Why Indians Don't Attempt (And Stay Average Forever) | KATA 4

India as a nation is a very anti-attempt nation. We're so afraid of taking an attempt and being ridiculed that we don't even try. When I met Mark Zuckerberg recently, do you know in live demo like a bunch of their things failed and you know what he told me? He's like there's a Steve Jobs quote that everybody needs to know which is that somewhere between the janitor and the CEO excuses stop mattering. There is a big difference between I think I can do it in your head versus doing it in real life. I would argue that the gap there is a few years. You cannot say I'll go to every network event and stand next to you know the CEO of some company and hopefully my reputation will increase. It doesn't work. The truth is that all success stories have luck involved. But luck only finds you after you attempt seriously. Indians massively overvalue good boy, good girl energy and undervalue people who can actually do something. But then what I learned about the world is that opportunities are not given. You actually have to grind enough miracles only then people start acknowledging and realizing you. You have to hang out with people who are okay with failing loudly. Failure cannot be demonized whether in our company or anywhere else. Failure is the norm. Before we begin, I need to tell all the people online that like I told you, if you post about this on Twitter or even on YouTube, if you comment, we're going to take some of the best comments, especially if you do it with your real name, and we're going to do something really crazy with it. Just make sure you use # kata #kata because it'll help us find those comments later on in 16th episode. We have something really crazy we want to show you guys and uh this is the way to

participate. Anyway, let's start with today's cutter which is scouters. For the fourth cutter, I was supposed to do something very high production but I decided not to do that. This is the easier format. Let's just keep it information dense. Today I want to talk about something which I think most people are really bad at which I was very bad at when I was 25 and I think even today many of you in the room are not very good at and you need to be good at this for two reasons. when hiring to figure out who has how much potential. And on the other side, if you are looking for a job, raises, if you are looking for appraisals, etc., you need to know what is it that you need to have in order to actually get one. Okay? And the reason I titled this scouters is because do you know what a scouter in Dragon Ball does? — It gives you the power level of a another person that you're looking at. And I believe in the real world there is something equal to this. It's not a specific number, right? But there is certainly a way you can measure, you know, just the value of another person at least the value in terms of, you know, how much they can add value in terms of can they add value to the company in the ways that they're saying they can, you know, can they actually write checks? Uh if it's an angel investor, knowing how to use the scouter, you can tell does the person actually have the ability to write a check. If you're talking to a client, you get the idea. Does can this person take the final decision? We learn about all that in today's episode called the scouters. It should have been called power level, but uh yeah, I just went with the Dragon Ball reference so that everyone gets it. Next slide. So the entire idea what we're going to learn

today is learn how to read competence, gain competence. Okay. So how do you increase your own power level so that you get appraisals and raises at your companies if you're online? And here how do you get raises and appraisals here? And maladaptive behaviors in competence reading. Sometimes we get the read of other people's competence wrong. Uh how do we do it accurately? Next slide. So I see this on a lot of like funded startup founders Twitter replies right which is bro company profitable etc. And it's almost like I used to be one of these people when I was very young mistakenly. And it's not just because I've made friends with many of these founders that I changed my opinion, but I just feel like you don't know the game many of these founders are playing, right? And it's almost like you look at where you are at right now and you see these founders completely out of your zone saying, "Oh, they're building something unprofitable. They've raised a lot of money profit. " And then as sort of confirmation uh you know bias you're looking for startups that have failed and said look they've raised so much money they've failed I know better but in reality a lot of these founders are playing very different games um you know if you went out and ask Kunal Sha you know why are you not profitable and you look at his actual career history he's built reasonably successful companies right his car collection alone would be worth more than like pretty much everyone in this room in some ways so I think it's important to know And important to know what games people are playing and then judge them based on that game. Right? There is a specific game being played here which is go for all or nothing. And that's why a lot of companies raise a lot of money so that they end up in that monopoly position. Um and that's a very different game. It's an all or nothing game. It's like going to the you know to the cricket field and trying to hit a six every ball right. Uh and it's a very different game compared to the person trying to hit one run one run one run. So anyway next slide. Um and I want to tell

you my story here and the reason you know when I realized this and how I realized this. I feel there are two startup Indias. There was a startup India that I was part of 10 years ago. There's like all these unknown startups raising from tier 2 tier three VCs good people. Nothing against the people nothing against the VCs but you know unknown VCs etc etc. And then there's startup one which is all these like you know the top startup names that come to your head right uh the lens carts of the world the zomatos the creds of the world and I just feel like I spent so much time in startup India 2 where I didn't have an intro into startup India 1 or I hadn't performed anything enough of a miracle to get into startup India 1 or I just wasn't in network and therefore I looked at Startup India 1 with lot of skepticism right which is oh they're doing something wrong they don't know what they're doing they're not focused on profits etc and there was a period in my life I remember one specific year where I was running a profitable company that year we were profitable but the profit numbers were very small and I was comparing the fact that oh we at least profitable compared to another company that had burnt 100 crores that year but then now 5 years later that company is doing very well right so I've seen many situations like that I'll tell you how I got into startup one

how I is by grinding right it's almost like since 25 I always knew I had the potential to be one of these big founders, right? And I always like the world's just not giving me a chance. an opportunity. I'm sure some of you here have felt this, right? Which is I think I'm worth more than what I'm being paid. I'm just not getting the right opportunity or I'm just not I'm undervalued. Yesterday I was having a call with, you know, a specific person that I was hiring and the person was like, I think I'm worth this much because I deserve it. And I always thought in my head that look, I deserve it. I deserve to be part of startup one. able to raise lots of money and build big businesses and whatnot. I'm just not given the opportunity. But then what I learned about the world is that opportunities are not given. You actually have to grind enough and be visible enough and perform enough miracles or you know perform enough work whatever you say you actually have to you know create that outcome and only then people start acknowledging and realizing you right and I think it's very important to understand this right acknowledgement from some of the top founders or top people in your space whoever you look up to comes after you prove something not when you think you have the potential to prove it and I think the gap between you think you have the potential to you think you have proved it is far wider than people think it is it's like the difference between having vegetables on a table and making a dish right everyone can buy the vegetables from a grocery store and put on the table and say I think I can make a dish but actually cooking is harder than you think it is next slide so yeah again as startup one maybe it was maybe as part of startup 2 India I think it was maybe I guess cope hope I guess whatever it is uh that I thought that the other founders were not doing as well and I was doing something better or whatever but I feel reading competence is very important in order to understand accurately where you stand and I think everybody in this room has a misread some of you are underconfident you undervalue yourself overconfident you think you're much worth much better than you think you are because somebody else in some other startup is making slightly more and you think I'm better than that person therefore I deserve more. And I think reading competence is important because it helps you with everything in life. And reading competence starts with reading your own competence. Next slide. I'll tell you how people build competence. your scouter level increases. Starting from a grand total of zero, how does it go to a,000? 9,000 and beyond? The path is you believe in something, whatever it could be, and we'll give you some examples. You take a big swing at it with some personal risk. Okay. Now third part sometimes is you have good cards, sometimes you have bad cards. But let's say you the odds are stacked against you that people believe it's this it's not going to work. Okay. Therefore, you know, a lot of people you'll face skepticism and ridicule. Oh, no chance this person is going to be able to do this, right? And we've seen this a lot. And finally somehow magically pulling it off. And what you'll realize about some of the best entrepreneurs in the world, even employees in the world, everyone's been through this path. Every single person. And I like to call this the test. Okay? And when I was negotiating with somebody yesterday, this is a talent. The last company he worked at was unprofitable. The before that it didn't really turn too much of a profit. And the person is like, I think I'm worth this much. And he gave me a figure, right? And I was like, you believe in this, but none of your outcomes prove this. And the minute you prove this outcome, you'll make far more than this. And that's the hard part. How do you prove that what you believe in, you can actually execute it. Okay? So you might say, "Dude, I can take up this campaign for this specific company and get them this many views or get them this much loyalty or this much engagement or whatever it is, whatever that criteria for you. " And nobody believes you, let's say. But we still give you that shot. and you take a big swing at it with personal risk, which means if this doesn't work out, I will get fired. I don't mind, you know, losing my job for this. And I met somebody from a very big gaming company recently who came here, a publisher, right? And there was a guy who came in from the company and I want to tell you his story, right? And he's like, "Yeah, we would love to publish your game. We want to like chat about commercials and stuff. " And I was open. I was just listening to him and he's like, "Yeah, I can write this. " We give a specific number which we would be

happy with and we don't need to take that. So we were just like only if we get the terms we want. But he said something very interesting, right? He said I can write this check but I won't write it. I was like why? He's like I really need 6 months to think about whether I should write it or not. He was like here's the thing. In our company we have a rule that you're allowed to take any bet. The company trusts you in the beginning. But if you are wrong about this bet, even though investing in a company is like 99% chance of failure, anything could happen in the market because of which that company could fail. Still in our company, if we take a bet and you're wrong about it, you lose your job. And it's like it's not even personal losing your job there. It's like you believed in this, you took a swing. As part of us giving you the power to take the swing, if you miss the swing, you lose your job. Therefore, personal risk. You have to create personal risk in the person taking a big swing. You give them power, but you also say, "Bro, if you fail on the power, you drop. " Okay? And having bad cards in many people's cases, oh, I don't have a good machine. I don't have this. I don't have that. Everyone has excuses in life, right? Every single person has excuses. I don't have access to funding. You know, investors won't talk to me. This won't happen. That won't happen. Blah blah. But actually you don't realize in almost everyone's stories unless they're very lucky and kids of like you know successful entrepreneurs or whatever 99% of the time most people who you see in the public who are successful have had bad cards and it could be anything. You might think oh my they might have good cards in terms of wealth but they might have bad comes cards in terms of health maybe there the competitors are too strong. Anything can happen. So you're not supposed to have all the tools to prove it off. You're supposed to perform a miracle. Okay. And then of course pulling it off. Right? You said you would do that campaign. You said you'll make that channel work. You said you'll, you know, make that business work. But if you pull it off, by definition till here, people are allowed to be skeptical. The minute you pull it off, your power reading goes up because you know what you've displayed? You've displayed competence. And by the way, humanity loves such stories. Humanity loves and the reason your power level goes up and the reason people talk about you at that point is humanity loves the stories where you have gone after a big swing and made it happen and then you permanently level up then you get access to more capital talent you get access to more things that you want that's why a lot of people start off and say I'm going to build you know I'm going to do space travel or some deep tech or something like that but often they find the better route to do that and the route let's say Deepipendar Goyel has taken is to first build a prove it that you can do it earn everyone's trust and respect then take a harder and harder shot and we've seen this with Elon Musk's career right Elon started by making a game then he made you know payments company which you know if you look at it so many people in India run payments companies and we say oh India is not innovative payment company but Elon started there and then so on and so forth till the point where you're like well I want to send rockets to mass so you take these bets time and time again increase your power level and the more the scouter increases, the easier it is for you to get everything, money, team, if you're in the company, for example, budgets. It's very easy once that scout level increase, once your competence read increases. Next slide.

If no swing is taken, which means you had an idea about the future, next year, you know, AI avatars will be very big, but you don't take the swing. You just go out and see it. You make a video about it, right? You make a YouTube video about it. you put a Twitter thread about it, you gain some confidence. It's called predictive confidence, which is, hey, I this guy was right about a couple of things. Maybe he's going to be right about the third one. Okay? It's called predictive competence. You gain that slightly if you made a prediction about it but didn't take a swing. Okay? But believing something deeply without ever attempting it also earns you a little competence. Let's say you truly believe in something. Let's say you're a person who truly believes in let's say some topic let's say veganism you truly believe in it okay and you will never compromise on your principles over time people will respect you even if they don't agree with you because like stands for something taken a stand for something and is not flip-flopping right so you earn a little bit of competence there too okay and but this is the biggest trap because sometimes you can believe in absolutely garbage things and stick to it for the rest of your life and because you've never taken a swing You don't even know if that thing is true or false. Okay. If personal risk is low, if the kid of a billionaire decides, you know, to take a swing and they let's say they actually managed to accomplish something, the status rate is still lesser. A scouter read is still little lesser because other people can see, oh, you did it, but you did it with lots of external help, right? Your parents were rich, therefore they gave you, you know, half a million dollars to go try this or couple of this. Okay? or if cards aren't that bad. If everyone knew you had an advantage going in, okay, competence gained after a successful project is lower. So, you still gain competence. People still respect you a little more, but it's lower. That's why if you're the kid of a very successful entrepreneur or like a, you know, rich person, it's important to take on harder and harder projects because it looks like you have bad cards, right? So, status read the competence read is a little bit uh higher. Okay? And here's the coolest part. What I've learned over the years, even if your outcome is bad, even if you went there, you know, as a batsman and said, "I need to hit a six right now. " And you swung and your wickets got hit and you know, you're out, you still gain competence if you took a clean, high integrity attempt. So if inside the company, let's say you did something and you tried your best, okay, and you gave it your all and then market fac because of market factors, it you know, it fell flat. If you give it a clean attempt, you still get some competence. And believe it or not, a lot of people, and we've seen this in our company, other companies as well, when they're starting to lose, let's say they took a they believed in something, they said, "I definitely can do this. " And they came in the company and they said, "I'm going to do this. " 3 months later, they realize, "Oh I'm not able to really do this. " And then we've seen a lot of them either ask for a department switch or quit or whatever. That's not a clean attempt. The right way to do it in our company at least is to put your hand up and say, "I thought I could do this. I don't think I can. Here are the reasons. " Okay? Or maybe here are the gaps in my own knowledge as to why I decided to take that swing and I was wrong. I'm going to call this a day and I'm going to shut it down cleanly. Right? And a lot of people don't do that, right? actually take clean attempts because they just say, "Okay, fine. Not working for me at this company. Let me just move on. " Some people quit this company because they're just not able to do the project given to them. And we've seen this before. Next

slide. Okay. And again, something I started this entire presentation with which I want to repeat is there is a big difference between I think I can do it in your head versus doing it in real life. I would argue that the gap there is a few years. And the minute you go from there to here, from the I think I can do it to I I've actually proved it. It increases your confidence. And you know, as a company, we now have to open our wallets because we don't want to lose you because now you have proven competence. But as a company, if we feel like you feel you can do it, but there's no proof, then it always starts with skepticism. And it's not just true for our company. I think it's true for basically every company in the world and even entrepreneurial kind of attempts. Right? At AOS, we have a name for this. It's called the test. Okay? the test permanently in if you pass the test you permanently increase your scouter level you gain some improvements if you take a like a clean attempt okay but if you fail and finally you know your adjustment of yourself in your head of I can do it either goes down or goes up right in my life it's almost like I was like I can do it at 21 I had like a very high opinion of myself then it started falling then I had some success it went up then again it started falling falling fall falling and then again it went up and I think the more attempts like this you take the more you're able to judge what you can accurately do and what you can't. Right? I think that's a lot of entrepreneurship. It's a lot of working in a company. life to chew on exactly what you can chew on. But you won't know till you try. Next slide. And

I'll tell you one thing, okay? It's very easy to take an attempt, fail and then say actually you know why the reason I failed was because of that person or that budget didn't come or AC office. Yeah. you know anything like you know the world right like we all come up with infinite number of excuses but I think there's a Steve Jobs quote that everybody needs to know in this company and even outside which is that somewhere between the janitor and the CEO excuses stop mattering I'll tell you what this means a janitor let's say somebody who's cleaning your the bathroom here right they are afforded an excuse sir I couldn't clean the room because the door was locked fair excuse I'm willing to say okay fine but if you're let's say a CXO let's say you're a VP of something or a manager or something then you have multiple options you can find the key you can go ask where the key is you can get a duplicate key made worst case scenar you can call somebody from outside break down the door you can do anything right like you have so many tools at your disposal to break down the door and we feel like with most pursuits entrepreneurial or not everybody has the ability to you know do it especially if you're responsible for it okay and I think the best kind of people are people who are like I tried. I failed. That's okay. But I tried and I failed because n number of reasons. Excuses just stop mattering because you have n number of ways to do it. The better thing to do if you feel like you know it's just not possible to do something is to chew on less. Is to take on a smaller problem and say I'm more confident about doing this and go out and do it. Next slide. Okay. And I just want to tell you the scouter levels. There are scouter levels. Okay.

Level zero is NPCs. No beliefs, no attempts, pure consumption. They don't say anything. They're just like I mean they don't take any attempts, right? And this is this happens to a lot of people after they become like just disillusioned with the world and they're just like I don't want to do anything with the world. I want to be a hermit somewhere. So no beliefs, no attempts, pure consumption. They're sitting on real scrolling. Level one is what I like to call the commentators, right? And you'll see India is filled with commentators. Okay. And it's a courage issue more than anything because they have very strong opinions but zero real attempts. And I've seen this in a lot in our company as well as we gotten bigger, right? Which is a person in a meeting will be like this needs to be done, that needs to be done and then okay do it and then silence. Okay. And most of these people are burning their energy on Twitter on Reddit. So the way I described is hi Twitter and Reddit no P& L. Right now, there's really not much to say about them apart from the fact that they're commentators, right? Uh there are some very passionate commentators, but that still doesn't earn you scouter levels. Next is the local doers. Okay, small attempts, something you've done, you've tried, you've taken initiative by yourself, got somewhere, low personal risk, some wins. And we've seen this some with freelancers, with side hustlers, etc., etc. And these people still have some scouter level. Like I've seen for example some kids who are freelancers on Instagram and YouTube and Twitter and whatnot and a lot of the commentators will be making fun of them but you don't realize among every competent person in the country we take the person who's done something more seriously than the person who's not done something. Even if something has like a very nicely written you know uh take down of the person who's done something. The next is what I like to call founders. I actually want to replace the word founders with owners because you own whatever you're doing. You're a project owner, which is you're taking repeated high-risk attempts with skin in the game. Okay, I've see a lot of people here and it like at this point it confuses me, right? Where they're like they want a full salary comped exactly to market or maybe even higher than market and they want some equity or some profit share, some skin in the game. uh and it's like kind of not possible to do both because you are now remember the rules of taking this thing right then there has to be some personal risk to you but there are some people I've met in my life and even here who are willing to say fine I'll take on this campaign it's high risk you know I have to work with this multinational brand and you know get them these results with the cards are stacked against me I might not be able to do this but I'll still try and you know what I'll reduce my salary to be able to take a share of if this works out right and many of these founders and owners what you'll find is and they've cleverly hidden it over time all of these people in India especially because social media only we only started learning everybody's stories like 5 10 years ago but if you actually go in their past they have lots of failures because the only way to accurately know what you're capable of doing is by trying is by attempting and of course the game is such that your first 10 attempts are not going to work your first five right most people there are lots of people actually that try once fail and then say I don't want the public humiliation risk of this etc and never try again. So usually after their first attempt you can tell whether they're going to become a founder or owner mindset or not. Usually after the first attempt you can tell okay and the last one is kingmakers right and you can quickly read their power level because it's very weird right and I've you know mentioned it as can move markets industries or cultures with just a decision okay and they have multiple successful events and I'll tell you something very interesting about these people failure doesn't mean anything to them what I mean by that is they're so hedged against failure because if you try something it works you build so much social capital that a failure or two doesn't matter Elon tries a new project and doesn't work, your opinions of him is not going to change much because he has enough of a scouter level to take a little bit of a dip, right? So, and most of these kingmakers work in such a way that even that failure because you know so many people in the ecosystem can be figured out, can be made a success. So, low risk getting into any project because you actually don't enter any projects with bad cards. So the difference between level three and level four is sometimes level three is still dealt bad cards. But most of the time level four is walking in having the entire deck in their hand and figuring out what to do. And of course this is a free market, right? So you can start as a level zero NPC. And by the way, one thing I disagree with everybody on is most people think you're either born, you know, a kingmaker or a founder or an owner or an NPC. You're born like that. It's there's nothing you can do about it. I have seen the complete opposite of this. I have seen people who I graded as NPCs who quickly went down with just a little more exposure to risk. And by the way, these levels are levels aren't clearly related to money like let's say an NGO founder who has you know not made too much money because that's not the game they're playing but has done very well. Uh maybe actual money not done very well but you have respect that they've tried something hard maybe a social movement and they made it happen. I still rank them higher than you know some person who's written a long article about something right but that at something maybe you know they invested in some stock before it became very big and they made a lot more money so this person may have more money than this person in some instances very rare but in some instances but still public and everybody else and all the competent people will still say this is more valuable than this next slide now I'll tell you why Indians are bad at

reading competence anyone has any guesses It's important you think along with me with this. Why are Indians bad at reading competence? — The idea of fairness is very weird. — Their Would you agree that India is a populist country? — Yeah. — Right. We like good stories, right? And we tend to ignore the value of risk in every story and luck in every story. It's almost like risk and luck don't exist for us. Next slide. I think what Indians do and this is something you'll find across is we cloud our own security, insecurity, ego and limitations and find reasons for another person's success. Oh, these two young kids are very successful. Maybe their parents were rich, right? We attribute their success to luck but ask to skill. Is this lucky about this? some VC just gave him money without realizing that for a lot of people especially now that I've seen the behind the scenes of this some of these are like multi-year sales to a VC you know the VC for 2 years and then you know when you're starting your next company because your scouter read is high the VC gives you money so it looks like you've raised money instantly but actually it's a 2-year relationship that you're capitalizing on right so when we look from the outside we just think oh it's all luck but for our own thing anything that you've done in life that you've been successful on you're like oh bro it's skill I actually did this I was skilled enough to do this But what I've realized is over time, especially with people who have taken multiple bets, it does it like even the art of betting is a skill. Okay. In reality, the truth is that all success stories have luck involved. But luck only finds you after you attempt seriously. Do you think when we did unleash the avatar that it would go viral in China? Do you think there's even a predictable thing? But it happened, right? And now we're sitting a few views below GTA 6, the previous trailer on IG and China. Most played, right? or 20,000 videos but there's no way I could have gone and saying this is going to happen. We could only find out after we played the card right so in my opinion you have to try five 10 times for one to succeed right and during this period facing ridicule is pretty normal. I was with Cristiano Oman who was the uh CEO of Qualcomm, right? You all have Qualcomm chips in your phone, Snapdragon chips in your

phone and he was telling me this amazing story about how when they came out first, I think they were doing CDMMA at that time, nobody believed them. They were ridiculed. When I met Mark Zuckerberg recently and it's like the most profound thing Mark said to me, right, I was talking to him and I was like, "Thank you for doing this demo live. " He did the Ray-B bands demo live, right? And do you know in the live demo like a bunch of their things failed. Do you know that right? Like it just screwed up. And you know what he told me? He's like, "I'm happy we got three out of five things right. " Can you imagine this is a trillion dollar company CEO saying, "I'm happy I got three out of five things right. " Can you imagine in front of the public where the stock price will drop, people are going to say lots of things about this person. He was completely okay with it. And I feel with India, we're so afraid of taking an attempt and being ridiculed that we don't even try. But if you go to the valley like Elon will try a new idea just like this, right? So I feel like India as a nation is a very anti-attempt nation because after an attempt you'll find out, right? You'll find out whether the story of yourself in your head is true or not. And lots of people are afraid to find out. It's like a being afraid of going to the doctor and checking whether you have cancer. Everyone's scared after the cancer you know check up and you don't have cancer like right but before you go in you know the anxiety you face etc people face that with attempts in India 99% of our country does not attempt hard things we are averse to failing even once as trying the act of trying almost always leads to failure in our company alone some of the top talent that you've seen has tried at least five things that have failed even before they joined here all of them have some history of failure in some way or the other and you cannot improve and luck cannot find you like I told you a lot of success is luck but luck cannot find you even if you don't try next slide and I think the best way to

describe this right for a lot of people who are trying to chew on more than they they actually know enough information about and I think Brian Johnson not Brian Johnson I think Brian Armstrong the CEO of Coinbase posted this recently which is that action produces information which if you don't know what to do just do something and you'll find out whether it works or Right? Ilia has this very good quote which is that the answer to that question will reveal itself. I think there are lots of possible answers. Right? So sometimes you do something and you're like I don't know where this will lead and this is what's bringing me like I told you startup one India right? Where it's like hey if we get a lot of users on this platform and we spend a lot of money doing it and bleed out all our competitors something good will happen. The answer will reveal itself as to what these customers want. And in some ways our entire attempt at content is exactly this. We didn't know getting into content that we' be able to monetize it in the way that we do today. But those answers revealed themselves over time. Right? So everyone believes that you have to go in knowing perfect information about the thing that you're going after. You don't need it. You don't need perfect information. You just need to do. Next slide. I'll tell you one more reason Indians are bad at reading competence. And you'll see this from Reddit and this and that, right? The ideal competent person in an Indian mindset is somebody who's quiet, shy, behind the scenes, introverted, suppressed, very technical, humble, and conflict avoided. Yes, — these are our ideas like someone successful like some technical guy who success. We love CTO's by the way, right? Because it's like, oh, behind the scenes, you know, technical, he's the one carrying the entire company, etc., etc. But you know what I've realized in my life? I used to think like this when I was 24 25. I realized that I was wrong. Next slide. At that time in my life, I feel like and even on Reddit and Twitter and whatnot, we show some people behind the scenes and this and that. And you'll see this a little bit with Nickel and Nithan, right? You'll see that online people will say really good things about Nithan because he's be because it feels to them he's behind the scenes. He doesn't talk that much. Therefore, he must be the person behind everything. But companies are like both co-founders are important. In fact, not just co-founders, all the entire team is important. You can't run a company with just one co-founder carrying it. Never works. Everyone's very important to make something happen. But we always ascribe one person who is not loud as the person who built everything, which is in reality almost never true. Right? But the reason we do this is because this is a reflection of most people in India. Go back one slide. How many people in India are quiet shy sitting in their mom's basement behind the scenes introverted suppressed somebody's not giving you an opportunity and of course technical because India is you know has overproduced engineers over the years and of course conflict avoidant we don't like getting into fights we like at least in the real world right we like you know staying behind the scenes and handling it next slide I'll tell you what the reality is companies are all about conflict and not conflict avoidance but conflict resolution. Do you think in a boardroom when we have a meeting people don't fight? It's the literally the most common thing where two people have a disagreement on what direction to go and not just here but in every company in every part of the world. This is the most ground reality of human beings that two human beings almost never align. The best founders I've met in my life, the ones who actually have good P& Ls because now I know is the people who are very verbal and very social which I'm not. I'm not actually very social, right? who are conflict resolving, not conflict seeking, but are trying to always say, "Okay, you guys have a problem. Fight, fight. Finish it. Okay, now this is the direction we're going in. We disagree, but we commit. " Who are charming because most people in the world don't want to deal like on a sales call when s buy this whatever it's annoying, but the minute someone's charming, well, we'll open up a little bit. Okay? Who are actually salespeople because money doesn't come from being behind the scenes. It comes from actually going out and selling. Okay? Okay. So in India almost like 90% of people who I've seen who are successful who actually have positive P& Ls are people who are sales people are run by sales people and the augs are sales ags. They're great at leadership in hiring because companies are about teams and you cannot hire people by being you know introverted and behind the scenes. Introversion is a skill issue which somehow we have made a virtue because everybody has it. They're good at product and marketing. It's a very weird combo right? You often think of product as something as very different from marketing. But let me take some examples for you. Steve Jobs, great at product, great at marketing. Elon Musk is also great at product and great at marketing. It's a very strange combination. It feels like product is a little technical, marketing is not so technical. But actually something you learn over time is that product is also a function of marketing. What is product? It's how your user flows through your app. Will they click on this? Will they watch this? Will they buy this? That's what product is, right? Will they like these colors? It's the same thing as marketing. It's just this is all just behavioral. This is how do humans behave. That's what product and marketing are. The technological implementation of the product is something different. But mostly most good CEOs that I met are both product and marketing. Most people here in their own units who have become successful are both good at product and marketing and they both flow in very well with each other. In fact, I heard a quote recently which is product starts from the day that a person sees your ad and then comes to your app. It starts there about what they know about your app and what they end up using on your app. They're technical but 90% not 100%. Remember I told you I'll tell you one more product and marketing genius which is Sam Alman. Is Sam Alman the most technical person in his company? No. But he knows enough to be able to run the company. But he's not the most technical person in the company. He realizes that anything beyond 90% can be hired for. There's higher leverage in hiring people because once you build a big company, hiring a person is a small amount of the P& L, right? So you hire the best engineer

more shots at goal right which is these people because of the skills above have tried 50 times like if you go look at you know the PTM founders history or anybody's history they would have tried like 15 things and then finally one of those things would have worked and they would have said now I understand everything from the my last 14 attempts to do this well okay and they're often much lower ego than most people think mainly because they've all faced repeated failure Right. So, and they realize that sometimes I have to go out in public and say that this is all going to work, but behind the scenes, I'm very scared this might not work out next week. The main thing is that companies have a lot of conflict. Companies are over time, especially as they get bigger. It's, you know, even with four people, most people the one of the common reasons for startup failure is co-founder fighting. Can you imagine? You can't even align one co-founder where you both have equity in the company. How are you going to align employees who don't have equity in the company or have much lesser equity in the company? How are you going to align them? It's all conflict and they require a lot of sales leg work to make any money. Most of the time the bigger challenge you'll have a lot of people are like I won't tell my idea to other people they'll steal it this that. It never happens. Most of the time nobody will believe in your product or service or company. So your job is to generate belief in the first place and belief can only happen if you have these skills. No come build a game with me. Come you know we'll do content together. Most people don't believe that there's any anything there. I remember when you know there was somebody who was hiring and he's like I can't work at this company because I don't want to work in a content company because I believe in a you know I believe in products two years later the person is joining us now because you know over time with enough of my own scouter rising I'm like okay now you see this now I want you to come and help me build it right so sometimes when you're talking to talent they may not some someone told me the other day right like we need to do a lot more branding to be able to attract talent because sometimes when talent when we talk to even if we're offering good salaries they're not willing to move to Bangalore for us and only within enough brand power they'll actually decide to move to Bangalore because it'll be exciting enough. Okay, but I'm like what if you built a relationship with them and over one year just send them updates about the company? Would that work? And I've seen a lot of people here do that. Some of the best hirers here who have hired good people for their team are just drip feeding updates about the company over time and it requires those skills. If you're an introvert and you can't text people and keep sharing, you know, how the company has improved, it wouldn't work. Next slide. I want to tell you some tips now. Okay. You don't need to like everyone who you feel is competent. You may work with people who are you don't like the person for whatever reason, but you like that person's competent. That person can get the work done. And I see this sometimes with some of our teams, right? Where it's a group of like let's say 12 13 people. They don't like one person and they because they don't like a person, their entire viewpoint of the person is clouded with the fact that they don't like them. But you can dislike a person and they can still be competent. These are two separate problem statements. You can hate a person. You can just be like, I hate this person. But got to recognize they're competent. But if you go to Reddit and read about Elon Musk, there's like some threads about Elon Musk where they're like, he's incompetent. He doesn't know anything. I saw one video about a of AOC, the politician, talking about Elon saying he's the dumbest billionaire or something like that. And somebody corrected her saying he's almost a trillionaire, right? So, uh, it's okay to dislike the person. It's okay. So Elon is bad at these these things or doesn't understand these things or you know um you know he's doing these things wrong. But the minute you say he's incompetent, no one's going to believe you. Um everyone has faults. So one of

the things I've learned over time is there's no such thing as a perfect colleague. So discard what you don't like. Let's say you're working in a team with somebody or you're sitting and judging somebody from the outside. Everyone has faults. Okay? Our job is to keep what we like and discard what we don't like. Don't even let it enter your periphery. Belief in general about anything is low. And storytelling is what generates belief. Right? So when you're trying a hard attempt like game dev for example, I had to over storytell in the early days because I'm trying to do something that's very hard, right? Generate belief among my team. Forget about the outside. You need first to get competent people in the space in the same time. And to do that, you have to do extra storytelling. But over time, you don't need to do as much storytelling because you have enough progress. You have enough proof of the product. So it starts with storytelling pivots into product. The product does the storytelling. Um but you must eventually deliver right like I said failure but clean attempts usually gives you another shot. People are like he tried once properly. Let me give him or her another shot. But you must at some point in your life deliver. And this is a big worry because in India there's so many people who worked in startups. Their startup would have gone under the water. They would have worked there. Then they would have gone to another startup. That startup would have become unprofitable. then they go to another startup died and it's like oh but I worked 10 years I have this is my salary requirement one thing that AOS does very well is when we interview talent and we take them in we look at have they worked in a profitable startup how much of that have they contributed to we actually really care about this okay and we don't care about what your last salary was as much like what is the contribution what is the output with editors it's easy right like I can see your videos and I can judge you but with other roles it's a little bit hard with sales people a lot of sales people be company made this much money. I'm like, how much did you contribute to it, right? So, we try to get into the the mechanics of it. Uh the cool part is it doesn't matter how many attempts you take because even one success will permanently increase your scouter level. There's so many people who are like the hotmail guy, right? Like some 20 years ago, you would have built something very successful. He still has my respect. He still has a lot of people's respect because he's done one thing 20 years ago. You just need one success for you to gain that competence. And more than anything, it'll give you also the confidence to believe in to know exactly where you stand. Okay? High scouter levels attract other high scouter levels. And the main reason for this is somebody with a high scouter level does not like interacting with somebody with a low scouter level simply because they're like, "You're not going to get this game. You're not going to understand what I'm going after, so why even spend time with you? " But the higher like if they're two high scouter levels, they love chatting with each other. I've seen this even in the company when there's one competent person sitting next to a competent person, they're always talking about how look at us, we're so competent, right? I've seen that happen so often, right, in our in some of our teams. Uh [clears throat] that's because high competence people love hanging out with high competence people. They feel like a low competence person in the team is dragging them down. Ego is the enemy. The minute we look at somebody ahead of us and say, "Oh, the person is ahead of us. Why should I do anything with them? " Um I think anyone ahead of you is a chance to learn and improve. Actually, I would argue my job is to find people with low scouter levels who have the potential to have a high scouter level one or two years later in hiring. That's the secret. Can you find somebody with potential and then unlock that potential over time? Socializing doesn't work to grind scouter levels. Like you cannot socialize your way. You cannot say I'll go to every networking event and stand next to you know the CEO of some company and hopefully my reputation will increase. It doesn't work right. You need to do something valuable for that person or with that person. That's when the scouter level increases. And high scouter levels don't like hanging out with people who are just there and just doing small talk. Like they cannot do small talk. Like I do this thing now which I bet is very annoying when people talk to me where somebody will be talking to me like 2x speed. I just tell it to people like YouTube 2x speed. Uh simply because I'm just like I want to skip the small talk and get to what is the thing you're really saying. One more thing. Okay. Multiple similar failures sharply decreases your scouter level. It gives you a scouter penalty. So if you do the same mistake once and then you do it again again, you're doing the same series of mistakes again and again not learning from it. Refusing to update your model. For example, I you'll see this a lot in engineers in India, right? They'll keep building apps. They don't even think about what they build. They say like I'll build app. I'll build app build app. None of it works. You have to update your model. 2023 2022 23 we updated our model. where like distribution model is now the model move there but there are still people now still making one app a week hoping the next one will go viral it's a gambler mentality that's like I said if you if you assume that you know it's a game of poker and you have to go in when you have slightly better cards or when the table is you know beneficial for you a lot of these people are just going all in every round right and hoping that one of the rounds you know everybody else has bad cards and you have good cards doesn't work that way luck is a massive part of success Nobody will say this out in public. It's not possible to tell like you have to get started and luck will meet you midway. It's almost always like that in everything that everybody does. Okay? And you will never get lucky if you don't try. So a lot of people hesitate to even take the first attempt. And I think if you needed a sign from somewhere to take that first attempt, here it is. Next slide. Uh I just want to add one point here, right? Which is that a lot of people are in India, we

value niceness a lot. Oh, this person's very nice. And I just want to tell you something that nice is table stakes. Everyone's supposed to be nice. Uh but it's not a substitute for competence. Like we won't work with anybody in AOS just because they're nice. Like it doesn't matter that much to us. Uh Indians massively overvalue good boy, good girl energy. Um and undervalue people who can move, who can actually do something. Uh and if you look at Elon, I don't think Elon's the nicest person. If you look at most of the successful people in the world, they're not the nicest people. Why? Because they're moving things, right? competent people that I know that I met in my life, they will disagree. They will say no to a lot of things. If you ask for an appraisal, I'll say no. Uh they'll kill bad ideas. This is Do the other thing. Uh ask uncom unc uncomfortable questions like did you get it done? What's your KPI etc. So a lot of discomfort comes being around what I would say competent people. If someone has a high scouter read, you feel dis uncomfortable around them. Unless you are competent, you're able to create you know outcomes too. Um yeah competent people that doesn't mean the competent people are always right. They may be wrong but somehow they'll still move forward. So because of this Indians don't like people who disagree. say no. Indians don't like people who kill their ideas. And Indians don't like people who ask uncomfortable questions. Okay. But these are all things that move the company forward. anything forward. And most people in India optimize for comfort. If you optimize for comfort, your scouter will always be wrong about competent people because competent people optimize to move things forward. Moving things forward comes with discomfort. It comes with a little bit of conflict. Okay? Competent people are generally uncomfortable because they have to fight inertia. They to get everybody to do things they don't want to do instead of everybody wants to just take a nap and do nothing, right? Like so you're pushing people against their will. Sometimes it becomes annoying. Next slide. So a lot of you might think okay this is all new but actually this has been the same for the last 200,000 years since humans became humans computer or no computer it's not that we you know uh val overvalue or pride oh he's done something technical or he's done something this or he's edited a great video. These are not things that are valued. What is valued since 200,000 years is bravery, confidence, trying, leadership, teamwork. Nothing has changed in humanity in the last 200,000 years. The tools have changed. Okay. None of this is handed to you. You need to prove it. It's fine for people to be default skeptical. Onus on you to prove it. One more thing. Huh? And I want to give you an example of this. And this goes to the idea of Steve Jobs about excuses. In personal experience, the people with the highest scouter levels can cleanly brutally explain why their last attempt worked or failed without blaming external factors. Let's say they the last company failed because they had a bad co-founder. They can still explain it as I made the mistake because I decided to work with this person. I made a mistake because I joined this company. Let's say your last company failed. Actually, still your mistake even if you're an employee because you chose the company, right? You got sold by the company, right? So, still your mistake, right? So, uh for example, there's a person that left our company went to another company, started poaching talent, that company failed now. That company's dead and the person still doesn't blame themselves for making that decision of not being here in the early days. They would have done very well here, right? But instead they're blaming all sorts of external factors. No, funding environment was bad. It's not my fault. Now could be true. But I think the most competent people that I've seen blame themselves and say actually here are the mistakes I made and they update their model. They learn like I won't make that mistake again. They don't get the scouter penalty because they don't repeat mistakes again. Choose the wrong market. Your fault. Sorry. My fault. Wrong people. My fault. Pandemic happened. Still my fault for not planning contingencies. The best companies in the world like the black rocks of the world have planned for every contingency. What prevents you like what is different between you and them? You should also plan. Next slide.

Again, I just want to tell you quick tips on how you guys can raise your scouter level. One is pick a game where outcomes are measurable. Sometimes there are games where outcomes are not measurable. I'll give you an example. There's a guy who was working on a marketing team of one of the OTTs in India and they do a lot of campaigns, right? And he was like, I did this campaign. But it's very hard to measure because there are like 50 people involved in the campaign. Okay. So you need something where some outcome is measurable. Either revenue, users, rank, watch time, some measurable game that you're playing, some way to keep score. Place a visible personal bet. Either it could be money, a reputation, years of your life, whatever it is. Ship in public. Let people see you struggle and iterate. Even if it's here, show your work. Some people just start working and they keep fully silent. And when somebody goes fully silent for 3 months, I know they're going to quit because they're not able to do the task given to them. So keep it's okay if you struggle. Let people see your struggle. When people start seeing your struggle, they come help you. That's one thing I've learned about the world. Okay? Ignore ridicule. Ignore somebody saying whatever. Ignore that. But collect actionable feedback. Some people can give you constructive criticism which is you can improve this specific thing or work on this specific thing. Those people are very useful. One clear win permanently upgrades how serious people see you. You just need one win in this company and now we're a large enough company where you need at least one win. It's very hard for people to keep giving you multiple shots. Next slide.

Anyway, the use of scout I think this is the last slide. Yeah. So in hiring we have to prefer track record of repeated attempts over whatever the CV card design is or what college or whatever. What attempt have you taken? What is the output? What did you actually contribute? And I feel like none of you in your hiring questions ask any of these things. what did you actually contribute in the last company exact spec instead of saying oh last company paid me paid this therefore we're paying this I don't think that should be it choosing bosses is also very important your growth ceiling is the max cap of your boss's scouter level it's just human right a boss will not let a person below them a manager doesn't exceed the scouter level why would they right like they're always trying to suppress so in order for you to win you need to do very well raise your scouter level and because your team did well your boss's scout level also goes up till the point where you get cycled out and you're on the same level of your boss and you keep going up. But if your boss has a low scouter level, low competence, no matter what you do, no matter how good your idea is, it's never going to go up. And here we make it, we are always looking at are your managers smart enough and competent enough to give you the space to grow. If not, you should probably ask for a team switch. Okay? And then we get to remove the bad managers. And in other companies, when you join a company, you're not really joining a company. You're joining a manager. That's the person you'll be working with every day. If the person is not competent, why would you be there? Um co-founders, we avoid people who have never taken any personal risk. Like if someone's never taken personal risk, they just don't get it. They assume I'm entitled to a salary plus percentage of the company without understanding that most people who've taken percentage of company unless they have some parental wealth have taken probably zero salary for a year and they're working off savings. Friends, you have to hang out with people who are okay with failing loudly. Failure cannot be demonized whether in

our company or anywhere else. Failure is the norm, right? And only from failure can you try hard enough things for you to be able to be successful. There's something called a shaen freud. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. Shaen Freud. It's a German word which is feeling good when other people lose. You've seen this right in India a lot. Somebody else is loser feel good. Oh go right. But I think um short and freud communities break your scouter uh and they convert scouting to a social process. Scouting cannot be done with five people all saying is this what is this person's level? It never happens. That's an individual relationship between you and that person. Even if somebody even if you're in a Reddit community of 10 other people believe that Elon is bad independently looking Elon you should be like this person is competent, right? It's not easily possible. Some people say, right, oh, it's because of his employees that you like. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how companies run. To think that anyone randomly can wake up and you know end up building such large companies across multiple spaces, it's just very difficult. Um, but if you convert into a social process, you start assigning a score to another person based on what other people think. You should never do that, right? Maybe they don't have enough context. Maybe they're feeling envy. Whatever hundreds of reasons could be there. Okay? The best way to play your life is to find people

with high scouters, high scouter level, cluster with them and over time that environment compounds because high scouter levels only allow high other high scouter levels to play with them. I knew this back from the time where I used to be I used to play on Garina. I played Dota 1 on Garina and they all moved off Garina and they went to a new client called ranked gaming client because they're like we're only going to get the top people from Garina to come here and that community was such that they just never let anybody below a certain scope a person who was not a known they never let anyone who's not a known play in rank gaming client okay and I think AOS is like that we cannot lower the bar we have to make sure that high competent people bring other high competent people on and we should never lower the bar from anybody that's it — cool subscribe Bye.