In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Swish Goswami, the 21‑year‑old CEO of Trufan and TED speaker. The conversation begins with sponsor mentions (Anchor and Authors Unite) before diving into Swish’s formative experiences: building and selling a hovercraft at age seven, and moving from the University of Toronto to New York to work with a venture‑capital‑backed basketball player. Swish shares his expertise on personal branding via LinkedIn, insights from three years of tech entrepreneurship, and his core business mantra of “fail fast.” He offers advice to his younger self about easing self‑imposed pressure, discusses his view of happiness as rooted in community and meaningful work (rejecting the work‑life balance myth), and reflects on his favorite book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F—, highlighting the lesson of avoiding harmful comparisons. Swish also cites Kobe Bryant’s quote about chasing perfection as a guiding philosophy across business and personal life. The episode concludes with his preferred online contact points—Instagram @goswish and LinkedIn under the name Manu Goswami.
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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 provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Swish Goswami with us. He is the CEO of Trufan and a TED Speaker, welcome to the show, brother.
Thanks for having me, man. Really appreciate it.
Of course, grateful to have you here. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Swish, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Absolutely. So I think it's two things. I'm sorry to be that type of person, but—
No, all good, dude.
I was 7 years old when I started my first operation, per se. I created a hovercraft when I was 7 with my father. And that was actually my first stab at tinkering and building something from scratch and even selling a product because we built the hovercraft out of the rechargeable remote control hovercraft and I sold it for $200 to one of my schoolmates. And that was just one of the biggest things for me because it really, really kicked in motion the idea that I could be financially independent at a very young age. So me being 21 now, I think the second story with me moving to New York last year by myself I came out of second year of university at the University of Toronto, got an incredible opportunity to work with a basketball player on a venture capital firm, and I decided to just take a leap of faith and move to New York, not knowing too many people there, and just seeing what comes of it. And in my opinion, it was the best decision I've ever made in my life so far.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Definitely, I think there's two things. I think one is personal branding on LinkedIn. I have quite a sizable LinkedIn community. And I really pride myself on being an early adopter of the platform and really being able to communicate all my thoughts and my ideas through that channel. And then the second is on tech entrepreneurship. You know, I've been in tech entrepreneurship now for about 3 years, and I've seen a lot of companies both as an investor and as an entrepreneur. So I've been able to really, really build up a good mental file of what works and what doesn't.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily necessarily industry-specific.
Yeah, I think A, it's definitely just to make sure as much as possible that you're failing fast. I think especially when you're building up a product, it's very easy to think, oh, I need everything to be perfect, I need to plan out all my steps. But honestly, if you plan too much, you're either gonna jinx yourself out of the idea, or that window of opportunity that you identified when you first started on the idea will go away. So as much as possible, move quickly, fail fast, and just keep learning from your mistakes as you grow.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Yes, I mean, I'm 21, so like, you know, I'm going to be talking to like a 14-year-old kid here, but I think the big thing really, just don't sweat too much in the sense of, you know, when I was younger, I was sweating all the small stuff. I was like putting enormous pressure on myself to be like a Mark Zuckerberg or something like that. And I think a lot of kids do that, especially in entrepreneurship, like a lot of the students that I know they're all like, oh, I gotta be a millionaire when I'm 21 or when I'm 22 or whatever. And you just shouldn't put that pressure on yourself. It clouds your vision, doesn't allow you to work properly, and it just makes you like egotistical. I agree.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
I think it's two things. I mean, one is definitely is your community that you put around you, your family, with your friends. And honestly, these days, even be an online community that you're very much a part of, like LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. And I think the second is work, you know, is finding— I hate when people say work-life balance because I honestly don't believe in that. It doesn't mean that I work always. It just means that I think work is such an important part of life that we shouldn't separate it from it. I think if you find something meaningful to do and make that your work, that can literally lead to having an incredible life. So I think the two kind of go hand in hand.
And what is the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Yeah, so I just recently finished it, which was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. I don't know if I can swear on your podcast, but Mark Manson. And I thought there were a number of really, really cool stories in that. And I think one in particular was the story about Megadeth and how Megadeth basically came from an offshoot of another rock band, which was Metallica, and Metallica obviously went on to sell so many more albums than Megadeth, but the person who started Megadeth eventually had a lot of depression, and now he's fine, but he went through a lot of depression because even though he sold about 5 million albums in total, Metallica, the band that he was kicked out of, sold about 26. And so it told me a big lesson about not really caring too much about comparing yourself to other people, especially comparing your chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
So I have a number of quotes that I like, but I think the most simple is definitely by Kobe Bryant. And he had a quote a long time ago, which was, "What I'm chasing now, I'm chasing perfection." And the reason why I think it is, for me, Kobe Bryant, I mean, it doesn't matter what you think of him as a person. I think as a basketball player, first and foremost, he's one of the most competitive athletes in the world. And his mentality of just improving every single day and not letting his competition even breathe It's something that I want to be able to put into every part of my life. You know, I want to be able to make sure that I do that in business, in my passion projects, in my advisory roles, in my personal life, etc.
I love it, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Definitely. So Instagram and LinkedIn for sure. Instagram would be @goswish, G-O-S-W-I-S-H. And then LinkedIn, of course, Manu Goswami, M-A-N-U G-O-S-W-A-M-I. Just shoot me a note, let me know what you'd like to connect about. Sometimes it takes me a little while to get back to people, but eventually I will if you're persistent. And I'd love to be able to get on a 5-minute call with anybody to chat about what they want to do.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for joining us. Really appreciate it.
