helps you reach that next level of whatever you're trying to reach in The Game of Life and for me I agree tofu it's all about how weird is like the intersection of like personal passion and interests intersect with helping other people and like right for me that's what lights me up you know Ravi now you got my juices flowing right like I uh I think about so you hear these stories a couple of conversations I've been in recently so one was so if you're afraid of spiders or you have some kind of a a real phobia of spiders it might be because you're great grandfather or grandmother was severely allergic to spiders and so and that gets passed through your DNA which I find a fascinating concept um or let's take comedians right a lot of things people talk about comedians become comedians because they struggled right as children and in junior high in high school and maybe you know people made fun of them for something right and so it it resorted to Comedy or maybe had family pain maybe there's abuse right I grew up in abusive household and so it was a way to how do I uh transcend that right and so they find they have a natural skill set right that's comedy and so they pursue that the comedic industry is that the right I don't know what the word is for it but they pursue that because it they have a talent for it but it also helps them transcend some pain that they have right yeah anyway yeah was that way off on a tangent or what I don't know Hey you Miss 100 of the shots you don't take true story keep taking them I'm curious Ravi for you I know that you've had a history of both being a lawyer some background in computer science just a very interesting combination of uh hard skills and to then end up as an entrepreneur Building Products shouldn't surprise me but at the same time it's not your traditional path if you look at the entire sample set of entrepreneurs across the U.

S so I'm curious to learn a little bit more about your own Journey were you into computers early on was that something in Booneville that was just like pushed upon you or did you were you attracted to it yeah there's too many nuggets there first of all I'd like to enjoy this moment where you referred to being a lawyer as a hard skill I think for a moment uh yeah you're welcome you're welcome I'll give you this this video snippet later just as proof that's right every morning and I wake up all right sweet all right Matt unclear I'm ready to go sweet yeah exactly pep talk yeah no it wasn't quite like that we I came to Computing a little bit later it's probably like around in high school I had the great privilege of having some old computers sitting around the house being able to take them apart put them back together I think those of us that kind of grew up in that time frame had a similar experience early 90s all these things were like huge modular components and you legitimately could take one of these things apart modern cell phones laptops computers good luck so I do think that growing up in that time it was formative I remember playing around with one of the first computers that had a hard disk in it and playing around with DOs and Unix back when those were all the you know the modern rage so I think to some extent the interest in Computing was planted there but yeah I went to Indiana University I studied cognitive science and computer science and it was a Charmed Moment In the late 90s early 2000s when IU had really done a bunch of things to bring world-class faculty to Bloomington and I was clearly the beneficiary in some ways those seeds were planted early the law thing man that's that's a bit of a tangent in my own professional career but I do think that people who are entrepreneurs or have this entrepreneurial interest do tend to follow the tangents I think if there is one common thread we definitely like the other and for me I really enjoyed storytelling I enjoyed still do obviously oral advocacy I love debate I you know I like that challenge of standing on your feet and going Toe to Toe with somebody so that's what drew me to law school and so I can look back and I can paint the whole history with one brush and say oh yeah it's the common thing but it totally is disparate right a bunch of different things oh good sorry I'm just going to ask you mentioned the the cognitive science and of course I've got a proclivity to be curious about these kinds of things but what kinds of things did you learn while studying cognitive science that you think still inform the way you lead and work today both in business and maybe even in family as well yeah it's a good question I I just for those that may not know cognitive science has a bunch of different definitions but you can think of it this way from a historic perspective we have things like Psychology and Neuroscience that have been around for a while and depending on when you want to plot this early moment maybe the 60s the 70s there was a kind of growing interest in taking on the study of the mind and the nature of intelligence like squarely rather than from any other context and so that's what cognitive science is and most of the times at most institutions the way it has manifest is it's largely an interdisciplinary act exercise so you have computer scientists and linguists and neuroscientists and psychologists all kind of interacting together with mathematicians and a bunch of other people that have that same curiosity but also talking about hard skills have hard skills that come from their substantive disciplines that they studied in so for me the thing that was actually more formative in terms of something that I take with me was the approach to answering questions and interacting than it was the questions themselves obviously I have the same fundamental Curiosities that most intellectual human beings have what does it all mean where do we come from what is this thing that we have in our in our head but this idea that you have multiple people with multiple skills coming together to solve one problem that's a really compelling Paradigm so I really enjoy that that's really cool yeah go ahead tough what so I'm just curious as we now pull that on into your entrepreneurial Journey so you go to IU you go to law school and I got a couple questions here I want to ask back to back but just real quick to close that Gap you graduate from your undergrad to tell our listeners about what happened between that and law school was our Gap did you go straight to law school and then ultimately how did you come to start Folia and I got some questions around that oh it's a crazy story I I went straight to law school Earth shattering no I for me I really wanted this feeling of doing something I I had briefly flirted with the idea of going into Academia some PhD track and once I saw it up close I was like ah this move's way too slow for what I want to do and so this impatience started building and so if you look at like where I do crazy stuff it's always where like this impatience builds and I'm like oh man I gotta go do something and so for me that's what drove me to law school and I I did it straight up for a semester and a half I took a semester off in the middle of law school it was just a typical I actually came back to IU to finish up my undergraduate degree which I didn't even bothered to finish because I was so excited so I was at washu took semester off came back did that and then I was like also taking some graduate classes and philosophy of science doing a bunch of off the beaten path things because I was like I don't know that's it it'd be fun to do this then I went back to law school and I really focused on oral advocacy and trial and so then that became my kind of ethos and I thought I was going to be a trial lawyer that's exactly what I thought I was going to do and then again the impatience built and then so you start so then you so you launched Folia right what go back to this cognitive science kind of piece et cetera like all humans have their own backgrounds their own experiences that forms their own opinions lots of people like to give advice which sometimes can be a little dangerous because that advice may be corrector incorrector appropriate not appropriate so what's the what's the worst piece of advice that someone told you you should go do this when you start that company or after you started that company what's the worst of a piece of advice that you got that you didn't follow or what's the what's a piece of advice that you didn't follow because you're like that person's crazy and you're like oh two years later they were right yeah it's a it's I like that two years later they were right piece because I I do think like a lot of bad advice is just mistimed advice it's like good advice for another period of time so the first bad advice I got which maybe is good advice to go get a job right and just focus on a profession don't try to color outside of the lines with my parents and having the professional background that they did the folks I was interacting with in Academia that really was the ethos in terms of like how do you approve your your profession so to some extent me not following advice has been more of the story than actually following advice and in fact if you say how many times did you follow advice and go do something great that's usually not what happens right I'm like in portable in this way it's like you know if you want me to do something just tell me to do the opposite of it and it's like all right cool it's gonna get done so that's really what more than anything else has guided me just being like totally unwilling to listen to other people at Key moments and the entrepreneurship stuff it came up in the in the same way right I was working as a strategy consultant on high stakes jury trials so typically like 100 million dollars or more at stake fun environments a pressure cooker you're walking into a war room two weeks before trial advising trial teams a presentation strategy you're doing like focus groups two months before that watching people behind one-way mirrors it's cool stuff but even there I got bitten by the bug this idea that oh maybe there's a new way to do this there's something else to do and that was a thing that actually drove me to entrepreneurship Joe heard me say this last week at the IU Ventures conference but I I really I'm really worried about advice right both giving it and getting it and I think there's too many young aspiring entrepreneurs that have their notebooks out and they're like sitting bright-eyed like waiting to receive the feedback oh no I'm sorry it was blank so I think it's excusable I learned so much from you oh my God that's awesome yeah you know where you're thinking you're going to receive some like sacred wisdom that's going to be the activation threshold but what ends up happening is something totally different I was doing a guest lecturing thing for an MBA class last year and I was asking how many of them are like in an entrepreneurship track or studying entrepreneurship but most of them raise their hand the class was something about this business strategy and then I asked let's go how many people feel like the more you learn about these things the more likely you are to take risk and there's a pinned up silence in the room and over the next 15 minutes the more you know the less risk you're going to take and so it comes back full circle to this advice thing it's I think it's a scary Beast right because like how do you learn how to do anything right you don't learn it from a device you learn from doing so doing I don't want to get singing advice I want to be on stage singing you know I don't want to get at least a comedy on what advice from a comedian right I want to go try it out what's a time in your career specifically in the entrepreneurial leg of your journey where you feel like you really learn something by doing and that changed the entire way you approached the practice of Entrepreneurship yeah so for me the moments that I remember like the absolute most are the ones that involve other people the team and in specific you know I'm embarrassed to say it took me a couple of years maybe even more than a couple years if you go talk to some of the people I worked with it they might say I'm still trying to learn it but what does it mean to work as a team and I usually tell people I think my teammate Claire dropped the off the call earlier but she'd be really the one to ask but but some version of the same speech which is like you join a startup to to find your butterfly story to like to go through some sort of metamorphosis right you're learning something new you're trying something new this is like moving to a new high school year junior year having new wardrobe being a totally different cat and being able to be truly a different person now if you can put yourself in that headspace then like my job and our job as a team is to create an environment where you're comfortable doing that but we're gonna kick your rear when you don't do that and the reason I say it took me a long time to figure this out is because I think I was still thinking about it really classically like there are instructions and strategies and like dicta that come down from on high and I guess because maybe I'm somehow in charge I'm supposed to come up with those things and just skew all this information everyone it just doesn't work right it doesn't work because you're firing an arrow at a moving Target and by the time the arrow gets there the target's moved on but it also doesn't work because it doesn't like cause the right kind of growth so the thing I dine out on is all of these people who I had the pleasure of working with before the great privilege I would say doing amazing things like founding companies working in big Tech living their best life and remembering that moment where I saw them for the first time on stage their voice cracking tricking a big risk doing a thing even if they hate me because I was the one who's like throwing them out on stage that's okay right because at least the growth was there and the reason that resonates with me is because I'm not done growing right I'm not like some like static thing that doesn't want to change right the reason I was saying earlier it's like check in 10 years it's 10 years from now man I I want to look back on this podcast and feel oh my gosh that's cringy I can't believe I said that exactly I want to be that guy yeah you mentioned creating an environment that allows metamorphosis to happen yeah what are some of the things that you've done at folio or that your team has done at Folia to create that environment I think everyone would agree that they hate me for this but one is not having good job descriptions or job titles we have quite a bit of fuzziness when it comes to what people's roles are because in my mind it's like when you create roles they're almost like bricks except the bricks aren't like really close together where you just have a little bit of grout between them the bricks are really far apart and all the action is in the gaps and we want to create an environment where people are excited to close the gaps right like maybe there's a new opportunity we have a new partner that we didn't even think about who's reached out if everyone has like these Silo jobs then it's no one's job right it's a pain in the rear in fact right and you see this with all kinds of businesses right the restaurant you walk into and they somehow close for lunch at like exactly two o'clock and it's 2 10.

now all of a sudden there's a huge group that's come in because you just finished this conference and you walked in with the 40 people it could be like game changing for today's revenue and they're like oh no sorry we can't help you out we don't want to be that kind of business right we want to be nimble we want to be responsive and so for me I think the Cornerstone of that is to not pre-judge people if you really believe metamorphosis is possible then today's great green recent college grad might be tomorrow's head of strategy and the only way that you're going to figure that out is to not Typecast them up front and that is comfortable yeah what does that mean so if they see I work at full yeah I come to work for you am I in sales or am I how do you what am I in sales accounting yeah yeah yeah I think there's like two three lobes of the business I'd like to say it's two but maybe it's three engineering people whose job is principally coding and everyone else so but the reason I say maybe there's three lobes is maybe there's a product component that's a little different than everyone else but yeah like sales marketing customer success even though certainly we have those titles and we have some folks that like specialize in particular areas I still love thinking about that in a kind of blurry way and it's also because most of my experience is very early stage right so I've typically done things where I'm managing relatively small teams at a very early uh point and like trying to make tons of growth happen I'm sure my attitude would be different if I was running a company with 10 000 employees quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweyer CEO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today Erica thanks for being here yeah thanks for having me and you're going to tell us a little bit about this rally Innovation conference that's coming up yep so it's the largest cross sector Innovation conference in the world we're going to feature six Innovation Studios so think hard tech software Sports Tech Ag and food Healthcare and Entrepreneurship is going to be our catch-all I love that so tell me what is who's it for yeah it's for innovators entrepreneurs investors honestly anybody probably listening to this podcast it's going to be a multi-day thing that's multi-day in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th to the 31st perfect and if people want to find out more information about speakers tickets things like that where can they go yeah so they just go to rallyinnovation.

com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I'll love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there so last week you talked about something I thought was an interesting way to look at it right everybody knows of this famous word called a pivot and that kind of came up in the discussion last week and you had a different take on a pivot right I think a lot of people associate a pivot with a moment in time where you had an aha moment of oh we got to go over here instead of where we are you have a different take on that can you talk about that a little bit yeah now see that the Paradigm is like I should be consistent with what I said last week because I don't remember what I said last night it's your windshield thing remember you talk about the windshield yeah I'll try to say it maybe like slightly differently today but like you're basically looking for opportunities all the time I don't know how much of this really should be surprising if you're looking outward not inward so tips right I was using the windshield metaphor we're not looking in the car at our hands on the steering wheel we're looking at the road in front of us right and so if a deer crosses the road is that really surprising no it's like we're looking out there because things are happening out there and change is apparent I think that teams often get like risk-averse with respect to pivots is because they're practicing with their pitch deck they're only meeting each other internally they keep rehearsing it over and over again and it starts sounding right to them right so much that now when the world out there doesn't conform to the world in here they're like oh I guess we have to really pivot hard and there's sadness and tears and all that kind of stuff we've just been looking out there the whole time you would have known hey no one's coming in the restaurant nobody wants Mexican Donuts right It's let's just learn here right so I love that what I mean by Mexican Donuts maybe that's the thing and I'm sorry sure is yeah oh sure no I was thinking like taco Donuts like salsa and beans on top of it I got you I got you but yeah that does sound awful we're talking a lot about Folia I I'd love to maybe just hear a little bit more about how that all came to be can you take us back to that moment when you're like okay I gotta I gotta step into the arena here yeah I was just talking to some some other folks about this yesterday a couple of uh folks I've been working with really closely who are first-time entrepreneurs right they're they're they're nursing a new idea they're like trying to incubate at their mind and trying to figure out what risk to take and you know I think what happens sometimes is when you interpolate back and you like try to remember what your past story is you want to make it look good sound good especially if somebody like is recording you for some reason like a podcast oh yeah we want the dirty ugly version yeah but it's almost never like that right like totally every single moment you're like always thinking it could fail and I'm fairly negative I'm very positive I'm energetic I like want the team to to be excited I totally would put in Granite what to have said at the top of this about positivity breeding positivity and negativity breeding negativity so I believe in all that but I am often thinking about what can go wrong right I'm trying to course correct around it so for me it was more of a slow burn than like an aha moment he's working as a strategy consultant when we did our first startup and a lot of the things that we were working on I was collaborating with two amazingly smart people who had already gotten started building some mobile apps they were doing a little bit of Consulting work for us at the consulting company and we just saw this like opportunity in Mobile and so for the first decade or so like really what we were doing was building mobile productivity experiences some fee for service for clients and building up more of a Professional Services offering and then we had a lot of the early apps in the App Store when the iPhone launched and the iPad launched so it was a lot of right place to write time and when that happens you're getting this constant flood of ideas right because customers are coming to you partners are coming to you and be like hey what if you did this what if you did that and so half of what you're doing is just filtering because you're like I can't do all of that we can't even begin to think about all these things so it's like how do we filter so Folia to answer your question more directly came out in one of those kind of sessions the inside is something like this as people progress in their profession they do less and less creating new documents right so if you take like a senior executive at a bank they're not sitting down in Microsoft Word and writing something most of their job is coming up with new ideas and giving feedback and so if you look at where their hands and eyes go they have a notebook out maybe like the one Matt has oftentimes it's blank they have a bunch of documents with them they have highlighters out they're writing margin notes in there and all of their work product is in this like chicken scratch that's in the margins not the documents themselves and so the Insight was and it came out because we had this product I annotate in the market yeah this actually could be a thing right because there isn't a good cross document cross platform meaning cross device solution for this we had just wrapped up on a previous project at a decent exit and we still were excited about I annotate and still excited about Folia and I was wrestling it and that was around the time when we started thinking about the potential of moving to Indiana and so for me starting Folia was like a three-prong risk right coming to Indiana which was really exciting taking on this new project squarely and going after this Market where it was totally customer driven and three doing uh as a venture-backed startup this time as opposed to bootstrapping and my experience up until that point I had only been bootstrapping um and so I feel like hey I did something right if I'm willing to take three risks at once as opposed to serializing them or being like I'll take one of these three risks so it's not necessarily a sexy answer to your question but but that's the way that's the way it happened and then along the way there's been a bunch of Partners and a bunch of cool things that have happened but but the Inception was very much customer-led what's been your most shocking moment so far in your journey with felia portfolia shocking exciting moment holy cow that is awesome there's been a bunch uh the other day I I flipped a chopstick up and it landed like in my keyboard like right there between the G and the H and it like stuck evenly and I was like my goodness I didn't have that on me no there's been a there's been a couple of exciting things we may have been talking about this earlier but uh we've had the great privilege of having some really Marquee Partners uh Microsoft was a research and development partner on Folia that was an exciting get this Insight that that we got from customers was one that resonated with them and their strategy around Microsoft 365.

so for a tiny company taking out a tiny r d project that's an awesome partner to have um how do you get Microsoft as a as an r d partner as a startup how did you do it at Folia I I think the there's some trite colloquialisms uh sayings that that actually turn out to be true and uh kissing many frogs one is is certainly accurate um I think I say that a lot and somebody from the BDC the other day this is the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation rolled up into our office with a t-shirt with a frog on it and and really gross looking lips the Frog had a lips and she said you said you were a frog kisser so I figured you deserved the shirt and I was like yeah thank you that's awesome that's customer service right there that's right yeah but you take your shot and you take a bunch of them and most failures are not fatal and most successes are not durable so once you realize that then then it changes the game right so Matt said no today to doing this thing tomorrow's another day and so for us once we figure that out it's been more about discovering what those folks want hey Matt I could help you with a couple of things that I think you're struggling with but can we just talk a little bit about what your struggles actually are and what kinds of things you're wrestling with I feel like I could learn a lot um once we approach the conversation that way it opens up a ton of potential other exciting moments um we've been working pretty closely with Google I was out um last week or actually the week before for Google I O uh working with a lot of their team that run Android and some of their mobile strategy because I think there's going to be an exciting partnership there we just announced a month ago a global partnership with Samsung Samsung has a huge investment in mobile devices but also devices with styluses so the S Pen on the s23 ultra or the fold for hopefully there'll be a full five this year that takes it to the next level they're really exciting and so for us it's great to be in the company of of some of these larger firms the other Professional Services Partners there are like DocuSign Cisco tiny companies that you've never heard of so Foley to some extent is is the one that doesn't belong but this again speaks to to to being customer-led right because we really are there in these opportunities doing these cool things because of our customers and what they see do most of these initial connections with Brands like Google Microsoft Samsung do they happen initially from a cold email are you networking your way to those folks are you meeting them at an event is it all of the above are they reaching out to you because your inbound marketing is so great you've been to our website our inbound marketing is not great no it's none of those things I'm gonna go back to the thing that people often say in these like unhelpful books about like how to get a venture investor which is you can't go through the front door almost ever on most things because if you do it's an anti-signal so you definitely don't cold call and cold right you've got to figure out a way to be introduced because that's the only way that someone else can give them context right so it turns out the insurance agents had it right from Jump Street right can you introduce me to five of your friends who would also love to hear me Yammer on for an hour and bring them a mug yeah I have five people I hate um so I want to keep them as friends uh but no for us all these things have have been organic and dynamic and interconnected in that way you have a customer but a large Bank introduces to one of our partners they introduced us to another one of our partners and you just go through the game that way that's it's really easy yeah it's really easy for people to forget like it's human nature you see these headlines foliate enough is this partnership with Samsung and then some other entrepreneurs hitting somewhere it's like I suck I don't have a partnership with Samsung right but they see the headlines like people see headlines and they think just stuff magically happens but what we never do press releases on is I had a phone call today with whatever XYZ company and they hung up on me in five minutes and then it happened 65 times in the last 30 days right yeah or I've seen a thousand emails and nothing happened just one of those examples are we never celebrate publicly the failures in the kissed frogs right but we announced the fun stuff it's like human nature a lot of times like in entrepreneurship it's so easy sometimes to get deflated and like all the awful stuff only happens to me yeah but it's happening to everybody yeah totally and I think that's because we collectively suck at telling the right stories you would not go to a sporting event just rolling in for the trophy portion of it and be happy right you want to watch the battle you want to watch the competition and that's what we pay money for that's what we'll compete to participate in somehow I think many of us have gotten on the wrong track when we talk about entrepreneurship where we think that hey I won the trophy is the story anybody cares about nobody gives a flying F about that story and it doesn't teach you anything and it's also not even clear what it means right that everyone else drop out of the competition and that's why you got it is this even a cup anybody cares about right or did you have the best of the world competing against you and that difference is not a tiny difference as it turns out people say it in this again trait ways which is yeah it's about the journey and all that kind of stuff don't get discouraged I don't think it's quite like that it's about the battles but the battles are the journey right they're not the result and so for the aspiring entrepreneur it's like the field is there there's no like guard preventing you from getting on the field you just have to put your shoes on and go out there and you'll be in the minor leagues and that's fine but every day is going to be a battle and every day you can get better in that spirit what's one of your lowest lows that you've had Ravi when you've worked now with Samsung and Google and Microsoft those are the trophy things million users on I annotate that's a trophy thing but if you look back over the last couple years at some of your lowest lows what were those moments for you those battles that you're not gonna forget oh there's tons of those more of those than there are any winds or even perceived wins there's a moment when we had an SDK a software development kit that a company in Japan was interested in buying and our offices were impressive to us like five minutes before this was about to happen and then we realized this is not impressive we're in a 2 000 square foot apartment above an Italian restaurant in Noble Square in the western part of Chicago downtown and it was a bunch of like pizza boxes and there's this executive Who's Gonna Roll Up and the toilet's backing up and I'm there with the toilet brush and a plunger trying to get this thing to work and that meeting did not go well right because I texted a bunch of friends because I was like we can't be like a three-person company so anybody I was like I'm buying lunch just just roll it and I didn't explain the dress well it'd be like edible so here come my friends like totally dressed like whatever being like where's the food you said there's gonna be food right and the thing I'd like to introduce you to this guy yeah that's fine but where's the food that was very unimpressive and then that guy ended up like leaving his luggage in our office and then had to come back for a second round of this yeah I'm sure he tells that story still which is how do you learn that there's how do you vet a startup you know what the toilets are like but then they're they're a bunch that are harder that one's a little bit more fun funny there's always that moment usually in the first year especially when you're bootstrap where you have bills that amount to this much and you have revenue and cash on here that amounts to that much and this is way bigger than that so now it's an exercise of which bills are you not going to pay and so that first moment for me it was like okay we're not paying me that's easy but then it's that's still not good enough that's heartbreaking right because you made a bunch of promises to a bunch of people that it's going to go a particular way and so for in our case I'm pleased to say we've never not paid an employee but in order to make that statement true we've had to go through all kinds of gymnastics and heartache but you're sometimes talking to Banks about a short-term loan to get something done you're asking customers to pay something a little earlier than they were expecting to pay these are not graceful and gracious moments that that feel good in the moment there have been products that we've launched that have just completely flopped on day one we've had updates that have rolled out on previous products that have gone out to 3 million people with a glaring bug that should have caught like two minutes before that had a bunch of one star reviews popping up the next day and all that conspires to create moments of great self-doubt because as much as yeah you could tell the story about yeah I'm The Confident guy who like likes to take risks and do the new thing and take the path not taken you're always running that sliding door is in your mind right I could have gone and worked at the law firm and this is what would have happened right and so there are moments I was talking to an aspiring entrepreneur yesterday who is this like like truly amazing framework for working on like wealth tracking and a bunch of other cool things and one of the things he was talking about is disappointing when people just talk about retirement planning you should talk about all this like decision making that happens before and that's yeah that's totally right but there are moments many moments where you underperform that alternative self so it's yeah that boring guy would have this much net worth and would have this kind of stability and his family would be in Mexico right now uh with the kids rather than everybody in the house with a stapler collating a bunch of things that need to go out to clients as their vacation right which has definitely happened before and not our Shining Moments so when those moments of like self-doubt seep in it's just awful I really appreciate you sharing that and I've really enjoyed this discussion getting to know you a little bit better Ravi I know we are at time right now do you have two more minutes for the lightning round sure yeah go for it awesome thank you so much for the extra time this is quick answer whatever comes to your mind first there's no wrong answers and this is the first of three questions first question outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for hard work oh good answer question two what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana the universities I don't think we've gotten that answer yet actually that may have been mine three last one who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things oh I'm gonna give you the the non-lightning answer to that um we could perfect we could import all the cool A-list people in the world but I think the person who's going to outperform all of them is the 22 year old that's getting plugged in right now to the amp and the ecosystem and is going to take the risk that they would have taken in the Bay Area here and it's going to be the next gazillion dollar billion dollar exit unicorn and all that kind of stuff I think there's always this temptation that we have to import everything but the ability to home grow is unrivaled because that's the startup ethos right like the game we play every day is not what we don't have it's with duct tape tweezers and a pack of Twizzlers what can we build that's the game and for me I think the person to keep on the radar is all those young people who are going to stay here and do some amazing things yeah it's a great answer no that was perfect that was perfect thank you so much for being on a get in and sharing some of your story yeah I know there's so much more to capture so hopefully we can have you back on the show again sometime but it's just been awesome and I'm so glad you're here in Indiana and obviously love b-town as a IU grad myself awesome to hear that you're doing great work down there thanks for taking the time man yeah thanks for having me and I think I I really appreciate as a as somebody who's rolled up a little bit more recently what I think a lot of people don't realize is is how much infrastructure gets laid before you have a moment of delight and I'm having moments of delight left and right being at 16 Tech and seeing some of the things happening there seeing what's happening with Elevate Powder Keg which I think I want to get plugged into a little bit more all these things are amazing but to toth's point from earlier what I really appreciate is all of you who have been building here for the last two decades because like when we did our first startup I did it with Bloomington guys and we actually looked at Bloomington thinking maybe we'd do our startup here and we passed on it because we were like there's just no infrastructure it would be really scary it'll be easier to do it in Chicago and that was right but it was the convenient answer it might have been better to move to Indiana at that time and what I really appreciate is all the people who didn't answer the question that way and really created the infrastructure that we are now blessed to be actually leveraging so hats off to you guys and really appreciate it that's awesome thank you Robbie you've been amazing are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling full-length documentaries they have got the expertise to take your brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in and they do amazing work all the videos across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate at powderkeg or check out alchemyfilmco.

com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all of your video needs this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or a segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkeg. com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive Community Check out powderkick. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listened to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at cassid have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast and video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at Powder Keg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted casted.

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