Zubair Junjunia, Founder @ ZNotes

Welcome back to another episode of The Grunge Guide. Today we're joined by Zubair. Zubair, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Peter Wood. It's wonderful to be here.

So I think a good place to start is if you could give our audience a quick explanation of what ZNotes does.

Sure. Xenos is the world's largest revision community of high school students. It was a project back when I was 16, I started, and has today reached 6 million students in 190 countries. And it's ensuring that every young person has equitable access to quality education. So we provide learning resources, a peer community to ensure that when you go into scary exams like the GCSEs or the A-levels, you have a support system around you to make sure that you do your very best.

Let's go back to 16-year-old you then.

Sure.

What was the outlook you had on your career at the time? I know you went on to go study mathematics at UCL, but what were you thinking at 16? What kind of person were you as well?

Yeah, so firstly, I'm— maybe some of your listeners can empathize— I'm a third culture kid. I am Pakistani, but I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, and I had this kind of mixed identity. My first language is English. I spoke Urdu and I was able to read and write in Arabic. So I had all these different kind of identities in me that I resonated with. And growing up, I knew that the big thing for my family and our kind of intergenerational social mobility had always been access to education. And knowing that was such a critical part of our, of our future and our success made me quite clear that educational access was something that I would always be really aligned to and wanting to make a difference in. So at 16, I didn't really have a lot of ideas of what I was going to do at uni or what my career would be like. I had started ZNotes because I'd seen that there was a big disparity in the educational experience that students had around me. So those even going to neighboring schools didn't have access to good textbooks, good teachers, good access to even tutors. And then you realize that we're going to go and sit that exam, that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, will do the exact same exam paper. How could we have a level playing field when someone could get the best teachers and the best access to resources while the other struggled to even know what was going to come up in the exams? So that was the start of ZNotes. What if I took all these amazing revision notes I was creating and just put them up on a website? And that's where it started as a a little blog, and not really much more than that. So no entrepreneurial aspirations, no idea what I was going to do at uni. I did really like math. I was doing math and A*Math in GCSEs as well. But yeah, that was as far as my thinking had gone at that point.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think 10 years ago, there definitely wouldn't have been this whole startup craze that there is now. I mean, now you do see 16-year-olds sort of putting, building a thing for themselves on this pedestal. For you, it was more a burning problem that you wanted to try and solve in whatever way you could at that age.

Correct. It was definitely startup and entrepreneurs were never a kind of glamorized story that we could go to look and listen to. And very much so, it was just I wanted to see this problem changed because I could see the impact it was having on the lives of young people around me.

So why did UCL, moving over to London and studying mathematics, feel like the right thing to do at the time? And where did that sort of leave you mentally while you were there?

Yeah, um, so, so Zenote is going on, um, 17, 18, do my A-levels, uh, kind of figure out that the thing that I love the most is physics, not even math. And I was like, oh, I'd love to learn a little bit more about this kind of this strange world of the cosmology that we live in. So I go down and kind of do my research and just figure out what degree I wanted to do. So firstly, I was kind of completely struck by physics and then realized that actually the fundamentals that I really loved was mathematics, even below that kind of the application that physics provided. So, you know, I had no role models around me. No one had gone in my school, had historically ever been to go and study mathematics. But I took the leap of faith. I actually told my school that I wanted to do further math. That was not a subject that they offered. I had no teacher who could teach me. And so I brought together a bunch of friends and we went off to the journey of doing that ourselves. We self-studied math and further math. And I think we might have been the only people in the whole country who did that subject. So it was quite an experience. Definitely a very self-study experience. Zenotes is ongoing. It's a project. I have no other ideas about it. Math is what clearly I want to do. I have never been to the UK before until just a few weeks before applications or decisions happen. And I think actually, and I go to Durham and I'm up in the, in the cold seeing this kind of very beautiful but very small town. And then I come back to London and I see the eclectic buildings of UCL. I'm like, yes, this is where I want to be. The, the, the buzz, the energy, the, the, the diversity of people really resonated with me. So I started at UCL not knowing what a math degree was going to be like, not having anyone to look up to and understand what that pathway had been, and had zero idea what career that would provide me. In fact, it was quite a conflicting kind of thing with my parents and even my teachers. Why is Zubair going to study math? Like, what is he going to do with that? And everyone expected me to be an engineer or a doctor, but I stuck to my guns and I went through that degree.

Given that a lot of the mission of this podcast is to try and make everyone feel heard in the career sense, there might be someone who's listening to this thinking like, how is his biggest problem like, you know, oh, what am I going to go study at one of the world's biggest, you know, top unis? I think a lot of people struggle to even engage with academia. And was it something that always came very naturally to you? Was it something that you felt like you were an academic?

To be honest, I don't know if I'm an academic. I'm still figuring that part of my identity out. But what I was very clear about was that I wanted to spend the next 3 or 4 years of my life doing something that I loved. And I also had a very clear perspective that whatever I ended up doing, the things that would matter the most would not be the that those knowledge aspects, but more the skills and the logical and mind development that I'd get through it. And if, if you've gone through different degree pathways, I can assure you that math is probably the most difficult one, but also the one that provides you with the greatest problem-solving, algorithmic thinking and abstractification. So these skills are truly remarkable and they push you to the hardest to get to them. So by the end of my degree, I was doing algebraic topology. I was thinking about multi-dimensions. I was thinking about general relativity and proving back Einstein's theory of relativity. And I was being pushed to such an extent that I was desperate. I wasn't sure whether— in my first year, I was kind of questioning my decision to study math. It was hard, but I was able to uncover during my degree what part of math I loved. And I really knew from the very beginning that this degree was not just going to be an academic pursuit, but actually a, a very remarkable and very privileged experience to push your mind to the furthest extent. And when in your life will you ever get 3 or 4 years of your life to just do what you love, to just have that pure pursuit of knowledge. It's a very, very special thing. And I think we forget in this idea of, you know, degree to career, that actually that degree and that experience, those 3 or 4 years are probably the most beautiful, wonderful, liberating years of your life because you've gone through a schooling where you've had to do 6 or 7 subjects and you've kind of been shuffling off to do a different subject that you may not like, but also then having to do things that you do enjoy. Suddenly you come to a degree and depending on the flexibility of it, by the second or third year of my degree, I was able to really, you know, make the nuances and decisions that I wanted in my degree. I could go to physics, I could do cosmology because I could pick that module. I could even do computer science modules and make that degree my own. And I know that I speak of this from a perspective of, you know, deep privilege. The fact that I could go and study what I wanted to do in a subject area that I wanted to. But I also think that many of us do have that opportunity and squander it away because we think that everything needs to be directly connected to a career. And I know this is a little bit controversial in your podcast, but I would say that a degree oftentimes has no relation to what career you want to go to. It is just an experience that you will be able to take away and a learning journey that will unlock your mind perspective in ways that you will never have been able to do if you had gone directly into a job or a kind of a limited perspective.

Yeah, that's not a controversial opinion on this podcast. I think a lot of why this concept was even born of the Grad Guide is that my career consciousness going to school in the UK was get into a good university, you'll be fine. That was all I really had in mind. And similarly to you, it was like, well, if I'm going to do that, then I'll just pick something I'm good at. But I do feel like we do live in a different time, even to maybe when you've graduated, where a degree carries less weight. And I think you have to really obsess over things a bit more and have, like, really know who you are a bit more to make yourself more employable out the back of it. Um, so I think there is like a frustration perhaps for those that did what they were told. Um, and I know you have a lot of, um you have a big student audience and big user, user base from before university that will be going to you like, okay, like it's all well and good saying, oh yeah, I— you should go and study what you love and immerse yourself, but how can I actually attach to a career? For you, you know, you were left at this point where you were studying maths and you had this thing, ZNotes was, uh, it was snowballing and it was going somewhere and you had to make a decision at the end of university. What am I going to do?

Yeah.

So how did you make the decision to continue on with, um, CNOTS?

Yeah, um, but maybe let me take one step back because I think, uh, again, a university environment and, you know, we're going to be questioning what the future of higher education will look like, whether we will have a lot of brick-and-mortar universities at all, but there's something special about it. And there's a unique opportunity that young people have if they properly leverage their institution. So yes, I was doing a math degree, but I was also part of the Entrepreneurial Society. I was at the Hatchery at UCL. I had a whole bunch of business training and accelerator programs that I was part of. I went out of my way to the education faculty, a faculty that I was not associated to, and made mentorship relationships with professors in education. I had them involved in my product development, in my, in my, in my research work. And then I just discovered myself. I was part of the running team at UCL. I represented UCL across the country, ran marathons. I was learning different other sports. I did figure skating, I did rock climbing, I hiked mountains. I did a whole bunch of things. I made friendships and I made experiences that really made me who I am, brought me self-assurance, self-confidence, made me discover what parts of me that I loved and what parts I didn't enjoy. And those opportunities are truly remarkable. Where else can you go to a— in your life, can you be like, okay, here are 50 societies you can choose from and do any sport or any hobby or any experience you can? Where else will you find literally hundreds of nationalities represented in a small, small geographic area? Where else will you find professors and educators and people at the highest level of academia accessible to you.

So you're saying that there's something damaging about thinking too much about your career in connection to university?

I would say that a university is much more than just a degree that it offers, and there's so much value that sits around the institution that many of us do not completely sweat. So I personalized my degree. I took extra hours from all my professors. I walked up to their office hours and sat there for so long until they knew me by name and they knew that I was going to come every few days. We don't fully leverage the resources of our institutions. And I will come back to the point about my decision of taking the career pathway of an entrepreneur. But before even that, I'd sweated my, my institution and my degree in a way that gave me all these opportunities that truly are really hard to get in a kind of one-to-one way. To kind of create that experience that I had in those 3 or 4— I did. So I did a 4-year master's. It's really difficult, both from a financial standpoint, how much it costs, but also from just curating that. So I think that as much as a degree that you pursue matters and your ability to really engage with it and really experience it in a way that builds your cognitive abilities, which it did for me because I was pushed to such an extent that I thought I was not going to get through the degree. In my first year, I actually didn't even get a first. So I was, you know, of course I'd overachiever, you know, all that kind of thing. I was thinking like I'd walk into uni and I'd be great at it. And then I come out of the end of the degree and I'm like, first year, and I'm like, I don't even make that like 70%. I'm like completely shocked and feeling dejected and feeling like I'm not good enough. And then I picked myself up and pushed myself further and further every year until I ended up with not just a first, but one of the highest firsts in the year. And that experience was about pushing myself cognitively in my mental abilities. And then I built myself up, my personal identity, my sporting abilities, my experiences by engaging with institution in as many ways as I found possible. So it was a lot of proactivity.

And what about being a founder then? Because when you're doing sales, you're building a business, they don't care that you got a top first. And I think it's actually quite a humanizing and humbling experience, entrepreneurship, especially at a young age. I think, you know, when you're building something very early on, there are themes of sort of belittlement or like, you don't know what you're talking about, from people above. But how were you approaching entrepreneurship at university? And, uh, and what was your, your process of getting things off the ground at that age?

Again, so I had a— so I still am— I identify as a social entrepreneur. I knew from the very beginning that I was setting out to solve a social problem. And so there are a lot of kind of stigmas associated to entrepreneurship and founder identities and mentalities. But I was so obsessed with solving a problem more than anything else. And so there were, of course, moments where I was looked down upon and I was the youngest in the room for for— I still continue to be, although I'm getting on the other— on the other end of the spectrum. But that was never a challenge, I'd say. I actually would probably say— and again, I'm one who takes chips on the shoulder and like the kind of seemingly disadvantages to your greatest strengths. So I was the youngest person in the room, but I also had the greatest ability to break stuff. Make mistakes, fail, and say sorry and keep going. And that's what I took. So I wouldn't— if someone made me— there were, of course, moments where I felt like I was not being considered seriously. And that's, of course, a situation you need to figure out. But in most cases, I met founders and met senior leaders in education and industry, and they'd look at me as, oh, this person has a lot of energy, excitement. He has a lot to learn, but he's there to learn. And he's there to make mistakes. And I was able to make the mistakes without having the repercussions I would have at a much older age. And remember again, the university provides a sandbox. Being in the Hatchery at UCL, I was building something, but if something imploded, what was the worst that could happen? Not much.

Yeah, I feel youthful naivety is something I credit a lot of my career to, sort of the idea, whether that's delusional optimism of actually building something, you know, or building a solution to such a big problem, which, which you were. And I feel like I'm trying to take on, like, actually being like, you could do something there. I, I put down to that naivety, and that allowed me to go on and do it. But then, but also in the way that I approach conversations, you're saying you're talking to founders and being in these rooms, right, where, you know, people could look at you and go, inexperienced, I'm gonna dismiss you. But then you can actually play to your strength and say, well, you are the only person in the room. That is a USP. That is, uh, that is something that I think— is it a mindset or is it just, um, kind of innate within you? Is it something you can cultivate?

Um, interesting question. I've never really reflected on that, but I'd say it's, it's kind of like a a mindset, like a mercenary mindset. What are the things that you have at your disposal that you can use towards your cause? And I've done that throughout my career, right? My journey. Zenote started off with nothing. We started off with a blog that you set up on WordPress.com. It then went on to leverage things like Google Drive to host stuff. And then I think the only moment my— like there was actual cash injection was my dad's credit card paying $100 for a website domain. So that this kind of sense of like taking everything out there and putting it to your use was always a kind of mentality that I had. So going into those rooms, I was always like, okay, where can I gain value? And again, there's this kind of, I guess, imposter syndrome. There's a sense of like, why me? That comes up and I was able to overcome it. Again, it was a kind of a mental debate that I had with myself was there's no one other than me who's going to fight for this cause. And what I'm trying to do is to bring and create an impact in this world. And there is nothing shameful about that. I want to take what I do and grow it. I want to take it from 1 million to 5. I want to grow it from 5 to 10 and so forth. So what am I apologizing for? What am I shy about? And so these type of mindsets really played a big role in how I approach those conversations. People turn me down, people continue to turn me down. And that is okay. It hurts for sure. Every rejection, even now, hurts. But you get better at dealing with it and you realize that, you know, they keep saying rejection is redirection and these type of things, but you don't really feel it until you actually like truly believe it. And I've started to believe not just that, but also the idea that when you approach someone and they don't respond to you, you can't really attribute it just to yourself. There's so many factors around them. They may be busy, they may have a situation, an emotional, emotional moment that they're in. You can't predict all of that. And the human relationship is always based on a two-way thing, right? It's not just you and your idea and your hopes, but what they are also able to offer. In fact, some of the funny things that have happened over the years is that people that I've reached out to, hope to connect with, wanted to share my work with, get something out of for years, have ignored me, have not looked at my messages, have not looked at my emails. And then I turn up in a room with them and they remember me, or they turn up in a room with them and then they want to talk to me. And again, it's not this idea of hubris that, oh, finally, you know, you came up and you finally discovered who I am. It's actually just that was not the right moment and it's okay. As founders, we need to realize that, that maybe not just founders, but even as young people who are, you know, sending out LinkedIn connections and asking something from someone, maybe no, someone will not respond to you. And that's absolutely fine as well.

Yeah, I had quite a, um, seminal moment, I suppose, uh, like a year into doing The Graduate Guide where, you know, I started to gain some kind of traction. Uh, they're all, you know, really vanity metrics, but in your mind you build it up as, okay, no, I'm— I am someone now. I deserve like a response from, from somebody. I've looked— look what guests I've had on. I like say I've had the manager at Speakeasy on. That means I can get anyone. I've And, and so I was going into, um, to ask people to come on the podcast, and my ego was being kind of crushed, and I couldn't really, uh, recalibrate or understand why. Or I just thought they haven't got a reason, um, to, to say no to me. And I think I was listening to this podcast, um, I don't know if you know The Third Door, um, it's this concept that, you know, if you can't get in the club, uh, by, by waiting or, you know, uh, paying or anything, the best way in is just round the back door by knowing someone who can take you in. And, and so this guy, he, he spent all of his life like dedicated to, to meeting these, these super celebrities and, and incredible people, uh, that he had no right to speak to. And he was speaking about, uh, in reflection on this whole journey about, uh, how understanding, like, why people don't always just say yes and actually understanding what it feels like to earn somebody's attention and respect is one of the most powerful things you can, you can get. Because I think once I'd heard that, it allowed me to think, okay, there's probably so many reasons why that person didn't reply, and I kind of now know this having done this for so long is that, you know, they could have just had a bad day, something couldn't have gone their way, they could have seen that message and not replied. It isn't, um, they're not trying to be offensive to you, they're not trying to make you feel bad.

There's—

similarly, someone could have just said yes to you and boost your ego because they just had a good day, or they've— they just received a raise or investment. So I think for you, I imagine you've had, uh, in your career journey, some, some breakthrough moments that your relationships that you've had to cultivate over time. What would you say has been your reflections on what really cultivating a good relationship where, you know, things that happen instantaneously but you've worked on it and it's produced the best results for you?

Yeah, um, again, I'll take one step back and then answer your question. The one step back I'll take is that It isn't— there are so many reasons why someone will not respond to you, and that's absolutely fine. And you can build that up. But don't take that to define who you are. Don't take that rejection to define who you are. And I think it's really easy for, especially for young people who are still in their kind of formative years building who their identity is and what their sense of purpose is, to take that rejection, say, ah, I'm never going to do that again. And it's about bouncing back. So again, my university journey was also about self-discovery. So I, I'm, you know, I stand before you, you know, with humility, with a lot of work I need to still do and a lot of challenges and a lot of failures around my life. But I'm not going to let myself down. Does that make sense? I know who I am. I know my flaws. But I stand upright with those flaws and those inabilities. And I think that self-acceptance is the hardest journey to be on, but you'll have to break through at some point. You accept yourself for your— for the things that you're great at, for the human you are, for the way you meet people and the way you cultivate relationships and friendships and partnerships. But you also know who you are when you're in bed alone and you're, you know, you're can't fall asleep and you're thinking through everything that you've done wrong. So that self-acceptance is so critical and it plays a big role in how you turn up and, and kind of come across another person, which then builds on to your next question. So I would say that, you know, again, I'm not— I don't feel like I should— I deserve something. I don't go into something expecting it, but I also don't expect myself to be turned away because If anything, I am a human and deserve the dignity of humanity. Right? And so when I come up to a room and I'm, I'm wanting to share and receive something, I'm doing it as a, as an individual would do to any other human being. So that self-acceptance is so critical to play a role in your kind of the way you turn up. And that plays a big role in how someone reflects to you. So relationships where I have gained the most are ones where, which built on the basis of authenticity. They were built on this, on these value systems, on the sense of purpose and sense of identity that we shared with each other. I come from a, you know, a mix of cultures. I grew up in Saudi Arabia. The culture of Arabia is very much around building relationships over long meals and coffees and kahwa and chai and, you know, and dates. And you'd spend hours and you wouldn't do any business. And you can't do any business. Actually, it's seen as disrespectful to do so. So my mentality of how I built relationship was never around the idea of I expect to get something out of them and there's a reciprocity that needs to be enabled immediately. It was actually built on the basis of there's something that I can offer them. There's something that they may find something valuable in me, and it may happen now or in 6 months' time or in a year's time. I tell the story, my first, you know, when we raised a small angel round, my first investor, was someone I had met very kind of loosely through LinkedIn and a referral. We'd had a couple of calls and she was an incredible champion of ours. And I was on a call with her telling her the struggles of raising. I was telling her, I can't figure it out. Not being able to talk to people. No one is responding to me. I don't know how this is going to work. I don't know what my pitch deck should look like. Can you tell me what do you think? She's like, she Sure, of course I'll help. I end the call and I go away and I literally seconds later I get a voice note from her saying, by the way, Zubair, I'm not sure if it's clear, but I'm investing, I'm backing you and I'll help you get to the next set of people as well. And that is the relationship you want to build. So I came to her with all my flaws, all displayed, right? And she still saw that as a validation. She saw that as a greater validation than having a very polished deck and someone standing in a suit in front of her telling her what— why she should invest in the company. So that authenticity and also realizing that a relationship, especially human relationships, should not always be built on this sense of like immediate reciprocity and gratification. We're not on TikTok where we double tap something and we get a like and we feel like, oh, that's, that's affirmation that we're getting.

It's interesting, we've been using words that often have negative connotations, especially in the world of careers and business, like naivety, uh, and vulnerability.

Yeah.

And, and actually, I think they are your superpowers. And I think definitely, and even the relation— the way our relationships develops is there's, there's obviously some synergies there, but we got to know each other on a, on a human level before, before anything, because I think your actual willingness or desire to do anything for somebody comes not from what you can get out of it, but like your desire for that, wanting to see them win. Um, yeah, so yeah, I think it's definitely a big takeaway of mine from, from what you just said there. And my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, so when you first started off in your career journey, you might have had a certain idea of what success would go on to look like, but fast forward of everything you've learned and achieved along the way, What is your definition of success and how has it changed?

It's a good question. My definition of success is fulfillment and innate joy and yeah, contentment. Not even joy, I'd say. I'd even say it's a slightly nuanced word. Big difference because you don't need to be full of happiness at every given moment. You need to be content and you need to be happy with how things have turned out.

It's always been that.

I attribute a lot of it to my faith that I've been able to be growing up around seeing people in every situation at different senses of fulfillment and contentment. Some of them have been millionaires, billionaires, and still haven't found that peace in their life, while others have literally had nothing, have tiny one-bedroom rooms to sleep and live in and are so full of fulfillment and contentment. And I think it's probably getting, you know, it's the journey of the past 10 years is also going to play a big role because I've had the privilege to meet such incredible individuals. But I'd say that we, we associate success to this kind of glamorous Instagrammable life. But when it comes down to it and you meet these kind of incredibly successful people and you ask them, you know, what would have mattered most? Like if I had a couple more days with my mom, if I had had the opportunity to, to spend my time with my, with my partner, if I'd had time to, you know, see my children for longer. And it's not just family, but it's just this sense of like the things that matter the most are things like time. It's health, it's, it's people you love and you want to cherish your time with. And you only realize that when you kind of think of them after you consider them as opportunity costs. Oh, let me get 2 more hours and let me become an analyst and become a consultant. Let me become the next rung in the ladder of corporate life and let me make X thousand dollars more. You only realize after all of those moments have gone that things that mattered most to you were always there and you just didn't give them the priority and value that they deserved. So again, I'm professing while maybe I'm still challenging these situations as well, but I wish that if I look back at my life, I want to look at success as a, as a metric of of money or even, even impact, to be honest. Like, I wouldn't be wishing to consider my life as a, as a, to reflect back, back on a vanity metric, but more on the sense of did I bring joy to people's life? Was I content? Did I feel fulfilled in the things that I did? And if I did, then I would feel like that was the right thing to do.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Pleasure.