Varun Mayya

In this conversation, I sat down with Daniel Shapero, CEO of LinkedIn, and got him to reverse engineer his entire career on a whiteboard. Yes, a whiteboard where he walks us through starting a company as a math student back in 1998, watching three startups collapse one after another, getting an MBA to regroup, spending four years at Bain doing due diligence on companies for private equity deals, and then landing at LinkedIn almost by luck, where he built a sales org from just himself to a team of 1,500 people before working his way up to COO and eventually CEO.

Uploaded 30-08-26

The whiteboard session also gets into the skills he didn't have at every stage, the people who took a bet on him when it mattered, and the decisions that looked reckless at the time but ended up defining his career.

We then get into where jobs are actually headed with AI. What should a 22 year old in India be doing right now. Which roles are quietly disappearing. Why entrepreneurship, healthcare, and data center jobs are booming while old-school skill sets are getting wiped out fast. Daniel pushes back on the "AI is cheating" mindset some people online have, explains why real skill still beats knowing how to prompt, gives advice to someone in their 40s who feels like they're falling behind, and talks about where LinkedIn is headed with video, short-form content, and paying creators directly.

00:00 Highlights
00:59 Reverse-Engineering the LinkedIn CEO’s Career
14:23 Becoming CEO After 18 Years at LinkedIn
16:28 What Changes When You Go from COO to CEO?
19:41 What Should a 22-Year-Old in India Do in the AI Era?
21:21 Which Industries Are Growing in India?
24:20 Does a College Degree Still Matter?
27:23 How LinkedIn Is Adapting to New AI-Era Jobs
29:08 Open to Work and the Changing Culture of Employment
31:31 How LinkedIn Makes Money and Why India Matters
33:10 How AI Agents Are Changing Job Applications and Hiring
36:33 Which Jobs Are Growing and Which Are Fading?
41:49 Are Colleges Leaving Graduates Behind on AI?
44:43 LinkedIn’s Strategy for Creators and Video
49:26 Closing Thoughts



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Metastartup is a 100% course that will teach you how to run an Indian startup from scratch to finish. In this episode, we explore how automation is making "Stable" jobs a thing of the past, and why running a startup isn't as risky as people make it out to be.

Uploaded 19-11-18

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Overhaul your legacy code with https://modelcode.ai/morph
Use my code "VARUNMAYYA" to get 50% off your first year!

Uploaded 27-06-26

In this video, we look back at 10 projects we built over the last 19 years, from early startups and games to AI products, content businesses, and everything in between. Some of them worked, some failed, some got acquired, and some taught lessons that ended up shaping everything we do today.

We talk about what it was like building products in very different eras of the internet, how our thinking changed over time, and why distribution, timing, and execution often mattered more than the technology itself. Along the way, we discuss projects like Jobspire, Avalon Scenes, God-in-a-Box, AI Avatars, Autocode Pro, Video Vault, and Unleash The Avatar, sharing what went right, what went wrong, and what we’d do differently if we were starting today.

More than anything, this is a conversation about experimentation. Why running lots of small bets teaches you more than chasing one perfect idea, how to think about competition, product-market fit, and timing, and why many of the lessons that built AEOS today came from projects that never became big businesses. If you’re building something of your own, or trying to figure out what to build next, there’s probably something here for you.

00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Jobspire
05:08 - Avalon Scenes
11:24 - Wolfang
13:18 - Mumbai Main Ek Haadsa
15:19 - God In A Box
18:22 - AI Avatar
23:23 - Autocode Pro
27:53 - VideoVault
31:10 - Unleash The Avatar
40:23 - Aeos



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Explore the fascinating journey of Singapore’s transformation from a struggling island nation in 1965 to a global economic powerhouse within a single generation. After being unexpectedly expelled from Malaysia, Singapore faced massive unemployment, limited resources, and daunting challenges. But under the visionary leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, the country was rebuilt with the precision, strategy, and grit of a startup.
Learn how Singapore attracted multinational corporations (MNCs), redefined urban planning, emphasised meritocracy, and built a clean, stable government—all while creating a home-owning society and encouraging national unity. These bold decisions turned Singapore into a beacon of progress and innovation.
This video breaks down the key lessons from Singapore’s transformation, highlighting how these principles can be applied to your own business and personal growth. Watch to uncover how values like personal responsibility, marketing ingenuity, and long-term planning can create extraordinary success.
Here’s something cool: the stunning intro visuals and seamless editing in this video were made possible using the power of Intel®️ Core™️Ultra laptops. These advanced processors are designed to handle compute-intensive tasks, making content creation faster, smarter, and more efficient. Whether it’s crafting breathtaking CGI environments or compositing high-quality footage, Intel®️ Core™️ Ultra laptops ensure creators like us can focus on telling great stories.

Uploaded 23-12-24

00:00 - Introduction
02:04 - Singapore’s Independence
03:42 - Economic Growth
08:55 - Housing Reform
11:42 - Reforming Labour
14:27 - Clean Governance
15:42 - Language and Unity
17:55 - Media Control
22:00 - BTS of The Video Editing and Creation of CGI



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Cero means "Zero" in Spanish.

Uploaded 12-07-19

Business was my gateway drug to philosophy and understanding humans.
In these short podcasts, let's talk black holes, computing, physics, business and philosophy, and let's try to keep it short.

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At the end of the day, everything from product to marketing to sales is fundamentally about psychology.
I spend a lot of time reading research papers and running experiments in the neurosciences lab and on people.
On Instagram, I've noticed how putting out any advanced content on this type of research gets me lower engagement - so I'm going to reserve that platform to put up motivational quotes and updates, and use this playlist to put out content for people to really win at this game of life.



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In this episode, we go over the process of doing an IPO. We also glance over minimum requirements, what it means to be an investor vs trader, and how investment banks help.

Uploaded 01-12-18

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In this episode, we sit down with Alex Wang, former founder of Scale AI and now Chief AI Officer at Meta, to understand what Meta Superintelligence Labs is actually building. We talk about how Meta is designing its AI organisation from scratch, focusing on research depth, talent density, and long-term scientific foundations instead of short-term wins.

Uploaded 26-02-26

We then understand how Meta balances frontier research with real-world products, and how models, infrastructure, and consumer applications all work together. They focus then shifts to AI agents, including wearables like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Finally, we talk about leadership, what it is like working with Mark Zuckerberg. So if you’re someone even remotely interested in AI, this conversation has it all.

00:00 - Highlights
00:57 - Introduction
01:46 - What is Meta Super Intelligence Labs?
03:31 - Balancing Research vs Product
05:17 - What's the team structure at MSL?
06:16 - Why Meta is betting big on personal agents
07:05 - What is Meta's identity in the AI race?
08:21 - The hardware vision beyond the phone
09:28 - When will Meta Ray-Bans get modern AI?
11:22 - Lessons from being an 18-year-old entrepreneur vs. today
13:54 - Why Alex left Scale AI to join Meta
16:18 - Alex's Unconventional Views on AI
18:10 - Should Meta have a chief philosopher for AI?
19:21 - What's it like working with Mark Zuckerberg?
21:12 - Closing thoughts



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In this video, we’re going over some of the best prompt tips I’ve come to know. We first look at how prompt engineering is kinda like “world-building” where you give the AI so much context, reference, and examples that it’s forced to be creative.

Uploaded 02-12-25

From meta-prompting, deep research, and asking AI to write like you… to using it to spot gaps in your own thinking… we’ve covered it all.

And then finally, we explain why all of this matters for students and works best on an AI PC, because instead of asking your parents for monthly subscriptions, you can just get an AI PC powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra Processors and run open-source models like Llama locally.

Learn more about Intel® Core™ Ultra Processors here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/processors/core-ultra.html

00:00 - Introduction
01:52 - World Building
05:44 - Deep Research
08:41 - Meta Prompting
10:34 - Personas
12:39 - Gap Finder
14:21 - Preventing Hallucination
15:11 - Using Voice Notes
15:52 - Erase Stains Of AI
17:33 - What's Next To Learn
19:31 - Emotional Prompting
22:29 - Closing Thoughts



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Welcome to the first session of a 16-Kata series where I break down everything I have learned about starting and scaling companies over the past decade.

Uploaded 21-12-25

In today’s dense session, we discuss how AEOS was built, how it was scaled from zero to a profitable organization without any external funding, the decisions, mistakes, and contrarian bets that shaped its trajectory, and what I learned along the way. The session also explains why distribution matters more than product, why talent is the real moat, and why running multiple small bets with high failure tolerance works better than chasing one perfect plan.

If you are building, operating, or trying to understand how bootstrapped companies really scale, this session may have what you are looking for.


00:00 - Introduction
03:00 - The 16-Kata Framework: How This Series Works
04:24 - Company Origin Story and Ecosystem
10:46 - First Principles and Unconventional Decisions
17:03 - Act 1: The Video and Content Opportunity
20:41 - Building the Video Editing School
27:30 - Act 2 : YouTube as a Service (YAAS)
30:08 - Act 3 : Technology Integration (Labs and AI Avatars)
39:25 - Talent Pipeline (100x Engineers)
48:08 - Act 4 : The Future Gaming Thesis
58:55 - Personal Reflections on Fear and Bootstrapping
1:02:15 - The Early Days
1:16:50 - Closing Thoughts



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Don't forget to follow me on Instagram!
http://instagram.com/thevarunmayya

Uploaded 06-08-18

With Webflow, the time I take to build a website has dropped from a few weeks to a few hours.

A personal website is your calling card - it will replace business cards, resumes and even the way you introduce yourself.

In this video, we'll learn how to build a personal website from scratch, without the need to write code. You'll learn the basics of HTML and CSS without the need to actually write any. The possibilities of what you can create are endless!



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