Inspired Execution

Chet Kapoor (00:24):

Welcome back to The Inspired Execution podcast. Each episode shares the experience and learnings of a world-class leader on their journey to success. The guests on this podcast are bold, brilliant, and not afraid to change. As you navigate your own path, we hope you feel inspired by these stories, lessons learned, and the vision of the future.

Today we are honored to have M. R. Rangaswami on the podcast. He started one of the first angel investments firms when he bought sandhill.com domain for $20 in 1997. In addition to being a founding father of Silicon Valley, M. R. Is a passionate philanthropist. His nonprofit brings together Indian leaders to drive positive social change. M. R.'s efforts have landed him on Forbes and CRNs list of top technology executives. We talked about the benefits of acting small while growing big, how communities can be a powerful force of change. His recent meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris over breakfast at her home. M. R., welcome to the podcast.

M. R. Rangaswami (01:29):

Hey, thanks Chet. Thanks for having me.

Chet (01:31):

Some, including myself, would say that you are one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley. Right? You started the first angel investment firm in the area, Sand Hill Road. You've obviously had a very illustrious career. What is the most surprising change you've seen over the years?

M. R. (01:50):

My early surprise was actually getting the URL sandhill.com. Right? The smart VCs in Silicon Valley hadn't bought it. This was 20 years ago. I picked it up for $20, and that's going to be my exit man. One of these days, someone's going to offer me a million bucks.

Chet (02:11):

That's your exit.

M. R. (02:12):

The biggest surprise, Chet, between you and me, when I came in 1982, I came to Silicon Valley. Okay? There were 10,000 Indians. 10,000 of us who were here. Okay? Fast forward 40 years, there are 400,000 Indians, 40 times in 40 years. Just think of the impact our community has made on the entire tech industry in the world has happened here.

Chet (02:40):

It is just awesome to see the impact that the Asian community is having. Right? Very rarely do you see a startup where it does not have diversity in it. Right? In fact, if it doesn't, you ask yourself why it doesn't. Would you agree with that?

M. R. (02:55):

Absolutely, absolutely. Any company and every company has to have that diversity, whether it's an Indian-American, a Chinese-American, someone from any other country. That's pretty much a given these days.

Chet (03:09):

40 years. How have you changed personally? Maybe if you can just do some broad brush on just your 40 years, and then talk about some of the changes that have happened with you personally.

M. R. (03:23):

First of all, I came in here as a naive, young person coming to Silicon Valley with absolutely no idea of what the valley was about. I had a comfortable job in Houston, Texas. I went to see a consultant for some training, and he goes, "What do you do, M. R.?" I said, "I have an MBA. I work on computers." He says, "What the heck are you doing in Houston? You better get out to Silicon Valley." Keep in mind, in those days, there was no LinkedIn, no Facebook, no online in internet, nothing. In '82, I'm sitting in Houston saying, "How the hell do I go to Silicon Valley?" I went to the library, had to look at all kinds of documents to find out what Silicon Valley was, and I suddenly found a list of potential employers, software company listings. Right? Started typing out my resume, mailing it in US Mail, and lo and behold, a company calls and interviews me on the phone, flies me out to Silicon Valley, offers me a job on the spot.

I had no idea I joined a startup. I had no idea, right? I was the only Indian, by the way. Go in there, do stuff. Company doubles in the first year. Great. Company doubles in the second year, even better. Third year doubles again. Awesome. We're all celebrating. Fourth year, chapter 11. That's why I say naive young guy going and going, "Oh shit. No job anymore. Right?

Chet (04:48):

Yeah. But that's what you learn from. You learn from the ups and downs. A lot of people in the valley would say, one of the criteria for interviewing is not just your first few years where you learned how to be a professional, but also what were your failures? Because you learn a lot more from your failures than your successes.

M. R. (05:06):

Absolutely. A lot of learning still. For example, this company had me lay off all the employees in my group and other groups in a region, and I was the only one left. Then they called me and said, "You're laid off as well." What do you think, right? When that happens and you go, "Wait a minute. I was helping the company close down and then they lay me off." A lot of lessons to be learned from your failures. Absolutely.

Chet (05:33):

If you had to give a younger version of yourself some advice like 40 years ago when you came to the valley, or 30 years ago or 20 years ago, what is the one thing you would tell them?

M. R. (05:44):

I'd say with startups, at least 9 out of 10 fail. Go into it with enthusiasm, but in the back of your mind, you know you could be doing something else in a couple of years. That's just part of it. You've been at it, I've been at it. We have had maybe five, six companies, but two or three of them have been complete failures. No reason of your own, but just the way it was. Right? Don't take it personally, but be prepared for failure. Don't take it personally and try, try, try again.

Chet (06:16):

I've always said three things, which is as long as you like the problem you're solving, as long as you like the people you're doing it with, and as long as you're having fun, when those three equal parts come together, then it's okay. Because if it fails, it fails. If it succeeds, it succeeds. You are not there saying, I want a home run or a base hit. You're literally in there because you want to change the world. The valley has lost some of that because for some of us who've been doing it for a little while, there is a passion to make a dent in the universe, as Steve would say, or to change the world. I think as long as you can focus passionately about that, everything else makes sense and falls in place.

M. R. (06:55):

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more, and I don't like this process where I see some people going for a company for one year, getting in a quarter of their stock, then leaving and creating a whole portfolio for themselves. I wonder at some point, did they really give it their all in each one of their gigs?

Chet (07:19):

What would be your advice to startups on taking advantage of their size against giants? Because startups are an unnatural act, that's why it takes so much energy and takes the power of the will. What would be your advice to them on how they should use their size?

M. R. (07:35):

Yeah, I mean it's like guerrilla warfare. You're small, nimble, agile. You can move around things. Here are the incumbents that are fat, dumb, and happy. It's a good fight to fight. I think really what we need to do as a startup is really keep that for as long as you can. Keep that spirit and culture for long as you can, because one day you could be an incumbent, and that happens to a lot of companies. They grow up, they're successful, they slow down, bureaucracy happens, layers of management happens. All kinds of stuff happens. The key is how long can you sustain that nimble, agile can-do culture. It's a hard one to crack, it's easy to say, but you got to look at yourself every day and say, "Are there more layers of management now or less layers of management? Can I really get a real feel as a founder or CEO for what's happening on the field? Or is it all filtered? Am I insulated?" You got to keep questioning that all the time.

Chet (08:34):

What's interesting, the two comments I'll make, one is actually it doesn't matter what the size of the company is, it doesn't matter whether it's 25, it's 500 or 10,000. You have to keep asking yourself that question, just like you said every day on, "Am I being insulated from what is happening in the bazaar rather than by sitting in the cathedral." Right? I think that's the one point. The second one is, I was having this conversation with some other folks on the podcast, and it's not obvious what you should be patient about and what you should be impatient about because it actually changes on a regular basis. This is the speed versus the agility versus not. Right? Would you agree with those two comments?

M. R. (09:16):

I do, I do. But don't lose at the sight. You always have to be impatient. Okay? I'm always impatient. You can not succeed by saying, "Okay, let it happen." In our business, you got to push, push, push every second of the day.

Chet (09:31):

Recently, with the macro headwinds, I've been saying, what are we going to be patient about? [inaudible 00:09:37] innovation, you have to give it some time. You have to be a little bit more patient on, you have nine people involved. You're not going to get the product in one month. Right? It's going to take its time to get there. With the macro headwinds involved, I've been saying, let me be patient with the macro headwinds, but impatient with our execution in that environment. This is actually a gift and try to make the changes that you want to.

M. R. (09:59):

I couldn't agree more.

Chet (10:01):

I want to shift gears and talk about something that you are absolutely kicking ass on. Right? Profit is important, but people and community are just as important or more important. You've built a phenomenal thing with Indiaspora. Right? Tell us a little bit about what's going on with Indiaspora, where did it start? What was the origins, where it is now, your recent trip to D.C. All that. I would love to hear a lot about it.

M. R. (10:31):

Before I get started on that Chet, let me kind of say what ethos I brought to Indiaspora. When I was an angel investor in 1995-96, I used to meet two entrepreneurs every week, look at their business plan, their PowerPoint presentations, try to help them. Over 27 years, I think I've met 5,000 plus entrepreneurs one-on-one to give them feedback and all that. Of course, I can't invest in 5,000 deals. I've only done 150 deals. You do the math. The other people who I didn't invest in, I would give them input, feedback, connect them with potential investors, potential customers. Really, I brought that ethos of giving right up front and in starting Indiaspora, it's the same thing to help others help the community.

That's the spirit you have to go in with a nonprofit especially, is what impact do you want to make? How do you want to give back? That's the feeling I brought to Indiaspora. What I'd seen with our community, the Indian-American community, is we've become very successful. Right now we have 60 CEOs in the Fortune 500. We are 7% of the doctors, 10% of the IT workforce. We are only 1% of the population in the US. We've done great things in many different areas, but really I felt we needed to kind of translate success, which we have as a community. We earn two and a half times what the average American earns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How do we translate success to impact? That really is what Indiaspora is trying to achieve is we have made money, we have created companies, created wealth, created jobs, but how do we give back? That really is what we're all about.

The heart of Indiaspora is all about philanthropy and giving, bringing that Indian ethos of Seva or service. How do we do that? How do we help underprivileged people? How do we help average Americans? How do we help society? That's at the heart of Indiaspora, but it was a hard thing. It's a great idealistic thing to have, hard thing to accomplish because herding Indians is like herding cats. We have so many religions, so many states, so many languages. How do you bring everyone together? That's where you have to leave your ego behind. You just got to be selfless and say, "Okay, my ego is outside. Let's accommodate everybody. Bring everyone together." We brought doctors, lawyers, academics, artists, venture capitalists, CEOs, all together to be a force for good. That's at the heart of it. It's a relationship based network. It's not a transactional network. There's a no selling code of conduct. It's all about helping people. That's where we're at.

Chet (13:16):

When did it get started?

M. R. (13:17):

11 years ago. Last year, we celebrated our 10th anniversary and really took stock. On the philanthropy side, for example, during Covid our community demonstrated so much giving. In one month, diasporas community raised 15 million in one month for Covid relief. Most of it went to India but even in the US we gave so much money to food banks. If you remember Chet, early days, there were lines of cars at food banks in San Jose and San Francisco and Oakland and all these places. We really gave back in a meaningful way, and that's when we saw the power of the community is when that happened.

Chet (13:56):

How do you measure success. Right? 10 years is a good period of time. You've accomplished a lot. On a regular basis, how do you measure success?

M. R. (14:05):

One of the long term measures we have is can we double and triple the giving of our community? We are tracking that. Much like I said, we did this cello give program for Covid and raised 15 million. We also formed a group called the India Philanthropy Alliance, which is a group of nonprofits that work with India. That group now collectively raises about $200 million a year. We track that to see can we get that to $500 million in 10 years. We are doing things actively to foster philanthropy and giving, but track the measures of success. That's one area we work in. We've also spawned other organizations through Indiaspora, for example. We've become much more politically active as a community. We have the Vice President of the United States as one of us. We have over 250 politicians and political leaders across the world who are of Indian origin, whether it's a prime minister of the United Kingdom or the President of Surinam or Mauritius. They're all of Indian origin.

What we want to do in every one of those areas is to track and inspire and get more people involved. It's not just in philanthropy, it's in politics, it's in business. We have now 60 CEOs in the Fortune 500. We don't look at their success, but look at the impact. Millions of jobs have been generated by CEOs like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai, and now more recently, Laxman at Starbucks, or Raj at FedEx. They're creating a lot of high paying jobs, and that's to be celebrated. Not that they're CEO, but the impact they bring. That's the kind of stuff we track.

Chet (15:44):

That's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the D.C. trip you just made.

M. R. (15:48):

I've known the vice president since she was the attorney of the city of San Francisco and supported her through the attorney general job that she had, the senator job she had, and more recently becoming VP. She's been pretty close to our community, and I've known her for a long time. The recent visit was to have breakfast in her house. It was to celebrate the Smithsonian Asian-American Museum, which is a phenomenal organization. A hundred years. A hundred years the Smithsonian has celebrated Asian-Americans. Now, the next step is Congress has approved the building of an Asian-American museum on the mall in Washington D.C., so we need as Indian Americans to seat at that table to build a museum that has history of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Indians, all coming together to celebrate the rich history, the immigrant history of the United States.

Chet (16:46):

Generally, this is a five-year endeavor, two year endeavor? Just to get an idea.

M. R. (16:51):

The museum building is a 10 year effort, so this will benefit Chet, your kids and mine, more than it will-

Chet (16:58):

Or grandkids. Right? Because our kids have gotten older. That's awesome. By the way, thank you on behalf of the Indian community in general. A lot of people, you're very well known in the Valley. I think you're getting to be very well known outside the Valley as well, because you've had such an inclusionary approach to going off and doing this and that the work you're doing is great. For those of you, just check out the organization, check out M. R. He does a lot of great work, and actually the team does a good job of posting up all the work that he's involved in. What he's talked about on this podcast is not even the tip of the surface. There's a lot of really, really great work that's being done. What do you think is the most overlooked innovation that will impact the work we do in three to five years?

M. R. (17:51):

I think really two things. Right? For example, with Indiaspora, now we have chapters in Australia, UK, Singapore, UAE, Canada, and so forth. There's a trick question. There are 32 million diaspora, Indian diaspora who live outside of India. We have two things in common. One is we're having Indian DNA, what is the second thing that we have in common? I won't prolong this, but the second thing is this. Each one of us, 32 million people, have a cell phone. I really think we haven't done enough as a society to connect people who have an affinity for certain things to each other globally. The cell phone technology, and now with AI coming on, can we do something meaningful to connect these 32 million people and that way look at other communities as well? How do we get people in Fiji and Guyana and Surinam and UK and India to connect together in a way that has never been done before? That, really, I think is what is fascinating me as these days.

Chet (18:59):

M.R., just to be clear, this is not, let's create a group in Facebook. 32 million is a large data set. Trying to make sure it's not just a large language model, but you also have small language models so that I can talk to somebody in Australia who has an affinity and the background that I might have. Is that a fair comment?

M. R. (19:19):

Absolutely. It's like someone in Surinam wants to learn something about something and that person he's connecting or she's connecting with is in Guyana or the US facilitating those affinities and like-minded things that we can do and really pulling it together to help each other. It's not about business.

Chet (19:38):

No, that's for sure. That's awesome. We talk about mobile, we talk about social. Right? We don't talk about, I think it's good for small groups. You can do WhatsApp groups and things like that, but when a group gets to be big enough, how do you create a graph and still try to make the connections so that there's somewhat personal? Because the larger the group, the less personal it gets, the larger the group, the more TikTok-ish it gets. I think that is a interesting challenge that has not been, no one is actually taking it on and tried to see if we can solve that. It's not with the current approaches. It's actually you start with a blank sheet of paper and then go at it.

M. R. (20:15):

Absolutely. Very different micro communities, but with the macro community also there to be able to do all this has really not been cracked up, but many other things. But as I go throughout the world, one thing I find is people want to keep in touch, but not just for business. They want to know more, do more. Philanthropy is obviously one way to do it. You talk of education, that's another big field. Right? In the US for example, there are 20,000 academics of Indian origin, 20,000. Just see the impact they make. They probably teach 2 million students a year in colleges, Indian-American professors. Can they now leverage that to teach 200 million people in India? That's a fascinating thing to also look at is how can we get this community do more in other places?

Chet (21:06):

That's awesome example. I'm going to now get to the rapid fire stage of questions. Obviously, this is brought to you by GPT. What's your favorite comfort food?

M. R. (21:20):

Idlis and dosas. No, I take it back. It's curd rice, yogurt rice.

Chet (21:27):

Two things you'd bring to a deserted island.

M. R. (21:29):

A good book and a pen and paper.

Chet (21:33):

Favorite Q&A from M. R. There's a Q&A you're conducting. What are the three questions that you would like to ask The person you're interviewing?

M. R. (21:40):

The most interesting place you've visited. The most interesting wine or alcohol you've tasted. The third is the most interesting person you've met.

Chet (21:52):

Great. Let's try to answer all three of those. What's the most interesting place you've visited?

M. R. (21:57):

My most interesting place was on a trip to Thailand for snorkeling. We stopped off at a little island and all it had was a small shack that was selling beer, and it had a hammock tied to two coconut trees. I was lying down at it saying, this is it. This is the most-

Chet (22:16):

It doesn't get any better than this.

M. R. (22:18):

That was it. That was it.

Chet (22:21):

What's your favorite wine or alcoholic beverage?

M. R. (22:23):

I mean, these days it's mezcal. I love any kind of mezcal and I try that any place I go.

Chet (22:31):

I will have to do that. The third question was-

M. R. (22:34):

The most interesting person.

Chet (22:35):

Most interesting person you've met or would like to meet?

M. R. (22:39):

Most interesting person I met recently was a yoga instructor who also was a great chef, a great musician, and a great tantric healer, and a great painter and a singer. I'd never seen someone do-

Chet (22:51):

Oh my God.

M. R. (22:52):

... All of the above and do it well. I was initially skeptical, but when I met this guy I was like, "Wow, how did he pull it off?"

Chet (23:01):

Your proudest personal achievement.

M. R. (23:04):

Proudest personal achievement, yet to be accomplished. I haven't done anything yet. There's still more to go.

Chet (23:11):

That's a great answer. I'd like to say thank you very much, M. R. I think our audience will love this. This is one of the most different podcasts that we've had. We generally have a lot of people who are CIOs and CEOs, and you've obviously been through that, but I think the fact that we had a conversation about something so different. Right? With philanthropy and your journey, I think people are going to enjoy it a lot. Thank you very much. I'm sure we'll chat with you again.

M. R. (23:38):

Thanks Chet, and I hope this gives your audience some inspiration to think of something different to do in their lives and make the world a better place.

Chet (23:46):

Awesome. Thanks again. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Inspired Execution podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe. We have many more phenomenal guests and inspiring stories to come, so be sure to join us next time.