My takeaway from a conversation with the CEO of QuestionPaperLibrary.

What’d I learn ? What made this conversation different ?

Prelude:
Rohit and I were introduced over email and we decided to meet at Nextspace, bangalore on 23th June 2017.

Gist of the conversation:
We spoke about his team,what they do, what they believe in and where they are heading.
It provided invaluable insight into what they believed in as a company.

Goals/Progress:

The company intends on switching from a product based company to a service based company to fund research into AI and Self driving Cars.

The team is currently looking to take up projects on an international scale to expand globally.

Takeaway:

There was a ton of things that I found to be increasingly captivating about Rohit, which spurred me into writing this article.

His joy in working with his own team, his own startup, building solutions and much more of how trust amongst backs their whole team, I found immensely inspiring.This article shall enumerate a few out of what I gathered amidst our conversation that day.

My key takeaways:

Invest in the team not the idea.

Both Rohit and his co founder have been together for 8 years continuing from their college days. He spoke about how they were almost on the brink of closing down until they received a contract which prevented them from going under.

He said,

Ideas can change, but it’s the team behind it that turns things around entirely.

Accordingly, he places his team at a top priority.

Treat others and you’d like to be treated.

Treating your team like family and vouching for them is a culture that startups would kill to have. He was able to vouch for not just his co founder and his teammates but for for his intern as well.

That kind of trust isn’t easy to come by.

An A player always brings in an A player, a B player always brings in a B or a C player.

I believe this is more of an experience trait and comes with working in teams.
He said,

The A players are those that learn from others in a room and B players pretend to know.
A players want to learn, B players want to display that they know.
A players will build better things, B and C players will corrode it away slowly but certainly.

Do not commit the same mistakes.

This sounds very cliché but I believe is necessary to stay away from repeating mistakes of any sort, not just your own, but others too. There just isn’t enough time to commit all the mistakes yourself.

Concentrate value in smaller teams.

This is one that I came across in 48 Laws of power and can observed in the Rothschild family as well.
Their team consists of 6 people and they doubt they’d be expanding beyond ten for the next two years. That’s value concentrated amongst.

There is value everywhere, find it, exact it and credit it.

When we spoke about his company’s Quarterly goals and commitment, there was a lot that I found similar to my father’s approach.

Both set goals, targets, deadlines and worked towards them.
I found this interesting for Rohit hadn’t joined the corporate structure as a lot of others would’ve. This habit of establishing goals, he said he picked up as he spoke and worked with people.

I find that the need to improvise, the need to learn from others, the need to grow immensely captivating for it is those that do evolve that do make it in the long run.

This has been proven over and over again.

I’d love to introduce you both if needed. Do feel free to reach out :D

I found this conversation to be extremely helpful and I hope you do too.