Adi Patil, founder of Magnifier Marketing, shares lessons from a 16-hour Hawaii hike gone wrong and his approach to building startups. He advocates bootstrapping over venture capital, emphasizes "build relationships, not accounts," and warns that academic rankings don't predict success. His definition of happiness: waking up to pursue your passions while staying responsible.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Adi with us. He is a New York City-based serial entrepreneur who exited his first startup, Magnifier Marketing, right after he finished his education in computer science. So welcome to the show, man.
Thank you, thank you, Tyler.
Of course, man, grateful to have you here. We'll dive right into the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Yeah, well, there's many best stories, but I'm going to tell you a recent one. It taught me a lot about team building. It has nothing to do with business directly, but I was in Hawaii with my co-founder Nico and a close friend Clement, and I'm going to keep it short, but we were on a 16-hour hike doing like 4 summits. We got lost in the forest and it was dark. And we were walking through rivers in the dark and this crater is supposed to be really dangerous apparently, and I found out later. But being lost for 18 hours, I'm still amazed as an afterthought as to how much composure we kept as a team and worked through situations and found our way out of that forest. And there's a lot of details in that story, but I can't get them on the show within the time limit. Yeah, I think it taught me a lot about life and team building and keeping composure when things are not going right. Yes.
Well, dude, you know what? We'll have to do a longer one because I want to hear about that in the future.
Definitely.
Everybody listening right now, there will be a part 2, so hold on to your seats. All right. So next one I have for you, man, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Yeah, well, I mean, I work primarily with marketing, tech, and VC market, getting startups funded. So I think the most valuable expertise is first, a lot of people are getting into this market without analyzing things properly. So I think the most valuable expertise is doing your research first, you know, analyzing what type of company you are, what type of person you are, and how much you can handle. And there are many routes to doing a business without loans, without the VC around and, you know, just bootstrapping. So I think analysis is a very important business today due to competition. So I think, I think my advice would be to like focus on analysis.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
Overall, I always have one mantra and I've been following that. And I recently gave the same piece of advice in another article that was published on us as well. I think the trick in business, to keep it short, is to just build relationships, not accounts. And I think that gives you a long-term business for yourself and your team. Yes.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
I think when I was younger, I was pretty naive and I used to underestimate myself a lot, you know, because I was never like the top performer in class or You know, I was never someone who like came first in college or first in school. And because of that, I underestimated myself a lot. But I think I would like— I would definitely like to tell myself not to do that because I think the world is huge and the definition of learning is changing every day. So if there's any students out there that are like not doing that well in college, it doesn't mean anything. You know, the real life starts after college. Sure.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness? And I just want to say I could not agree more with what you just said.
Thanks so much, Iker. Key to happiness, I think I've recently learned, is the definition of success. I think every person has their own definition of success, but what's worked for me, for me, my definition of success is like waking up every single day and doing whatever I want, you know? And work is included because I'm passionate about work. So of course that's there and I take care of my responsibilities. But I think to be able to wake up and say that, okay, I wanna play tennis first today, and then go about other things. I think living life that way, I think itself is a successful life. So I don't think money or fame is equal to success in regards to that, if you have that.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So the best book I read, again, is not business related. It's a war novel called Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I don't know if you know, it's the book that pretty much came up with the phrase Catch-22, you know?
Oh, okay.
And I think the number one thing I learned from it is definitely dealing with Catch-22 situations because I think life is all about them. There's always a reaction to an action, you know? And even before that, a lot of decisions are difficult because just thinking of like reactions and stuff like that. So I think there's a lot of Catch-22 situations in life. And I think once you know how to deal with them, life becomes easier.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
I think my favorite quote is probably Abe Lincoln, you know, and he— I think it goes like, in the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years, you know. And I think that means a lot to me.
Yeah, man, I love that. Thank you so much for coming on. The last one I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?
I mean, in today's day and age, if you cannot find someone online by the name, you're in a tough spot. So just look up, look for my name, Adi Patil. And if you want to email me directly, it's adi@startitupnyc.com. Again, it's adi@startitupnyc.com. Perfect, brother.
Thanks again for joining us.
Thank you so much, Tyler Wagner.
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