Life After One Of India's Biggest Startup Exits (feat. Phanindra Sama)

Oh my God, a lot of this gyan, a lot of this knowledge that you possess, like it's stuck in your head. You're dropping these gems. I want to get this on air and hopefully it'll help one person who needs to hear some of this stuff. So for folks who are listening or watching this, Fadi was my hero when I was in college. All right. So I was in Hyderabad. I grew up in Hyderabad. Some of you know this. And all I read about in Telugu and what are some of these newspapers was Deccan Chronicle was about this startup called Redbus. And it's one of the first big name popular startups. And before the phrase startup Was a thing, and Funny was the founder and one of the founders and the CEO, and it was a big deal. It gave a lot of the youth of that generation a lot of identity and something to aspire for. So for

three years,

what? Wow!

For for almost three years, and like many VCs rejected us, saying, "Hey, that crash happened," and then I'm in a new world, and all the people who said they would invest invest went silent, and I came very close to the running out of cash because now we have kids and it gets. difficult to go in bus, right? But after we sold Redbus, lifestyle was the same. So before Redbus, I was going by buses. After Redbus also, I was going by buses. So a friend of mine actually said something which really made me even more motivated to pick up these things, because I mean, he said like, how many lives can you fit in in your one life?

So bring us to the early days of Bibb.so. Like, what made you choose that idea? What was the curious part that you were trying to explore?

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Build in Public podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildingpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up

and get ready for our latest episode. Hello everybody. I'm KP and welcome to yet another episode of Building Public Podcast. Today I couldn't be more thrilled, more stoked, and more, I mean, I don't know, I I'm in search of words right now. Insanely excited for today's episode because I have a fantastic guest from my home country, from the great India. We have Funny Indrasama joining us. And the funny thing is, Funny, we're going to talk a lot of this stuff about startups. We're going to talk about Redbus. Some of you may already know you. I know him. But Funny decided to put on a very formal attire for this interview. And I think it's— I'm going to disappoint him with my questions because I can't— I'm not going to do a very formal thing. But welcome to the show, Funny. Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks, KP. Very excited to be with you. And yeah, we've had great chats in the past. So look forward to this.

So the premise of this conversation really came about maybe like a week ago where I shared with Funny that, you know, like, look, man, we— he and I have been going back and forth. We've had lots of like startup conversations, lots of like entrepreneurship, business building conversations. And I was like, oh my God, a lot of this gyan, a lot of this knowledge that you possess, like it's stuck in your head. You're dropping these gems. I want to get this on air and hopefully it'll help one person who needs to hear some of this stuff. Or maybe it could be something fun that we could look back in 3 years and laugh at, like how naive we were. But so that was the premise and he agreed to join us. And so I'm super thrilled. Funny, once again, thank you.

I think, yeah, all those things don't come out when you set this up formally.

Yeah, I know, right?

Informally, when we're chatting, it comes out.

Exactly. You just loosen up. But see, look, I think you have such a great knack of speaking your mind, you know, for better or for worse. I think very similar to me. And then I think you're so good at— I mean, one thing I've enjoyed, which I want to share with the audience here, is that one thing you've had more than a decade of experience in the startup world, and you've probably seen like a lot of variations of the ideas and the frameworks and so many like personal experiences that you tried, trial and error, failed, succeeded. And so to me, the way I think about you is like Yoda, a wise but young advisor. And so I think you have a lot to share to the world and really appreciate you joining. So let's kick it off with the topic I'm sure you're tired of talking about, or maybe not, the rise of Redbus, right? A lot of people know you for probably the most iconic startup out of, I don't know, in the first era in startups in India. I was in college. So for folks who are listening or watching this, Funny was my hero when I was in college. All right. So I was in Hyderabad. I grew up in Hyderabad. Some of you know this. And all I read about E Nadu and Telugu and what are some of these newspapers was or Deccan Chronicle was about this startup called Redbus. And it's one of the first big name popular startups. And before the phrase startups was a thing and Funny was the founder and one of the founders and the CEO, and it was a big deal. It gave a lot of the youth of that generation a lot of identity and something to aspire for. So, you know, getting to do this with Funny and getting to like become friends with Funny is like dream come true. It's like, I can't believe it. But the moment I spoke to you, Funny, like one thing I loved Was you're so unassuming and you're so humble. And I mean, well, let's start with that. And I have another question about Redbus. Talk to me about why are you the way you are? Why are you so unassuming? Why are you humble? I think there's something deeper. I feel like the way you carry yourself.

I don't actually— nobody asked me this question, but one thing is I think being simple is a choice for me because, I mean, like, I come from a humble background. My father was a farmer. Right? And we lived in a village and all that. So like, I never had all these habits of driving like a fast car and all those things. So when I made money, I told myself that all this while I didn't have that habit. So why should I make it a habit now? Particularly because it gives me strength, right? I mean, my fear is if I make a habit of all those other things, right, then I'll have to keep working for that. Right. Right. But the money that I made, if I continue living a simple life, I have a lot of freedom. I can do like I have earned my living for the life, right? And then after that, like, you have many degrees of freedom to do several things. Like, after RedBus, I worked for the government. I did several things with like no intention of making money, and my family was fine. So I think— I don't know the humility, but living simple is a choice that I made, and my wife was happy with it. So we— right, the only person I had to convince was my wife. So she's fine, and it gives a lot of joy.

I love that. I love that. So the early days of Redbus, right? What was, I mean, what was special about building a startup back then, that era when you first started?

I think, or the other way I can answer that is what is the difference now that you're building again? What is the difference between then and now? For me, from the entrepreneur perspective, right? I think what is special then was the ignorance. Like, right. I mean, I didn't know like, what is the TAM? What is the business model? How much should How do I raise capital? What is dilution? Nothing. Right. In fact, we didn't start it like a business. Right. We— all that we had was— I never thought we'd start like an internet business. Right. I was very passionate about electronics and I was working for Texas Instruments. I was a chip designer. Right. And the life was set. I mean, I was very happy doing what I was doing. And then I happened to miss a bus. Right. Right. But then being curious, like, figured out why I missed the bus, why did it happen, like, etc. And then when I saw the problem, the solution was apparent. Then I said, hey, let's solve this problem. And we actually started off doing as an open source software. We never thought of business during that time. I mean, open source was a big thing. I'm talking about 2005, like the coolest thing that a college grad could do is uninstall Windows and install Linux. Right.

Linux.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. So I said, wow, let's just create the solution for the sake that the solution should exist without expecting anything out of it. And then we started writing that software, creating solutions. One thing led to another. We became a business. I mean, we went to TIE, the Indus Entrepreneurs Bangalore chapter, and we got mentors. And the mentors, as I mean, the mentors advised us that this could be a business. And immediately after that, like we got inbound interest for VC investments and one thing led to another and we became a business. But at that point in time, I think what was great was the ignorance. Hmm. Right. If we were not ignorant, we would not have done that business because there were many, many things against that business. Right. Right. I mean, like when we started Redbus, there was already MakeMyTrip, which was selling airline tickets in India.

Right.

And that was not profitable. MakeMyTrip was not profitable. So many investors who have invested there because they look at travel. So when we were doing, they were looking at us. Right. And their thing is like airline ticket was about ₹5,000. A bus ticket is about ₹500. Right. They said when we are selling a ₹5,000 ticket, And making about, let's say, ₹500, let's say 10%. We're still not able to make profits. How will you sell a ₹500 ticket and make ₹50 and be profitable? Right. It's like it's not going to work. It is just not viable business.

Right.

Don't even pursue this. And then on the other side, people are saying, hey, how many people who travel by bus have internet access, have credit card access? The TAM. That they will buy on the internet. Right. The TAM. Right. So almost everything was against us. We went to the bus operators. During that time, there was just no internet other than offices. There was no internet at home.

It was all cyber cafes or inner, uh, at work, at business. Yeah,

correct. I'm talking about pre-iPhone, pre-Facebook, right? Pre-YouTube. YouTube was just ever started, right? It had not come to India, right? At that era, right? So it was a very, very different era, but for us What really, what we really, really wanted to do was solve that problem, right? When people said, hey, it's not going to be profitable, we took on ourselves that, hey, all that we want to make sure is this solution exists. So we figured out a solution around that. We said, hey, we'll have offices with no AC. We will work out of some other place. Like we will have team members who are like very low. Like we paid the first few engineers, we paid only $100, less than $100, ₹5,000. Wow. Maybe it was, yeah. It was $100 given the— I mean, engineers coming at that per month and we cut down everything to just make the solution possible. And then the solution became possible. The interesting thing about internet businesses is it's a winner take it all.

Yep.

Right. True. And after a particular point in time, right, every ticket you sell directly goes to your bottom line, right? Because you would have covered all your expenses. Right. And then it just— every additional ticket you sell, it's almost going into your bottom line.

At scale, right? Like you're not even— it's compounding help.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So the ignorance and the naivety of like, okay, you know, not knowing all these traps that you will have to overcome. But I feel like there was a sense of what I'm sensing from your story is that there was a sense of sheer determination that this needs to exist. Right. And that seems to me like that's the biggest, that's the biggest driving factor for any business. Even now, if you can get to that conviction of saying this needs to exist and I will figure everything else out. We'll work out the math, work out the spreadsheets, work out the TAM, work out all the other answers. I think that's how you win.

Yeah. I can't agree more on that.

What is different now in your current

era? What's different now is going through that cycle right now. Everything needs to be affordable. Like, hey, how big is the TAM? And what's your business model? Where will you make money? How will you make money? How much will you dilute? When will you raise capital? Everything is like, you have to, like, I'm having to think through before doing things. I wish I was as ignorant. Just get in and do it. Right. The only thing I need to, I think the only thing every entrepreneur needs to cover is don't take such a big risk that it will hurt your livelihood. Like, I mean, finances or reputation or emotionally. Right. This thing, right? There's a threshold below which you don't go and all these things, right? That's the only thing that one needs to take care. Above that, I think you can just do whatever thing that— I wish I were ignorant about that. I'm ignorant about everything. That's the thing that I wish now.

So there was another point that I heard that impressed me in one of your interviews was the conversation you had with your first customer for Redbus. I want you to kind of retell that story? Like, what— I mean, if you can remember, like, what was— do you remember, like, what was it like to get that first customer, and what did it teach you about business?

Okay, about the bus operator? Yes. So yeah, to get the bus operators, so we went— I mean, there are several things. So one thing is we kept— okay, so the problem statement was bus tickets were not available on internet, and we had to make them available, right? But before that, the problem is like bus operators were not computerized. Yes. Only if they are using software and computerized, we can publish their inventory on internet and people could come and buy tickets. Right. So anybody who is like logically trying to solve this problem, they will actually first probably create software for bus operators and get them to use that as a, as their ERP and get access to that inventory and put that inventory on internet. Right. That's the logical thing, right? So first you create that software. So we also did the same thing. So we created that software, we went to the bus operators, started asking them to use the software. So that we can also sell on internet later. So we went there and we started pitching to them. Like we went to 40 of them and started talking to them and etc. They were not interested. They would say that, hey, this is not going to happen. And incidentally, we started in 2005. Incidentally, in 2000, when the Y2K thing was happening, right, somebody tried selling bus tickets on internet. Wow. Same thing. And the bus operators are like, hey, somebody tried it and it failed. Why are you coming and doing it? Like there's an operator who showed me a customer who came to his office and he was showing it to him. Do you think this guy will buy on internet? Why are you wasting your time? Like people who go in bus, they won't buy on internet. Right. So we had a lot of resistance for people to use their software, use our software and et cetera. But we persisted. We went to 40 of them because the software was already created. So there's there's no downside. So we just had to go and keep giving it.

Right.

At last, one operator agreed because his son was just coming into the business and his son was like educated and he wanted to try something new. So he agreed, but then he was also not like taking software, right? Like he said next month and the next one, 2 months passed by, nothing happened. Then we were really stuck. We didn't know what to do then. So then our advisors told us that, hey, They will not take your software. If they're not really taking your software, go and ask what they really want. Right. At that point in time, I really thank the decision that we took. I mean, thank our good fortune. So at that point in time, like we could have said, hey, you can sit in a good AC office and say that, oh, go and ask them what they really want. I mean, that is what we've been doing for the last so many months. We're going to them and asking them and they're saying they don't want software. They don't want internet. Internet won't work. So what else can we go and ask them? What do they want? Right. Right. But that day something happened and said, anyway, okay, fine. Let's give it a try. I mean, they're saying, go ahead. So we went to the bus operator and asked them, okay, you don't want software. You don't want internet. You don't want any of this, but what is that that you really need for your business? They said, we don't want anything. You, more customers come, we can run more buses. Right. They just said that casually, like, hey, we just need more customers.

They just want more revenue, more customers.

Yeah. Yeah. More, more passengers, more passengers. That's it. We don't need anything. We don't need anything, right? Then we caught that thing and went back and started thinking, hey, they just want customers. They don't need software. They don't want anything, right? Then it stuck to us that, hey, how do we deliver just that what he wants? And for that, that meant that just launch the consumer-facing website, drop this ERP for bus operators, and start selling there. And getting— somehow bringing them traffic, bringing them customers.

Yeah.

Customers, somehow get them in. But that was an impossible thing. Like on internet, they'll come, you have to show them what is available, they'll just book and then they'll go.

Right.

Unlike a shop, right? If I'm an agent shop, they'll come to my shop. When they come and sit in front of me, I can ask them what they want. I can engage them, call the bus operator, ask him if he has seats, and then sell that seat to the customer.

Right.

Right. But on internet, I'm not talking to them. Right. They just come and they self-serve and go. So how do you solve that problem? But that was very interesting because then we said, hey, like, I think this is a very useful thing. Like, you break down into a smaller problem and just go with that problem. We said, hey, our problem right now is how do I sell tickets on internet when I don't have the availability of the tickets, right? I mean, it's not integrated into bus operator. Right. I don't have the live availability. When we define the problem like that, then we started thinking, ideating, and etc., and we came up with this thing. I don't know if you have used Redbus in the early days. So Redbus in the early days, right, it would not have a book button against the buses, right? It would have a list of buses. So all the information that is static— what is static? That it is an AC bus that goes from Bangalore to, let's say, Chennai every day at 7 PM, and this is the price. So all this information about bus is static, right? The only thing variable is whether seats are available, right? That static information itself was also very valuable because that information was not available anywhere. Yeah. Like how many buses are going from Bangalore to Chennai? evening was nobody knew, right? So we took that static information, published on our site, said, hey, these are the buses, this is the price, this is the type of the bus, and this, right? I mean, these are the boarding points. And that itself was valuable. So people were coming here just to see the schedules of buses. And over there we put a request button, not a book button. Not a book button. It was a request button. So if they liked a particular schedule, they will click on that request button, leave their phone number, and say, I need 5 seats Then as soon as we get that, we call the bus operator, find out. And then— So you were doing the Wizard of Oz.

You were like basically doing the, you know, man in the loop kind of situation, right?

For 3 years.

What? Wow.

For almost 3 years. And like many VCs rejected us saying, hey, this is so manual.

Yeah, this can't scale.

Can't scale and et cetera and all that.

But this is such a classic example for doing things that don't scale.

Absolutely. I think automation and all those things will come. The most difficult thing in any business is getting the customer, right? If you have the customers, then all this is easy to set, right? Once we started getting customers, right, we could easily go to the bus operator and say, hey, now you use my software if you don't want me to keep calling you, right? Right. And then he would say, by then the trust is set. You build up the trust, right? He knows that you're getting him and you're giving him business. Yeah. Yeah. he'll use— he has a reason to start like using, familiarizing himself with some new technology. And on the customer side also, it becomes more convenient if it is live thing. Right. So for 3 years we ran like that. And after that, it just took off.

Right.

I mean, yeah.

It's a fascinating story. So one part that I wanted to address about that era, I'm sure fundraising must've been different back then. You know, compared to now what you're seeing today in Bangalore right now where you are. What was it like to go fundraise in that era? And who was your first check, if you remember that? Or what was that journey like for you fundraising?

Yeah. So for us, it was a little different because actually I never went and raised capital. Always it was inbound. It was inbound. Always it was inbound. Maybe in the second round, it was a little difficult because we raised Just after the 2008 crash.

Oh yeah. Financial downturn.

Yeah. Correct. And that, that is also a very fascinating story. Until then, we got so much inbound. I was very confident that, hey, we could raise any time we want to raise.

Right.

Because there was so much interest from investors. And one day I just woke up and all of a sudden, like the 2008 crash happened just like that, like all of a sudden. Right. And that crash happened. And then I'm in a new world. And all the people who said they would invest, invest went silent. And I came very close to running out of cash. Wow. Yeah. So that's when I spoke to Kanwal Reki again, at a Thai event. Kanwal Reki, one of the Silicon Valley investors. Right. I spoke to him and he was convinced in that just one meeting and they wrote a check. And then from there we went forward. Wow. But after that, it has always been inbound. Yeah. I think it's also because our business was doing well. Yeah. And you were, I mean, I think

I think you were like a media darling too, right? The Redbus was like, people were writing about it all the time and you were always in media.

So I think especially the first round when you said that there was a lot of inbound, what made you choose one investor versus the others? Like you chose someone eventually. Like what was appealing about them that you made that, okay, that was, it's a good fit.

Yes, actually it was advice from my advisors. So I got these advisors from Tide. I went and pitched in a TIE event and they gave us advices. So I took their help and that was advice. So at that point in time, the 3 inbound that came to me, actually, once they selected us in TIE, they wrote about us in their newsletter saying, hey, these are the 3 companies that we selected for mentoring. And once that newsletter went, immediately that day or the next day, I got calls from 3 investors. One is called Seed Fund. The fund is called Seed Fund. The other one is called Sequoia. Wow. And yeah, Sequoia was just, I think, setting up in India at that point in time, or maybe something like that. And then the third one was Yahoo and Canon partners were doing something in India together. So it was like a Yahoo joint venture, maybe Yahoo's, right? Yeah, Yahoo's investment arm or something like that. Right. So, and there were only these VCs, there were not many VCs. In fact, all through Redbus, all the 3 rounds that I raised from the funds, first Fund, like every fund's first fund. So as we were growing, the ecosystem was also growing. Yeah, wow. Right, every fund, like a first-time VC, was investing in our company.

Wow.

But then when I had these things, one of my advisors advised me saying, hey, Sequoia is a large fund and you are like very early. Like I was just out of college then, right? Uh, right. He maybe thought that I'm not ready for a large institutional fund. Huh. Take it from a small fund who will give you little money but give you a lot of time because you need that time. You need their time to like mentor you to do this thing and etc. So I didn't even speak to the other people. I just went with Seedfund and Race Capital. So that was how the first round was. But talking about the media darling, right, I think we had a big advantage over there because we were one of the very few startups And that to consumer internet startup, right? There could be a B2B startup, but the regular media doesn't have much to write about. But once it touches consumer, like, uh, media has a lot to write about. And we got a big advantage because being like one of the early— it's a novel concept, right? Fresh out of college, coming out and starting a company, and that to internet company, and etc. and all. So we got a huge हुज़ एडवांटेज ऑफ़ दैट, फ्रॉम कंज्यूमर परस्पेक्टिव आल्सो, राइट? इफ़ आई एम सेइंग आई एम ग्रेट, दे डोंट केयर. बट इफ़ वॉल स्ट्रीट जर्नल इस सेइंग हे हीज़ ग्रेट, राइट? दैट्स अ हुज़ क्रेडिबिलिटी. क्रेडिबिलिटी. या.

राइट?

शुरू. या. या. सो.

दैट. आई मीन दैट्स व्हाई आई थ You know, I think the— like, you were such a— like I said, like, you were such an aspirational figure. You became one. And I think, you know, I don't know how much you were intentional about it, or were you like thoughtful about it, but you were just— it was easy for the public to root for you.

And hence it was easy for the public to root for Redbus because it felt like a new startup taking— bringing us into the new era of internet, right? Internet consumer era, which I think India was just waking up to that era. And, you know, you were such a great guide to guide us into that era. And you were like, well, even now you're like that, you know. So it's such an easy thing to root for. And I appreciate your authenticity.

And I think one thing that everybody like growing up, like business was like, you had to be born into business, you know, you had to be a Tata, you had to be a Birla, you had to be— so to realize that a common man, like an ordinary person like you on TV, could give an interview and like say, hey, we're building this cool thing, it felt cool. but achievable. That's what I loved about your story. It felt so cool that you were doing something new that, you know, like these, uh, moguls couldn't touch because it's so new that they wouldn't touch it. It's so risky. But you were ordinary in the sense that you were relatable, you know, to everybody, you know. That's why, like, I think it was a special moment. So take us to your life after Redbus acquisition. I know, I mean, you covered this in so many interviews about the acquisition and like how it required— so I'm not going to touch on that. But let's just say Suddenly one day you wake up and you realize Ibigo Group or one of the groups, I mean, they basically bought Redbus and you're done. I mean, not done, but like, it's no longer you. You're no longer there. It's no longer your baby anymore. What was life like from there? And what did you do? Did you go on vacation? What did you do?

Yeah, of course I went on a vacation. I took my mom and family on an international trip, which is great. I mean, being in India, like, especially our parents' generation, right? And they have this thing about London. because my mom was born in the 1940s, so she had some overlap with kind of the British era, right? So I think taking her there was a great, great thing for me, right? And also having the time to go on a 10-day vacation, just spend with her, and etc. So that was fantastic. But otherwise, just after selling, I mean, the first— the thing in my mind was I wanted to take a, uh, like a learning break. What I mean by that is I wanted to do things things that I won't get a chance to do, right, again later in my life. So I wanted to expose myself to different experiences, different things. So I went to Stanford and did a course. I went to UK and did a course in finance. And these courses also, I chose something that I probably won't study. Like, I did theater, I did psychology, I did economics, I did finance, I did sustainability in Sweden, a course on sustainability and all that. So I went back to school, I set up a foundation Along with another board member of Red Bus, which is not-for-profit organization, which is now about 300 people full-time staff. Right. Then I worked for the government. I got this Kakatiya Sandbox, correct? Yeah, it's yeah, that's Kakatiya Sandbox in my hometown in Islamabad. Yes. And then yeah, yeah.

How did it feel like going back to your hometown? Like did anybody recognize you from TV or like just like overall did they know what you did? Like how big of an achievement that was to sell a company and like, you know, go from zero.

Within the family and friends, I mean, they would all know. I mean, neighbors and everybody would know, right? So that, I mean, that is expected, that is there. But I think if you take it like casually, then they would reciprocate it casually, right? Which I think I managed to do because it really didn't change anything in our life. I mean, I still want to maintain the regular life. So for many years, actually, we went in bus. Like until recently now, because now we have kids and it gets difficult to go in bus. Right. But after we sold Redbus, lifestyle was the same. So before Redbus, I was going by buses. After Redbus also, I was going by buses, no aeroplane and all that and all. So life remained the same. I mean, they probably didn't see much of a difference. So you took this learning break for how many years?

Was it 2, 3 years?

No, no. I wanted to take a 5-year break. Right. Yeah. So I took a 5, 6-year break. Yeah. About 5-year break.

Right.

Yeah. I worked for the government, which is, which is again, very good. I became a government officer. So actually a friend of mine, I mean, when I had this opportunity, this thing, a friend of mine actually said something which really made me even more motivated to pick up these things. Because I mean, he said like, how many lives can you fit in, in your one life? I mean, in your life, how many lives can you fit in, in your life? Right. And that was like, oh wow. I like, what he meant was you lived a life of an entrepreneur. Like how many more lives can you live? Right. Right. Can you live a life of a not-for-profit or impact entrepreneur? Can you live a life of a government servant?

Right.

All these are very, very different perspectives. How many lives can you live in your life? And that was, that made a big, big impact on me. And I said, wow, like once you have financial freedom, just go for these. So that's how I spent all my— I did a bit of angel investing and all that.

Right.

And so after all these things and you know, different experiments, you finally got back to the highway of entrepreneurship, right? Recently. So tell us about that. Like, tell us about what that idea brought you back. And I know you're currently working on Build in Public, right? bip.so. So we'll talk about that. But yeah, tell us the path that got you bip.so.

Yeah. So basically, in these, all these experiences, I was thinking, hey, whatever consumes me is what I'll do. If being a government servant consumes me, I'll do that. Being a student consumes me, I'll do that. Being an investor consumes me, I'll do that. Any one of these things, right? But having gone through all that, like, I felt like what was more exciting to me was building something. The joy of bringing something new to the world.

Right.

Right. The joy of crafting it, right, through the different paths or putting in creativity into it, whether it is go-to-market, whether it is product, whether it is organizing your company, the freedom to select who you work with, right? The smartest, the amazing people that you can work with. Right. So all these things were like very, very— I was kind of craving for that. And I said, hey, more than anything else, like building a company again is probably what will be more joyful to me. So that's how I kind of chose the path of, hey, I want to build something. So I mostly also driven by I think bringing something new to the world, right? I think that was the big, big drive that I had, right? Let's further the, like, possibilities, or what new can we bring which will further the human race?

So bring us to the early days of Bibb.so. Like, what made you choose that idea? What was the curious part that you were trying to explore?

Okay, so while building Redbus or even all these other things, like, uh, one of the things that I realized is our network is very powerful. everybody's network, right? And when we are solving a problem while building something, if we just ask somebody in our network, we'll leapfrog forward. Right. Like, for example, many of the things that we are doing are not being done for the first time. Like, let's say you want to get a load balancer for your servers. It's like it's, it's been done earlier by somebody, but if you have to do it, you have to go read about it, figure out, and then first of all figure out which one should you go, like what technology to use and etc. And after that, that, you try implementing it. All that is like a few weeks actively or passively doing it. But in your network, in your contact book, there are people who have done it and they can just come in and do it in like maybe an hour or so. Right. So that will leapfrog you. Like it will accelerate your journey of building something. And that happens in so many places. Like for example, if I have to launch on Product Hunt, it's only one chance, right? You get to launch on one. At least the first time you go read up about it, and then you get prepared and you do a mistake, then it's gone. Right. But in your network, there's somebody who's already launched. You just go there and they'll tell you. They would have—

I'm smiling because I, you know, I could be that resource. And I'm always talking to founders and I'm like, guys, I want to help. Use me. And I was, you know, last year I had 4 Product Hunt launches that were number 1 of the year, number 1 of the week.

Wow.

Multiple of them were number 1 of the week. And last year, 2021's Product of the Year was Softr, which I launched. And so like, to your point, like there are so many people in my network who I'm— sometimes I actually want to help and hunt them because also as a product enthusiast, I want to keep my streak alive. So it's in my own interest to kind of like keep my streak alive and keep hunting new things to bring to the world. And but most people, you're right, they're trying to like, they try to recreate the wheel. Without ever asking or without— by trying to do it themselves first time. So

absolutely, absolutely. So there is a need for people to like reach out to their network and show what they're doing. And interestingly, on the other side, their network is interested in what they're doing, like what, like, right? So it's a two-sided network. Both of them want to get connected, but there was no platform which was making that possible in a seamless way. And the other way of doing it is like, I need to first think of who will help help me, then I have to set up a meeting. I have to spend an hour with them and then explain to them and get that help, which is not scalable. I mean, but it was very, very beneficial. And then it just stayed with me. I mean, I always thought, hey, it'll be great if I can get my network involved in what I'm doing so that I can get timely, proactive. It just stayed with me. And then during COVID I noticed this build in public, right? Right. People were putting a hashtag build in public and building in public. They were opening up. They were talking about all the things that they're doing, the pricing policy, or something else, or A/B tests or things like that, and et cetera. I said, wow, if people are interested in showing what they want, it could actually solve that other thing that I had in my mind that, hey, you can get your network to help you build your product. And it will also bring in efficiency to the human race, overall efficiency, right? Instead of like today, anybody who's building software, last, I mean, a couple of months ago, I was in the US and I met a friend of mine who was working for Oracle Cloud. Right. a big bet. They want to— I think they want to do something like AWS and things like that and all. And he was building a particular thing, so I was just spending time and asking, how are you building, and etc. And he's a very, very senior guy, and he was saying that he's actually taking open-source software and trying to like use it. Like Oracle-like thing, such a high-stage game of cloud compute, they're using open source. Right. So in software, it is more or less taken that nobody builds it ground up. You go there, reuse that knowledge, and build it. So if we enable that for other things other than software, our efficiency of building things will go up. We'll do it much more productively, much more faster, and everybody benefits. The person who is watching this thing getting built will build his or her confidence and conviction and familiarity of building something. Right. Like if I watch you every, like while you're doing podcast, Right. The more familiar I get, the more is my probability of actually starting a podcast myself.

Totally.

Right. When I'm not familiar with it, I'll feel like, oh, okay, I don't know how to start, where to start.

It's like a black box, right? It can feel like, oh my God, it's too intimidating. Yeah.

Yeah. But once it is revealed, right, it inspires many more people to do it because it is all demystified. Right. So I thought there is a win-win-win, right? The person who's watching is winning, the person who's showing is winning, and overall as a society we are, uh, right, we benefit because of the efficiencies and productivity that comes right into the thing. I said, okay, great, uh, so how do we make it as a platform? How do we create a platform which is like built for building, building, right? Right. Then, uh, so that, that was a broad idea, like, hey, is it Is it useful to be there? Yes, it is important and useful to be there. And being a second-time entrepreneur, right? I mean, you have some freedom to do something that is useful and important and not necessarily— Making money day one.

Yeah. Right.

And how do I pay my bills? And it's not like I have to make it work right now because I need to make something. You can attempt to do something that is, that really, I mean, something, something of this sort. And then we thought about, hey, where is that, that what people are building lies, right? And where does it lie? And while thinking through that, we actually figured out that a document is a very, very powerful but a very underrated tool of makers, right? Anything that is made in the world is actually probably first made in a document, right? Like it could be a big business, it could be anything, right? First it is made in a document and only then it is made in the real world. Every It is such a powerful—

Every great feature was once a PRD, right? Or once a company—

Feature, product, concept, countries, policies, the way we live as a society. Everything is actually first created in a document before it is created outside. It is that powerful, but it is so under the thing that we don't even think about that. We said, hey, document is a place where things are made first. We said, hey, if that is a place where things are there, that is a place where collaboration happens, like people can come together and create. How about taking that document and building this whole process of involving your network into it? So that's how it started. I mean, if you're talking about what are the first few ideas and what are the first few days, the first few days was that, right? That we saw this phenomenon of hobbyists doing it. I mean, at that point, you know, I thought it those hobbies, right? But our whole conviction also came from looking at GitHub and open source software, right? 20 years ago when GitHub started, I mean, when open source movement was there, right? It was done by hobbyists. Yeah, like people said, how can you put your code out there? Like that was the era of Microsoft and proprietary software. Everything was like closed. Like you would never put your— yeah, you never put your code out there, right? And why would— the questions were like, because I come from that, like Red Bull Because I was talking about creating an open source, right? At that point in time, people are like, why would somebody come and like work on your software? Right? I mean, so those were the questions that were there at that point in time, which I'm seeing now in build in public. Like people say, why would you open up your PRD? Like why would somebody come and actually contribute to your PRD? Things like that. But I think there is, we built our conviction around talking to build in public folks and we have a conviction that it is here to stay. It's not a fad. It is only going to grow bigger and bigger. And there is a precedence in open-source software that open-source software is only getting bigger and bigger as days pass by, and it's not becoming smaller and smaller.

It's going to compound. I mean, just the same thing here too. One thing that was interesting when I spoke to you last time was like how you found in this journey of Bibdot, so how you found a lot of Surprising interest from Web3 and DAOs in this concept. So tell us about that. Like, why do you think Web3 and DAOs are adopting this Bib.so so much more than others?

Yeah. So actually, what is Bib.so? Bib.so is a workspace like Notion. On top of that, we have a layer of Git versioning, which will enable anybody to get the merge request, right?

Sorry.

And et cetera. Like anybody can come and contribute to you and send a pull request. then you can accept or reject. When you accept, their contribution is permanently attributed to them, right? Which they can showcase in public because this project is built in public. So I can go and showcase in my profile that, hey, I contributed these ideas to these projects and et cetera and all that. And on top of the Git layer, there is a network social layer, which means I can follow you, I can follow projects, I can follow topics, and then I'll get in a feed which will make me engaging and I'll discover new ideas and new content and new projects and etc. So there is a workspace with a Git layer, and on top of that there's a social layer. So that is what we built, and we thought we'll go to the Build in Public guys and then show them the product and etc. And while doing that, some people pointed us to saying, hey, did you know about DAOs? That's the first time we heard, what is this DAO? Right. Then we Googled about it, and then we started reaching out to them. For them, this was a perfect match. Because like Web3 projects are built as a community, right? Like they wanted a way for their community members, let's say in Discord, they have like 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 people, and they wanted them to come and give contributions to a PR, to a feature, to a marketing plan, right? To all these things. But the existing tools didn't allow your 6,000 people community to come and edit a document. Right. Like if you use a Google Doc or even a Notion doc, you can't open up edit access to 6,000 and track who's editing what,

right? Like, it's impossible to

track who's editing what by mistake if they're undoing something. And not just that, there were other actually interesting problems there. Like, if you have 6,000 people in your Discord, all of them are actually pseudonymous. They are not with their regular names, right? Of course. So if I have to take their 6,000 people and then give them access to You need the email addresses. I need their email addresses. Yes, absolutely right. And imagine the hassle. Like, first of all, I need to go and ask that pseudonymous person to identify themselves by giving me—

They don't want— that's the whole point of pseudo, right? Like, I mean, they don't want to dox themselves.

Absolutely, absolutely. And the second thing is, imagine the hassle of managing that, right? I get an email ID, like I asked 6,000 people, some of them will give now, some of them Will give me 30 days later. Take those things, manage them in an Excel sheet, and then map them. Some of them are contributing to marketing, some of them are contributing to, let's say, product, some of them are contributing to something else. They're in different guilds. Now I need to map that this email ID is this pseudonymous person and that person is in marketing, or this email ID is in this thing and this thing. Like, I think— A nightmare.

Yeah, it is.

Nightmare, right? So with this, Bip, you integrate your Discord server, immediately all of those roles and users are synced onto Bip. And then now you can do access management just by roles. You can say whoever has marketing role will have edit access to these canvases. Within the marketing, people who are at level 3 will get edit, level 2 will get comment, level 1 will read. And after they get edit access, like, they can come and seamlessly edit it, and you don't have to worry that your original document is getting like Yeah, right. Right. Because there is a Git moderation flow. And if they use a Google Doc or a Notion doc, there is no attribution to their contribution. Like people have this, right, on BIP, because it's attributed, they have intrinsic reason to come and contribute. So there are all these small things, small things which are in their workflow, which make it a perfect fit, which There is a need for a new product beyond this because these tools are all made for teams, right? You are, you have a permanent staff and it's made for them. Whereas our tool is made for community. I think fundamentally from bottom up, everything is different. Like the tool features are different. Yeah.

I think that's what I loved about it when I first saw, when you showed me, I was like, this is a very novel take. It's refreshing. Nobody's ever done anything close to this at all. And it right now, it can feel like a toy, like how everything great once felt like a toy, right? At the beginning of something, it always feels like a hobby thing, but that's how new era is always like embarked upon. Now tell me about how the customers are liking it, like the current users are liking, uh, Bip.

Yeah, so these are the features that they like because it just fits into their workflow, the Git workflow and, uh, Discord integration and the social features. Like when we write a big document, You can ask your team member to read that whole PRD, but if you have a community, people who