Kunal Shah: evaluation

Transcript context

…So I'm curious why you think Indian immigrants are so successful in business and in tech in the US, especially in these very high positions. And I'm most curious, just what can we learn from that? What can we learn from their success? It's a great question. I often wonder about it and I have had the good fortune to meet a fair bunch of these individuals, and had a chance to really explore with them what really went on. So there are a few things that pop out. And again, these are all conjectures, which I can't prove in any way, but it's a thought experiment to talk about these things. First is in general, immigrants that get out of the country usually have a chip on their shoulder in a very different way. And the struggle that they have to go through to just get out and be successful, and that hunger that got them there. There was no privilege. They came from very, very humble backgrounds and literally no money to start with. So I think that this force is real. You can say that for many immigrants in general as well. But appreciation for math in general, or logic which came to society in a big way, kind of gave. Let's say for example, lots of engineering graduates come from only a few countries because society was bent towards early exposure to mathematics. And I think that kind of helps create status that will get appreciated. For example, being an engineer, a doctor... As a philosophy major, I was a write-off for society. So the reason I'm the rare commodity over here, because you are not considered to be very bright unless you break into these very hard exams and do very, very hard things. So the filtering criteria on its own is big. But there's another interesting framework altogether, which I have actually learned from this gentleman, Devdutt Patnaik. He applies Indian mythology and management principles together. And it's an interesting thing. There are three major Indian Gods. One is Brahma, the God of creation, Shiva the God of destruction. I'm generalizing here, but that's the classification. And the third is Vishnu, the God of sustenance. And their avatars-the word “avatar” comes from Vishnu who keeps changing avatars. So we have Rama, Krishna, all these Gods are avatars of his. So what you notice is that if you take a two by two of people who are high on values and low on values, are high on obedience and low on obedience, you make an interesting two by two. Now, Lord Krishna, who is one of the very popular avatars, which suits the entrepreneurial category, is high on values but very low on obedience. He was known to be the naughty God and he could actually create lots of things. And there is Rama, who is known to be the one who follows principles and is obedient. So they will follow ‘dharma’ and scale on that. And then there are these notorious characters, there is Ravana who is low on values, low on obedience, and there is Duryodhana which he says that he is high on obedience but low on values. So these are the people that you don't want to be. And what you notice is that a lot of CEOs have done well because they follow the ‘dharma’ of the founders quite well. on obedience but low on values. So these are the people that you don't want to be. And what you notice is that a lot of CEOs have done well because they follow the ‘dharma’ of the founders quite well. They have not diluted the dharma of the founders who have started these companies, and managed to sustain that. And a lot of CEOs have this need to say, "Oh, I'm going to change the company forever and it'll be my identity and I will change the logo and I'll change the name and I will do all sorts of things." But maintaining ‘dharma’, where I will say that “These principles were given to me and I'm going to sustain this and make it even bigger," comes from the humility of saying that there is something that was built with some pure form factor, and I think therefore that character stays on. And therefore we have the characters of Brahma and Shiva, the founder and destroyer. That's the thing. But sustenance is the harder one. And therefore our avatars keep happening over time and different hurdles come and then different levels come. But when you think about the archetype of, at least the Indian CEOs, I've seen that they are fabulous at moving between Krishna and Rama all the time. They can play this consistently, and therefore they keep evolving and keep making these companies bigger and bigger. And I think we'll see a lot more of this in years to come, because now they have the role models of these individuals who have done well. But the key principle is that if you ask the founders, they will love these CEOs if they're around because they maintain the dharma. For example, what Tim is doing is maintaining the dharma of Steve Jobs because if he had tried to change the dharma of Steve Jobs and the values of the company, it's very hard to imagine it sustaining itself forever.…

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