About James Keyes:

My next guest on the One Percent Project is James W Keyes. James served as the Chief Executive Officer of 7-Eleven and chairman and CEO of Blockbuster. James graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross. He also obtained an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1980. James is the founder of the 'Education is Freedom' foundation

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How curiosity and adversity have helped him lead organisations such as 7-Eleven and Blockbuster?
2. The need for entrepreneurial thinking within a corporation.
3. The art of negotiation and its tenets. 
4. How has 7-Eleven been able to keep itself ahead of the curve, and why others have not been able to replicate its growth model. 
5. Why did he choose to join Blockbuster?
6. Would Blockbuster be a different company if it had accepted to buy Netflix?
7. Are the principles of leadership being disrupted by the new generation of leaders?

Some Key Highlights:

• When you are hit by adversity, you can respond in two ways: You can have your head down and become the victim, or keep your head up and say I'll get through this and get to the other side. Most of the time, there's hidden learning, and there's a strength that comes from knowing that you were able to make it through to the other side. This gives you the quiet advantage over someone who hasn't had to endure the adversity.

• The idea of a corporate entrepreneur is almost an oxymoron. Unfortunately, many corporate cultures believe in conformity and force people into a norm, discouraging the outliers. The very definition of an entrepreneur is someone who sets out on their own as an individual and breaks the norms. In contrast, the definition of a corporation is coming together as one; it's a body, not an individual.

• Leadership is about adapting to change, and change happens every day. So whatever you learned about leadership last week, you might have to change it next week based on a new set of facts, people or circumstances.

About Sourjyendu Medda:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sourjyendu Medda. Sourjyendu is the founder and Chief Business Officer at DealShare. After spending 15+ years with leading Retail and FMCG organisations such as Metro, Raymond and Britannia, Sourjyendu kicked off his startup journey at the age of 40 to build Bharat's first social e-commerce unicorn.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How his experience with Britannia, Raymond and Metro helped him understand and build DealShare.
2. Why has DealShare been able to penetrate a consumer segment that the retail and FMCG giants have not been able to connect with?
3. How to build a consumer-centric business?
4. Building and growing a network of community leaders.
5. How to build an MVP - Minimum Viable Product?
6. His leadership style
7. Why is it hard to copy and compete with DealShare?

Some Key Highlights:

• Value creation comes only through building disruptive solutions because another copy can't create value.

• Communication is critical. However powerful a product may be, if it is not publicised, there will be no market for the product. Communication should be simple, clear and to the point.

• When you make a difference in the community and solve the correct problems, your career is bound to be better than others.

About Taru Kapoor:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Taru Kapoor. Taru is the general manager of Tinder and Match Group in India. In her previous stints, she has worked with Sequoia Capital and The Boston Consulting Group. Taru graduated from IIT Delhi with a B.Tech and M.Tech in Chemical Engineering and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

This is an amazing conversation on leadership, solving a hard problem and educating the youth on how to safely and respectfully express their feelings.
 
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In this conversation, Taru talks about:

1. Her leadership style and decision-making process;
2. Balancing between EQ and IQ;
3. Is it important for Tinder to have a female leader?
4. The objective behind creating "Closure", a creative film that talks about consent;
5. Dating in Metaverse; and
6. Reasons behind Tinder's adoption and growth in India.

About Shrishti Sahu:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Shrishti Sahu. Shrishti is the Managing Partner at SSV. SSV is a sector-agnostic family-office investing in early-stage companies. Through SSV, she has invested in 30 companies such as Plum, Kutumb, Chingari, Rupifi, Jar and 10Club.

Before setting up SSV, she built two businesses, worked with a PE fund and led Facebook's South Asia Startup Program.

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In this conversation, she talks about:

1. How has waking up at 5 am enabled her?
2. Being a Generalist vs Specialist.
3. How has writing empowered her?
4. Leading people and businesses in towns & villages vs metropolitan cities.
5. Why did she plan to become an Angel Investor?
6. Her decision framework for startup investments & how to build a startup portfolio?
7. How can early-stage founders differentiate themselves?
8.  What got her into the crypto space?

About Abhinandhan Sridhar:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Abhinandan Sridhar. Abhinandan is a screenwriter who kicked off his career as an assistant director to Andhadhun writer and National Award-winning filmmaker Hemanth M Rao. His writing credits include Netflix's Little Things Seasons 3 & 4 and Teen Tigada, a film for Prime Video's Unpaused anthology.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. How have OTT platforms disrupted the creation process and the new media industry?
2. His experience working with Netflix as a creator.
3. What should new creators do when kicking off their careers?
4. His research technique and what has he learnt from Pixar's filmmaking process?
5. How does one judge and manage execution in creative processes such as filmmaking?
6. What are the attributes of a head writer?
7. How are OTT platforms enabling creators to be producers?

About Jeffrey Paine:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Jeffrey Paine. He is the Managing Partner & Co-founder at Golden Gate Ventures and an Edmund Hillary Fellow. Jeff is one of the most thoughtful VCs I have come across. Last year, he launched an initiative called Coachable that focuses on founders' mental wellness by pairing them with experienced coaches and mentors. He wishes for other like-minded VCs and corporations to join this initiative so that more founders get the support they need while building their startups.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. The state of venture investing in Asia.
2. Is there an Angel investing bubble and its impact?
3. His framework for learning and understanding a new industry.
4. How to get the timing right as an investor?
5. How to choose among copycats; who gets funded and why?
6. Are Asian founders always building a business around problems they encounter?
7. The need for coaches and mentors for founders.
8. His views on blockchain, NFTs and Metaverse.
9. What makes introverts strong leaders?

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Ashwin Suresh. This is an intriguing conversation where Ashwin talks about how he went from being an investment banker on Wall Street to becoming a New Media entrepreneur and co-founding Pocket Aces and Loco.

Pocket Aces is the production house behind the hugely successful web shows such as Little Things, What the Folks and Please Find Attached.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. His decision to move from Investment banking to building a career in New Media.
2. How did he navigate through the media industry with no background and network?
3. His first Angel Investor, Mohan and how he funded the whole seed round and kept himself invested even when Ashwin and his co-founder planned to pivot the business.
4. Being venture-backed, at what point do you need to think about growth Vs profitability.
5. How he decided to launch Loco, a gaming platform especially in a competitive ecosystem with multiple well-established players?
6. Building a community
7. Why is success your best teacher?
8. Finding a product-market fit in the content industry
9. Being decisive as a founder

About Utsav Agarwal:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Utsav Agarwal. Utsav is an entrepreneur, a networker and a hustler. He kicked off his career in the music industry, managing Indian rock bands and went on to build a music app. Post his entrepreneurial stint, he joined Uber and launched it in eight Indian cities and Dhaka in Bangladesh, breaking all growth records. After Uber, he joined Glovo and launched it in nine Eastern European markets and built a team of 250+ people. Delivery Hero acquired Glovo for $2.6 billion. Utsav is now back to entrepreneurship, building Evenflow, a roll-up platform acquiring and scaling e-commerce businesses.

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In this conversation, he talks about:

1. His entrepreneurial journey and his learnings?
2. His experience launching Uber in Dhaka;
3. How did he land his Glovo offer and his framework for launching new markets?
4. The power and technique of cold emailing
5. Why is he building Evenflow?

About Sabeer Bhatia:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Sabeer Bhatia. Sabeer is the co-founder of Hotmail.com and ShowReel. Sabeer and his co-founder started Hotmail with $300,000 and sold it to Microsoft for $400 million within two years. Sabeer believes the success of Hotmail or any startup lies in the core idea of the business and the problem it is solving.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. How to validate a problem worth solving?
2. Why is it essential for a consumer to connect emotionally to a product?
3. Why was Hotmail a success?
4. Why do we need ShowReel?
5. Can founders outsource sales?

About Ravi Mehta:

My next guest is Ravi Mehta. Ravi was the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, Product Director at Facebook, and VP of Consumer Product at Tripadvisor.

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In this conversation he talks about:

1. What makes product development challenging and exciting?
2. Mental and executional frameworks that Product Managers should develop?
3. How can products managers make good decisions?
4. Why difficulty in prioritisation is a strategy problem?
5. Why have Tinder, Facebook, and TripAdvisor products stood the test of time, especially when hundreds of clones come to market every year?
6. His views on the evolution of the Chinese tech product ecosystem in the last decade?
7. Metaverse’s future
8. Why do today's founders need to have a product orientation?
9. Entertainment Value Curve: Netflix Vs Quibi