About Frank Lantz:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Frank Lantz, Director at the NYU Game Center and Owner of Everybody House Games. Frank was a creative director at Zynga as well after his social gaming company Area/Code was acquired by Zyna in 2011. I discovered him and his work while reading The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova. Maria in the book talks about him and his expertise in game design as she mastered Poker. This led me to explore game design and understand how does this new age discipline work and impact our lives. 

This is an interesting conversation with Frank on: 

• How games are designed and built and their impact on society
• The brilliance of games such as Chess, Go and Poker
• How entertainment companies such as Netflix see Epic Games and sleep as their primary competitor

Rapid Fire:

• What is the hardest thing about your job?
  • Email 
• A book or a blog that has transformed your personal and professional life.
  • meaningness.com a wonderful website by a guy named David Chapman, who was an early researcher in AI
• If not a game designer, then what?
  • Cartoonist

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.
#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate
#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Ayush Jaiswal:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the young and dynamic founder of Pesto Tech- Ayush Jaiswal. This is an intriguing conversation with Ayush who is on a mission to give everyone equal access to opportunity.In this chat we explore how his personal background of coming from a 2 tier city and early professional hustle helped him find purpose, value time and build a business with impact.

We talked about:

• Ayush’s background and early life
• What do Time and Purpose mean to Ayush?
• Growth and Future of Pesto Tech
• His three learnings from building Pesto Tech and observing other start-ups
• Building a company culture
• How should someone from Tier 2 or 3 be thinking of starting a business today

Rapid Fire:

• The toughest thing about your job?
  • Delegation
• One book or a blog that has influenced you personally, as well as professionally?
  • paulgraham.com

Three ways to support the podcast:

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Victor Lang:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the co-founder and COO of Gini, Victor Lang. This interview is especially insightful and interesting for young startups because Victor shares how within 4 years of Gini’s existence they have been able to build a network of 3000 banks in 60 countries with a small team based in HK through afflictions and partnerships and consumer adoption through word of mouth marketing.

Victor also shares his insights on businesses he built previously and how he managed a successful exit after going insolvent 3 times.

We talked about:

• His career
• How they have built their network of banks in 60 countries
• How they moved from spending money on Social Media marketing to Word of Mouth marketing
• What is product market fit and how do gauge it
• How can young start-ups build and scale in such a competitive environment where Tech Giants and Incumbents are playing in the same field
• How his previous biotech business went insolvent  three times before being acquired

About Vikram Chandra:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the world-renowned author, professor and tech entrepreneur Vikram Chandra.  His first book Red Earth and Pouring Rain, published in 1995 was received with outstanding critical acclaim. It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. In 2006, he published Sacred Games,  which won the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction and a Salon Book Award. In 2016, Sacred Games was chosen by Netflix to be their first original series from India. Vikram has been teaching creative writing for 25+ years first at George Washington University and now at UC Berkley. He is the co-founder and CEO of Granthika Co., a  revolutionary software startup that is re-inventing writing and reading for the digital age. 

I enjoyed speaking to Vikram about his early life, his work and his entrepreneurial journey.

Rapid Fire:

• Most favorite comic book.
  • I have to say ‘Phantom’- ‘Vetal’
• Advice that you would like to give Arthur Doyle, Sherlock Holmes?
  • Get more women in there.
• A book, blog, or an author other than you who you will highly recommend for creative writing?
  • Book, that's a tough one. I actually have a list of like 12 books. I guess, you know, I would say... okay, probably I guess I would say the book that I recommend to everyone is Janet Burroway’s ‘Writing Fiction’. It's a wonderful craft book. Absolutely, it covers the field in a really clarify... I mean, a really clear way without dumbing it down.
• The hardest thing about your job?
  • Well, actually writing every day. So, I have a friend. He's a colleague in the Department of English at Berkeley, Robert Hass, Bob Hass. He's a great American poet. And he has this... this lines that he says, “Writing is hell, but not writing is also hell. The only tolerable state is just having written.”
• Is there a third season of ‘Sacred Games’?
  • The writer is the last one to know. So, unless there’ll be an answer, I won’t know. And if I knew, I couldn't tell you because they will send their ninjas after me.

About Jayant Sinha:

On the momentous occasion of India’s 73rd independence day, I have with me a very special guest on The One Percent Project, Mr Jayant Sinha, Member of Indian Parliament and former Minister of state of finance & civill aviation government of India.  Mr Sinha is alumni of some of the most prestigious universities across the world, the Indian Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School. He had a remarkable corporate career prior to joining politics, from heading the global IT practise at McKinsey to impact investing at Courage Capital and Omidyar Network.

We talked about:

• His early life and career;
• How his education and corporate experience has helped him with good governance;
• His views on grass-root entrepreneurship and if migrant workers will become the new micro-entrepreneurs;
• The recent success of Jio in attracting foreign capital;
• How governments need to plan for the future based on the learnings of COVID-19;  
• And finally, his vision for India and its youth

Rapid Fire:

• A book or a blog that has influenced your work and personal life.
  • Lord of the Rings.
• The hardest thing about your job.
  • Making sure that I have enough time for my family as well.
• What do you know that you didn't know before you joined politics?
  • How hard you have to work as a member of parliament.

Three ways to support the podcast

#1 Share the episode with family and friends on social media with #OnePercentProj using the share button on the site.

#2 Take a few seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. This helps new folks find us organically. Rate

#3 Leave a review if you feel inclined. We read every single message and love feedback. Review

About Utsav Somani:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the young and brilliant head of AngelList India Utsav Somani. Utsav talks about his early career, his mentor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, the evolution of the Indian start-up investment space, building AngelList India, and his view on COVID and its impact. 

Thank you to all our listeners for their feedback and questions, especially to Varun, Mahesh, Ashish and Aakriti for questions Utsav has answered in this conversation.

Our Conversation:

• His early career and learnings of India and Start-up Investment Ecosystem.
• Naval Ravikant his mentor and building AngelList India.
• Setting up a Micro fund and learning from investments thus far. 
• Need for EquityList- AngelList’s- Equity Management System for Indian companies.
• His view on COVID and its impact.
• How to grow and add value in a market with similar investment eco-systems.
• The growth potential of Indian Cryptocurrency start-ups?

Alfonso Fiore, Head of Packaged Product at AirAsia. He has been with Grab, Agoda, Nokia and other leading firms shares his journey of becoming a product manager and how his entrepreneurial journey helped him to be a better product owner. He discusses the evolution of Super Apps in Asia, the role that Brand and Trust play in product development and why Google Maps is his most favourite product.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures.

About Alfonso:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Alfonso Fiore. Alfonso has an MSc in Computer Science and an MBA from London Business School. After a long career in telecommunications across Europe, he moved to Asia and started a new career in product management quickly rising through major Southeast Asian multinationals and now heads all packaged products at AirAsia.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation, Alfonso talks about his journey of becoming a product head at AirAsia and discusses

Amit Agrawal, founder of OckyPocky and Ex-YouTube India head, shares his views on how one needs to think about the Indian consumer and discusses the evolution of EdTech and digital media in the last decade. And how Netflix, Amazon Prime, TikTok and Cousersa are disrupting the Indian consumer space.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures

About Amit:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Amit Agrawal, Founder, OckyPocky, and growth expert. OckyPocky is India’s 1st interactive English learning app for vernacular preschool kids. Amit head YouTube India and grew the business from scratch to $100 million per annum revenue. Known as a thought leader in kid-tech, internet and online video space, he has advised some of the biggest names in Indian industry, Silicon Valley and Asia.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Amit, we speak to him about the Indian consumer and discuss the evolution of EdTech and the growth of the Indian digital media in the last decade.

QuickFire Questions:

Robert talks about his China immersion. How he built and scaled Airbnb China and shares his views and frameworks on building a venture in China. Why and How to China.

The One Percent Project are conversations that will help you understand how some of the smartest minds build, scale and implement new ideas and ventures.

About Robert:

My very first guest on The One Percent Project is my ex-colleague, Robert Hao, Co-Founder & COO, HYPE Asia. HYPE is a venture builder that helps startups demystify, unlock, and succeed in Asia. Presently, Robert is heading the expansion of Goat into China. Goat is the world's largest sneakers marketplace.

In 2012, he helped form the Asia landing team to expand Airbnb into the APAC region. From 2013-2017, Robert relocated to Beijing to start Airbnb China business, where he led Business Operations & Strategy and Host Community Operations and grew the China team to two hundred strong.

Our Conversation:

In this conversation with Robert, we speak about the Chinese tech ecosystem evolution and the frameworks to succeed in China.

Quick Fire Questions:

About Prasun Choudhary:

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Prasun Choudhary. He is the operating partner of OYO Hotels Japan. He joined OYO in 2015 and as a founding member first headed OYO’s expansion in South and East of India and now Japan. Prior to OYO, he has spent a significant amount of time in corporate banking and strategy consulting.

Japan is a unique market traditionally and culturally. Market entry for any foreign entity intriguing. We kick this conversation off with Prasun on how he navigated through Japan’s traditional mindset to launch OYO Hotels Japan.

Our Conversation:

• Building OYO Japan
• What does he look for when hiring for OYO and how did he navigate through Japan’s traditional hiring process?
• How has the OYO model disrupted the Japanese hospitality market
• Operational learning from running OYO in emerging and developed markets
• The impact of COVID and post-COVID hospitality trends
• Ritesh Agarwal’s leadership style through the pandemic