How To Innovate Your Success From Scratch

Announcer

Welcome to the Cyber Business podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and share their inspiring stories. Now let's get started with the show.

Matthew

Matthew Connor here, host of the Cyber Business podcast, where we feature successful business leaders, top law firms, green energy companies and more. Today, we're fortunate enough to be joined by a man who was once the president of BlackBerry, the CTO of Ericsson, mobile phones and Sony Platforms, the executive vice president of AMD and the current CEO of a very cool startup called Under.

Matthew

Welcome Sandy Chen, excuse. Welcome.

Sandeep

Thank you. It's a privilege to be on your show.

Matthew

That the privilege is all hours. And before we get too far into it, a quick word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by CyberLynx.com, that Cyber-L-Y-N-X dot COM. CyberLynx is a complete technology solution provider that ensures your business has the most reliable and professional I.T. service and the only company that guarantees your safety and satisfaction.

Matthew

In this day and age, we rely on technology for just about everything. And if your company isn't getting exceptional support for its IT needs, it's not performing optimally. And Sandeep, as an engineer and technology business leader, you know better than most the importance of optimizing or optimization for business, which is one of the many reasons why I'm so excited to have you on the show here today.

Sandeep

Thank you.

Matthew

Thank you. So you have written a great book here. Your company is your castle. I absolutely loved it. I thought, you know, it's a really great read. You know, having gone through that whole business school, you know, education and getting to see, you know, from your perspective being, you know, working at such a high level in tech and also in business, kind of merging those together, I think it really creates a really great view and some really great information for people that's that's really applicable and not just academia.

Matthew

So excited to have you on on the show and wanted to ask you what was your, you know, the whole premise for for writing it. What what inspired this?

Sandeep

Great question. You know, I always wanted to write a book because I do write a lot. I write a lot on technology articles, finance, economics. So when I wanted to write the book, I started around 2019. I asked myself, what would I write about? And then it struck me that when I was 32, 39, and I got promoted to running a multibillion dollar business, a multi-hundred million buck close to $1,000,000,000 business.

Sandeep

And I was technically adept, but that's what someone thought because they promoted me to be the general manager. But I had no clue of business even though I have a management diploma and absolutely no clue. So I made a ton of mistakes. I cannot believe that they still kept me there. But what I found is by learning, I use this quite this phrase quite often, I said every stumbling block became a stepping stone for success and I learned, I corrected the mistakes, got stronger in the process, and I said, What if I write about how I built this framework of running a successful business from scratch and impart that knowledge that I had learned through

Sandeep

my journey of being through the school of hard knocks. Yeah. And so that's why I basically decided to write the book so that others can use it and not probably fall into the same traps and pixels and mistakes I made.

Matthew

Yeah, no, it's funny because you, when you learn it in a book or you learn it in school, all of those lessons are so cheap. And then when you learn it on your own, it is so costly for every single one. You're like, Oh, I knew that. I read that. But it's so hard. They kind of, you know, really implement some of those those lessons.

Matthew

But I think kind of the way that you you go about talking about it in the book. I like your your castle analogy. You know, I think it creates a really nice visual for people to kind of understand. So I really like that. And I like your, you know, your perspective on well, I mean, how did castles do it, right?

Matthew

I mean, how how is it they've been standing for so many years and and make this work? And then I think it's interesting how that really does apply to business. You apply that really beautifully in the book. So kudos on that. I mean, it's not easy to do, but I think you pulled it off beautifully here. I enjoyed that part of it.

Matthew

But let me ask you, so you go into a lot of a lot of things and I think, you know, for the small business owner, you know, I think that you hit planning really, really heavily in in your book. Right. And I think that was one of the big takeaways for me is and and I can't really attribute it to the fact that you're an engineer who likes the details and the plans so much as was just smart business to write.

Matthew

So you having worked at, you know, a BlackBerry and and you know, Ericsson at those levels, you're doing all of this, this planning and you kind of have to write it kind of built into the system. But then you go and impart that on on the small business owner. So my question there is, do you think that that that same level of planning, you know, that that you used it, say BlackBerry and Ericsson?

Matthew

Is that do those those same levels the same sort of planning? Does that really do you think that applies to this small startup who like, you know, one, two, three, five people? Do you still apply it the same way?

Sandeep

Well, I think it's a little different. You'll be planning in a more complex. Businesses require more detailed planning, and it's in various aspects that the things that I talk about in the book, all the structures, you know, those are established businesses. So you need very detailed planning and to make sure that all of them are connected. Now, in today I work in a startup.

Sandeep

A startup is much smaller, you know, normally the companies that I worked in, they were 10,000 employees and here I have 150. And even that's large compared to startups. But so the planning is different. You know, typically startups have one or maybe two products, not a whole host, but you still need the planning. For example, you know, one of the biggest things in a startup is how do you manage cash so you don't run out of it.

Sandeep

You know, whatever you raise your investors want you to make it last as long as possible, because if you raise another round, they get diluted and they want to know that you can weather storms like today, the market is tough. How do you raise money? So we go to the plan carefully to see how does that cash last, not just spend as you feel like and then suddenly realize, you know, how do you basically take your limited resources and make it resourceful so you can deliver So because know you have to be a switch hitter in a small business, you've got to have multiple hacks.

Sandeep

But how do you divide your time efficiently to do different things? That requires careful planning and how do you make sure you don't chase shiny objects? Because when you do, you get distracted, and if you get distracted, then this whole concept of being efficient and resourceful goes out of the window and you waste money. So the planning is at a different level.

Sandeep

But I think it's it's the concepts remain the same, right? It's only the complexity that changes.

Matthew

Yeah. Now I think you're I think you're spot on. And I think that was one of the, the nice parts about your book is is how that that applies. So I'm always taking obviously the the small business perspective because well that's where I am. And so I think this applied so nicely to small business and you can see how it came from like business.

Matthew

And I really liked how that that played in there. You talked about, you know, the sales funnels and sales forecasting and, and, and I, I, you do a really nice job in the book discussing that so I won't spoil the ending for people but I am curious you know with your current startup at under kind of that that contrast and how that differs in in the sales funnel and the sales forecasting in your startup versus you know say it at you know BlackBerry or.

Sandeep

Yeah you see it in in the bigger companies we had an established process an established system. We had a lot of tools and we had basically implemented a framework and models. And so it's all set right. And then you can just we make sure the model works and people are doing what they're supposed to do in a startup.

Sandeep

We had no tools, we had no forecasting. We had pretty much other than very clever people. And then suddenly the customer says, Oh, guess what? We actually like your product and we're not going to ask you for thousands of chips now. We're going to ask you for hundreds of thousands of chips. And then we had to go from manual testing where we tested each chip manually to an automated dislike.

Sandeep

Right? And that's where the knowledge from working at a bigger company came to play. And I said, okay, I know how to set this up right, but it's going to take me six months to make a months. So this is the investment we need to make. This is the Gessler setup. This is the way we are going to forecast this is the way to be able to model cost the yield in the factory, the quality systems.

Sandeep

So the nice thing is I've been through that the different situation and I could bring that to bear. And you know, by the middle of the year, you know, we'll be up and running, being able to produce for our customers. Look.

Matthew

That's great. Yeah. No, there's there's no substitute for experience. I mean, you hear all that know all the time. I love founder stories and people talking about how they they came up with the idea, they financed it, they got going and then they hit something like that. And if you've never been through something like that and you're kind of inventing the wheel as you go, eh, you're not going to have nearly the same successes as you would in your set, your case where you're like, Oh, I know exactly how we do this, And then you can use that experience to do, you know, to implement that much faster.

Sandeep

So yeah, but you know, like even if you didn't have the experience, you know, there are three or four of us who have 30 plus years in this field, and it's not just me and this team of people. And so we knew exactly where to buy our equipment. Okay. How to shorten the lead time for delivery in this environment.

Sandeep

How do we get who do we contract with and closing contracts, setting up the entire factory line, then getting the quality and monitoring processes and writing documents so that we can know that when we run, everything will come out to be of good quality, right? Writing all the tests that we needed, you know, and setting everything up, including having very tough discussions with our lot, with our customers, telling them, No, no, no, you have a lead time.

Sandeep

You've got to stick to it. If you don't. I'm not saying your boss. That's right. I just got the ghost beat. You know, there's no magic in this, right, If you're not disciplined. And what's interesting is in our startup, actually, one of our biggest customers actually told us that, you know, all through the pandemic time when there was terrible shortages of chips in the industry and we were the only supplier who never shorted them.

Matthew

Wow.

Sandeep

And so it comes down to again, I think it comes down to not having more people. You know, you don't need more people. You don't need a company. You need the right people. Yeah. And they only find in the team and they because they have a lot of experience, they were able to partition the work and do things systematically to get things done.

Matthew

Yeah. And you hear that, you know, time and time again. It's not, you know, it really does come down to who you surround yourself with, who's on your team. I mean, that that makes or breaks it. It doesn't matter if it's sports or what it is. If you're if you don't have great teammates, you're going to have a much harder time winning the game.

Sandeep

Yeah. And also, you know, you got to use this word switch better. But, you know, we are nonhierarchical, which means that, you know, if I had to write documents, I wrote documents. Yeah. If I had to help with design, go ahead with design. If I have to help the program management to go ahead with program and then vise versa for my team.

Sandeep

So that helps a lot when everybody knows that, you know, they've got to contribute and not just throw stuff over the heads and think it's going to happen.

Matthew

Yep. Yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, I guess kind of to your point, you mentioned in your your book about being battle tested, you know, and I guess that's can you tell us a little bit more about that because you've got some stories in there about your battle testing. Is there one you'd like to to share?

Sandeep

Yeah, sure. You know, you know, one of the very but is just out of school. I just finished my PhD. I, I tell the story in the book, but let me repeat it and I'll tell you a few others. But what happened is that I got into this program and we were contracted by a very big company to build a very special piece that would go into their for it was an algorithm.

Sandeep

So when you have signals bouncing off buildings and coming to you, they interfere. These echos interfere with each other and it is very difficult to hear someone's voice or get data. So I built this algorithm called an equalizer that actually removed all of this strange things that are happening. And I was trying out a school. Nobody had built this in the world, and they just gave it to me and said, Go do it.

Sandeep

And that was the first time I've got to get it's not.

Matthew

Sure it's never been done.

Sandeep

I'm not going to get a grade. If I beat the contract goes away. We're not getting another contract. I'm going to lose one. Oh, yeah. So it's a different level of pressure. And it actually the way I was able to do it was thanks to my languages and others that they actually help me black. Again, I didn't just dive into stuff.

Sandeep

I did a lot of research as to what was the likely chance of something working and then built the models and said, okay, I've got a good shot, and that's how I got everything to work within one year. Okay, Another example is in 2003 I was asked by A to come and fix the company in Sweden. Fascinating opportunity.

Sandeep

This company was bleeding it. They had spent close to $1,000,000,000 and they hadn't released a product. And and the it was a foreign country for me but and we had a lot of customers everything riding on this company actually producing their chips and software and you know, everyone had written us off because they were bigger competitors who were promising things earlier.

Sandeep

So it was a big leap of faith. And I had to go and run a company in Sweden and do two things. Launched this product so my customers wouldn't abandon us. They had invested a lot. And the second is to make the company profitable because it was leading. And third, on the confidence of the employees, because they said, this guy is coming from America.

Sandeep

Okay, what's he going to do? You know? Right. And fortunately, thanks to my brilliant employees and the the framework we set up, as I explain in the book, because in nine months we turned profitable and we went on to take 30% market share in the world. And we did launch the product for us to work. So, you know, there's no substitute for actually being thrown into the focus either.

Sandeep

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Yeah. And it just helps you start prioritizing. So in that case, I said, okay, first thing is I've got to basically make us profitable. Okay? Okay. Because everything else was secondary. I said, if I am bleeding money, my customers will say, Well, these guys are going to die and then move on.

Sandeep

My employees are going to say, There's no money, so there's going to be more layoffs, so they're going to leave, and then I'm left with nothing. So the priority one was to make us profitable. And I came up with the formula, as I explain in the book, of how to make one deal that will basically bring in a lot of revenue which may not have been super favorable in the long term, but it made me whole.

Sandeep

I was able to cut the cost and then once I was able to do that, I was get I was able to get the teams confidence to focus on fixing the problems.

Matthew

I love it, you know. So you talk a lot about planning and a lot about kind of, you know, that the battle tested kind of just do it aspect, right. The action that goes along with it. And you know, you hear a lot I think on on both sides of that, you know, people would say you've got to have a have a good plan.

Matthew

Other people saying you just got to get out there and just start doing it. You'll you'll figure it out. What would be your advice, you know, in that.

Sandeep

Whole.

Matthew

Spectrum?

Sandeep

So I'm not a big believer in doing months of planning. I believe planning is done in days if you know what you are doing right and you have the experience, you can plan and days and then you have to have the conviction that your plan is working and put it to action. You can't basically have an analysis paralysis that doesn't work, right?

Sandeep

So anything I do, I try to do in a few days by thinking through systematically and but in a way, a plan doesn't have to be complete. You need to have the main things, what I call the critical part. You need to plan. Those are the things that if they move, everything moves. Once you've nailed down and you have the right people assigned to those tasks, you can start building things around it.

Sandeep

Okay? Because you don't have to basically start with this huge, huge plan. Many years ago I found that, you know, sometimes people would ask me for 8 to 10 weeks of planning and usually it's wrong. It's wrong because you have to do it again.

Matthew

Wow. Well, I know we're getting close to your you do you have to stop now. I know. I know. It's getting close time.

Sandeep

I know it's I've got that.

Matthew

Oh, okay, great. So. Well, that that's that's great. And I think that's that's really good. Good advice having that kind of balance between the two, having that you've got to have a plan and it doesn't have to take forever. And, you know, contrasting that with those people who say just go for it because, you know, especially in today's day and age with with with social media, there's so much kind of, let's call it advice, right?

Matthew

People, everybody's got an opinion on on, you know, just do it. Just do it. And sure, if you're stuck in that analysis, paralysis, I agree. But, you know, I think that that you strike this really good balance of your plan and and have the the there's important, you know, key factors nailed down and then execute. And I think that's so many young people don't have that right They here just do it and they run out.

Matthew

If you just do it, you head in the wrong direction and you're not you don't have a plan on how to get to where you're going. You know, that's a problem. But if you just sit there and plan forever and you never go anywhere, that's also a problem.

Sandeep

So absolutely. I mean, if you look at it, you know, I read the statistic that 20% of all companies failed in two years, 45 in five years and 65 in ten years. And if you look at the five most common reasons, Forbes has an article on this and it it talks about, you know, one is you have a product that the market doesn't want, which means you didn't plan it.

Sandeep

You didn't do analysis as to whether the the product is even relevant. You didn't have the right price. Right. Because you had no knowledge of the market. What the market will bear, you didn't have the right people because you didn't hire them for the right jobs. Okay? Or you completely forgot competition, right? And the fifth one is you just run out of money, which is 82% of the time that people run out of money.

Sandeep

And why is that? It's because, hey, you run excellent speed and forget all the aspects that are necessary to make your business successful. So I believe that planning has not should not be super process heavy, it should be pragmatic and then it should be regular clients to say I'll be on the right track or should be change. Unless you're pragmatic, you know you can't do that.

Matthew

Yeah, you know, and you talk in your book about, you know, having these assessments and plans in place when it comes to the kind of the, the actual execution of that, like the how do you go about it? Do you do a, a word document? You you do that and then you set up, you know, tasks on, you know, on your calendar to say, hey, review this, What's your actual, you know, hands on, You know, how do you go about that?

Sandeep

You actually in one section in my book, I it I call it truffles triage and temperature. I think that what is what most leaders need and managers need to have. So I liken truffles and hogs. You know, hogs can smell truffles three feet on the ground. How do they do that? So a good manager leader should know and smell and said struggle way in advance.

Sandeep

That's like basically sniffing truffles three feet underground. So how do they sense from a buy they should have a certain index and metrics to say, you know, these questions are not being answered precisely. Let me dive deeper into it. So that's how I diagnose that something is amiss and I double click and I double click and a double click with people in the room.

Sandeep

I don't try to do it through charts and could take people too much time to do all that. You keep asking questions till you actually get to the root cause. Okay? And it's that is basically and I call this go see for yourself a boss of mine, Katsumi Hara, he hasn't taught me this. It's a word in Japanese.

Sandeep

I'm probably mispronouncing it. It's called Gamba. And so it means go see for yourself. Forget translation, forget bias of translation. Go. Get down to the root cause yourself. Once you got to the root cause, assign it to the right people and give them clear directions. What you want to look at. Don't get that. Don't let it be scripted.

Sandeep

So they go off and do 50 million things because that just confuses everyone. And the third thing is you've got to manage the temperature of your team. If you are banging the table, yelling, screaming and scaring people, okay? They're not going to be able to do anything. You have to systematically actually guide them and be part of the solution and manage that temperature.

Sandeep

And you always I always tell the sales guys, it's my neck, okay, it's not yours, but I want you to try these things. Right. Which gives them the confidence to go ahead and try it, because then because if they're always afraid of failure, then you're going to be paralyzed. And so I want that to be at their best problem solving mode when they have a difficult problem.

Sandeep

Now, of course, there are pressures. You know, there's timelines, customers are screaming at you, but usually in such situations, I also basically become the interface to the customer so that I can basically have the discussion and don't expose the team. So that's what I do. And I don't I, I don't like long slide meetings with 50 slides and I like to basically talk about a problem in each meeting and I like to only talk about that problem.

Sandeep

And then if you have a different problem, we have a different meeting.

Matthew

Yeah, I like that. Well, going back to your, your book and the, the, your original intent, who would you say is the, the ideal reader.

Sandeep

So I wrote this for, you know, as I said earlier, earlier, I wish I had a book like this when I became a general manager. So I really wrote this for those aspiring minds who want to learn to build a business and run the business or grow in their career with the things that they've not been exposed to in a more practical manner.

Sandeep

And I felt that if I brought together all of the elements of a business rather than one aspect, I would create this cross functional ability to look holistically at the business. I also rooted for it be an MBA students who would like to basically augment their theoretical knowledge. They learn in school with practical knowledge of how to apply that with recipes and structure, and it also can help financial people who want to look at a company from inside out rather than outside in.

Sandeep

And I liken I like evaluating a company from its financial statements and management commentary to actually assessing an iceberg with good sonar. And I'm hoping that this will be the books framework or become the sonar because you don't see 9/10 of a company by just looking at those statements. Sure. And so and it's also good for consulting companies as to what questions to ask me, how they solve difficult problems in companies.

Matthew

Hmm. So you'd say that there's more of the this helps going back to that that financial person. This would be more of the how to assess the sort of intrinsic value versus the kind of the fundamental values. Is that kind of what you're saying that gives them kind of a framework for that to understand it?

Sandeep

Exactly. Exactly. Because when you ask the questions, I ask in the book, you can ask, is their cash flow real or not? Is it going to be sustainable? Is their strategy even going to win? Right? Is their culture aligned to deliver to the strategy? You know, how were they thinking about products and sustainability? Was this competition and consumer desire to make the product sticky?

Sandeep

What are they doing on delivery of a product in timing, in quality and cost? How are they thinking? Because if they're not thinking about these three things maniacally, they're not going to be in business for long. How are they? How do they think about their sales channels? How will they be thinking about their funnels? How do they think about managing the complexity of forecasting and channel management?

Sandeep

And finally, how would they dealing with investors, customers and employees to maintain their confidence? You know, all of these things when tied together, really defines how a business is run and you can quickly when I use this, when I use my checklist, there are many companies I'm asked to advise on. And the investors asked me, would you invest in this?

Sandeep

And I can tell them quickly, you know, after an analysis, plus talking to the company, not not otherwise, you can't do it. Just some paper. You have to actually talk to them. You can then point out what are the pros and cons and then it's up to the investor to decide whether they want to invest.

Matthew

That's great. And so. Well, let me ask you and I guess, you know, we're probably not here to discuss too much of of under. But if you don't mind, I think it's really fascinating. And I really like the the idea can you you run us through what under is you know what the goal is what the product is because I think the whole radar on a chip is it's a super cool idea.

Matthew

And then then we'll get into how you apply your your book to under. But if you could a kind of an overview of under would be great. Yeah.

Sandeep

Under under is we build a radar chip. You know most people think of radar as these big things that look for aircraft and everything besides things like that. But people have been using radar in automotive applications for 30 years. Okay? These are small little objects, little bigger than your smartphone that are mounted on the bumper or some part of the car that tries to look at objects right through fog, rain and any weather conditions.

Sandeep

And says, okay, I do I need to brake. So automatic emergency braking is based on radar. Okay. Automatic cruise control and monitor, you know, is also basically done through radar lane keeping assist is done through radar. There are a lot of automated conditions of automated driver assistance, also an automobile that goes on because of sensors. So we thought that, hey, you know, we need a model radar.

Sandeep

It's quite different from what people are thinking building. One of the biggest things is the resolution. How do we resolve objects in final resolution? So you actually see them completely. This has been a challenge because, for example, if you have a child next to a car, many radars will look at them as one object. Right. But when the child starts moving away, suddenly you say, okay, the child's moved with the two objects, but you are too close to brick.

Sandeep

And effectively our radar actually can resolve objects in very fine resolution. The other thing is when two cars are coming towards each other in opposite lanes, the radars shine on each other and they jam each other, which means they go blind. And our radar is more resistance to that. So it actually sees objects even when it's been jammed and this then sometimes you have to combine these sensors like a camera is great to look at shapes and colors.

Sandeep

Radar is great at detecting objects. Even in bad weather. If you can somehow combine them, then you get the best of both worlds. That's called fusion, and our radar has some capabilities that greatly enhances fusion to make this whole area opens up a complete new field. And what we've been able to do is to put this very sophisticated radar on something as big as your thumbnail.

Sandeep

Okay? It's really small. And others who are trying to mimic what we are doing, they actually required five set chips when we required one. So that's why it's cool. And so it's it's fascinating and we're very excited.

Matthew

That is fantastic. Well, let me ask you. So I you know, I love my Tesla and it's you know, and I thought it was doing something kind of similar to that with it's using cameras for most of the stuff. But I know it's got the sensors for maybe that's just parking stuff or proximity sensors. Maybe it's not using.

Matthew

Do you know? And is that something that you guys are looking to kind of get into or how's that?

Sandeep

Well, we are looking to get into a lot of automobiles. And, you know, we are working actually at the moment with customers. And it's been announced that we will be in real cars in a couple of months. So it's very exciting. Now, we, of course, are not like ultrasonic proximity sensor. You can use it, but our system is too sophisticated for just that.

Sandeep

All our system is much more clear applications where you need radar around the car. What was happening is people are thinking of site to generate our school car to get you a 360 degree protection against what's coming towards you and what's moving away from you. And as the car gets more automated, these sensors will only grow in prominence.

Sandeep

So I think it's super exciting. But that's not the only place where we are also in. And I don't want to make this a pitch for under see, but we are an import and we use automated vehicles which drive using radar and they are used to basically pick containers of ships loaded and take it to certain places rather than having a manual way of operating it.

Sandeep

And it's far more efficient. There are a lot of industrial applications for radar too, so the market is very large.

Matthew

Oh, that's fantastic. So are you allowed to share with us what cars might be using under in the in the coming months and years?

Sandeep

No, we're not allowed to.

Matthew

But fair enough.

Sandeep

I think it's it's just really excited that, you know, we are there's a lot of things that not of gates we have to go through and we systematically pass each one of them and we have a few more in the next two months and then hopefully two or three months and then hopefully we are on the road.

Matthew

Congratulations. That is very exciting stuff. So let me ask you, so you've got when it comes to under and this, you know, I can't help but think back to your your very first job where you are creating this algorithm that it's never been done before. Right? There's, you know, a radar on a chip. It's never been done before.

Matthew

Right. And and, and then when you apply, you know, things like you talk about it in your book, you know, these kind of business processes and analyzing a business and understanding this, you know, how do you take that that thing that's never been done before, right? Algorithm, chip, product, whatever. Nobody's done it before or certainly, you know, you haven't or you don't know anybody who has on your team.

Matthew

So you're basically doing the unknown, the the yet to have been done. And then when you apply these these systems to that, how do you know what you know when you apply that you know that okay that's going to that's going to do it. We can do this, right? I mean that. How do you how do you make that leap from the unknown?

Matthew

You make up a plan. Is there is there planning that you can do to say, to kind of mitigate that all or in the end, is there still a leap of faith that where you're like, yeah, it's never been done before, but but we can certainly do it. We might be able to do it. Yeah, there's a chance we could do it.

Matthew

Probably not going to happen. How does that work? Right? How do you go from that? You know, and, and bridge that?

Sandeep

You know, a lot of people had a by the way, just one point is that other people have built radar, but they normally do chips and they combined and we've combined all of it in one with far more capability. But but, you know, the point you're making, Matt, is very interesting. You know, when you think about these novel ideas, like, you know, we might teens, actually we're responsible for building the first two G phones.

Sandeep

The the first 3G phones and all these new technologies. And you're right, nobody else had many people working on it. You know, But we were fortunate to be among the first. And here again, it comes up. It's really, again, being systematic and thinking through how you do it right. You have to basically be able to piece together everything that goes to building such a product and hiring people who are experts in each of those fields to actually realize the best version of that component.

Sandeep

And then putting it together as a system and ironing out the problems and giving your site self time to do that. And this requires not just smarts and planning, but deep conviction, because very often in this process, right, we find that, you know, we are stuck with a very difficult problem. And I'll give you one example. When we were bringing out the 3G chipset, it was very complex, 800 people working on it.

Sandeep

Right. And we had to test it all over the world and things were breaking. And I finally told my team, No, no, no, guys, I think we are trying to boil the ocean. We shouldn't do that. Let's focus on one network operator who really wants it and one customer who really wants to work with us. Let's narrow the requirements to just meet what they want.

Sandeep

And my goal was, if I can launch it commercially in back place, that would be the evidence that it works. Then I could build upon it because success builds upon success by just trimming that. I remember my chief operating officer came and said, he said, you just scale up and we went ahead and did exactly that. I launched it ahead of my competitors.

Sandeep

One of my customers made 4 billion in his first quarter. It was a huge success and everything went from there. So to me, I like getting wins along the way because that's the only way to keep the team motivated.

Matthew

Yeah, that's I mean, there's just so many great lessons like that that you kind of put in the book and, and, and lay out for people and I love how you use all these great analogies, like, you know, like boiling the ocean and just the book is, is kind of, I don't want to say littered with them, but it's filled with with great, you know, just kind of practical advice and and and and it's a fun read as well, you know at the same time.

Matthew

And I think that's hard to strike that balance. I think for a lot of people, I think it tends to get very either preachy or I don't want to say self-help because that's not even a thing just made that up. But know it tends to or it's just very dry. And I think that that you you've got so many great stories in here that you apply to people that it was just a great read.

Matthew

So kudos on that. I mean, I.

Sandeep

Think you know, but, you know, I, I have to give the credit to you know, I dedicated the book to my wife of 33 years and all the people who worked for me or worked with me because every person who worked with me, this book is as much their story as mine, because it was they are the ones who actually helped make things happen.

Sandeep

They are the ones who helped me correct my mistakes. And I made a ton of them. So, you know, if you don't have a great team, I have a common saying. I said, you know, we talk about our race because I don't know what castle was in our midst, but every general is only as good as his army.

Matthew

Well, let me ask you what advice would you give on on hiring the right, you know, soldiers for your army, if you will? To take that analogy a little further.

Sandeep

You know, whenever I do an interview, of course, I look for competence. There's no substitute for competence. But I dwell more on two things. I try to find out what the person knows. Many interviewee interviewers try to find out what the person does not know. That is stupid. You should basically try to find out what they know and can you apply what they do in your business.

Sandeep

And the second thing is I look for attitude. I try to find out. I give them practical examples and say, Here's a problem I'm facing. How would you solve it? How would you go about solving it? You don't have to give me the answer. What's your thinking? Right? And that tells me how they think. And I ask them, How do you work with other people?

Sandeep

Tell me your style, you know? So my interviews tend to be a little broader in trying to figure out. I'm really trying and everyone will be interviews with me. I try to find a is there a fit between this person in my organization and not looking to reject that. I'm trying to see, is there a fit? Can I use this person in this job or this job or this job?

Sandeep

And if it's not, then of course it's not a fit.

Matthew

Yeah, well, I mean, and you seem to have a very you have this very kind of gracious style of of leadership. And so it makes me wonder is is it that you have have had the right team, you know, you in many cases hired those people or is it, you know more that you had good people? Maybe they weren't the best people, but having a leader that was so gracious and and giving with in terms of credit and support does that help make a a decent, you know, soldier, a great soldier is.

Matthew

Do you think that's, you know, part of the secret?

Sandeep

But I don't I don't know whether I'd be gracious today. I think when I was younger I was a little hotheaded and yeah, weren't we all patient and, you know, all of the things that go with being younger and being, you know, you know, whatever. But I think time has taught me a lot. I found out that some day, some things that I did were just wrong.

Sandeep

And you have to acknowledge that, you know, you have to know who you are, you have to stay true. And I think but what I have been there are two things that I had done, I think will and one thing, but probably I would change. I probably am quite a demanding manager in that I didn't bond a tremendous amount of productivity and to keep your commitment.

Sandeep

But at the same time, I've been fair. I've had the managerial courage not to just have friends. Look, I bought my friendship badge at the door when I walk in every day. Look, I have no tricks, right? But and I'm good at parceling work out and good at educating people how to solve things. So I've done that well, because my goal is the reason I'm demanding and educate is I want them to be the best soldiers that they can be who one day take my job.

Sandeep

And he does. I'm actually trying to work myself out of a job because if I can do that, then there's something else waiting for me. Yeah, right. And that's the philosophy I have used. And over time I've mellowed, you know, and 65 today, the gray hair shows. I've mellowed a lot over the.

Matthew

Well, you know, I think, you know, you talk about two things there that I'd like to to kind of dig in on a little bit. Is the being true to yourself you mentioned and then at the same time learning and I think I and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, you know, a lot of people here be true to yourself and and for a lot of people that makes them kind of more static, more obstinate to to change.

Matthew

Right. They're like, well, who am I? And people are constantly like, well, this is who I am. So I can't change and evolve and grow because then I'm not that person anymore. I think a lot of people struggle with that in in I don't know, maybe life in in growing as an individual and not realizing that their identity can grow and they can grow and learn from those lessons.

Matthew

Because as you said early on, you were very hotheaded and now now not so much. Is that what you're you're trying to say be be true to yourself and and still like learn lessons? Is that is that kind of the takeaway there?

Sandeep

I think what I mean by stay true to yourself is two things Believe in yourself because no one will ever believe in you more. Okay? The second is understand yourself, understand your strengths and weaknesses. And today you acknowledge that you can address your weaknesses. Otherwise you can't write. Because you know, I did a survey. They did a survey of me in one organization.

Sandeep

They did a 360 degree view bosses, peers, employees. And they had they rated us on three categories affiliation. That means how you get along, other people, etc.. Power and accomplishment. I think it's called the Hays Survey of a and the guys in the give me the result. They actually told me that my results were interesting because what I thought of myself, they asked you to rate yourself on them.

Sandeep

They all scored these people great. You They said that the scores were within 2% of each other. So. So I felt okay. I think I know what I felt. And that allowed me to actually reflect on my weaknesses right. Strengths, of course, I think that everyone recognizes. But what about the weaknesses? Are you willing to confront them? And I had a look.

Matthew

Yeah, well, I think that's such a really important piece. And really it's rather profound that and I think a lot of people kind of. Well, it's not comfortable, right? People don't like looking it at the bad in them, the weak parts. And I think maybe it's part partly the engineering. You Right. That's like, well, what is broken? What is not as good, as efficient, as optimal as as the other piece is?

Matthew

Well, let's get it that way. Right. So is it that you take more of an engineering mindset whereas other people would would be more philosophical about that and they'd look at themselves that way? Is is that way? Perhaps it seems so comfortable for you to look at at that and other people might struggle.

Sandeep

No, I think I think, you know, it was actually I took a more human look at it. And the thing is, the engineering mindset actually helps you rationalize, you know, you can't do that. But I almost always said it right when I was in a tough situation, I went back and asked myself, I used to go and drive once, and I used to say, Hey, dude, I handled this really well.

Sandeep

You know, I have three, three things, you know, which one of them actually one or two of them are very appropriate were three favorite things. I say it is everywhere. I did not course, but Bertrand Russell said, you know, he said conquering fear is the first step to wisdom. So when you are confronted with something, you deal with it.

Sandeep

You will learn a lot from it. The second thing is not Thomas Doer said the mind is like a parachute. It only functions when. So listen. Listen to listen to feedback. And it's okay, you know, and I've not always done that. So, you know, I probably, as I said, I was all kind of arrogant into all of these things.

Sandeep

But, you know, you change with time. And so I think it's really important to reflect and to, you know, you don't always have to be wrong. Sometimes you're right and then you don't have to change. You have to have the conviction not to change. But I think it's important that you try to figure it out and ask yourself honest questions and then proceed from there.

Matthew

Now, I couldn't agree more. Mean, this is really I mean, that's that's incredibly helpful stuff. I mean, I think for every entrepreneur, every manager, every every student going through, you know, graduating college or high school and going off into the world. That is right. Those are are very fundamental and important things. You know, that that will help you be successful.

Matthew

Then I, I don't think you find in many other books you know and and in a lot of those conversations and and I think you strike that a really good balance You're filled with lots of great knowledge and lots in in your book here that you're you know basically giving away I mean this is it's ridiculous how much information is in a was it a made a $20 book or something?

Matthew

It was and it's it's clearly thousands and thousands of dollars and, you know, many thousands of hours of knowledge, you know, really just kind of packed in there in a very enjoyable way. So before we go, your book can be found on on Amazon.com, is that right?

Sandeep

That's correct. It's on Amazon. Absolutely.

Matthew

And is there any place you'd like people to go to find out more information about you and or your book?

Sandeep

Yeah, you can go to my website at it's www.sandeepchennakeshu.com. It's a long name but if you have Google com there's a website for you there and on that website you can also place bulk orders if you want and write to me at Sunday dot case you at Yahoo dot com and I'm sure I can help out and I've enjoyed talking to you Matt so thank you so much for this opportunity.

Matthew

It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on the show and again for anybody interested, Great read. Check out and Amazon.com, your company is your castle. All right. Thanks, Sandy.

Sandeep

Matthew, thank you. Thank you again.

Matthew

Bye