Let’s go for a Hike w/ Kavin B. Mittal

Foreign.

Welcome to another episode of investream. I'm Pankaj, and in this episode we have a really exciting conversation with Kavan Mittal, the founder of Hike messenger, and we discuss everything from the spiritual side of being an entrepreneur and how does spirituality play a part in his life, as well as Covid and moving to a fully remote environment and pivoting a unicorn and a whole bunch of other things. So this was one of the best conversations I had. The conversation was held on Clubhouse and apologize for the audio because it's not the best audio, but the content is really, really interesting. So please do leave your comments and let us know what you thought.

Hi, how are you?

Very good. How are you?

Very good, very good.

I don't know if you guys have opened up your offices yet or not, but, you know, with vaccine going out, rolling out, I think a lot of people are just feeling invincible now, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we transitioned to a remote first company and we've kept it. It's working really well for us. So we actually don't have an office anymore, which was something we would have not done if you didn't have the whole Covid situation. But for the most part, I think the team's more productive this way. We're opening up or sort of getting these 10 people sort of working spaces at the wework in co working spaces to complement the remote first. But I think it's working pretty well.

Everyone's here to listen to you not talk about this pandemic. So since you brought up code, let's start with code. What is the height code and kind of what. What was the impetus behind putting that out in public?

Yeah, it's a great place to start. You know, one of the biggest challenges. And we'll dive into this more. Back in 2017, 2018, when we were scaling up Hike was. We just, we made a couple of bad hiring mistakes right at the top. And the, you know, we were. We became big very fast. And when Ike got to sort of 112 million DAU, we raised a lot of capital and became a billion dollar company. And the big question that I had for myself was, you know, I was 28, 29 at the time, and what do I know about running a company? And so we had built a fantastic product, scaled up to 150 people. But beyond that, you have to start building the company. And so we hired some professionals, some executives from big companies to help us run the company and build the systems. And that was a big mistake. And we went from 150 people to 400 people in nine months. And you know, when you make bad hires at the top, that whole thing just trickles down to the junior most part of the company. And honestly, it just destroyed our culture. And what we had built over four or five years just got destroyed in nine months. And we suddenly went from being this innovative company to one that worried about failure and that choked creativity and sort of took the fun out of things. And a large part of the, you know, 150 people, the scale up will happen in Bangalore too. And when we opened up Bangalore, we should have sent someone who was with us for the first four and a half years, five years to set up Bangalore. Instead, we ended up hiring someone new who turned out to be one of the bad apples that we have. So that just compounded everything. And so the big lesson for us was, you know, and this is of course obvious in hindsight, but most problems tend to be who problems and not bot problems. And so we just made sure going forward that we would never get to a place that we had these hoop problems again. And that was the inspiration behind the high code and many other things that we've done since then. To scale the company from a kind.

Of 60,000 foot level, you hired a bunch of folks that you thought were experienced and could really help get the business to the next level. How quickly did you realize that they weren't a fit and what specifically about them was problematic and contrarian to the culture that you were trying to build at Hike?

That's a, that's a great question. It was different for different people. I feel like for one it was about a year and three months, for one it was six months. And you know, we learned. So the first one was about a year, three months, the next one was, you know, nine months, the next one was six months. And we hired all of these people in a similar times, but we sort of took care of them in different ways. And I'll tell you what the issue is, which is, you know, most of the executives were big companies and they're very good at what they do in those big companies. They tend to be far more geared towards managing and not really creating something. And at big companies that are managing the systems that exist today, the products that exist today. And the big takeaways for us was we have to find people who lean a lot more towards sort of being individual contributors, but who had no choice but to become managers to amplify their own productivity. And that was the big difference, because if you don't have those Kind of people in executive positions. Then the company starts becoming a company of managers, of managers. And that's a dangerous position to be in. And I think we had quite a bit of that in 2018 as we scaled up so fast. And so we really look for that, which is, you know, at their core, excited about solving problems, individual contributors, but have had to become managers to sort of amplify their own impact at companies. You know, that was a big takeaway for us.

So, you know, we're going to jump all over the place here. But, you know, I think this is a really interesting thing, talking about culture and a lot of, especially in Indian startups, you hear a lot of people mentioning it and talking about it, but not really diving into what is that culture that you're trying to build and how can you actually tell before you hire somebody whether they're a fit for your culture rather than, you know, finding out six or 15 months into the process?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, how do you. How do you know what world class is if you've not seen world class? That's the question people ask. And, you know, we had a couple of pretty strong advisors, but. And all these folks actually, you know, ran through them by interviews, but still they turned out to be not right fits for us because I think every culture is unique. And the most important thing in the hiring process is, I think with these.

Guys having relatively small percentages of ownership and some of your early investors having large percentages of ownership while all of this is happening and, you know, there's lots of shifts occurring, how are the investors and how are they behaving? How are you handling them and what's that process like? Right. There's so many founders here that probably are curious, like, okay, are your investors supporting you? Are they not? And you don't have to name names, but I'm curious, like, how tense did it get with your investors during this time and how supportive were they? And if you could be a little bit more diplomatic, that would be great.

Yeah, look, you know me, I'm a straight shooter. So, you know, it's a great question. I'm so glad you asked it. We were lucky to have some of the world's top and most seasoned investors in Hike. And I think what differentiates the best investors from the very good is that they back a founder and the vision and the organization that he or she builds. And we were. I personally, since I'm a single founder, I was very fortunate to have Tiger Tencent Softbank on board and These guys, they make so many investments that they understand that things change quite fast, fast in our space and sometimes things don't work out and sometimes people have to pivot. It's all part of the adventure of building something new. And I know situations where in, you know, when things are not going well, investors are trying to take over the company. Fortunately, that never happened with us because we had one principle that we stuck by throughout, from start to finish or started today, which is we're just sort of so transparent and authentic inside the company, including with our investors, because we see investors as a part of our team, not this sort of, you know, bunch of people to sort of, you know, showcase that we're doing extremely well. And Pankaj, it also saves a lot of time and energy because you're not managing perception. So we've just been, you know, radically transparent and authentic and talked about all the things we're doing and they've been very appreciative about that even till today. And that's why there's a very deep trust between us and our investors, because they know we're not bullshitting them and we did it like it is. And so that's worked out really well for us. I think it's a combination of having some of the best investors on board that are backing founders and just being absolutely, radically transparent, authentic, and saying, here's where we are, here are the issues, here's what's going well and just keeping them in the loop. And we had the additional challenge, by the way, that, you know, the representatives at Tencent changed, the representative at Softbank changed, and we have to sort of bring them up to speed again and again. It's definitely like a full time job, you know, sort of managing investors.

So let's touch on that a little bit. Like, you know, you spend years building relationships with representatives from some of these investors. Like, you know, Lee left Tiger as well. Right. Like, how does, how did that change the dynamic and how much effort did you have to put into building new relationships with these representatives? And you know, what were some of the things that you had to do to kind of speed up that process, if you could have?

Yeah, I think it was one of the most challenging things, honestly, which was, you know, when, when a rep sort of leaves the firm, person who's invested in your company, that relationship actually is more with the rep than the firm. And when you're going through this sort of up and down time and you're building the business, it becomes even more difficult. And I feel like it was just about ensuring that we had a cadence where we were sending data and sending all our material to the people and just being open, the questions being asked. And so we kept that cadence going despite sort of all the transitions that we're doing. And some of our board updates just looked like, hey, guys, we're making a transition. And it was awful. You know, as a company, you want to be talking about metrics and the business and so on and so forth, but we did it because I feel like that's the best way to sort of, you know, build trust with people. And so we had to invest more time. We had to sort of, you know, keep the cadence going. We could have very easily said, you know what, we're just going to stop sort of talking about what we're doing for the next six months. But we never did that. We just kept everything transparent and authentic. And what's good about that is, you know, some of the new reps also, they like the company, they like you know, our team, and they're batting for us, and that's a. That's a nice place to be. So I think being transparent, authentic is just. It's underrated, especially when it comes to investor relationships.

So what's the advice you would give to a founder that's in a similar situation, but the new representative isn't necessarily super excited about the company and the direction that you're taking? Like, how would you handle that?

Yeah, we had one of those.

Okay, now we get to the fun stuff.

Oh, you asked the right question, punkage. We had one of those, and we spent a lot of time with that person. And after a certain point, you just have to accept that you will have one of those.

And.

Here'S the thing, though. Here's the thing we always fell back to. If the metrics are looking good, no one's going to have a problem. If the metrics are not looking good, everybody's going to have a problem, and especially the person who's not bought in. And so we just had this maniacal mentality of getting back to growth as quickly as possible so that it becomes a lot easier. Because, look, you know, this growth solves all problems. So that's the attitude that we had and the approach that we had towards sort of, you know, that person, which is just to get back to growth as quickly as possible. Honestly, that's it.

Yeah. So speaking of growth, I mean, here, you know, we're talking about 2016 now, five years later, you found some problems, you found some successes, but eventually you decided to Shut down Hype Messenger. Right. As a founder and as somebody who's started with this, how do you feel about sunsetting a product that you and your team conceptualized and started and worked with and built for so long? What's the emotional aspect of that? As a founder?

Yeah, I think, you know, my honest answer, Pankaj, is we were kind of just glad to move on because the value. It became very clear to us that we can't be number one and number two in the space, and that India is not going to the west, not going to do to the west what they did to China. And as a result, there's no space for local sort of there to operate. It just was a bit of a relief time to move on and sort of focus on niches and end markets that become 10x in the next four, five years and use all the infrastructure that's been built today to sort of build those new products. And if you have that discipline in the mind, and, you know, we have the saying which is discipline people, discipline thoughts, discipline actions. If you have the discipline in the mind to sort of make these decisions, it all becomes a lot easier. And I think the way to sort of build that discipline is to keep zooming out all the time and understand the purpose of why we do what we do. Because, you know, somebody asked me, you know, and, you know, what was sort of the challenges in keeping Haik alive? And my response was, you know, it's less about keeping Hike alive. It's more that we were so obsessed with our mission and the purpose that we had in the first five years, it was so clear, and suddenly, all of a sudden, boom, it was gone. And so we had to sort of find this new purpose, this new mission where we could build great products that could have an immensely positive impact on the world. And so I think I'm a fundamental, and call me idealistic, but I'm a fundamental believer that people feel very inspired by the very notion of building something great. And as long as you have that inside the company, simply are a manifestation of that. So our purpose, our mission of building something great that can have a positive impact toward and change. It sucked, by the way, that we have to sort of, you know, sort of work on something different. But we swallowed that like, you know, two, three years ago. So I guess you're also talking to me about a year and a half after we made the decision to shut the Hike messenger down. We did it publicly recently because we had so many users on the platform, we just couldn't do it. Overnight. But we made the decision sometime back because we want to win, we want to be number one, number two. And I think that's the most important thing. And if you're trying to have impact through a business vehicle, you have to be successful by the rules of business, which means user growth, profitability, revenue and so on and so forth. I think those things have to become non negotiable in your pursuit of greatness. And if you have that clear in your mind, then I think it becomes a lot easier to sort of make these decisions.

So you figured out this isn't working, we're not going to be a big global player in the messaging space. And you decided that, hey, you know, we're going to work on a couple of different products. And eventually you came to Vibe in a rush. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made that decision? How you guys as a team figured out that these were opportunities where you had the potential for being dominant global players? And what was the path to actually executing that strategy?

Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, I think the seed of this was we understood social really well. You know, we were and still are the only social companies that are building for this market. You know, I don't consider the content apps, social products, but social is unique. Building a social company, growing a social product is very unique. And we also spend years building a gaming platform inside the super app. So we knew these things really well. And we were also very excited about having impact through these pieces. It matches our DNA as a company really well. So first was, you know, what are we passionate about? That was very, very important because when you're passionate about something, it's easy to get obsessed about something and then it's, you know, work becomes pleasure. Second was, you know, what could we be the best at? And that was very, very important. And this is also one of the reasons why we sort of shut the messenger, because we could build a very good messenger, but for us to be best at it, we'd sort of lost that opportunity. And so it would be very, very important for us to sort of dive into something where we believe we could channel our skills to build something unique. And third is the business model has to make sense. And our thinking on the business model was different from the first phase of hike, which was, let's go build a massive scale, then we'll monetize on a payments platform, ad platform, so on and so forth. But because payments have become seamless today, technology has evolved so much, you can start experimenting with the Business model today itself, which, by the way, we're doing both on Russian Vibe. So this is the three intersecting circles that we sort of use to make the decision. And then if an opportunity or an idea didn't fit inside the intersection of these three circles, no matter how sexy the opportunity might be, we just simply discarded it. And through looking at our data, through seeing why people used Hike, some of the experiments we've done on the platform, it became very clear to us that there's a very large challenge, not just in India, but globally, for people to make new friends. And in India, the challenge is much, much bigger because infrastructure is poor offline, the market is highly conservative, and thus it's difficult for people to interact offline, especially in tier one cities and beyond. And it's no surprise, by the way, as a result, that people use 15 gigs of data a month on their phones because the phone has become an escape from reality. And the Internet has a habit of disrupting, by the way, behaviors. We've seen this, right? And we really believe the behavior that's getting disrupted right now and will do in the future, the big one is going to be not necessarily the dating category, but the make new friends category. And we saw it with Hike Land. It was so obvious to us when we launched the first bullet that around the idea of a Hike moji, which is your virtual identity. And it's a very important part of the platform because a lot of people worry about putting their photos. They don't want to be judged. This is still India from a cultural perspective. We were seeing 30,000 matches happen per month in the first three to four months after launching Hateland. And we had a couple of thousand people paying us a couple of dollars a month to sort of buy some superpowers on the platform to stand out and so on and so forth. Wow. And once we hit that bullet, it became very clear to us that holy shit. Like, this is. This is. This could be big. But we have this restriction that the Hype line was launched inside a sticker chat. So people still perceived the whole thing as a messaging app. And so we had to take it out. And that was a bit of a painful thing to do, but we had to do it. And we had to sort of change the name from Hike to something else because, you know, Hike is a very successful app. So people have this idea that Hike's a messaging app. Anything Hike is a messaging app. So we changed it to Vibe by Hike, which is now the Hikland dream come to life in a new application. And the simple dream state for Vive is a magical and safe place to hang out online where people can make friends and be their funnest and most expressive self. And the Hike emojis are the center of all of that stuff that we're doing. By the way, we launched the Hikemoji back in 2019. We launched Hike in 2020. We've just been iterating, evolving, firing bullets. Tricks are looking better and better and better. And suddenly we're like, you know what, we're very confident about this. Can you go fire a bazooka? And I think Vibe is sort of that first essence of the bazooka that we're firing because we're so excited about the market. And, you know, we have this saying, which is. I think it's. I don't know if it's Mark Andreessen who said this or somebody else, but if you find, if you have a great team that's pointing at a poor market, the team loses. If you have an awful team pointing at a great market, market wins. But if you have fantastic team pointing at the bright market, the team wins. And I feel like on Vibe, we finally have what I call team market fit. I feel like we are the right people to build that product because we've understand the pulse of the youth in India really well. Plus we're very creative and innovative as a company. And that's Vibe. And then Rush, we fired the film in 2019. And I want to just mention, by the way, like, you know, 2018 was a complete write off. You know, when we cut the team from sort of 400 people to 150 people, we completed all that stuff by like, you know, April, May, June 2018 was a complete write off for us. And in 2019, we invested in Winzo, which is the bullet that we took because we were very curious about the gaming space. But we also saw that this real money games business model was working in India because payments had become skills. So we fired the bullet there. And, you know, that company's done really well and it's growing. And we decided to, you know, build our own product in the space because, you know, we don't want to build. It's against our values to go deep into gambling. We don't want to wake up in the morning and be building a gambling app. And the RMD space for the most part has gotten into poker rummy and so on and so forth. And so did Winzo. And we respect that decision, but we really believe that there's an opportunity for us to bring Sort of this gaming arcade that we still have as kids in the offline world online for the masses, because everybody's spending seven, eight hours on their smartphones every day. And it could be really new bite sized entertainment service for the masses where you could play, compete and win. That could sort of channel the, the competitive spirits of India. And that's what Rushes and Rush is a gaming platform where I can play caram against you and I can wager against you and If I wager two rupees and you wager, you know, two rupees and you win, you keep four rupees and the house takes a 10% cut. And it's strange, it's like games of skill, like Candy Crush combined with a betting mechanic all into one. And it's a very unique business model for India and that's growing really fast as well. And so again, the journey of fighting a bullet and then a bazooka and you know, that's where we are today.

If I had a chance to write a check into Russia, I would do it right now because I think that is going to be massive, you know, as you roll out more games and you're not going, like you said, you're not going in the gambling route, down the gambling route. I think this is going to be massive.

Well, punkage, so I'll come to you.

Okay, well, unfortunately I came right, 100 million dollar check. But you know, if you take a small check, I'd love to love to participate. I want to, I want to just roll back a little bit and come back to it. You specifically not hike, but you.

You.

Know, this has been a massive roller coaster ride. You know, very high highs and very low lows. What are the things that you wish somebody told you about entrepreneurship and, you know, kind of how to ride these waves and, you know, come out of them as calm and collected as you are.

Oh, that's a loaded question.

Yes, it is.

I mean, I may have a longish answer, but just interrupt me if you feel like you have a question on something. But I think first off, it's not as sexy as people think. And I think the world for some reason thinks building new things is very cool and exciting while it is some part of it, actually a large part of it, but it's also just hands down incredibly difficult to build something new. And then on top of that, build a business and a company around it. It's just very difficult. And you know, this quote I think is definitely by Mark Andreessen. He's like, building a company is like waking up in the morning and eating broken glass every day. It is so true. You just wake up and things are broken, fix them. And that's a large part of building a company. And that's the life you choose, by the way, as an entrepreneur, when you're building something new. And so, you know, if, if I were to give advice to somebody here who's thinking about starting a company or just started a company, I'd say first, be very clear about why you want to do it. To be successful in life, to be happy, you don't need to be an entrepreneur. As a matter of fact, it's very possible that it's inversely proportional to starting a new company. And you know, the reason I see most people starting a company is because they have a problem that isn't solved yet, or they're not happy in the environment that they're working. And if you're doing it because of that, then I think, you know, you're gonna have a fantastic time and you're likely gonna be successful. But I also must say this, which is if you do invent a product and build a company around a problem that you're incredibly deeply tied to, it is the most character building journey of your life, I'm pretty sure. Business, like a business venture, is like a character building journey disguised as a business venture, I swear to God. And the one thing that's worked, or not the one thing, but the few things that have worked really well for me that I've experimented with, because I experiment a lot with my own life, you know, things that I do to sort of make myself more productive. The first one, I think the biggest one is learn how to learn. You know, Pankaj. It's so weird. It's not something we're taught and not many people know how to learn. Learning for many people is tied to the memory of exams and grades and comparisons to others. And as a result, many people are just scared of the idea of it.

Absolutely.

And learning, you know, is like learning a skill. It's a skill that one has to learn. So, you know, learn to learn what's worked. For me, it's if you want to learn something new, you have to understand that the first time that you're going to try to learn it, you're going to feel like a complete dumbass, like absolute dumbass. And you have to find ways to know that's going to happen and realize it. And what ends up happening is, and I've seen this with myself so often, which is when you dive into Something new or solving a new problem. You have this excitement that, yeah, oh my God, I'm, you know, I'm so crazy about this idea. And you sort of start solving it and you go deeper and deeper and deeper and suddenly all the excitement is gone because you're bogged down on all these details and suddenly you're just exhausted and, you know, some part of you no longer wants to work on the problem anymore. And what I realized is if you just step away for a few days or six, seven days and gain your energy back on that problem, go solve some other problem, and you come back to this existing problem you're working on with the same excitement that you had, suddenly you end up making a lot of progress because you also have the knowledge you gained on the first try. And it's such a powerful way to sort of learn a new topic. That's one. Number two is get to the first principles of the topic as quickly as possible and work your way back up to the surface. And one of the best ways to do that is when you're learning something, learn it as if you're trying to teach it to somebody. It, I mean, it works like magic because when, if you can teach someone to somebody, no matter how complicated it is, you truly understand the problem. And it's also a nice trick that encourages you to go to the first principles to pick up a new topic. So that's one. And this is very important because, you know, When I started Hike, when I founded Hike, I was 24, I think, and the biggest challenge I've had by far is just managing me is working on myself, evolving myself, making sure my learning curve was very, very high. Because let's face it, no one's born a fantastic CEO and manager. And experiences in life cultivate those qualities that would make you great at all those things. And in a fast growth company, you have to sort of crunch what would typically take 10, 15 years into one, two, maybe three years. And keeping up with that requires a lot of growing up emotionally, especially if you're building a company in your twenties, every six months you have a different job and you have to scale up really fast. You have to really learn to learn. And I think that's a very, very important trade and skill set if you're building anything new. Second thing I'd say is this has worked for me, and I've had this from a very early age, is simplify your life. You know, as a society, we're so encouraged to have an ever increasing desire for things, more possessions, more everything. And it's kind of absurd because the more you own, the more you own, the more problems you have. You got to spend time, energy, money, maintaining all those things. It sort of increases the operational cost of your life, and it ends up tying you down. You no longer have the freedom that you thought you do. Because you sort of become a passenger to life, tied by all these things that you have in your life and do the opposite. You know, subtract from your life, keep your life simple, keep the operating costs of your life low. Because then you can take more risk, especially if you're young, own less stuff, lease, rent, when you can. And it gives you the freedom, and it allows you to figure out life on your terms. I see a lot of people, you know, in the quest to own more, become a trap to all these things that they never actually wanted. And I feel like the best way to sort of come to this realization is to understand what games to play and what games not to play. I think most people are very interested in status games. I am more than you. I'm better than you. And they get caught up in the cycle. And actually, most of those people are miserable.

And keeping up with the Jonah, it's a disease.

Exactly. And you know, you're not going to get any happiness through that. Because the mind's desires are insatiable. You just can't satisfy them. And so, you know, find a way to live your life, some portion of your life, in a simple way. Because you realize after that that you can live your life in a simple way. You don't need all these things in life. And most importantly, it keeps your operational costs low, which means that you can take more risk and do more things. Because you don't tie down to all these things that people sort of encourage you to chase after. I would say number three is find time for quiet and solitude. This is one thing that unfortunately, today's modern world makes it very difficult to do. Spend more time with your thoughts, understand them, understand why they are the way they are, explore who you are. Then you can start working on your mind. You can remove things that are holding you back, double down on things that are your strengths. And you sort of then come to this realization that life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. I feel like many people have the opposite. They're a victim to life. But if you spend enough time with yourself, you start realizing that you're not imprisoned by your circumstances. You're not imprisoned by your setbacks. You're freed by your choices, you literally have a choice to do stuff in your life, from the smallest things to the biggest things. And anyone who enjoys solitude is definitely an unstoppable force in this world because you really get to understand sort of who you are. The fourth thing I think equally important is build habits for high energy. You know, building something new is. It just. It's such an energy drainer, you know, it sucks a lot of energy out of you. And energy is the first principle of doing anything great in life. And this is something, honestly, I personally struggled with. I was always a. I was never a super high energy person. Like, I know people around me, friends of mine, who are just super high energy all the time, but I always had this trouble of being low energy. And I just realized if you don't have the energy, then you can forget about your ambitions. And so you have to. And it's solvable. By the way, there are certain habits that you can build in your life that give you a tremendous amount of energy because you're going to need it to do anything in your phone in life. And, you know, my curiosity, my experimental nature led me to understand that human beings are just a bundle of chemicals. And at our core, we're just like atoms vibrating and oscillating at certain frequencies. And so if you just took care of your chemistry and your energy, your energy levels absolutely transform. And this means, right? Diet, exercise, I meditate every single day. I just incorporated yoga in my life the last couple of years, and sleep. And I'm one of those people who can't function without seven and a half, eight hours of sleep. If you meet me on a day where I've slept for like five hours, two days in a row, you're gonna think I'm complete dumbass. And I feel like, you know, it's also, it's also weird because, you know, we, again, we live in a. We live in a world. We live in a society that I feel like is encouraging the degeneration of the human being. It's, you know, it's cool to look forward to Fridays. You should hate Mondays. You should eat junk food. It's cool to sort of work four hours of sleep. It's complete nonsense. It's the best way to drain your energy. You got to do the opposite of all that stuff. Eat right, exercise just enough, meditate, you know, find your connect to something bigger and make sure you take care of your sleep. And once you have a lot of energy, suddenly you become unstoppable. Like, nothing can, you know, hit you and your personality transforms because you get much more sort of control over yourself. And I feel like you slowly shift to what I call a creative consciousness or a victim consciousness. I really believe a lot of folks who are sort of a victim in their mind just don't have the energy to sort of face those battles. And you want to sort of be like a river. You know, a river keeps moving, overcoming all obstacles. It just keeps progressing until it reaches the ocean. I think that's the mindset that I have and that I try to instill in the company. And, you know, the bonus, I guess, is spend a lot of time during some part of your life being single. I think it's so important, find out who you are outside of somebody else into a relationship because they're lonely. Not realizing that conquering that idea of loneliness is not just the key to your happiness, but also unlocking your true potential. And I've come to conclude that lonely people are people who just don't enjoy their own company. And you have to turn that around. You have to find out who you are and learn to enjoy the. The person's company, who you are. And it also helps, by the way, simplify your life. Being single also, by the way, is a very. It's very light on. On costs. It becomes a lot easier. You can simplify your life and have less possessions. And it also lets you dive deeper into your personality, learn how to learn. It lets you find more time for solitude. And I feel like spending a couple of years, at least being single instead of diving deep into yourself is something that everyone should do. Because, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if you had a good sense of who you were in your 20s? Because if you did, you know exactly what you want to pursue in life. And more Importantly, the next 40, 50, 60 years of your life would be so much more productive because you're chasing after things that you really believe you truly want. And, you know, last thing I'd mention, and, you know, this. This point is a deep point, but. And I think we can dedicate a whole clubhouse session to it. But I'll try to summarize it, which is, you know, I. Through my process, I was studying the Mayan philosophy, Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and I discovered ancient Hindu philosophy, which is the Vedas, the Upanishad, the Gita, and my God, like, I don't know why we don't teach the children in this country all this stuff. And, you know, most people think that we're human beings having a human experience. And there are some People who think we are human beings having a spiritual experience. And I thought that was it. I thought for human beings and you know, there's a higher power and we're all sort of connected towards it. But just through my journey, I realized that actually we're most likely spiritual beings that are incarnate, incarnating into a human form, having a human experience. Now just run with that for a second. They're not human beings having a spiritual experience or spiritual beings incarnating into human form, having a human experience. Suddenly the perspective shifts a little bit. Because if you think you're a human being, you believe you are, your body, your mind, your intellect, you start to identify with these three things. And this is how we're taught to sort of grow up. And what ends up happening is because you identify with these three things, you become very sensitive to the body, mind and intellect. And as a result, people become very insecure about these three things. I want to feel smart, I don't want to feel dumb. I'm too emotional, I'm too fat, I'm too thin. Like, people become very insecure about these things. And that comes, by the way, in the way of growth. Because I think the biggest thing that comes in the way of people's growth is worried about what other people are going to think of you. But, you know, let's flip that. If you're not the human form, but you're a spirit incarnating into human form, you're not the body, you're not the mind, and you're not the intellect. The human form is just a vessel. It's the body, mind, intellect are tools to use to make our way in the material world. So if you shift your identity from the human formed, the spirit, and then view your body, mind, intellect as tools you can use to sort of do what you want to do, carve your destiny out in this material world, you end up getting into a situation where you, your, your knowledge, your perspective changes. So you start mastering your tools and don't let the tools master you. And you know what the engineer is to a car, the spirit is to human form. And I feel like just having this perspective has changed everything for me, which is why you see me so calm, which is why you see me. You know, just. We'll figure it out. Because we, at the end of the day, you, you have to ask why we're all here. You know, if you're truly a spiritual being incarnating into human form, what the hell are we doing here on this planet? You know, why did we come here and I have two answers through all my reflections and meditation. One is, you know, I think one is to experience three dimensional reality. It's very possible. You can't experience things like love, hate, anger in spiritual form. It's possible, possibly not. But I think the bigger reason is to evolve your spirit. You are here in the constraints of three dimensional reality to evolve your spirit, because the best way to evolve something is to have their. Is to have your backs pushed up against the wall. And so that's the core purpose of life, of this life. You know, how can you ensure that through everything that you do, this remains the core sort of central point, whether it's building a company, whether it's sort of, you know, you know, bringing kids into the world and so on and so forth. And then how can you also have that impact on people's lives? And this ties back to the purpose of hike, which is, can we do things that positively impact people so that their consciousness can move forward too? Because at the end of the day, that is our purpose of life and also at the same time be successful, wildly successful materially, because we also are here to enjoy the material world too, but not be attached to all that stuff, but sort of use it as a conduit to just do more good in this world. So, you know, that's the blueprint of my mind these days. And I hope that was useful.

Dude, that was incredible. And I am like completely mind blown right now. And I'm sure there's a lot of people, I can see one or two people in the audience for sure that are gonna try and ping you and say, hey, could we do a session on all of this alone? So I. You're absolutely right. Let's, let's park that for the second. But I want to come back to that at a future date and talk about all of this stuff. The, you know, the spiritual aspect of being an entrepreneur and managing all that. I know, we're overtime. Do you have time to take questions from folks?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

All right, so I'm going to open it up. I'm going to ask folks to raise their hands, come on up and ask questions. Please make your question as short as possible. And after you're done asking your question, I'm going to move you back down into the audience. All right, so Arvind, you're first. Come on up. Hi, Irvin.

Hello. Yeah, hi.

Hi, Kavin. It was really nice listening to what you had to say. A lot of interesting stuff. I mean, my question to you is like A lot of challenges is, I mean, I've seen hike, you know, see its ups and downs like recently and I just wanted to get your input, saying, how would you recommend like you know, an entrepreneur who's going through a lot of struggles to like get through times?

Well, I, I hope I answered that in some way in the Last sort of 15, 20 minutes, but if there's something more specifically that you think I can help with, I'm happy to answer that question.

I'm sorry, I just dropped, dropped off and joined in towards the end again.

But I was saying, is there anything, anything specific that you know, you're looking for some, some guidance on?

Oh yeah, I mean, like one more thing.

What I would say is I was.

Just listening to you talking about the whole meditation thing and sometimes things get very hard and stressful right at work. So how would you recommend on that angle, like, I mean, kind of like imparting it out on your colleagues as such.

How would you do that?

Like, do you do that at a hike with everyone?

No, no, that's, that's a part of growing as a leader and that needs investment in time. I think one thing I mentioned was you, you have to do a lot of growing up emotionally if you want to become a leader. Because a leader's job is not to be liked. A leader's job is to sort of get the best out of people and deliver results on behalf of the company. And oftentimes that means you're not going to be liked as a leader. And so I think one is that realization and second is just getting to a place where you have an ample amount of energy, you as a person. Because once you an ample amount of energy, you end up becoming a lot more self aware about your actions, your thoughts, and not just retrospectively like reflecting on the day, but during a conversation with people, during a meeting, you become a lot more self aware. And this is just the journey of building yourself up as a leader, which also, by the way, is just becoming a better human being, unlocking your potential a lot more. And what's worked really well for me, by the way, is just cultivating all these habits in my life that are high energy habits, you know, right exercise, right diet, meditation in the morning for at least 45 minutes every day, a little bit of yoga every day, you know, working out two, three times a week and just making sure my sleep's on track. And so, you know, and it sounds very basic honestly, but it's the key to unlocking sort of all the things you're talking about and rising above them. Because look, at the end of the day, stress is simply a thought in your mind that's called you anger. And the question you have to ask is why do you relate to the thought in a way that's causing you anger? Nothing should cause you anger and every tough situation must be seen as the way to raise your game. So if something you know bothers you, you have to ask why and get to a place where if it happens again, it doesn't bother you. And you can do all these things by having a high energy lifestyle and evolving your yourself.

You take a. You have a question for Kevin?

Yeah, hi Pankaj, thank you so much. So Kevin, first of all, thank you so much. It was an amazing experience listening to you. Thank you so much for everything. I guess in between your talk I had somewhere tears in my eyes because I was resonating and vibing so much. So thank you. Thank you so much for just, just being you there. And my question can Kevin would be that you mentioned that social and gaming are two pillars and now Vibe and Rush are coming forward. So do you see that these pillows, or let's say Vibe and Rush will be coming together and their stories being weaved together or something where they merge somewhere down the line where they merge and not just act as two separate apps or something which is coming under the umbrella and it's probably, it's a part of a bigger gigantic ball which is coming into form.

Thanks for that question. No, we believe super apps are the thing of the past. So we believe that multiple applications are the best way to serve the market because for one simple reason, which is customers want simple things. You know, an app should have one job to be done as we call it. We use the job to be done framework at Hike and Vibe has a very different job to be done from Rush and actually the overlap in the user bases is quite minuscule. But we believe we can have a positive impact on through both those products and be the best and innovate and also build a fantastic business to. So Hike and Vibe by Hike and Rush by Hike are two separate products but we have a, you know, common, we have some, we have a few things that are common about both those products. And the big one is the Hike Moji, which is the identity. It's your identity and Vibe and it's your identity in Rush as well. So we have common sort of aspects of both the products, but they're different, solving different jobs to be done. Hey kbm, what's up?

I was with Hike for some time, for about a year and a half. But I left hike right before, you know, the whole change in administration and.

So on, people leaving happened.

So just want to ask, how do.

You, how did you manage the morale of the team? I mean, you had to let go like, you know, 250 odd people.

How do you, how did you manage?

And now that you're remote, how do you manage?

You know, people would love to know. Yeah, that's a great question. And hey man, been a long time. The, the, the, the way to do it is the answer the first question first, which is cut once, don't cut more than once. Just do the whole thing in one sweep. If you have to make a change to the Oregon cut the team, you can't do it in drips. You just got to cut it once and tell the team that this is it. And the second is everybody who's left, get them involved in the process of helping rebuilding. And the high court is, you know, it may be a document that's written by a few of us, but it imbibes the values of those people that were there at hike, those 120 people. And they feel part of the mission, part of the culture. I think that's very, very important. Third is you, like I said, which is, it's not that we didn't want to do great things. We wanted to, but we stumbled along the way and we just had to remind people that we're still on this path to achieving something great and would they want to join us on the journey or not? So being very upfront. So that's one second is on remote, you know, as a culture and you know, you would have seen this in hike from when you were there too. We've always had the tools to make people productive. We focused a lot of time and energy on making people productive very early on. And that investment has worked 10, 4 for us in a remote environment because we have all the tools for design, for engineering, all those things that come extremely well together. And we also invest a lot in, you know, we're very transparent. So all hands once a month. You remember that TGIF every two weeks in Q and A is completely transparent. People can ask us anything. Demo days every two weeks. And we also have something called Office Vibe. That's a tool that we use to sort of get employees inputs to make sure that the pulse of the company is understood. And having all these online sessions with people we are starting to explore as the vaccine comes out. And you know, the risk of COVID is Less once every two weeks, sort of people gathering in person and working. And so while we aim to be remote first, we also are going to experiment with that second leg of in person working too.

Hey, thank you, Kavin.

So, first off, I love nothing more than social and gaming apps. I'd love to see the two new hype apps really succeed. But my question is, I have a hypothesis that is in India, the population mostly gravitates to whichever is the best social app of the world.

So it might be Instagram, it might.

Be Facebook, it might be YouTube in some ways. So what makes you think that these apps, if built purely for India, have a chance? Why not just do it for the world and place the bets over there? We never said we're not building for the world. It's India first. And because the market is very big, which is spot on, which is if you're building for India, you've got to have a sense that you're building for the world. And we definitely keep that in mind. Which by the way means that you could differentiate not just an India level, but at a global level. So I'm totally with you on that and I think that's the right hypothesis, by the way.

You know, I fear that once my work life goes back into. Fully back into the office or, you know, working in office and remote, I'm worried that I'm going to lose that discipline that I built because, you know, now I have a bit more time to, to put these things into practice. I won't be commuting and I won't be, just be distracted by people. You know, I've really enjoyed not being distracted by people. And so my question is, when you started inculcating these practices in your life, did you come up against issues, you know, in that sort of transition period and how you dealt with it, how, how you made sure that you truly stuck to your disciplines that you picked up.

Yeah, I think that's a good question and thank you for asking that. The. Let me, let me. I think on the, on the remote side, there are people, there are always sort of people on, on the extreme. Some people extroverted and love the in person working. Some people are more introverted and a lot of time with themselves. I am, by the way, just, I lean much more towards introverted than extroverted. So I totally understand what you're saying. But I think once you realize that these things that you do in your life have a very positive impact, you find a way to make time because Honestly, you have 24 hours in the day you sleep, let's say seven, eight hours, you still have 16 hours. And I see a lot of people saying, hey, I don't have the time for this, this, this. I don't think that's true. I think it's not making the time for it. And I feel like that's what you got to do, which is just make the time for it. And, you know, people watch what, two, three, four hours of Netflix every day. Take out half an hour of that or one hour of that and meditate and go to the gym. So I think it's a lot easier than people think it is. You just gotta know that it's in your control.

Just a quick follow up. Thanks for that. Actually, I'm an extrovert, so.

So.

Which is when I. So for example, I went to work out with a friend the other day and I had a friend who was just dropping by the park and just that interaction alone completely threw me off because I'm naturally, you know, sociable and like to respond to people. And that's where my worry comes.

It's like.

Because I feel like the external obligations really pull me, and so that's why I'm worried. But I suppose I'll have to figure out a way to center myself despite external circumstances.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Great.

Thank you so much. Thanks for the conversation.

Thank you. Thanks.

Kevin. Keeping tabs on time. How much time do you have? Do you have time?

You've got another. Yeah. Another five, seven minutes. Yeah.

Okay, great. So we'll go through these questions as quickly as possible and then close it out. Manveer, welcome. Got a question for.

Thank you.

Pankaj. It's pouring out here in, you know, San Francisco, so it's good to join a hike virtually. Kevin. I mean, honestly, dude, I think following you in Twitter, it's a different personality and being kind of being able to hear you out on Clubhouse, you know, it's a totally different personality, to be honest. And this side is definitely better. You know, it's more. It's more kind of understanding how you.

Are and the thought process.

I think it's great, Kevin. So thank you for first of all kind of doing this. And Pankaj, thanks for. Thanks for hosting this. So, Kevin, I think, I mean, I'm also an ambivert. When you say introvert and extrovert, I'm also kind of. I. I define it and we would.

But.

But one thing that I had to ask you, you know, the thought that you said that you have to be spiritual in what you're Doing, you have to have that spiritual mindset because you're born in India, you've got so much of depth of, you know, cultures, religions. You have to take something out of it and put it at work. I'm not saying it has to be driven around spirituality, but you should have that kind of thought process in whatever you're doing. With that said, when I speak to folks back in India and I tell them that, yes, you know, you have to explore yourself. And the way I was able to explore myself is by, you know, let's say, living a year in Singapore, living two years in China, and then back here in San Francisco. I think that's where I got to know who I was. But when I relate these things back to folks in India, they do not agree that, yes, this is. What is the true definition of just kind of moving out and being alone, doing your own stuff, learning more about yourself. But given you echo the same thoughts, how do you handle a conversation when you're speaking to your friends or somebody, like on this chat, and people kind of come back and say that, no, this is not. This is not relatable. Probably Kevin was fortunate because of his father's background. That's how people come back and tell me that you come from a business background, and maybe you were fortunate to do that. But I don't think the people I have met on the journey, traveling outside, were all fortunate from a business background. They were just of the opinion that, yes, we have to explore ourselves. How do you communicate that gap that people cannot see today to, you know, to relate to what your thought process is?

I think the simple answer is you have to accept that everybody is on their own journey, and everybody is on their own sort of level of evolution, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. And what's right or wrong, by the way, in human society is just relative. You know, what's true is true from one perspective. There are very few absolute truths. So what I'm telling you is what's worked for me. It's very possible it may not work for somebody else. As a matter of fact, I have a twin brother. He's completely the opposite of me, by the way. So, you know, I'm talking about just what I think has worked for me and some of the reasons why. And it may work for some people, and it may not work for some people. The whole idea is to figure out what you want for yourself. And that could be. And that will likely be very different for different people.

Yeah. Hi, Kavan. Thanks a lot for doing this, and I absolutely loved what you spoke about in terms of the discipline that it takes to make a decision, however brutal it may be, my question is around how, as somebody who's built a startup that's pivoted so frequently and thoughtfully, how did you find the circle or community of people that you constantly had conversations with, and how did that evolve over the last eight years?

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it was a mix of conversations. You'll always have the people who are supportive. You're always the people who are skeptical. You'll also the people who are just all kinds of people. And I feel like, you know, the company was in a holding patent for a good 12 to 18 months, and that was frustrating for us. And the key goal was to just have the discipline to keep executing and sort of going on this march that you just fire bullets and you learn and you get to a place where you can start firing some bazookas. And so, you know, I'm a big believer in frameworks. I've got a bit of a sort of mindset, which is you build frameworks and you abide by those frameworks, and let's say something's not working in the framework, you zoom out, change the framework, and then again, abide by the framework. So for us, it was always getting back to growth, getting back to a clear direction, getting back to a fantastic culture. And I think those goals, in my mind, are very clear. And my guess is if you. If you talk to anybody who spoke to me the last 12 to 18 months, obsessively, I would have talked about nothing else. But my question is, as a founder, how do you make the journey fun? What's. What's one advice you would give two founders that how do you make your entrepreneurial journey a fun journey and a memorable one? Work on something you're passionate about, and also don't take life too seriously. And all that stuff becomes easier to do when you realize some of the deep spiritual stuff that I talked about. At the end of the day, life is one big cosmic movie, and then everything becomes a lot easier.

Hi, Colin. I just have a small question in the social space. Like, I'm just wondering, like, you know, the second move advantage that people always talk about. But after Facebook, there is. There's no other social app that is able to bring such a big, you know, user base or something like that. But do you think that. I'm just wondering, like, is this space a bit saturated? Or, like, how can social apps rediscover themselves?

That's a great question. Thanks for asking that. I Think two parts to it, three parts to it. Actually, one is a lot of data shows that pioneers in the space are not the ones end up winning the market. And Facebook also is not the Pioneer, MySpace, Friendster and a bunch of other sort of social networks before them. But Facebook also had to buy Instagram. They also had to buy WhatsApp to sort of stay relevant. And a large part of the company to Facebook is Instagram and WhatsApp. They tried buying Snapchat, couldn't do that, tried cloning them, but still Snapchat today is $100 billion company. Evan's a fantastic founder, someone I look up to quite a lot actually because he's built the sort of Apple of the Internet space. And I really believe quite the contrary. This is the last coin which is social is up for a massive disruption because technology and cultures evolve so much. You know, Facebook was built for the 2G and desktop era. We now have 4G, we have smartphones that can do God knows, so many things. And as a result you have all this technology to solve the world's problems in very different ways. And look at Clubhouse, for example. This is a fantastic innovation by a brand new company that is building a brand new product based on the fact that the adoption of AirPods has been fantastic and this audio culture is building. So technology is moving at such a rapid pace that there's so much room to innovate. And I think the markets have become so big. I think there are 4 billion people online now that even a small niche like 10% is like 400 million people. So the market is big, technology is evolving. I think this is the best time to be building for social.

I have a small follow up. Can I.

Sure.

So there's one more thing that I, I kind of found myself that, you know, there's been previous attempts that a small number of us did to, to build products, but at one point we didn't have the conviction to move forward when it came up to scaling, so on and so forth. I often find that, that, that conviction is missing based on, you know, the place where we come from, blah, blah, blah. So I'm just wondering like, how do, how do we gain that confidence to move forward when there is. Because technology, like all these new age people will come with technology today, are far more confident. Right. From people who are a bit more older. So how, how do we put that conviction to march forward? If I don't confuse you, you know.

I actually see that the younger generation, you know, there are pockets of them that I think may Be more confident than sort of the older generation. But I think most of them are far more insecure because they're obsessed with Instagram and Snapchat and looking at people's lives and comparing themselves all day long. So I don't think that's necessarily the case. But my simple point is I have this equation. I'm surprised I didn't talk about it before, but I have this equation that I pinned down. And I show this to the company almost every all hands, which is success, is equal to a cube plus B squared plus C in brackets multiplied by D. And, you know, when I ask people what sort of all these are, they almost always get them wrong. And the abcd, you know, I'll start with D. D is one that does not have a square or a cube. So it's important because it's on the equation, but it's not the most important thing. You know, D is hard work. Hard work is stable stakes. You have to work hard to sort of be successful. B is skill. Someone with more skill can be more successful than someone who works super hard and has less skill. But A, which has the cube on it, is clarity. Someone who has a tremendous amount of clarity can beat someone who has more skill and works harder than them. But none of this matters if you don't have D, which is the courage to pursue your clarity. And courage tends to be 0 or 1. It's a binary. So you just gotta develop the courage to rise above all the things that hold you back and just go chase after your dreams. And I'm telling you, it's just one thing that holds people back. It's not fear of failure, by the way. It's fear of what will other people think if I fail. That's the issue. You get that out of your head, life becomes very easy.

Roman, thank you so much. This was incredible. I wish I had more time, but we're going to do this again. We're going to make this a regular thing. We'll talk offline to do this more often. I think a lot of the stuff that you talked about, the spiritual side, I think that's stuff that we could spend a couple of hours diving into. And I think a lot of people could really benefit from a lot of that as well. So I want to thank you. This was really incredible. Good luck with this, the pivots, and with all of that. And we will talk again soon. Awesome, everyone.

Thanks. Pankush speak.

Thank you, Ken. Take care.