Billion Moonshots

Shashank Kumar is co-founder of Razorpay - a $7.5B fintech giant in India.  He graduated from IIT Roorkee, worked at Microsoft in Seattle, was driving Mustang, and still felt he could do more. So he flew back to India and built a unicorn. 

We talked about life post-graduation, living in US, convincing dad to move back to India, early days of Razorpay, getting into YC, imposter syndrome, and much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM me on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

GUEST LINKS 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shashank_kr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarshashank/

CONNECT 

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga 

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots  

OUTLINE 

(0:00) Driving Mustang at 22

(4:58) Life in US post IIT

(9:02) Origin of Razorpay

(15:03) Dad's reaction to coming back home

(18:06) Finding Product-Market Fit

(21:20) How Y Combinator took growth to another level

(26:21) Paid 25 lacs to get a Payment Gateway License

(30:20) Imposter Syndrome

(34:51) Hiring first 10 employees

(38:53) The story behind the name 'Razorpay'

(40:43) RBI driving innovation in the Indian fintech ecosystem

(43:08) Living with co-founder even today

(44:57) Future of Tier 3 & Tier 4 cities

(48:12) Philosophy of Money

(52:07) Day in Life as CTO of a unicorn

(54:13) Razorpay's Web3 strategy

(56:45) Reverse Brain Drain

(1:02:56) Dad's Reaction today [MUST WATCH]

TOP EPISODES     

75: Kyla Scanlon, Founder of Bread

74: Adam Jackson, Co-founder of Braintrust

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin 

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan  

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi) 

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Kyla Scanlon, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Jenna Hannon is the Founder at Supermassiv. She led marketing at Uber Eats and is now building Supermassiv to help artists make real money.

We talk about teaching kitesurfing to Elon Musk, how the new CEO changed the culture at Uber, making money with NFTs as a musician, having lunch with Val Kilmer, and more. 

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM me on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

GUEST LINKS 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JennaHannon

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennahannon/

Website: https://jennahannon.com/

AngelList: https://angel.co/p/jenna-hannon

CONNECT 

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga 

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots  

OUTLINE 

(0:00) Teaching Elon Musk how to Kitesurf

(4:02) Email to new Uber CEO

(6:19) How new CEO changed the culture at Uber

(10:14) Why quit Uber

(12:01) Origin story of Supermassiv

(14:35) State of Music Industry

(21:45) How TikTok changed Music

(25:32) Getting into Crypto back in 2011

(30:54) What's wrong with NFTs

(33:52) Most creative NFTs

(36:45) How Artists can make money with NFTs

(40:59) How Supermassiv works

(47:45) What's Web 2.5 ??

(48:40) The Supermassiv Vision

(54:53) Lunch with Val Kilmer 

TOP EPISODES     

71: Danielle Strachman, Founder & General Partner of 1517 Fund 

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin 

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan  

45: Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks 

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi) 

2: Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)  

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Kyla is an independent, Gen Z friendly, new-age content creator with a fantastic newsletter and YouTube channel. She wrote her first book “The Little Penguin” in third grade, started options trading at 16, sold cars in college, garnered ~130k followers on TikTok with her finance skits and working with top brands like Morning Brew & Bankless. She's also building a fintech startup in stealth (launching soon).  

We talk about doing options trading at 16, selling cars in college, the right time to publish on Tiktok, monetary policies, sneak peek into her startup, and more.  

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

CONNECT 

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga 

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots  

GUEST LINKS 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kylascan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylascanlon/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylascan/

Website: https://kylascanlon.com/

Newsletter: https://kyla.substack.com/

OUTLINE 

(0:00) Options Trading at 16

(2:54) How Options Trading works?

(5:38) Selling over $1M worth of cars in college 

(9:41) Writing book in 3rd grade

(10:35) Content Creation

(14:29) Power of TikTok

(19:16) What is the right time to post on TikTok?

(20:43) The Fed, Monetary Policies & Inflation

(25:33) It's a good time to Buy

(27:49) Bullish on Metaverse?

(33:57) Building Financial Education Company 

(34:27) Day in Life!

(38:30) Closing first sponsorship deal w/ Morning Brew

(40:12) Is Venture Capital a Ponzi Scheme?

(42:57) Web4???

(45:10) Elon vs Twitter

(47:18) Cheat Codes for Creators

TOP EPISODES     

71: Danielle Strachman, Founder & General Partner of 1517 Fund 

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin 

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan  

45: Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks 

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi) 

2: Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)  

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Adam Jackson is the co-founder of Braintrust - the largest decentralized talent marketplace. Braintrust’s mission is to build the world’s most impactful talent network — one that is user-owned, aligns incentives, and redistributes value to Talent and Organizations. Previously, Adam founded 4 VC-backed companies, sold 2 of them, and is an angel investor in 100+ companies.

We talk about Web2 vs Web3 marketplaces, building a successful governance model, mechanics of DAO, freelance economy, message for Web3 critics, and much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots

GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamjacksonsf

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajackson/

Website: http://www.usebraintrust.com/

Portfolio: https://angel.co/p/adamjackson

OUTLINE

(0:00) Built 4 companies, sold 2 of them

(1:31) Solving the Chicken & Egg problem of Marketplaces

(4:07) "Dirty little secret" of Web2 Marketplaces

(7:43) Venture Capital as a forcing function that leads to fee extraction

(9:33) First encounter with Blockchain

(10:49) BTRST as a Governance Token

(12:52) Is Braintrust a DAO?

(14:16) What happens when DAO members don't execute a proposal

(16:49) What's working, what's not working

(19:55) Role of a DAO Founder 

(21:18) Value of a Token

(22:51) What happens when VCs hold a lot of tokens

(23:54) Growing from 0 to 700,000 members during the pandemic 

(25:32) Convincing Nike, Goldman Sachs & other Web2 co's to get onboard

(28:12) Hiring remotely & globally

(30:07) How the freelance economy is helping corporate America

(33:07) Vetting new Talent

(35:05) Coordinating 100+ developers to build DAO

(41:19) How many tokens does Adam own?

(42:00) Crypto Twitter & Future of Web3

(46:24) Are you buying the dip?

(46:49) Message for Web3 Critics

TOP EPISODES    

71: Danielle Strachman, Founder & General Partner of 1517 Fund

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan 

45: Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi)

2: Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Ryan Duffy is the Founding Editor of Payload Space, a digital media outfit covering the business and policy of space. Previously, he worked at Morning Brew where he launched their second product, Emerging Tech Brew. Over three years Ryan was at the Brew, the newsletter grew to a subscriber base of 300,000+, all while maintaining industry-leading open rates.

We talk about getting detained by the UN in Haiti, time at Morning Brew, scaling Emerging Tech Brew from 0 to 300K readers and  a lot of space meta trends.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots

GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ryandoofy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfduffy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/duffydrones/

Website: https://ryanduffy.xyz/

Payload Newsletter: https://payloadspace.com/

OUTLINE

(0:00) Getting detained by the United Nations in Haiti

(3:26) Not setting a predetermined path for yourself

(8:34) Solo creator vs traditional media

(11:21) Deciding to Write Full-time

(17:13) Getting into Morning Brew with a Facebook Event description

(20:15) Secret sauce(s) of Morning Brew

(40:40) Pulling all-nighter for Russia-Ukraine war

(45:13) Morning Brew vs The Hustle

(46:34) Move to Payload Space

(52:48) Inflated email open rates due to Apple's privacy change

(55:35) Value for Space Industry & Government Military

(1:01:01) Interviews with Rocket Scientists & Heads of Military

(1:05:48) Drones & FAA certification

(1:10:10) Tragedy of Orbital debri

(1:19:43) 1969 Moon Landing

(1:25:34) The Wild Launch Landscape

(1:31:25) Business Models of Space

(1:35:49) Space's PR problem

(1:42:00) The best minds are thinking about how to make people click ads 

(1:45:54) Kids wanna be professional YouTuber over Astronaut

(1:53:58) Hi Sean!

(1:55:17) Lunar & Mars Exploration

(2:04:11) How to break into Space Industry

TOP EPISODES    

71: Danielle Strachman, Founder & General Partner of 1517 Fund

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan 

45: Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi)

2: Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

"80% of the people who follow me are in for the ideas and not how beautiful they look"

Janis Ozolins is an Illustrator with over 38,000 followers on Twitter. His work have been seen by millions of people and led him to work for Naval Ravikant, Steven Bartlett, Matt D’Avella, Shaan Puri, Julian Shapiro and others.

We talk about life after school, selling his first product as a creator, and going full time into creating visuals on Twitter. He also shared advice for beginners such as what platform to pick, how to start, etc.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots

GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OzolinsJanis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ozolinsjanis/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/jaozolins

Website: https://bio.link/ozo

OUTLINE    

(00:00) Life in School

(01:32) From selling bikes to becoming IT manager

(03:25) The Book that changed my life

(08:27) Living by society's default standards

(11:33) 3 people who inspired to go all-in into visuals 

(15:52) Early days of growing on Twitter

(19:17) Kids help you cut all the BS in life

(22:20) 0 to 40K followers on Twitter

(26:53) 50% of the battle is to figure out what to do

(29:22) Design Inspirations from James Clear & Jack Butcher

(35:20) How to generate ideas

(39:43) A day in my life 

(46:53) Mission might sound cringe, but you need it

(50:44) Landing gigs with Julian Shapiro & Shaan Puri 

(56:14) Shaan Puri's Golden Framework for Creators

(01:01:52) Minimalism & Matt D'Avella

(01:06:58) My Support System

(01:12:40) Creator Economy & upcoming Artists

(01:18:02) Leveraged your Time

(01:22:39) What social media platform to focus on?

(01:25:38) Advice for Creators

TOP EPISODES

71: Danielle Strachman, Founder & General Partner of 1517 Fund

68: Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan 

10: Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi)

2: Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Thank You for Watching. 🎉

Danielle Strachman is Founder and General Partner at 1517. She was also the founding member and program director of Theil Fellowship. 

We discussed about building our own school, convincing children to study, building Theil Fellowship from ground up, handing out $100k to 17-year-old kids, starting a venture capital firm, early days with founder of OYO and Figma and much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DStrachman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellestrachman

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dstrachman

OUTLINE

(0:00) Origin story

(6:55) The right way to homeschool kids

(14:38) How to build your own school

(26:05) How should parents should convince their child to study

(29:35) How did Danielle join Thiel Fellowship

(36:40) How to become a Thiel Fellow

(45:20) Superpower of Peter Thiel

(50:00) Betting on founders of OYO & Figma

(56:10) Investing in Loom

(59:40) Role of Venture Capital in today's world

(1:09:32) The Bootstrap mindset

(1:12:54) Managing ego & arrogance as VC

TOP EPISODES    

#68 Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin

#62 Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan 

#45 Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks

#10 Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi)

#2 Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Johnny Dallas is the founder of Zeet. Zeet is a developer tool to help less experienced engineers easily deploy and scale their applications.

He broke into startups at 14 as a Software Engineer at Bebo (founded by Shaan Puri). A few years later, he was promoted as their Director of Operations, while still being a teenager. When Bebo got acquired by Twitch in 2019 he became the youngest engineer ever at Amazon. Then, he quit Amazon to start Zeet at 19.

We discuss his experience working with Shaan Puri, building various products, getting acquired by the biggest live streaming platform, managing high school & a full-time job & much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

OUTLINE

(0:00) Origin Story

(6:46) First day in a startup as a 14 year old

(10:40) Rapid prototyping to find the next billion dollar idea

(12:45) Managing High school & writing code for a multi-million dollar startup

(16:35) Convincing parents to drop academics 

(18:02) Shaan Puri - Frameworks king

(25:10) Director of Operations at 16

(30:02) Getting acquired by Twitch (Amazon)

(34:17) Interviewing for getting acqui-hired

(36:44) Learnings from building B2C products

(51:42) Lean Team at Zeet

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

GUEST LINKS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_johnnydallas_

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theonlyjo...

TOP EPISODES

#68 Natalie Brunell on Everything Bitcoin

#62 Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan 

#45 Suhas Motwani, Founder of The Product Folks

#10 Aryaman Maheshwari, Software Engineer at Google (Hindi)

#2 Shanaya Bagga (my lil sis)

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

John Howard is the founder of Slingshot. Slingshot is a swag company that leads to more sales calls, and more shout-outs on social media.

We discuss how John sold his design agency, built Slingshot, how it evolved over the years, executing Adobe's viral Twitter campaign, bootstrapping, and much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

OUTLINE

(0:00) How John sold his design agency

(9:00) How to hack the Dribbble algorithm

(15:15) What happened after John left the agency

(17:04) Built Slingshot

(23:28) Evolution

(26:33) Adobe's viral Twitter campaign

(35:22) Growth rate of Slingshot

(44:07) Most popular swag

(51:12) John’s sales experience

(01:08:28) Bootstrapping

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.

Natalie Brunell is a Podcast host at Coin Stories. She has over 220,000 Twitter followers and is an educator in the Bitcoin space. Her popular show, Coin Stories, features interviews with Bitcoin thought leaders about their backgrounds and conviction for BTC. She is also a video contributor to Bitcoin Magazine.

We discuss Natalie's transition from journalism to podcasting, being bullish on Bitcoin, how Bitcoin can lead us to a better world, the role of other cryptocurrencies, the future of censorship, and the adoption of cryptocurrencies due to war, and more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM Prashant on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr.fm: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

OUTLINE

0:00 From Bankruptcy to Bitcoin

4:45 From Journalist to a Podcaster

7:50 Why are you so passionate about BTC

9:55 Fix the World by Fixing the Money

14:15 How BTC can reduce debt & increase entrepreneurship

19:15 Role of other cryptocurrencies

21:28 The Mystery behind Satoshi Nakamoto

25:05 Social Media Censorship: When did we become so weak?

27:30 The Great Resignation

29:40 Bitcoin Conference: How she got Michael Saylor on the podcast

31:43 Wanna learn Bitcoin? Check out these resources

33:20 Bitcoin adoption due to Russia-Ukraine war

36:03 El Salvador's Bitcoin Experiment

38:22 When will we start paying in Bitcoin?

40:49 Behind the scenes of Coin Stories 

41:55 The Future of Podcast

43:06 Advice for Podcasters: Don't write questions!

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.