What does it take to build a billion dollar company? with Somi Arian

Summary

In this video, Somi Arian shares what it takes to build a billion-dollar company. Learn about scalability, agencies, and more! If you're wondering how to make your business successful, this video is a must-watch!

Takeaways

1. When starting a business, think about what people want and how you can provide it to them in a more efficient way than your competitors.
2. Building a personal brand on LinkedIn involves creating valuable content, listening to what resonates with your audience, and associating with industry experts.
3. Even with limited resources, it is possible to build a good enough personal brand by taking risks, being consistent, and focusing on content creation.
4. The choice between running a bootstrapped company or a venture-backed unicorn depends on personal preferences and the stage of life one is in.
5. Investors should consider the potential of female founders and not let biases or polished pitches overshadow their potential for success.

Chapters

00:00 Trailer
01:30 Who is Somi Arian
06:30 Understanding Scalable vs Non-Scalable Businesses
11:30 Why agency business are not scalable
14:50 Competing in the SaaS Market
18:40 Building a Network of VCs and LPs
20:20 Building Successful Businesses in Different Verticals
23:55 Giving People What They Want
26:25 Building a Personal Brand on LinkedIn
31:35 Building a Personal Brand on a Limited Budget
37:07 Choosing Between a Bootstrapped Company and a Venture-Backed Unicorn
40:19 Ending

Connect with Mudassir

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💻 Website - https://prodcircle.com/
👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mudassir-mustafa/

Transcript

Mudassir (00:01.084)
All right, cool. Please do a clap for me and then we're gonna be live. Awesome. Allowed one, allowed one actually.

Awesome. This is a video and audio syncing tip that I picked from somebody. I don't know. OK, awesome.

Somi (00:19.182)
I used to be a TV producer.

Mudassir (00:21.724)
So you would know that, right? So you would know that.

Awesome. All right, we're rolling now. Hey, Swami, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Somi (00:33.518)
doing great, especially now that I'm here. Thank you for having me.

Mudassir (00:37.724)
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you. Every single time I have anybody on the podcast. So one of my go -to questions that I ask everybody is to figure out how did you end up wherever you are today? So what was the journey like and how you become the Swami that we are interviewing today?

Somi (00:58.67)
Oh my God, there are so many layers of it, right? This is what I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. I said, think about of all of the things that happened to me of where I was born in Iran, been in the UK now for almost 20 years. And I was thinking every step of the way, if I had done one thing differently, I wouldn't be here now. Right? So like, you know, maybe as little as.

Maybe I got into a car one day and I met somebody and that changes. This is like the way it works, right? So every step of the way, you have these little things that happen to you. And it's like just one little movement different. You don't meet, like for example, you know, we were earlier talking about a documentary I'm making right now about the Middle Eastern investment scene.

And I went to Portugal Web Summit. I almost didn't want to go. I remember almost, I was like, I told my team, they even booked the flight and I was like, I don't think I will go. I was so tired of traveling. I was like, no, I cannot face another conference. And if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be doing that documentary now. And I wouldn't have met incredible people in the region. And I wouldn't have.

done that, right? So I went to Portugal, I met somebody there who introduced me to the ecosystem in Saudi, and then that opened a whole new world of opportunities and possibilities for me. So in a similar way, I used to be a tour guide for European VIP tours that came to Tehran when I was...

in my early, like basically I was almost a teenager, 17 years old when I started doing that. And through that, I met people, VIP tours from embassies, but it was like just one small event that led to me getting into the VIP part of that journey that gave me access to the embassies. And then from that, I then got a job.

Somi (03:19.662)
offer in the Dutch embassy in Tehran that then that changed my life. Like literally I wouldn't be here if I hadn't gotten that job. So, and there was one person who has actually passed away now who introduced me to that and you know, to that thing. It's like that. Basically, if you think about how did you get here, there are all these events and that's why, you know, I always, I'm a big believer that nothing, no experience is ever wasted.

Every experience that you have good or bad. Yeah, nothing is wasted Every experience is valid valuable and valid because every experience it Ultimately leads you to where you are and it's about how you respond to that So so in a nutshell, I was born in Iran I grew up in You know a very underprivileged background very strict parents rebelled

Mudassir (03:51.836)
Interesting.

Somi (04:19.726)
against it, got into heavy metal music, which later on I then went and had a band actually. And rebelled, taught myself English. My mom said, I regret the day that you learned English because that changed me. And, you know, worked as a tour guide, worked for embassies, United Nation, got into political philosophy and philosophy of science and technology, got a scholarship in Scotland.

went there, studied, came to London, worked as a TV producer for five years. Started my first company, which is a content creation and thought leadership building. And landed some amazing brands as clients like Steinway, worked with brands like Bentley, some other luxury brands. And then started my second business, which is a

Mudassir (05:09.308)
you

Somi (05:19.438)
a tech platform. So the first one was an SME. The second one is a venture. It was not venture backed yet, but we raised angel money initially. And so just went and learned about that side of things. So I know the difference between a scalable startup and a unscalable SME. I got the experience for both, worked in TV as well. So I learned all about media creation.

and wrote a book about the future of work and AI before anybody else was talking about AI 2019. Got into blockchain. So I've done it all. And now I'm focused on the Middle East and the tech and venture ecosystem.

Mudassir (06:08.828)
Amazing. Wow, okay. That's an amazing, amazing, amazing journey. So, I'll pick things one by one, just like peeling the onion back. So, the first thing that I wanna pick is, as you mentioned, that you know what's a scalable and what's a non -scalable business looks like. And the reason why I'm asking you this particular question is because most of the people, most of the founders that I get to see almost every day, everybody is chasing capital funding.

Somi (06:09.55)
Thank you.

Mudassir (06:37.788)
more so a venture capital funding because that's kind of, it's kind of considered sexy, it's kind of, you know, it gets you all kind of media coverage and all that. But most people think like VCs are rejecting them, oh, just because, I don't know, like for X, Y, Z reason. What people don't understand is your idea could be a great idea, but it's not a venture backable idea, right? It's not a scalable idea. So can you please start there like,

One is that's a very, very good conviction to have. Like I know what's a scalable and non -scalable business looks like. And so how do you know like what's a scalable and non -scalable business looks like?

Somi (07:16.526)
That's such a good question. I actually have a section in my book, which is called career fear and how to beat it. It's about the future of work and in it, I talk about deciding whether you want to build a scalable or not scalable business. What, when I say not scalable, I mean, you had Daniel Priestley on your podcast. So he calls it a lifestyle business. You know, so that, so that's, that's the difference.

A lifestyle business can be a really nice business. My first company is a lifestyle business. It's basically you have some clients and you could build your brand and your team. You could scale it up to around 12 people. It's a nice 10 to 12 people. And then...

There is companies that are more like SaaS business, like Software as a Service. And then there are all sorts of things in between. So the main difference between a lifestyle business and a SaaS business or a scalable business, honestly, is this level of stress. I think the level of stress that you have in a...

lifestyle businesses are a lot less. You know, once, once you get your clients, you just need to keep on top of it, make sure you stay on top of the churn. So, because there will be churn. So you, you want to make sure that you always stay a little bit above. So like, for example, we just lost a big client in my first business and I don't have time to get another client for it. I just, um, you know, that, that business is sticking along and the team has to deal with it themselves. They have to go out and get a new client. I just don't have time because I'm focused on the new business.

So, yeah, so just, you just need to stay on top of the churn. And other than that, you know, you can, you can pretty much like have your weekends, you know, you can pretty much have your, just deliver for your clients. You know, in most cases with 10 to 12 people, the business makes anywhere between, you know, half a million to 2 million a year. You have a team of, you know, three to five people to.

Somi (09:36.27)
to 10 to 12 people. Some of the people can be abroad. So some of them can be like, you know, not paid necessarily to the same degree as your local team, if you're based in Europe or US. And it's a very nice life, you know, like you just get paid and you can put a lot of your expenses against the company because that's just the nature of that type of business.

So, a lot of things you do is tax deductible and it's a great lifestyle. You can buy your house with it, buy a car with it, that's it. A scalable business, which can be venture backed typically. I mean, sometimes you may have a scalable business that's not venture backed. I know I have met, like for example, I met somebody who is, a few people who have built really good SaaS businesses.

without any venture backing. And they now have teams of three to 400 people working for them. That's very rare. In most cases, if you are building that kind of business, in most cases, you are going to need venture backing. And with that venture backing, and so for my scalable business, we didn't even raise venture yet. We raised from angels.

Mudassir (10:43.548)
Yep.

Somi (11:02.35)
But even with angels, we raised 1 .5 million dollars or 1 .2 million pounds initially. Even with that, there comes a lot of stress and a lot of that you need to respond to your investors. What you're doing is like we've had three pivots and every time you have to explain the pivot, why are you doing it? And some of them have...

Mudassir (11:17.774)
you

Somi (11:31.054)
positive opinions about it, some of them have negative opinions about it, but you're not just you and your potential founder or co -founders. So I think that's the main difference. It's just, do you have the stomach for it? And I think that most people don't realize how much stress is gonna be and they don't have the stomach for it. They don't have the capacity to, the level of sacrifice you have to do. If you have family,

Mudassir (11:52.604)
Yeah, so you think it's a choice at the end of the day. It's a choice, it's like what kind of a business you're building and what kind of growth you're looking for. So at the end of the day, it's just a choice.

Somi (12:00.558)
If you have children, it's just, forget it, it's so hard. It's so incredibly hard.

Somi (12:14.958)
It's a choice, but also you have to pick a topic or a subject or a matter, subject matter that is scalable. Right. For example, my first company is a marketing agency. It's an agency model. It's not scalable. It's never going to be scalable. But we took the learning that we got from that. And we said, can we create a media and content as a service platform or media content and community as a service platform?

Mudassir (12:21.628)
Hmm. Hmm.

Somi (12:44.11)
And that's what the second one is trying to do. So it's a choice, but also it needs to be by design. From start by design, it needs to be developed that way.

Mudassir (12:56.316)
Yeah, one question which I, by the way, wholeheartedly agree that agency models are not scalable. But somebody who has built this thing successfully, scaled it to a very, very good height, and then building another thing on top of that. Why do you think agency models are not scalable, but also not seem attractive enough to a lot of investors?

Somi (13:20.238)
Because it's a services business, right? So it means that there is no point where you could say, OK, I'm going to create a template, and then that template, then use technology to repeat that template. That's what makes a SaaS business a SaaS business, which basically means you create a template, and then that template is repeatable. Now,

Mudassir (13:23.036)
Okay.

Mudassir (13:37.564)
Hmm.

Mudassir (13:41.884)
Good.

Somi (13:49.582)
Within the SaaS model, there are degrees, right? So there are degrees. For example, let's say something like Slack, right? Slack is a typical SaaS business. So the template is built once, and then it's being used over and over. The problem with those types of businesses is that they are very easily disruptible, right? They are now.

There's think about Slack. It has got a lot of competition, except that because it's been built a brand name, it's still, you know, market leader in this category. But I know already, I have talked to quite a lot of, you know, people who are building various types of Slack competitor, which are cheaper. Right. So, so there's, so there's that aspect of it. So it's quite disruptible.

Um, that's why, what I'm trying to do is build something that's got elements of both. Um, and it's more complex and it's, uh, and less easy to, uh, uh, to, uh, replicate. And that's where we are, uh, Leveraging my network. And like, for example, right now we have a network of 800 BCs. They come in and they do master classes on our platform.

They create content with us, you know, and we are leveraging that to go out to accelerators, to governments, to corporate venture firms and tell them, hey, look at what we've created here. We can create your own portal and we can create your own kind of like masterclass as a service or, you know, that type of thing, or, you know, like we create your own content. And, and they like it because...

For them to try and do that themselves, they need to hire multiple, multiple people. It takes a lot of time. We've done it. We have created a template. We know how to do that. And we can replicate that. And we've also got the relationship with those speakers or thought leaders or VCs. So we are riding this on top of our relationship with the VCs that we have created, with the investors and angels, et cetera, that we've created.

Somi (16:11.406)
So that's like, it's not a pure SAS model, but it's still very scalable because it's like basically media content community as a service. So there's still a level of you need to dedicate an account manager for each portal, that type of thing. But still, it's very sketchy.

Mudassir (16:41.66)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for just cleaning that in depth. A couple of things that you already mentioned. Picking the example of Slack here for a moment, okay? We can pick any SaaS for example, but yeah, let's stick to Slack. Slack, sorry. You mentioned that you meet a lot of founders who are building a competitive Slack, could be cheaper, could be a lot cheaper than whatever Slack is charging today. But it's because of the brand name that they get the market pull. So,

Somi (16:42.382)
Thank you.

Mudassir (17:11.9)
How can anybody launch a SaaS business today and disrupt a bigger name, a bigger brand that's already out there?

Somi (17:22.286)
So one of the competitors of slack that I can talk about is I interviewed David Heinemann Hansen on my podcast. He is he was the original one of the creators of let me just quickly Google him this programming language. He's very well known, right?

Mudassir (17:48.284)
Okay.

Somi (17:52.302)
and yeah, David Heimer Hansen. So he is a Danish programmer, so then racing driver. And he was the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework. And so he's creating a competitor to Slack that is not a monthly membership.

So it's like he's gone all the way back to the original model of how software was done, which was like you bought something once and then you paid for upgrades. So not another monthly subscription model. So that's one of the ways that he is looking to disrupt that. And that sounds quite interesting. Think about it. Everybody hates, you have all these subscriptions and sometimes you don't necessarily.

Mudassir (18:48.732)
I know.

Somi (18:51.054)
need them and then for a month and then you have to pay for it, et cetera. So, so he's thinking in that sense. I think I was very interested in Web3 at some point, because I could see that Web3 and tokenized, you know, SaaS products could be very interesting for disrupting that space. Unfortunately, that didn't quite work out and Web3 didn't proliferate the way that we thought it would. So, so part of it comes down to,

Can you create a new business model? Can you create the other part of it is simply just cheaper. Like, you know, there's, there's like cake .com in Silicon Valley. I met the founder, you know, and like they have got all sorts of, uh, you know, um, uh, disruptor, um, you know, products to, to these types of things. And, um, and I asked him like, what's your secret? And he was like, just cheaper. You're just cheaper. That's it.

Mudassir (19:30.108)
Yeah.

Somi (19:46.286)
So we're doing the same thing, just as good, just cheaper. So I mean, sometimes people are competing on price. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Mudassir (19:51.868)
They're the.

Mudassir (19:56.604)
Yes, so sorry to interrupt. I think they are the competitor of Karta. I think the name of the guy is Kim, Kim Hansen. I think I know him. Yeah, yeah. So the quick question that I want to ask you is most of the time, and I come from a world of product. Like, that's what I knew. That's what I did for a lot of the time. We were just told this thing, like, you know, don't let price to be your competitive advantage. Because, you know, when you get into the pricing,

Somi (20:16.366)
Thank you.

Mudassir (20:25.212)
When you get into just making things cheap, that's a raise to probably like zero. You can do the same thing for 500 bucks subscription -wise. Somebody's going to do it for 250. Somebody's going to come and they just take it like do it for 50. Somebody's going to come in and just give it for free. So how is that? Yeah, please.

Somi (20:43.918)
So let me respond to that. So, so, um, I will respond to that. So people who do that, um, if they know what they're doing, it works out for them. Um, and somebody like, um, you know, David Heinemann Hansen or cake .com, these are not venture backed. They are not venture backed. They, they, they are, uh, you know, they have had the means to do it themselves.

Mudassir (21:07.164)
Okay.

Somi (21:11.278)
and they can afford to take that kind of risk and decision. I think if you're venture backed, it's very different. You're giving away equity to raise money to do things and therefore there's an expectation of things moving in a certain direction with a certain kind of upward trajectory. If you are David Heinrich Hansen or Nanette from Cake .com, Nanette, these guys.

They're not venture backed. They can do whatever they want. And having that ability to do that is a big plus. It's great for them. So my point is that it's not so cut and dry. And it's not like it's not black and white. It's not that you can never do something in a certain way. It's possible to take it case by case and think in some cases,

competing on price worked out. Think about Amazon. It worked out for Amazon. They competed on price. It worked really well for them. But competing on price is just one of them, one of the things. But it's a really good one, because most people are looking for something cheaper. If you are in a completely different league, if you're in luxury, then that's completely different. Then you're not talking about price. Then you need to compete on other things. But you need to find an edge.

So in our case, the way that we are, you know, our, our moat is the relationships that we are building with VCs and LPs and, you know, and startups, especially with VCs and LPs. So that's our moat is the relationships that we're building. I think in that sense, it's quite, yeah, just, you just need to find what is your moat, right? So the moat, sometimes it might be price.

Mudassir (23:06.236)
Okay.

Somi (23:09.23)
And sometimes it might be something else. I don't know. I don't know. I've done some.

Mudassir (23:15.228)
Okay, cool. So you mentioned you guys are building a network of VCs and LPs. So I want to ask you a question, which I actually pick up from one of your episodes. Are we going to see you raise a venture capital fund of your own? Because you do angel investments, you meet all these people, you get, yeah.

Somi (23:38.158)
Angel investing. I'm not in a position to do that now because I'm deploying all any any capital I have back into my own current business I thought about it, you know because I'm building a great network Of LPs, so I have considered that I thought about it, but I think that my role at the moment my thinking is probably not because my

You know, I'm better positioned serving the existing VC community rather than trying to be a competitor to them or creating another fund. Where I am now with the type of content we're creating and the kind of relationships we're building, I would probably be better staying where I am and being a bridge between VCs, LPs and startups, especially across the region.

with me being in London, I'm just onboarding a new co -founder who's based in California. So between the two of us, we will have London and California covered. And then of course, I will split my time between London and Middle East. So my current thinking is, there was a point when I thought about it and it seemed attractive, but my current thinking is that I would probably be better off.

staying where I am and serving the existing VC community. If anything, it might be better for me to go more towards creating a fund of funds rather than creating another fund.

Mudassir (25:19.516)
Okay, thank you, thank you for answering that one. I just want to go a little bit, you know, at the beginning. You run a couple of companies, you've built a few companies in a different industries, you worked in different industries, you worked with a lot of founders, VCs and, you know, LPs and all that. So, what is a common pattern that you have or like an underlying message that you want to share with everybody? Like how can you build like...

a company in one vertical and another company in another vertical and then you can work in another vertical and all of them are growing at the same point in time. All of them are good businesses. So what's the common message here? Like how can anybody build any business that's a good business regardless of the verticals? How can they do that?

Somi (26:09.646)
Yeah, so it's about thinking from first principles, right? And thinking from start with the viewpoint of is there something I'm building that other people want? It's very simple. Even people like Tony Robbins was talking about this in the 80s. It's like if you can give people what they want, you can get anything you want.

simple, you know, proposition, right? If you can give people what they want, you can get whatever you want. And it's a question of, can you find what people want and can you give it to them? So I always think, you know, even with the documentary, for example, that I'm making, I always think, who is my audience? What do they want? And to be honest, before you even...

Mudassir (26:42.012)
Okay.

Somi (27:08.27)
think about who is your audience. In some ways, it actually works better to think about what is it that people want that I can give them, and then reverse engineer from that your audience exactly. Because for example, I didn't say my audience is VCs. No, I said, okay.

I have an opportunity of being from Middle East originally, and there's something really interesting happening here. I'm building this network. Who could benefit from this network? Oh, it's VCs that could benefit from this network. They want access to capital. And then of course, startups could benefit from that because startups want access to capital, right? So I'm very good at networking. What am I really good at? I'm very, very good at networking. So I'm going to go out, network, build relationships, and then bring that network to my...

other network and connect these networks together, right? So everybody wants access to networks. So if you're very good at networking, you can figure out where you want to put your efforts because networking is massive, right? You can do it in so many different ways. You could do it with art, you could do it with crypto, you could do it with so many different things, right? So in this case, I chose that specific audience. So whether you're building a SaaS business,

or you're building a lifestyle business, it simply comes down to what is it that people want that you have the ability to give it to them. And if you can figure that out, you know, and then the question is, how can you give it to them in a more efficient way than your competitor, cheaper, faster, better, or maybe if you're in the luxury space, maybe it's not necessarily cheaper, faster, better, but maybe it could be that in a way that is perceived.

at a higher value, right? So, but in most cases, unless it's in luxury, in most cases it's cheaper, faster, better. So if you can do that, then you have business. It's simple as that. So whether it's content, whether it's community, whether it's network, whether it's a software, whether it's Uber, you know, ride sharing, whether it's Airbnb, it's all about what do people want? How can you give it to them in the most efficient way?

Somi (29:30.99)
Does that make sense?

Mudassir (29:31.068)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and that's the easiest easiest way that anybody would describe like how to start a business is like you know just find what people want and just give it to them. So that's probably one question on top of that is

Somi (29:42.798)
And the problem is, just one thing is, the problem is that a lot of times you may think that there is something that people want, but you may be wrong. And that's where product market fit goes wrong, you know, or you may be right, but the market changes on you. So both of those happened to me. So with this current business, we pivoted three times. The first pivot, we were building a community of women.

in business and technology realized that it was too small and there were not enough women wanting to raise money and build scalable businesses that warranted having an entire platform dedicated to that. So we pivoted away from that. The second one, we went into creating educational content for blockchain and the whole WebTree world.

It seemed good at the beginning in 2021, seemed very interesting, very promising. Turns out we were wrong and the market turned on us. So there was a product market fit, but it was not lasting enough. It was like a flash that came in and out. So then we had to find a new one. So the third one we went into this whole VCN and startup ecosystem. So this one...

It seems that, you know, so far so good. It seems very promising and we are in the process of closing contracts with governments, et cetera. So we are in a good position now.

Mudassir (31:23.292)
Okay, so you think product market fit is somewhat of a journey and it's not like a destination. So it's like you constantly have to change according to the market and you constantly have to find that thing, right?

Somi (31:35.79)
Yes. But sometimes if you find it, some of it will be more lasting than others. But in general, it's, yeah, you can't say it's not like set it and leave it. You have to stay on top of it and you have to constantly because the market will change on you. You know, like AI comes along and maybe you're like an accelerator as a service. AI comes along and does everything better than you.

So then you need to have all these added values. You have the network. You can connect them to VCs. You can do all sorts of things that maybe AI can't do. So you want to stay on top of it all the time. Because the product market fit itself will change as technology changes as well.

Mudassir (32:25.404)
All right, awesome. So let me thank you. Thank you so much for just picking all these things apart. So there's one particular topic that I want to dedicate a decent bit of time on the podcast, and that is about personal branding. And the reason why I'm asking you is because you mentioned this thing, like your superpower is networking. You meet people, you connect with them. But what I've also seen is you have done an amazing, amazing job building your own personal brand on LinkedIn. So.

Let's start with how did you do it? What is your cheat sheet or whatever? What was the template that you followed? So how did you build a great personal brand, especially on LinkedIn, because that's where the business things were happening. And I'll add a few follow -up questions, like how first -time founders and people can actually start building their own personal brands. So yeah.

Somi (33:20.718)
It's actually very simple. It goes back to what I said, figure out what people want and give it to them. So on LinkedIn, I started posting, I started listening. We call it social listening. You know, you look at other people's content and then you see what resonates with you. Like for example, there are some people who create a lot of content on LinkedIn about, you know, how to break into LinkedIn or...

People on Twitter will create content around how to break into Twitter and how to succeed on Twitter I have occasionally talked about that, but I just felt like some of those content I didn't rest it didn't resonate with me as much so I was trying to find Something that people were interested in so as I was doing that I know initially Initially, I started teaching people about content creation, you know because I was like, oh, I'm a con creator I'm gonna teach people about how to make video or how to create content. Um, I

A lot of people were doing that. So I was listening a lot to see what other, what are some of the conversations. And I kept this word millennials kept coming up. This was like seven, eight years ago, kept coming up. And I was like, I started getting into those conversations and I thought, oh, okay, I see there are people here, mostly marketing directors of companies who are trying to figure out the change of business models and the change of, you know, business landscape.

because of the millennial disruption, essentially, the millennial, you know, how millennials are disrupting the business landscape. So I decided to create a major piece of content, which was my documentary, my first documentary called the Millennial Disruption. And what I found was that I was like, there are a lot of people who are doing podcasts. How can I do something?

slightly different that will really capture attention, that will give me access to really big names that then in association with those names, I built my brand. Right. And, um, and that's really honestly, one of the easiest way to build your brand is by associating with other people who are, you know, um, in, in industry experts. So, um, uh, I reached out to Gary Vaynerchuk, obviously didn't answer me. Took me five months to get a response.

Somi (35:42.638)
Eventually he sent me an emoji, a smile emoji with connected and connected me to his team. Eventually I went and sat in his office, interviewed him. And similar kind of process, not to the same degree of difficulty, but it was still difficult. I got access to CXOs of The Economist, Jack Ward -Landover, Bentley, Mary Claire, and...

And I used to do business breakfast meetings in London and I invited these people and I talked to them about millennials, you know, like come to a business breakfast meeting about millennials. And I paid for the breakfast for everybody. You know, I did these every six weeks for a group of 12 to 15 people, built my network, then invited those people to my documentary and built this content. So the truth is you have to spend money and you have to spend time.

energy resources. And you can do it without money, but money accelerates it. It makes it easier, faster. And then on the back of that, so started to connect with, you know, marketing directors of companies. They started to see my content and LinkedIn picked up on it. I became LinkedIn top voice, you know, then got approached by

uh, Kogan page to write a book about the future of work for millennials. You know, I did that. So all of a sudden I had to write about AI and, you know, I was writing about future work, but you couldn't not write about AI. So then you become an expert in that and then you get invited to speak at conferences. So one thing leads to another. So ultimately it all comes down to content. And that's why my first business beat that. It's called smart cooking media. That's still what they do.

And, um, you know, I don't run that business myself. My team run it without me, but that's literally what they do. They create, they help people create content, build their thought leadership. Um, but there's no magic to it. It all comes down to content. And to this date, honestly, sometimes I post content that doesn't get a lot of engagement. Sometimes I post something that gets a lot of engagement. There is no hard science behind it. You know, the algorithm changes on you all the time. The point is that you need to be.

Somi (38:05.646)
consistent and continue to post, even if you don't get a lot of engagement on some of the things, you will see what resonates. So just have to keep at it. Consistency.

Mudassir (38:16.604)
Okay. Okay. Got it. So suppose there's a founder. So I'm just going to, again, just going to peel the layers of the Indians. You invest quite a lot of money into, I've seen the documentary, by the way. Like it's an amazing thing. I've seen the piece with, Gary has seen a couple of pieces with other people as well. So it's amazing. Suppose, you know, people do not have the means, like first time founders, early stage founders, because these are the people who have.

we have in the audience. They don't have a lot of money to spend building their personal brand, but they do have money, whatever they have, they're actually spending on their business. So LinkedIn seems to be a good enough starting point for them. Nobody can get into video, sort of a content creation. They cannot hire big agencies to do that. So they start with LinkedIn. So anybody who does not have that level of means, like that type of money to spend into

breakfast and then hosting all these dinners and parties and writing up writing you know say recording a documentary or something like that how can they build a good enough of a personal brand not to your level but a good enough

Somi (39:24.718)
So, well, I didn't have any money when I started the company. I got a business loan. I got a $25 ,000 startup loan in London, in the UK, pounds, 25 ,000 pounds. So I started with a loan and bought some equipment. This was before the quality of cameras on your iPhone was as good. And I taught myself a lot of...

Well, because before that I used to work in TV, so I knew production. But I had to teach myself some additional things because in TV I had editors, I had all sorts of things, but I had to then teach myself a lot of stuff to do it as well. The truth is that, like I said, money accelerates it. I didn't have money. I just took risks. I think the biggest thing is, think about...

Now that the documentary I'm making in Saudi, it's not backed by anybody. I'm literally just paying for my own pocket, going there, you know, filming, editing, you know, trying to take my team. There's a lot of challenges with that, but it's like anything else in life. You need to take a risk. And that risk can be risking your money, is risking your time. You may or may not have the personality for it.

If you don't have the personality, you just need to keep practicing more and getting better. I didn't have the personality. I look at some of my early content, I'm like, oh, this cringe. This is terrible. Because when I worked in TV, I wasn't on camera that much. I was mostly behind the camera. I was a producer, director. I had amazing talent that I worked with, but I wasn't on camera talent. I only had one show, which was very small. It was like three minutes.

and it was called Scream for Miterran, it was about heavy metal music. But other than that, I wasn't on camera, I was behind the camera. So when I started being on camera for my own content, at first I didn't have the personality for it. I still don't think, I still look at some of my content and I'm like, it's just, you know, it's not great. But you know, but I think the content of what is being said is good, is, you know, I think there's definitely something there valuable.

Somi (41:49.006)
But whether I, how I look on camera, how I come across, there are people who speak so much better than me. And I remember, you know, I used to record these breakfast meetings that I did. This was before I did much public speaking, you know, it was early days of public speaking for me. And I was terrible. I had like shaky voice, you know, and sometimes I recorded them and put them on LinkedIn. And I remember sometimes people commented on me.

or send me a message in DMs and said, Somi, why is your voice shaky? Like maybe it's not a good idea to put that out there because it's not a good reflection. And I said, I disagree with you because you should focus on what I'm saying. I'm not putting this out there to say I'm a professional speaker. Now I am a professional speaker. Now I get paid 20 ,000, et cetera, to go around and speak.

But at that time I didn't. And I was like, I'm not putting myself out there as a professional speaker. I'm putting the content out there because it's about how millennials are disrupting the business landscape. So you forget about how I sound, pay attention to what I'm saying. And if you are upset with it, don't watch it. So I was like, Daniel Priestley has got this thing of prolific is better than perfect.

So I was like, you know, I'm just being prolific, not perfect. And, and, and that's again, you know, that's a risk you're, you're putting, taking a risk, putting yourself out there, you know, right now, even with the documentary I'm making in Saudi, after all of the things I've done and all of this amazing, you know, profile that I created, it's still so hard for me to get certain interviews with some of the government officials because I need to prove myself again in that, in that market, right? Every market you go into, you need to prove yourself in it.

Mudassir (43:10.524)
Yeah.

Somi (43:39.918)
and you're constantly putting yourself out there, there is no guarantee that people are gonna give you the time of the day. And it is what it is, that's the price you pay. So if you don't have money, you have to work harder. If you need to, you go and maybe take the risk and borrow money, which is what I did. But I knew that I didn't have children, I didn't have to pay for somebody else. So you need to think about all of those.

you know, life circumstances. So I took the risk of, you know, and made the decision of not having children so that I could do all of these other things, right? So it's just, you need to make sacrifices. It's like anything else, nothing. You know, if it was easier, everybody would do it.

Mudassir (44:25.116)
Oh yeah, absolutely, totally agree to that. Totally agree to that. Okay, so thank you again for the kind of, so we do have this one small ritual on the podcast. So what we do is we ask all our guests a question for the next guest without telling who the next guest is gonna be. This is a habit that I picked from Steven Bartlett, so it's not my idea. Credit goes to him.

Somi (44:45.582)
I was going to say, did you steal that from Stephen?

Mudassir (44:49.212)
Yeah, no, you know, I read the book, which is called like, steal like an artist. So when so many people do that, it's an inspiration. It's not stealing. So we took the inspiration from I took the inspiration from Steve. But yeah, all credit goes to him and his team. So the question that the previous guest left for you is if you were guaranteed the same amount of money for your exit, regardless if you build a VC backed company or a bootstrap company, would you rather start and run your own company or would you rather be a

Somi (44:58.99)
I'm sorry.

Mudassir (45:19.068)
be somebody at a sexist unicorn of the day.

Somi (45:23.95)
So let me understand the question better. So you're saying that if I've had an exit, would I start a new company or would I invest in another company?

Mudassir (45:25.756)
Okay.

Mudassir (45:30.268)
Mm -hmm.

Mudassir (45:35.356)
No, so the question is, suppose you have two companies. So one is a bootstrapped, one is a venture backed company. If both of your companies exit today, in both of these cases, suppose you're going to make $30 million on each of those, right? Would you rather run that bootstrapped company, which is going to exit for $30 million, or would you rather run the unicorn?

that's only gonna give you 30 million, but it's probably gonna go to your IPO for a couple billion bucks. So which one would you pick?

Somi (46:10.478)
It depends on what stage of my life I am at that point and what I want to do. If I want less stress, I would probably take the one that is bootstrapped. But if I'm feeling like, yeah, I like the stress, because the stress is addictive, it's adrenaline. Honestly, every time I come back, when I travel, especially when I go to conferences,

Mudassir (46:30.684)
I know.

Somi (46:38.318)
and I'm speaking and like making incredible connections. When I come back, I feel a bit depressed for a few days, for maybe two days. Like I feel a bit depressed. And then I get back into my routine and then I start to get feel better again. And then I go out again. And so, so when I am at these places, usually I get like so little sleep and maybe five hours sleep a night and have to get up, go and keep going. And like, you know, so.

The stress is addictive. So it really depends on what stage of my life I am at that point and whether I feel like, yeah, I want more stress and I want the excitement or whether I want the easy. The problem is that the bootstrap company is probably going to be a bit boring. A bit boring. Like that's why, that's why with my first company, I don't run it myself. I let, I let my team run it without me. I get bored with it.

Mudassir (47:27.996)
I know.

Mudassir (47:37.692)
Okay, awesome. Question for the next guest, please.

Somi (47:42.51)
Will they always be, are all of your guests always to do with the startup world? Okay. Okay. You put me on the spot. Yeah, I have to think about this.

Mudassir (47:49.052)
Yeah, yeah, or 100 % of them. Yeah, 100%.

Mudassir (48:04.476)
Okay, send me an email if you want to take some time. Yeah, we have a recording session tomorrow. A very, very, very, very fine lady. She runs a VC firm, a very early stage VC firm, but she built it on top of angels.

Somi (48:07.726)
Yeah, I'll do that. Let me think about it. Yeah.

Somi (48:19.662)
So maybe we ask her, if it's a lady, maybe we can ask her something to do with women, right? Like maybe something like if somebody comes to you, if a woman founder comes to you and you look at them and you think, this is an incredible founder, I just, I can see that she's going to do amazing things, you know, but.

Mudassir (48:26.46)
Yeah, sure.

Somi (48:49.07)
And at the same time you have, but maybe her pitch is not quite perfect yet, you know, because the problem is that a lot of times women have, they don't have as big a network and as much exposure to the venture world as, you know, their male counterparts. And because of that, sometimes they struggle to get their message across to the same degree.

Mudassir (49:10.3)
Yep. Yep.

Mudassir (49:16.828)
Yeah.

Somi (49:18.702)
And I've had that, I've had that problem myself in the past. And I guess, you know, if you see somebody who comes in, they've got that incredible spark in their eyes and you think this person is going to do great things. However, there is another male founder, you know, that maybe they have a much more polished, you know, and then like all the right connections and credentials, which one would you invest in, you know?

all things being equal, which one would you invest in? Because in this case, investing in the female founder may seem like a bigger risk, but I just would be wondering whether they would have a slight bias towards one or the other.

Mudassir (50:07.964)
Make sense. Okay, make sense. All right, so, she, you know, just telling you, and this is not gonna be part of the recording because this is a question that we're gonna ask, so obviously not gonna be part of the recording, but just telling you, she's in San Francisco. 80 % of the companies she invested in are male dominated. Like 80, 90 % of the companies, so, but anyway, because I think people, because I think, sorry, say it again.

Somi (50:30.99)
It's a good question for her.

So this is a good question for her.

Mudassir (50:36.412)
Oh yeah, yeah, because I think, so the way these people work, or you can say the way that this entire industry works is they need to find a return for the LPs. Like they don't care. They don't care about most of the things that they say, like investment thesis and all of that. Like this is off topic, off topic. So I meet like at least two of them every day and they don't care about investment thesis. This is all just a media play thing. Like, hey, we just, we have this sort of investment. They care about.

the fund returners, they care about the outliers. Like that's all they care about. So that's the reality. Okay.

Somi (51:11.182)
Yeah, yeah, I know. But let her answer that. That's a good point.

Mudassir (51:16.156)
Okay, awesome. So let's just stay the, stay the bias and pause the recording, but please stay for a minute or two. Okay.

Somi (51:23.054)
Yeah, I can just mute it and work in the background. Yeah.

Mudassir (51:27.58)
Yeah, you know, all I say is thank you so much for the time. I don't have that fancy big ones. OK, awesome.

Somi (51:31.534)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I thought you mean like that I have to stay for you to download the recording.

Mudassir (51:41.564)
No, no, no, this is probably, I think this has already uploaded, so no need to download anything. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much, Swami. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate the wisdom, I appreciate the candor. So thank you again for just sharing all these things with us. I appreciate it.

Somi (51:58.318)
Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. I do apologize. I wasn't my usual very, you know, projecting because my voice, I'm losing my voice from talking so much, but it was a lot of fun.

Mudassir (52:11.644)
Now very kind of you.

Somi (52:13.614)
Thank you.

Mudassir (52:14.62)
Uh...