Today, I'm connecting with Karan Anand, Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director, Australia at Hnry.
Today, I'm connecting with Karan Anand, Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director, Australia at Hnry.
We trace his journey from 13 years in consulting to becoming Hnry’s first hire in Australia, exploring what it really means to lead without ego, think in systems, and be a force multiplier for founders.
Inside the episode:
Connect with Karan Anand on LinkedIn.
Other operators mentioned in the episode:
Connecting with Karan Anand, Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director, Australia at Hnry.
[Note: This transcript is AI-generated via Descript. Please expect typos]
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Laura Nicol: Connecting with Karan Anand Chief Strategy Officer and managing Director Australia at Hnry Quote Grounded and values driven never the loudest but the most impactful end quote That's how people describe Karan others Call him one of the most effective communicators They've worked with a multiplier who builds from first principles An instinctive leader Raised an Australian Sikh Karan learned from a young age that life's value is measured in service Not status not noise but contribution Whether to your family your community or the world your role is to serve And that belief guides everything He does spend 90 minutes with him as I did for this podcast and you really feel it the presence the calm and the clarity At Hnry he serves as chief strategy Officer and a close ally to [00:01:00] co-founders Claire Fuller and James Fuller helping scale their footprint across Australia their newly launched market the UK and the home base of New Zealand at home He's navigating the early days of fatherhood with the same curiosity and care with maybe a little less sleep I literally learned so much through this chat and I hope you do too Huge thanks to Brandon Palmer Manisha Pannu and Sandeep Chandra for helping shape this episode via the pre-interview chats
Karan welcome to Calling Operator
Karan: Great to be on here Laura I've been looking forward to this one
Laura Nicol: So we're gonna start by getting to know you a little Who are you beyond your job title
Karan: probably the first thing is I'm a new dad I've got a 10 week old baby and that's been taking up a lot of my time It's just the most fulfilling incredible experience that I've had in my life and that is so all encompassing I can't think beyond that broader than that I'm an Australian Sikh I'm a call myself a reformed management consultant but that's still intrinsic in my [00:02:00] corporate DNA and I am a diehard Cricket fan which you know let's not get into that cause it's a whole other podcast on that topic
Laura Nicol: That's so good So how have you found the journey into fatherhood so far 10 weeks is pretty
Karan: Yeah we are we are definitely in the extremities of sleep deprivation and learning new things it's either end of the emotional spectrum So on one side you know she's now babbling a little bit She's engaging she's looking at us We get the occasional smile and each one of those just lights up my heart you know in the last year I've probably taken my wife and I are fortunate enough to do some overseas holidays sort of banking all this stuff before knowing we're embarking in this family path So perhaps I've taken a thousand photos in the last year of which I think in the last 10 weeks I've taken 700 So my phone is just full of photos But then on the other side it is exhausting and all the stories you hear from other new parents they prepare you for it but nothing is like the reality of it but I wouldn't have it any other way we feel very blessed to have this baby [00:03:00] girl in our lives
Laura Nicol: Yeah Congratulations to you both in your pre-interview chats with some of your colleagues and friends you were described as community orientated instinctively thoughtful and grounded in service Where does that come from
Karan: Well first of all it's very nice of them I have to make sure I increase their commission on giving this great feedback on me there's probably a mixture of three connected places they come from One is just you don't get to choose your family you get the family you're given I've been very blessed to have parents who had the great balance of being rooted themselves in what's important from a traditional community perspective but also being very ambitious on my behalf noting that we were migrants to Australia and saying in this country we want to do everything we can to set you up for success And so that encapsulates a lot of my and you know two things like my dad was a big proponent of two things and inculcated these in me from when I was about 10 years old which is [00:04:00] very uncommon One is like Your network is your net worth sort of thing So he really pushed on me like build your network The people you know are the ones who are gonna help you succeed in life And secondly he's a fantastic orator himself and he pushed me into debating in public speaking and so I was a school debater right from when I was a year five through to year 12 And consistently did that And that's helped me with debating is this then perfect thing which helps you with the public speaking skills but also get a complex problem break it down and then be able to communicate it with conviction The community side comes from a little bit of that but also there is without again sounding biased there is something special about the orientation about the Sikh community We are taught from a very early age that your life itself is valuable in the context that you contribute to the world around you And so the concept of service and that your value in the world is defined by the amount you serve and it doesn't matter who it may be your family it may be the people around you it may be the world at large but the [00:05:00] point is you serve That is how you live in the world And then the consulting career sort of I think brought those things together in the context of some of the things that you mentioned about being inquisitive thoughtful or a good communicator Like if you're not that in consulting it is a brutal industry right You are not gonna get promoted and so you get that little bit of validation every time you get a bump they're like oh maybe they think you're good at that
Laura Nicol: such a values orientated foundation for you at the core So let's go into management consulting So you spent over a decade 13 years maybe in management consulting What did that teach you about company building and what are the core foundations that you still carry with you today
Karan: the great thing about starting in a consulting career from early on is you are exposed to senior leaders to complex problems that matter at a C-suite level or an executive level or perhaps even a board level when you have no right to be because you actually know nothing you know it might be 22 23 24 [00:06:00] and you are not necessarily the advisor but you are in the slipstream of the advisors doing the work which ladders up to that strategic advice and so it teaches you a couple of really important things One is stripping away the noise of things which are important and not important and then breaking down a vague problem into its core components and then building that back up in order for you to deliver one of the partners I used to work for he used to talk about our role here is not to provide them with the answer It's to give them clarity in order to make the right choice and actually they're outsourcing the seemingly like I've got three good choices here I could expand the country A I could cut costs here or I could invest in things there all three are actually good choices What they are paying you for is to go give me conviction such that one choice is the best choice such that then I can go and sell that to my board my executive team my staff external investors external stakeholders and I can [00:07:00] stand behind that choice And that's your role and so that teaches you if you then take that into company building you're like Strip away the extraneous stuff get rid of all the noise that's involved in there's so much noise in business and go what is the thing I need to do And then in my role now as a chief strategy officer here providing the founders at Hnry with either the space to think through problems or presenting them like let's work through this problem in this way and then trying to get consensus between us so then we've got an aligned way forward applying that in this context that's quite well
Laura Nicol: How do you provide them the space to think through problems Is that you just taking stuff off their plate to give them space or is it more complex than
Karan: uh to a certain extent yes Although I don't think there's any scenario where I could take enough stuff off their plates To give them space because you know you work with founders in your role but also from an investor perspective as well that just plates are perpetually full so as a a [00:08:00] very recent example we're going through an exercise at the moment the three of us the very first time we're trying to set a three year corporate strategy for Hnry I feel very one very honored to be part of the process but it's also as a stakeholder in the business it's actually a really nice thing to think Three years out we're a 7-year-old business we've always had grand visions but the opportunity to actually think three years out is a rare luxury for an early stage company and I come into this process with all of these frameworks in my kit bag that I brought from my old consulting days but actually the thing that's been most impactful and it's been helpful because I've been working at Hnry now for four years so I could do this is what we did was or what I did was we broke the business down into basically 26 elements of the business out a mostly the first principles level So you think about our core proposition you think about where could we go upstream downstream the markets we play in And basically plotted out here's a status quo choice here's an extreme [00:09:00] choice and here's what a midpoint choice would look like And just as a temperature check starting with that and basically ran a poll between the three of us independently And when in three years time where is is the most extreme part of each of these spectrums across all these 26 choices you'd want to be on Because then the only things we're debating are where there is significant divergence Because if there are parts where we agree on it's like there's no point discussing that it's almost a given Either we will frame an option around there or that is where we will go and doing that as an exercise again coming back to my earlier point about stripping away cause we can talk about one part of our business the three of us till the end of time but that's not actually constructive if we're largely have consensus on that direction let's forget that one That's kind of a given Let's focus on the ones where there isn't consensus and try and arrive at one Or what is the information we need in order for us to arrive at and actually it was a useful exercise to start the process with because about half the things we were [00:10:00] already generally aligned on or more than half the things And so then it's just a process of going okay these other ones let's have either a dialogue or going actually I dunno the answer to that yet Are we gonna answer it now or are we gonna park it and come back to it later and so that's an example of like giving them space to think which is not really space per se but it's like creating the condition so that they can think through this
Laura Nicol: Yeah Nice What did you learn in management consulting that makes you a great operator today
Karan: You probably hear this from other consultants who do this podcast as well cause there's a lot of us floating around in operator land we call it structured problem solving right It's breaking down a problem from its broadest sense into something tangible and the building back up I probably take a slight bent on this I'll call it corporate technique technique is really important in the sense of in any craft you do so you take sport I used to play a lot of sport when I was a kid I was a particularly good but I'd loved it And there is objectively good technique there is a way [00:11:00] to kick a ball and there's a way not to kick a ball You may not be a good soccer player if you don't kick the ball properly but you're definitely not gonna be one if you can't do it technically Well in those areas it's easy to go this is the technique in business it's harder whereas what consulting teaches you is the technique of particularly when you're operating in management layers whether you have p and l responsibility or you're operating in an internal advisory function Like me going okay what is the actual problem here Who are the stakeholders that need to be involved How do I break down that problem I often see people who they acknowledge the problem they'll do the analysis and they hope those things meet somewhere in the middle They frequently do not Whereas what consulting teaches you to do is to hold the tension top down You'll do the analysis bottom up but it teaches you to hold attention top down such that when you present your findings to a stakeholder you're telling them the story and the way their brain narrates it which is I gave you this context I asked you to solve this problem I'm expecting this outcome Whereas lots of people will do [00:12:00] that but then they'll analyze it this way which if this is a podcast you can't actually see my hands moving but I'm coming top down and I'm going bottom up and that mucky middle is where a lot of operators get stuck whereas consulting helps you hold that tension the whole way through such that you give answers with more conviction with a bias to action and they're more satisfying for the listener as well to go Yeah that's actually the answer I wanted not just a random bit of analysis loosely connected thing I you to do
Laura Nicol: And you said at the top of the call just when we're having a chit chat before we started recording that it helps you present in a way and you ran for a stream of things of how to present in a boardroom What were those points that you hit
Karan: presenting in a boardroom or presenting anywhere really I think one of the things people often forget when you're presenting and it doesn't matter if you're presenting to a room of two or a room of 200 you are on stage that is your stage It is a performance art and treat it like that Just because you're not sitting at a theater or you're not an actor doesn't mean you're not on stage you must [00:13:00] entertain people you know use entertainment with the loosest term but they have to buy into your context So either you remind them of and busy executives they'll issue you some instructions and they'll forget that I even and you come back into a meeting and I've seen so many people they just race into here's the solution And you're like whoa whoa whoa What are you talking to me about Either remind them or get them to buy into your context Secondly establish the burning platform or why this thing is important Why are we talking about this Why do you need to listen to me right now you know either reframe the problem or frame the problem correctly and then work the answer based on the things they care about But just remember everything has gotta be a compelling pitch too many people work the machinations of meetings as if they're like it's either I'm just going through the process of what's your update What's your update What's your update Even in an update meeting tell me something interesting Tell me something I don't know And I think startups are beautiful in that regard right Because there is zero tolerance for just the corporate middleman which you might get at like a big bank or a large government department Whereas people [00:14:00] who just they attend meetings for the sake of meetings And in the meetings they talk about their last one for the first 15 minutes and they talk about the next one for the next 15 minutes and that's what they do all day And the bank prints money and everyone goes home happy at the end of the day whereas there is zero tolerance right therefore you've got an even higher burden to make sure that when you are going to a meeting are you genuinely adding value And part of the value is from the content Part of the value is from Do people compelled to act on what you're saying
Laura Nicol: you lead us into startups quite naturally there So what nudged you to leave consulting and take an operator seat
Karan: I had the startup itch well before I left so I actually took some time out from Deloitte to have a [00:15:00] crack at a couple of my own startups ultimately they failed but one we got up to about 30k MRR before we ended up our one client got acquired and then We were out of market for too long to get it back in I actually had this unique period for my last five years at Deloitte where they allowed me to work part-time So I was actually a director at Deloitte three days a week and working on my own startups my own not-for-profit stuff two two days a week which was the dream like hectic but loved it and so I already had that itch that I wanted to work in the startup game And then as you get older your risk appetites that changes a little bit as well So you're like do I want to be a founder or do I want to be close to and you know risk appetite varies Then you're like what stage of a company do you want to join as well The way I look at you know if you look back when they tell the story of our generation in a thousand years time I've used this quote a few times and I always say they're not gonna tell the story of Trump but maybe they will tell the story of Trump now but I don't think they're gonna tell the story of US politics I don't think that's gonna be the dominant narrative of [00:16:00] our generation The dominant narrative is going to be this is the generation where software and our AI ate the world And you've got two choices that you were either part of that or you weren't and whilst I loved my time at Deloitte the business model of professional services is woefully outdated It is labor arbitrage it's charging a margin on humans It's the same business model that the Egyptians used to build the pyramids I needed to be part of this tech and software revolution and so then If you've got the opportunity you've basically got three choices right It's founder investor or operator I had the crack as founder a couple of times didn't go successfully and then as investor operator But I like rolling my sleeves up I like being part of the story of building an organization of building a business and so I actually thought I'm maybe two moves away from the role I landed at Hnry Maybe I need to go into like a strategy team of a scaled tech company cut my teeth there a little bit before I had the permission to join a place like Hnry But when that opportunity presented itself I jumped at it as I got to know the [00:17:00] company and the founders and the people this was a no brainer and four years later absolutely no regrets Best career decision which I'm very grateful for
Laura Nicol: Yeah Congrats And from what I hear rightfully so based on the feedback from your colleagues today you are Hnry's Chief Strategy officer or CSO as you say and you've had a front row seat to its growth What's this journey been like for you so far
Karan: the journey's been incredible So I was hired in 2021 as the first person on the ground So we're in New Zealand founded FinTech so maybe the 30 second pitch on Hnry So we're a digital accountancy focused on sole traders and so we provide sole traders with three things throughout award-winning app and service which is the ability to have your payments accepted into Hnry and then have your tax automatically calculated and deducted at the point that it's received such that you are on top of all your tax obligations from the outset It's The biggest pain point sole traders face when they go from salary employment to self-employment is going tax which used to be your employer's burden is [00:18:00] now your burden and it can be incredibly complicated The second thing is the Hnry app itself which is available on the play store or the app store If any one of your listeners is actually self-employed or interested in it provides you with business tools for you to run your business So you can generate invoices generate quotes We give you a Visa debit card for you to make business expenses with And then you upload that into Hnry and then we categorize that expense for you And we automate the expense claiming process for you as well Issues you with reports statements of accounts you can make custom allocations to your superannuation fund to your high interest savings funds to your share trading account so you can manage your financial health a bit better And the third thing is we're also a proper tax agency So we do our customer's tax work for them and so we will do their quarterly b we do the income tax returns They get an hourly letter from the A TO We answer that for them Our team is constantly on the phone live chat all day long answering not just answering customer queries Like I can't log into app It's like [00:19:00] Hey can I claim more things Like things you would ask your accountant We are your accountant I was the first person on the ground in Australia Hnry and New Zealand founded company about seven years old They decided they wanted to expand to the Australian market They were looking for a head of Australia I joined we already had a few customers here but for us to expand particularly during Covid you need a local presence and you really need to you know Australia is orders of magnitude larger in terms of a country relative to New Zealand And so you want a local presence You want local capability and it's gone really well so uh thank you So across ANZ Now and we've just announced Laura which you'd be familiar with Hnry uk which is very very recent hot off the press So we opened up our early access program a few weeks ago and we've got a number of customers who are using Hnry there now with a view that will scale that business out over the coming years We're very very excited about that we are New Zealand's largest tax agency by number of customers we are probably [00:20:00] australasia's fastest growing tax agency and at an aggregate level the volume of payments we process through the business Equates to about 1 of the entirety of New Zealand's income tax bill which is a pretty cool vanity metric if you think about a company that's about seven or eight years old that's just credit to the vision of our founders and the execution of the team And I mean you solve a really compelling pain point in elegant way people want to use your service
Laura Nicol: And it is such a great product I've used it myself I'd love to know what outcomes are you responsible for and what's top of mind for you this quarter
Karan: maybe I answer the second part first So top of mind at the moment is now we have been a multi-market business for a little while now with Australia and New Zealand but UK adds an Whole other thing to the mix with the time zones as well that makes the like the operating cadence of the business Very very different what's top of mind for me right now and as we're sort of working through this strategy process is each of of our three markets is different in its [00:21:00] context in its size You know Australia is five times larger than New Zealand than the UK is three four times larger than Australia Our relative position in each of the markets is very different New Zealand is we are a mature business still lots of growth opportunity but very well known brand name In our target market Acquisition flywheel is significantly optimized You know the margins and all the metrics are through the roof it's possibly one of the it Hnry New Zealand was a standalone business that would one of the most compelling fintechs in the world given its metrics Australia is our growth engine it's a more competitive market than New Zealand but we have established a really good footprint We are on a like for like basis for every customer and revenue milestone in Australia We're tracking 18 months ahead of New Zealand which is awesome which is exactly what we wanted when we we started out here and it makes sense Larger market more mature product more money in the bank to spend on marketing But we are just scratching the surface in terms of the depth of the market here So we're in hyper scaling mode at the moment here The UK [00:22:00] is like big market How do you skin that What's the most efficient way to go to market we could burn all our money quite easily advertising on the tube in London for two months but that's not the most efficient way to acquire customers And so working through the what are the early experiments we want to put in place What are the cohorts of customers early adopters we want to find that accelerate word of mouth thinking through the nuances of how we have a consistent business across all three geographies but actually our go to market motions in our context you know they're different enough for it to require a lot of attention and orchestration That's very top of mind So the strategy team is as you can tell with how I describe that I'm not accountable for the strategy of the organization but I'm you know responsible alongside the founders as the executive for developing and executing that we're responsible for competitor market research basically informing the leadership team of what's going on in the world at large We're responsible for generating compelling customer data insights as well We're responsible [00:23:00] for the legwork involved with investor relations so our quarterly shareholder reporting our AGM many cap raises and the like that we do and any sort of large strategic projects it's like let's look into blah topic Or let's do the commercial analysis around this proposition that will land at my desk and I'll distribute it amongst the team it's a pretty cool varied role and it's a very very unique I mean I know you are a chief of staff you know CSO you have sort of equal permission to be in the co-pilot seat amongst the co-founders in terms of what are we doing What's the direction you know and you're fronting up going how can I help
Laura Nicol: such great exposure and such a great learning opportunity too
Karan: Yeah absolutely Absolutely
Laura Nicol: let's take a problem that you've solved recently How have you made one of your biggest strategic calls and what did the early signals look like
Karan: Maybe let me not do a recent one Let me do one that's a couple of years old because I can then share with you how it's gone Early(ish on in my tenure as I was [00:24:00] still head of Australia we were concurrently looking for a couple of things and the stars happened to align which helped us make the strategic call which was We wanted better market data and literature around the sole trader market for us to then you know understand your customer segment better from a market perspective in order to do better business I don't need to insert the rest of it but then also we've had a focus for quite a while on earned media making sure that we are as a new challenger brand we are top of mind sending positive trust signals through the press to prospective customers And so we were on the lookout for a PR agency to help us with this and the problem with the first part which was there's not a lot of good market data sole traders because they get caught up in small business land and in small business land like all lands he or she who cries loudest gets the most attention and SMBs vary from sole traders through to companies that employ 50 to a hundred people And so who's the one that gets noise is the ones who can actually [00:25:00] pay the fees for the organizations that represent them there's a lot of stratification in SMB and 60 70 of them are sole traders and they don't have a voice and therefore there's no literature on them And so this PR agency fortuitously pitched us the bones of this idea which we took and fleshed out which is why don't we create the primary data set ourselves And that concurrently allows us to have the data set It allows us to then use that as an opportunity to build consideration from an earned media perspective but then also helps build the Hnry brand as advocates for so traders which is a key pillar of our strategy And so we concocted this thing three years ago called the Hnry Soul trader Pulse which is a report that we run It's independently run by in fact a sole trader himself His name's Jim Reed his business is called Resolve Strategic He's the pollster for a number of the large publications in Australia Sydney Morning Herald the age and he runs their political polling So we pay Jim three times a year to run an independent poll with a sample size of 500 sole traders [00:26:00] and we assess their economic sentiments their social sentiments their welfare We ask a bunch of contextual questions about either political topic of the time or how they're feeling from a cost of living perspective or if it's end of financial year how prepared they are if it's tax time how ready they are And we've now run this 11 times And through that I've been on TV several times we've been in the newspaper several times I've met with most of the small business ministers across the country We hosted the federal small business minister in our office here We regularly engage with the small business ministers in New Zealand And the literature from this pulse has allowed us to position ourselves basically So that bet we made we pay quite a bit of money for this but we are now the custodians of the best literature as it pertains to this demographic better than the Bureau of Statistics better than any government organization and in fact we are doing confidentially pieces of work with various government agencies where they are tapping into our literature to [00:27:00] be like Actually we want access to that to help us make policy decisions and so I'm incredibly proud of what we've done with that and over time what it allows us to do is significantly advocate for improvements and changes from a sole trader perspective which otherwise governments would just be ignorant to because if no one's talking about them they're not gonna know And so we are now talking about them We are now raising this in the halls of Canberra and the Hall of Wellington hopefully we can keep doing this and I'd love to look back in 10 years time and go there's now 30 40 50 sole trader pulses we run And now we have this incredible longitudinal study of economic impacts behaviors how sole traders respond to different changes in government policy and the like And therefore you do in the future
Laura Nicol: I love it when a PR motion becomes a repeatable campaign and asset for a business Like it's so powerful and not only have you given sole traders as a voice you've taken an activist stance to give them a voice quite a tactical example from [00:28:00] a campaign and a business growth perspective how have you thought about growing your team
Karan: my team has taken on different versions right Because I changed from effectively a p and l leader to a functional leader And so in the early days the Hnry Australia team so everyone who was in Australia effectively reported to me and the long-term intent was never to run the two geography separately but it made sense early on to do that whilst we were still building management capability in New Zealand and then once we sort of merged the teams moved into a CSO role I think the team aspect is really interesting and really important right Because you need a combination of a few things and it is changing in an AI type world where you need people who have got so in a small scrappy like we're a team of three So in a small scrappy scale up strategy team which in and of itself is an indulgence for most startups and scale up to have a strategy team You want people who are equal parts I'm a bit of a hustler so I know how to find information really [00:29:00] quickly I have really good business context so I don't just cut slides and produce them for you for the purposes of kicking a conversation down the road It's like I'm looking at this because I know it's a problem All my instincts about this makes sense or doesn't make sense are a good thing And then one thing which has not been something I thought about as much in my consulting days but both our founders excellent at this and I've been trying to build my skillset in this is this concept of abductive logic traditionally particularly in consulting when we go through all the types of logic you teach inductive logic and deductive logic Deductive logic is you know A good US president has high approval ratings Barack Obama had high approval ratings therefore Barack Obama it's the concept the evidence the therefore and then the inference is proved So therefore Barack Obama is a good president Inductive logic is different things like so the US economy is performing really well People are happy with how the administration is going Those two things are kind of disconnected but the the thing that links them is Barack [00:30:00] Obama must be a good president You know they're linked There's not a therefore necessarily abductive logic is in the absence of me having the time to have lots of data points and obviously in business that's more complex than just the very simplistic examples I gave you in startups you get one or two data points and from that you need to go based on this I go C DE FG therefore we do this And it's like but how do you know You don't have the evidence and you have to be comfortable with that tension You have to be comfortable with that but also you need to have the capability to go based on those one or two data points you've given me I can comfortably go it's because of this and therefore this So I want to change that and I don't wanna touch that And we're also gonna add this thing and our founders very different people very different personalities equally capable on this front and I've observed them and I've watched them and go that's an important skill set because then it cuts the time required to make decisions to almost nothing It also removes the need for lots of data lots of analysis lots of [00:31:00] blah blah blah blah But you can only do that when you're comfortable with your ability to connect the dots through very few data points and make decisions going forward I'm looking for the capabilities needed for a strategy team of our side is people who've got those three things right So I've got that scrappiness I really invest in understanding business context and I can do the abductive logic part really really well that's the environment that I'm trying to foster at the moment in the team Which you know it's hard because you've hire you hire ex corporate people and ex consultants like myself there's lots of unlearning before you can actually do the relearning And so the unlearning is it's not more data leads to more questions leads to more insights leads to more well actually the scope could be really big It's like no no we got a narrow really quick We got a narrow really quick What's the action What's the action What's the action It's like that action is not a material action what is a thing We can do it now make a change in the next week or two and working through that is that's I think the sweet spot we're looking for in of of strategy operators in an early stage [00:32:00] company
Laura Nicol: that's great and I love that you gave an example of a growth area for you Like you've seen something done really well by the founders that you support and that's where you're turning your attention for your own skill growth Is there anything else that you've had to learn in terms of how to be a great manager
Karan: when you're in professional services it's like the most over performance managed industry in the world it feels like at times you do work in between performance management conversations Either I'm setting your goals on this project and I'm your career coach and I'm your mentor and I'm someone else's mentee and I'm someone else's coachee And you spend all your time doing that one part of it it's almost like I'm happy that I'm not having to be governed by 7,000 performance management frameworks anymore The other probably more macro insight I'd make is when you're on professional services you are working in an environment where you're essentially for good or bad you are essentially trying to create clones of yourself You therefore can be quite harsh in [00:33:00] terms of performance management cause you're like that's not what I would do therefore you are wrong which isn't it's not great for people's self-esteem but that is the way of the world in that part but also you know firms so law accounting consulting whatever they're constructed around homogenous skill sets designed in a particular way companies are different because you've got heterogeneous skill sets And so if you've got carriage as a manager of people who are not in a service you know internal service part you inherently have got people who have got different skill sets different personalities different ways of working different backgrounds different context different goals And so you have to change the way you manage I think I came into this eyes wide open but it's still a shift you have to consciously make where you can't performance manage or manage the way you did in the past And not because a place like Deloitte is really harsh in terms of performance management It's not it's because the style is I'm trying to create a clone of myself in you So in five years time you should be where I am [00:34:00] And so you're not doing this therefore do more of this And then you can be where I am in five years time That's not the way I manage at Hnry because I'm not trying to create clone of myself I'm trying to make you the best version of yourself in service of the business And so you have to be a lot more nuanced You have to be a lot more delicate You have to be a lot more contextual in the way you do management in a company as opposed to the way you do management at a firm
Laura Nicol: your friend Sandeep from Atlassian describes you as an instinctive leader and you can't help but take on that coaching and guiding persona role in any context that you're in he also mentioned that you've therefore become a multiplier on people's careers So let's stick with the startup context What are you doing now that helps you multiply the output of people
Karan: That is a great question and very very flattering for Sandeep to say that to me I think fundamentally the older you get the more people ask you for advice for good or bad right It's just the way the world works [00:35:00] like an internal mantra is that don't give people cliched advice and make sure everything you say is not boring and so I inherently think about things more in terms of someone's asked me for this I'm like well if I told you like work really hard and you know make sure you build your networks And I was like yeah it's cliched nonsense You can listen to it on any YouTube video Like why are you coming to me for this advice and so with my very because I have a lot of time with my team at the moment I spend a lot of time then coming up with like bespoke ways of trying to work through that piece of work we did we could have done it better if we'd thought about this And then let's abstract that out to what that means in the sense of how you are then progressing in terms of your own trajectory as well the way I'm trying to be a multiplier to your question is to try and be more Nuanced around the feedback which ladders into whatever career direction there is So if I give you an example one of the discussions I was having with a junior colleague the other day was this concept of there's this bridge that you've got If you think conceptually I've got my my hand up [00:36:00] here for for the listeners where a a senior I'm raving a senior person they'll give you a bit of advice or they'll give you sorry a bit of context which then ladder down into therefore I want you to do this bit of work which ladder down a little bit too in service of this outcome if that is then picked up by an analyst say if I'm gonna use sort of firm speak they will hear that whatever that spectrum is and they'll go okay I've got this bit of data I'm doing this bit of analysis and I'm synthesizing the analysis where my hands are There is a gap in between those That is the gap the manager fills And if you have a separation in those things then the executive will never be satisfied with doesn't matter how high quality the analysis the analyst did is because there is a gap between the outcome they wanted and the outcome of the analysis The role the manager feels is to take that outcome they're looking for and break it down and then build it back up And so part of this conversation is about someone being a more effective manager is right now we're getting [00:37:00] really effective analysis which is really good outputs but it's not connected to the outcome the executive wanted And so they'll inherently be unsatisfied And so how would you take on the outcome they're looking for in the way a manager would look for that going I'm starting with the end in mind and I'm working back with the end in mind or if someone you know there's another separate conversation I had with another more of a peer going so-and-so's asked me to look into this problem It's like here's how I'm framing the problem Like no don't frame the problem Start from what is the answer you're going to give them And you don't actually know the contents of the answer but you know the structure of the answer and the structure of the answer is we are going to do these six initiatives and they have this sort of flavor And then you go okay what would need to be true for those to be the right initiatives Then go and find the data which helps you identify whether those are the right initiatives or other ones the right initiatives And that then cuts your analysis time really really quickly So long-winded way of answering your question is I spend a lot of time trying to go like what's the [00:38:00] most bespoke additive thing I can give to you which is gonna help you make a difference Tomorrow day after But also you can bank that advice hopefully just to make you a better practitioner going forward that comes from an advisory background people they don't pay for advice They pay for very bespoke advice And so you're just trying and to bespoke advice at scale
Laura Nicol: And if I play that back to you in its simplest form it's teaching people to think in systems and also framing is
Karan: yep yep Totally Yeah totally first principles and systems thinking is unfortunately very underdone and I think that's a skill any person in any organization should try and master for all of his current controversies I think Elon Musk has been one of the best macro systems thinkers of our generation which has you know led to the compelling companies that he's built and the breakthroughs that he's led that's like first principles and systems thinking at a sense degree in practice
Laura Nicol: Given that you think deeply about systems and scale how are you [00:39:00] operationalizing what AI first talent could look like in an organization
Karan: I thought about this recently and I think the limiting not the limiting factor but almost the threshold to determine whether someone is still a good practitioner and operator particularly in a context in which I operate which is as a strategist is and you know we'll start running case studies like this in the future is how good are your prompts Because if you can't write Not even write you don't need to be a prompt engineer but you need to be thoughtful about how you instruct the AI to give you answers but then also how you pressure test the answer to know is it right because increasingly I'm doing a lot of my work in ChatGPT we're just in constant dialogue I'm going back and forward I build a canvas and I start I'm going I'm thinking about this topic give me your thoughts And mostly they'll suck because I've been very vague But then in that canvas I'll comment and critique and in three or four hours I've unpacked the reasonably large problem into [00:40:00] a memo style response I can then for example send on to our CEO who's asked me a question going do you think we should enter this market And I'm making half a day I've got an answer for him And he's like that's good enough The answer is no but here's why And he's the reasoning behind it I think AI first talent are the people who are still and you know if you did an interview case study you'd still be like cool you've got ChatGPT I'm actually gonna read what the conversation you'd had with ChatGPT did you take it on a instructive journey where every question was additive or were you asking it nonsense and just copying and pasting what it produced without being thoughtful of oh actually I didn't think of that Maybe I'll take it in that direction Or No it's not understanding what I'm saying I need to prompt the output to be in this format I still think that comes back to first principles thinking going what am I trying to get out of this it's a tool for you to use there's that hierarchy of there's data leads to information leads to knowledge leads to wisdom increasingly the LLMs are If you've got structured data it's helping us get to the information and stepping into knowledge a [00:41:00] little bit But that top part is so contextual in a business level it's gonna be owned by but are just operating the data information who are gonna get arbitrarias out by the system
Laura Nicol: talking about different levels in terms of who may get rolled out by the system as an example what are you and the exec leadership team doing to build capability across the organization
Karan: many many people are now using a combination of Gemini Claude and Chat GPT internally to multiply their work just to make things go faster we're building sort of shared confidential desensitized data sets that we are training some of these models to allow us to do analysis across different parts of the business quicker and better we are not using it necessarily from a customer facing standpoint just yet and that is very central to Hnry's secret sauce we see ourselves we're a SaaS business but the way our founders describe it is rather than being software as a service we are service delivered [00:42:00] via software And so central to Hnry's way we win is have someone a human a local human who is available during business hours when you need them to answer your tax question And I think as much as those of us operating in the worlds we operate in getting very excited about this the general public When it comes to their financial affairs and their tax matters and stuff they want to know that there is a human responding to me either by email or in app chat or someone I can pick up the phone and speak to and they understand my context and so we will be we're increasing gonna be using the AI to help our customer support staff become better But in the short term the AI will not be replacing our customer facing staff So it's very much an improvement internally in some of our cost of service analysis times
Laura Nicol: So it sounds like each employee within the business has almost like how can you multiply your output KPI attached to their role and they're expected to
Karan: No not quite I mean it's quite contained [00:43:00] to those who we can we don't want to this false expectation of people as well because our culture is not to push people on a fad and I've been in the game around long enough to know that business cycles go through different fad We are going through a major AI fad and AI will remain it will be an important it will be AI existed before ChatGPT exploded just in the same way that the blockchain exploded a few years ago Blockchain still exists Crypto still exists It's just not the center of every conversation as it was five years ago AI will be that in a few years time it will exist It just won't be the center of every conversation And so we wanna make sure we're taking a mature approach to it going let's make sure the people who can use it to improve their work rate and therefore multiply the business have got the tools and capabilities they need in order to do that Let's make sure we're experimenting where it makes sense but let's not get sucked into this Like we have to mandate the usage of something I I've heard some companies [00:44:00] do that in the past recently It's that's not our culture
Laura Nicol: Fair I feel like we've talked across a few pillars there but I'd love to kind of round out the section why did you join Hnry and what should somebody joining an early stage company be thinking
Karan: so there's a few things and maybe I'll cover off sort of the two or three big ones the first one and I'm calling on my consulting background again which was you know I was in the business of going around as a strategy consultant in financial services talking about different strategy or innovation frameworks to different clients mostly big banks insurance companies super funds and the like and one of my favorite concepts Is the concept of disruptive innovation which was coined the term disruption was coined by a professor late Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School from this book the Innovators Dilemma a good sort of 25 30 years ago and without going into the theory of disruption it's a very bastardized phrase Now everyone who's doing anything interesting is a disruptor Whereas Christensen he said very clearly [00:45:00] this is the ingredients you need to be a disruptor And we used to talk about that to clients going who's gonna disrupt you How could you be a disruptor Where would you think about disrupting your own business Where would you think about carving something else out where you could disrupt others blah blah blah those sorts of things And then I was introduced to Hnry Hnry is a textbook disruptor It is a company using unique technology in order to lower the cost to server the category entry point from a costing perspective to create access to an industry which is otherwise unaffordable For a large segment of people which are sole traders who want access to world class accounting services They just it's too expensive You're not gonna pay 5 10 15 grand for that level of service And the only way you can make that accessible is through breakthroughs in technology and the system that is delivered in And I just went oh my God I want to be on this I want to actually work for a disruptor I don't just want to write case studies of them and then point to people going why don't you be like them So that was the first thing The second thing was we talked about [00:46:00] community a little bit and the importance of community in my life and you get to a point where for all the pros associated with a consulting career at some point it happened for me where It started to eat me up inside That fundamentally my job was about helping rich people get richer and I advise executives and board members and the like who are already on good wickets and we talk about how can you increase your profit There's nothing wrong with that There's a society that we live in but I wondered whether there was more and the archetypal Hnry customer that we work for So if you would take the mode the most frequently occurring customer for Hnry is a 30 something year old female disability support worker living in Queensland small business operator and that is very different from the clients I used to serve before So I go home every night knowing that is the person the business I work for serve today And I sleep very well I mean I don't sleep very well these days I've got a 10 week old but with that in mind I'm very comfortable with [00:47:00] then the impact we're having and then the third thing is obviously like when you make a mid-career transition you're as much interviewing the people you're gonna work with as much as they're interviewing you and I've been very fortunate that the team I mean I joined as employee number one in Australia but employee number 20 ish at Hnry overall So quite a small team then we're about 140 150 now particularly with the founders who I still have an excellent relationship with the the broader at the time leadership team got to meet most of the people like half the company through my interview process cause that's what we 10 people not that many they're just like the culture is fantastic there's a high degree of some of the things the founders care about they have some very strong convictions on a few things which are like just absolutes for them So one thing which I love is this concept of fairness And it manifests itself very practically in two ways Our commercial model is a 1 fee and so we carry the commercial risk When someone doesn't earn in a particular month you will still get the Hnry Service [00:48:00] but you're not paying for it which is bizarre but it's you know when you're a freelancer your income's gonna be choppy We don't think you should pay for a service you're not using So you don't earn We don't earn But then it also manifests itself in the way we do pay parity At Hnry there is a stipulated salary for every role we advertise which is published on our website and there is no negotiating There's little bit of margin in there based on your level of experience noting that if you've done this job already for two years versus zero years Maybe you'll pay a bit more but we don't negotiate And that is because empirically we know men are better negotiators in new jobs than women And so you'll automatically create a gender pay divide at the start of any new role And so we don't negotiate That's how we implement fairness at Hnry And I'm like that's awesome Love it How good Like values not just listed on the wall it's like here's how we practice them and that's a policy we won't waiver from And that's got a commercial bent to it with our customers but it's also got an internal bent with our employees as well And so the combination of those things it [00:49:00] this was the right business for me to join
Laura Nicol: And is Hnry hiring Would you like me to
Karan: We are we are absolutely are hiring We are hiring across Wellington I think in Sydney and definitely in the uk And so if you just go to our website so Hnry.com or Hnry.com au all the roles are listed on our website and we've got some pretty good marketing we've put out there for people who want to understand what life Hnry's like
Laura Nicol: we are going to in true corporate speak zoom out just ever so slightly and I just want to just take a moment to reflect on what you think your operator strengths or superpowers are
Karan: I think it's structure and clarity they're the two things I think I'm good at So it's being able to quickly contextualize a problem and then Hopefully reciprocally when someone is framing a problem to me go actually I think what you're asking is A B and C Does that feel right And if we frame it that way then you go they're the problems we need to solve And then we go away and solve the problems and we [00:50:00] present it back There's always reframing that happens but then helping them get back to the thing we were talking about was this Sometimes you don't obviously you don't get it right But I would like to think that that's my strength
Laura Nicol: And I feel like you've had a really successful career and I feel like you've worked really hard to be a great leader but I'd like to flip that ever so slightly and just hear what has been the hardest moment of your career so far
Karan: there's been a couple the one I'm thinking of was I was very very early days So a graduate during the global financial crisis In 2008 and I wasn't at Deloitte I joined another consulting firm prior to that like a mid-tier consulting firm in Australia And I wasn't quite enjoying the work I was doing there And an opportunity came up to join another consulting firm So I applied for a role This was at the end of my first year there and it was like a Italian headquartered Milan headquartered telco and media strategy house And they were gonna pay me like 30 40 more [00:51:00] their offices in King Street Wharf which in Sydney is next to Darling Harbor Nice swanky office with beautiful views got an offer gladly resigned you know much to the annoyance of the partners I was working with you don't want a graduate to leave in their first year and four weeks into my they asked me to extend my notice period so I could see out the project which I did Four weeks into my five week notice period I get a call from the Australian managing partner of that firm saying because of the global financial crisis they're cutting back on costs and they are shutting down the Australian operation and so I was made redundant before I even joined as a 21-year-old it was a pretty ing confronting thing So I went through multiple existential crises over the course of the next few weeks deciding what I do next should I go I go back to the existing firm Would they even have me back my ego says no how could I possibly go back to where I just walk out But also I'm like we're in the middle of a financial crisis a job is a job [00:52:00] in the end through my dad convincing me and the senior partner in the Sydney office of this firm basically calling me while I was on leave going what are you doing You need to come back to work I ended up going back and worked there for another good year and a half two years before then I skipped onto Deloitte but that was quite a shock and I was very grateful they took me back and then put my effort in for the next couple of years And then I needed a big brand on my cv And the one thing I learned about that was when I joined Deloitte oh man I worked hard the first two years there I was like I am not letting this opportunity go through my fingers I was like I don't need to go home I ate dinner in the office two or three nights a week I don't care I am going to smash this job I want them to know I am qualified and capable of being here And that was kind of a little bit of that learning from that experience going don't take your opportunities for granted it was same when I joined Hnry I absolutely have to smash the first few months and we still wanna smash every day but first impressions matter
Laura Nicol: A [00:53:00] hundred percent
Karan: opportunities like you know they are you and far between And your track record really doesn't matter matter
Laura Nicol: And redundancies are so tough both of my marketing startup roles ended up in redundancies and picking yourself back up after those is so hard but it's such an opportunity to create a different path for a different life I'd love to get your take on what you think the future of the startup ecosystem looks like in apac
Karan: so I think probably the instructive part of that question is apac one of the other things I did in my really um expansive years I call this just to give you a little bit of context When I was 29 I was concurrently a director at Deloitte a startup founder part-time the chair of the Young Seek Professionals Network and the chair of the Australia India Youth Dialogue And so I was parallel processing four career options going I could go down the corporate partner path I go down the startup founder path I could go down not-for-profit CEO path or the Australian India Youth There the back of of my mind I had maybe politics there's something I might flirt with [00:54:00] and then I progressively ruled them out So the context is done
Laura Nicol: was your debating
Karan: It was a debating it was this watching West Wing for many years going I wanna be that sort of guy but that's not really what politics is like and so I've ruled that out the reason I go in the APAC one and linked to Australia India Youth Dialogue is because once you spend a bit more time working in the Australia Asian network at corridor not just the diaspora here but actually working directly with that you realize how much of a contrived thing it is When we call ourselves part of Asia cause we just geographically located here we are culturally Absolutely dissimilar from Asia And so it matters from a startup perspective because I think the structure of startups and the startup sector and the world's view of us here is very different to Asia and I think there are markets in Asia particularly like the Indian market for example which from a startup perspective are just gangbusters The amount of dry powder that exists there the scale of the businesses that they're building there is huge And not to say that [00:55:00] Australia does not punch a above its weight We love telling the world that until you speak to Kiwis and then they tell you how much they punch above their weight and you know it's a different level
Laura Nicol: It is so true
Karan: you're like yeah you are the guys that punch above your weight I think there are different stories here So if we then focus on the ANZ story It's interesting I think for there to be a really really special startup ecosystem or a like world leading one there are a few conditions which need to be true And I don't think Australia has those conditions necessarily which will mean I don't think we'll ever have one of the world's great startup ecosystems but we'll still have the world's greatest country And I think the second one matters more than the first one because we don't have the problem of scarcity of employment opportunities and particularly high value employment opportunities we have this great social infrastructure because of that or perhaps slightly related to that culturally we don't have a huge risk appetite but also we've got massive amounts of tall poppy syndrome I And so we don't [00:56:00] we don't celebrate people who are successful but in a way it's good because they also don't walk around behaving like pork chops is when they're successful as well right there's a humble mindset to the people who operate here So because of those reasons I don't think we'll ever have what the world's great startup ecosystems but I'm okay with that I will be a startup operator here hopefully for many many years to come but at the end of the day as you know well the system is only part of the equation Actually Startup success is largely idiosyncratic It's like did you have the right founders solving the right problem at the right time Who at every single point of the journey cause you you don't just fail pre-seed you fail post seed you fail Post series A post series B post series C You can fail at any given point you know history will see you as a failure which the startup community celebrates which is good so for you to ever get into the ranks of the number of things that needed to go right at every step for Atlassian and Canva to be where they are is [00:57:00] unbelievable And maybe there are several companies who are on that track who failed post series B you're like is it their fault Not really I think community and ecosystem can only help to a certain extent which is why you have great companies which come out of every corner of the world There are unicorns from so many different countries because it's just those things for that company just happened credit to them that they can then bask in their glory as well
Laura Nicol: So then what do we need as operators the whole reason I host this podcast is to learn how to be the best operator I can be and learn via other operators So what do we need to adopt to become some of the world's best
Karan: So one is we have access to the global market So I think if we assume that and we don't assume that at all I don't think anyone in Australia assumes that your learning should only come from Australia Like you should absolutely steal off everyone the Americans the Europeans lots and lots of different countries in Asia from Israel so many great tech companies that come outta Israel we should absolutely [00:58:00] steal all their ideas and we should absolutely steal all their playbooks and there's an interesting part like To be successful as an Australian startup do you have to be globally minded from day one Is our market big enough and if you assume that's true you have to then from the outset have a global mindset if I'm gonna be an operator at say I I joined as an operator in a company that's only Australian based but if I'm joining because I want to be part of the journey of a company going from post seed or series A to a unicorn I know it must expand overseas And so in order for that and then when you get overseas you get into much more different competitive markets So for you then you go okay what can I already do now to learn about how logically different markets that an Australian company would expand into work And so what can I learn about how the US market works What can I learn about how Southeast Asia works how India works how China works how Europe maybe works but those markets at least because there's almost an [00:59:00] inevitability that your company will have to go into one of those markets if you're joining For the purposes of you know I don't think many people will listen in least want to be an operator and a company that has no growth ambitions so with that in mind I think you have to take a global mindset and then I talk to people a lot about this who attend a lot of events going I think you should attend events I think building your networks and the like is great but actually there is more content available in YouTube than you could possibly consume in many of the events you attend and so do you have a learning mindset Hopefully the people who are listening to this podcast the reason they are listening is because they care about this and credit to you because you've actually built very niche content which sits below the founder layer where most data literature is just at the founder layer noting that 99.99 of people who work in startups are not founders Um
Laura Nicol: 100
Karan: and therefore they probably want to learn some stuff too which is not about learning you know what Steve Jobs did but I think making sure that your vision and view from day one is [01:00:00] global and learning about the things you don't know which is about how other work will just help you be a operator when you hopefully join an Aussie startup trying to do big things
Laura Nicol: Yeah totally also hear people's stories while they're in the thick of it what is the everyday operator learning without them being an expert and then us trying to take those learnings so I hope that I'm giving some of these insights on this
Karan: yeah Totally
Laura Nicol: thank you for sharing today
Karan: Yeah no no problem
Laura Nicol: And
Karan: And on that note
Laura Nicol: who is an operator we should be paying attention to across APAC
Karan: well you've interviewed a couple that I like So you've interviewed Albert we talked about Albert big fan of his your very first podcast with an old colleague of mine Harry Hamilton ex Culture Now I think he's a founder so so maybe you rule him out He started his own product education Business Yeah
Laura Nicol: he's product at tracksuit now
Karan: is he right There you go Okay Um um there you go Plus fuzzy Okay So yeah Harry and I go way back as well but I would like to spotlight a couple of the people I put forward to you for the [01:01:00] pre-interview questionnaire who they're colleagues and friends but also people I tremendously respect It was very nice to them to say good things about me But Sandeep who's you know my oldest and dearest friend also the head of strategy for DevOps at Atlassian Atlassian one could argue is perhaps passed startup era just slightly but still you know a huge tech success story And I think still has a lot of that startup culture as part of the continuous scaling journey And then Brandon Palmer who's Hnry's head of marketing and we owe a lot of our success as a business to how we go about doing marketing we take a very unique approach to not just you might've seen some of our ads Laura and some of your listeners might as well and particularly the ones in Australia We'll see lots of ads in and around the end of financial year period a lot of that credit to that around the conception and the execution is about the way we do marketing at Hnry
Laura Nicol: So we're at a time in the podcast now that we're gonna go into a quick fire round this was inspired by Harry Uffindell I love like bringing in [01:02:00] builds from other operators to grow the podcast over time So just say what comes to mind Are you ready
Karan: Let's do it
Laura Nicol: Best tech stack for operators
Karan: you've gotta start with an LLM now so I start with ChatGPT and then you build off use Notion we love Notion we use monday.com then the comms happens in Slack
Laura Nicol: One piece of advice you'd offer to sole traders
Karan: use Hnry but you know beyond being selflessly commercial is to make sure you get your financial sorted as soon as you start Don't wait for the end of your first year because that's inevitably how you start with tax debt
Laura Nicol: A book framework or tool you swear by
Karan: cascade of Choices by Roger Martin
Laura Nicol: helped you level up lately
Karan: being a dad time is scarce and so it's actually helped my home and productivity improve the next level
Laura Nicol: A skill Every operator should master
Karan: structured problem solving
Laura Nicol: a leader you admire
Karan: I mean I'm concerned about [01:03:00] my job So our founders no but genuinely I I do and I think I stated in the podcast what they've built but also their ability to that abductive logic point I do actually genuinely marvel at that and I'm trying to learn that but you know if you must have someone outside Hnry I'll say I know I can't say two people but whatever Barack Obama think in in terms of effective orators and leaders who come commanded that office that guy was just off charts good
Laura Nicol: the coolest way you've built community recently
Karan: I'm very proud of what we did with the Young Seek Professionals Network Whilst that's been operational now for more than a decade I've firmly stepped away I was the first chair part of the founding team it's now 12 years old operates in Australia New Zealand Southeast Asia India soon to be north America thousands and thousands of people come to events digital events in the mentoring program it's pretty cool that we've just been able to activate this first generation of Sikhs around around the world and very
Laura Nicol: Yeah Globally
Karan: Yeah there's a volunteer team of like people who [01:04:00] work on this around the world Started from started yep Started a cafe in Newtown in Sydney in 2012
Laura Nicol: Oh I love that Um awesome Well done you guys Um dream project to work on outside of work
Karan: Um I think the one I just told you um that was actually genuinely part of my dream when I was sort of a mid-teens late teens was to try and build something that's um that would a generational thing for our community Um and you know then the community could be a force multiplier for others is a very quick example One of the initiatives we did during Covid um was we ran a free CV check program where anyone from anywhere around the world could send in their CV and someone would view it within Three business days and give you feedback just so you could help make your career shift And I think [01:05:00] in the end we reviewed like 1100 cvs from like 16 different countries Uh like people were write sending us cvs from like Peru I don't even know how how they've heard about us And so it's that where whilst it was designed for the seed community inherently it's about service to others And so that's but how can serve others And so
Laura Nicol: Hmm Um
Karan: uh you know I feel very lucky to have done that earlier in my life And so now a bit guilt free
Laura Nicol: yeah That's so great And about service to others what would be your advice for young operators
Karan: it is concurrently make the the move but have your head screwed on right as to what value you provide I've spoken to too many people who are like I would like to join this company and I would like to do these things It's like I know what you want but why do they want you What is your secret sauce but then I've also met of people who are like I would like to do this at some point in the future And they never move and then they'll lift to regret it So I think there's some medium ground between both [01:06:00] those things
Laura Nicol: And who should I bring on the pod next
Karan: You should bring Sandeep He's a
Laura Nicol: Yeah
Karan: He's a really smart guy and very very thoughtful
Laura Nicol: so building and scaling companies is messy what's one tactical mindset that helps you stay grounded
Karan: keeping a very low ego working in a founder led business is very different to working in a manager led business founders have high conviction some things happen on gut feel Lots of things happen on gut feel and things move very quickly And so if you get attached to a recommendation or a decision or a particular line of thinking which is rebuffed or changed in the end the person who gets hurt is you and if you just go I have strong conviction myself in this for these reasons but ultimately someone in the seat is making the call and if they don't make it or they make a different call they're the person in the seat that's their job is to make the calls And so suspend your ego every day
Laura Nicol: That's so good And honestly this chat has been one of the highlights of my week
Karan: Oh go ahead
Laura Nicol: [01:07:00] you so much for your time Really really appreciate it where can our listeners connect with you
Karan: pretty active on LinkedIn I'm the guy with a turban and a and a Hnry on LinkedIn so pretty easy to find