00:07:00 · Karthik Gollapudi
And I think one of the things is just learning from the smartest folks. And at SpaceX, I just saw a lot of people that were operating at a very high level. And sure, you can criticize that, like, maybe certain things in, like, management might not be what everyone else likes. But at the end of day, you see it with your eyes. It's like the largest rocket ever launched and brought back and landing until you you can, like, push the boundary and, like, show people things that have never been possible. And then you're, like, super proud of the work you do. You work really, really hard, but then you can look back and you're, like, super proud of what you do. And I think the key learning was just how to operate at that very high level. The things that stood out of operating that high level, lot of is just urgency. So it's just like high urgency, high iteration rate. You learn the most if you just have that urgency to move faster. It was mostly I just wanted to see what good look like. So I was interviewing companies I thought were really high performing. At that time, this is what, twenty seventeen ish. When I decided to join SpaceX, I was just pretty much looking for learning from very, very high performing companies. Because I knew eventually I'd rather be running a company or starting company or be in a high leadership position. Let me go see how it was done by the best. So I was interviewing companies that that were very, very high performing at that time. Stripe was one of the hot companies at that time. Palantir was, like, really interesting at the time. I just wanted to learn from people who are doing well. What's it about SpaceX? Like, the interview process was just very different than every other company. Nobody was pitching me on benefits. No one was pitching me on, like, work life balance. They were pitching me on mission and the work that you're doing here. There's a lot more spartan, but it's also something you can look back on and be very excited about. And you can, like, point to something great that you accomplished with another team that was grinding very hard. That was the main reason why I chose it. So while I was there, I learned a lot about how to build machines that are safer, more reliable, fault tolerant. I wanted to bring a lot of those ideas and practices to wider industry of people building machines.
00:08:36 · Karthik Gollapudi, S0
That's why we actually started Sift to productize some of this knowledge into tools for the rest of the hardware industry. I see Sift growing in, like, the vision that I would have for it or my goal. I want a percentage of the physical world to be operating on Sift. I want at least a percent of the trains, the planes, the automobiles, the drones, the aircraft, things that are out there. I want those operating on Sift, whether they're being designed, whether they're being manufactured. If they're out in the field, they're generating data, they need to be maintained. There should be at least percentage of the fis Roll it out. Ad[00:09:02] S0: Whoever said good things come to those who wait, never shop Black Friday early at Lowe's. Right now, get up to 50% off select major appliances, plus get free delivery, free haul away, and free basic installation and parts when you spend $896 or more on select major appliances. Shop Black Friday early in store and online now at Lowe's. Valid through twelve two while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See associate at Lowe's dot com for details.
00:09:30 · Karthik Gollapudi
[00:09:30] S1: Four Worlds running on Sift. Process for acquiring Sift's first customer was actually kinda novel. We actually just rented Space, Parallel Systems' office. They're the autonomous rail company. They were our first customer. They have a pretty cool office, and we literally just asked them if we can rent one of the rooms as we build out the product. And that was just motivated by... At SpaceX, Elon always wanted the engineer on the factory floor. So we said we should just be embedded with our customers. Let's go rent a room. And then as we built the product, we had new features. We just go grab someone else in the office and say, what do you think of this? What do you want? What do you not like? Our early road map was completely driven by them. The evolution of our sales motion to the next first few customers, it was... A lot of it was, like, using things in network. We were lucky that there is vibrant SpaceX alum community. We also were able to reach out through existing investors or investors that are generally interested in Sift, for introductions, and also just even just reaching out on LinkedIn, talking about this stuff that we solved, what we wanna do, showing a product. But then also, we had a competitor started around the same time as us. We actually had a a few of those bake offs in the early days. The other companies knew that there's a bunch of customers do it through mobile companies in the space, invited us to a bake off because it definitely added a lot of urgency on our team. And we won all the bake offs that we've done to date. That was actually a bit of a novel experience, I would say, compared to most companies. I think some of the biggest lesson I learned is that, like, it really all just comes down to people. You have one life to live. Like, spend it with the people you wanna be around. There's a lot of urgency. I have very, very limited time. If I'm gonna go spend my time with someone, I want to be the best person I can spend that time with, and that goes into everything, whether that's work, whether that's personal. So choosing the best partner for that. Everything that you do is just informed by the people that are into that. End of day, like Sift, you can talk about all this tech. You can talk talk about this architecture. You can talk about all this cool stuff that we do, even our backgrounds or whatever.
00:11:04 · Karthik Gollapudi
But it really just comes down to the people. Without the people we have at Sift, we wouldn't have the company at Sift. Make sure you bring together the best team, create opportunities for everyone to grow, keep everyone happy to be there, and that's the main lesson I learned. And that's actually a big thing I would call out because a lot of the audience here probably... It looks cool to get some person that's like, oh, the CEO or that person who has, like, a really high profile sounds really prestigious to get them as advisers. But if they're not vested in your success significantly, they're not gonna be actually helping you. They're not gonna be doing interviews. They're not gonna help you on the trenches, and you need to get people who are gonna do that. And in that process, they're gonna challenge you and get the smartest folks around. So the best way to evaluate what is a good team or smart team, honestly, is just to kiss a lot of frogs. Maintaining that talent bar and looking for people who want to do something challenging that they can be proud of. They're gonna work hard, and they can think around, like, the same level or smarter than you, even better. For people just starting their career, I have a bit of a different advice. Like, I think a lot people say, go start your own company. Learn by doing. I highly don't recommend that route. I would recommend most people they actually go see what good looks like, and that doesn't necessarily... Part where I talk about prestige is that, like, just because something's prestigious doesn't mean that it's, like, the right place that you're gonna learn the most from. The thing that might have made that procedure might no longer still be relevant. Because the people who were there that got us to that state might not be as involved. It might be a much larger company. It might be a lot more processed. It's very much about, I would say, go look for the smartest people you can surround yourself with and try to work there. And don't just do, like, little flavor one year at multiple companies. Like, you really wanna understand something from first principles, which really requires spending multiple years trying to work through some hard problem. You definitely wanna try to look for places that already had some level of success, and then you're gonna continue to build on a level of success.
00:12:38 · Karthik Gollapudi
The reason I call that out is because there's some pretty interesting companies with smart people that seem smart from the outside. And as a 22 year old or when you're young, it's hard to evaluate, like, what is smart or not smart because everyone's smarter than you. You wanna be careful to not go somewhere, spend a decade, and if that company shuts down, you don't know what that company did that was successful or not successful. That's why it's good to go to a place that has, like, some level of success that has momentum and it's continuing to grow. So, like, SpaceX was really awesome in that regard. They were actually... Around the time I landed was the first time the Falcon Heavy was launched. They already had rocket... Falcon nine rockets that were launching. They already had the Dragon one program, but there's still a lot more there they were planning on doing. They weren't just, like, sitting and resting. That's what I would optimize for. The reason I call out the procedure is, like, I would completely remove the procedure. Like, if you really wanna do that, go do that. The reason I call that out is because a lot times people will go into that career purely for the sake of the saying, like, it looks cool. You can go tell your aunts about it, but are you gonna learn as much? Are you doing
00:13:31 · S0
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