Ep 3 How Does Peak Xv Choose Their Bets Funding Advice Hiring Early Career Tals Pod

TITLE: Ep #3: How does Peak XV Choose Their Bets | Funding Advice, Hiring, Early Career CHANNEL: Tal’s Pod DATE: 2026-06-19 ---TRANSCRIPT--- You said go to consulting. I’ve gone and done consulting. Now give me a job. So that was the introduction to venture capital. Most people would submit like a three-page word document and I’m making like a 70-slide deck because I was like I want this. So we care for excellence, but we don’t really care for pedigree.

Like give me like a clear road map to get a check from you. I know that startups structurally are set up in a way where success is really hard to come by. The [music] expectation of failure is embedded in the business model of venture capital. In the age of AI, how are founders hiring? They are able to use multiple brains and multiple hands and that makes them superhuman. So you invest in three startups a year. Each of us would end up investing in three, four companies a year. The folks you work with, is there a pattern you see across what they’ve done in their life before they joined Peak? What I think is we really care that you have a smell of money. My next match may be much later in the future, but I obsess over the game tape. I think working under extraordinary people completely changes your perspective on what excellence looks like. I trust you. I back you. Go out and make mistakes and we’ll figure it all together. That is extremely rare. So Pushpak, I want to understand from you, right? You were 19 years old sitting in a classroom in Koramangala in Christ and then one fine day you decided that you want to be a venture capitalist, right? Right, you rarely come across someone who has decided that early in life that he wants to be a VC. So what was that like? How did it happen? Yeah. Um so born and brought up in a hardcore Marwari family. We come from a lineage of being in the textile business. Dad, granddad, everyone sort of done that. Um so early on the expectation was that I would do the same. Um you know, school was Bishop Cotton Boys and then did commerce in 11th and 12th and then undergrad was BBA at Christ. Uh largely key, you know, go do this stuff and then anyways you have to join the family business. So education was largely padding the resume but also just padding the biodata. That was kind of the expectation. In undergrad Christ is a unique place. I think Christ BBA attracted a ton of people from all over the country. It was a very unique time because India’s startup scene was taking off at that time. So, 2014, you know, as an example, Flipkart had just raised a billion dollars. The next day Jeff Bezos was in World Trade Center in Bangalore with a two billion dollar check you know, for Amazon India to fight back. Bill Gurley and Aswath Damodaran would fight it out on what could be Uber stamp and stuff like that. There was a very nice blog post which um the time it put up about their 10th year anniversary of their analyst program. It spoke about what the analyst program is and how it works. Then I was like, “Dude, this sounds freaking amazing.” And if I can do anything close to this, this would be awesome. I I didn’t really know how it works, what venture is, but it was, you know, sunke achha laga type vibe. And I was like, “Look, this this is worth giving a shot.” So, yeah, I think that was that was the early sort of introduction to it. I think I’m very like fortunate in that it was like more of a foolish pursuit at that point in time, but it’s ended up being very very rewarding. But graduated, wrote to a bunch of places. Most of them told me, “Why don’t you go get some real work experience?” And then I said, “What does that mean?” And they said consulting. So, did consulting, but 18 months on the dot went back to them saying, “Look, you said go to consulting. I’ve gone and done consulting. Now give me a job.” So, that was the introduction to venture capital. So, I think it was more like attracted to the glitz and glamour and prospect of what it could be without fully understanding what it could be. But I think over time it’s actually turned out to be be a great call. And how did you get hired? Like I think we were speaking about your journey and then so, you were you did consulting, realized, “Okay, fine. Like, hey, now where’s my price?” Then what happened? Yeah, so consulting was a time bound pit stop. Yeah. 18 months on the dot I finished 18 months. You know, two months before I was about to finish 18 months, I went back to the guys that told me go to consulting and I told them, “Look, I’ve paid my dues. Uh, so give me, you know, an interview opportunity.” And then they said, “Sure, why don’t you come interview?” And I took this interview super seriously. So, the the firm I got invited back to interview with was a firm called Pravega. Mhm. Uh, this was a new firm that was probably set up 18 months before I sort of applied there. Um, and they had like a case study round. Um, for their case study round, uh, most people would submit like a three-page Word document. And I ended up being like a 70-slide deck. Cuz I was like, “I want this. Mhm. I’m going to go out of my way to get it.” Mhm. This is the one venture firm that is entertaining me. So, you know, like I’ll I’ll give it my all. Mhm. And I think that, plus, uh, you know, they were just like, “This kid is very persistent.” Uh, so yeah, they they sort of gave me an offer and invited me to join. Mhm. I was the first analyst to join the team. This was 2019. Mhm. And yeah, that was the gateway into venture capital. Oh, wow. And then, how did your career unfold after after Pravega? Yeah, so, uh, was it Pravega fantastic place, great introduction to venture capital. Uh, it’s a very unique firm. Uh, you know, I think all three partners had their own Mhm. stylistic preferences on the types of companies they wanted to back, etc. But as a as a young person doing venture for the first time, it was it was amazing. Um, I thought I’ll continue with Pravega and then increasingly felt like I needed some you know, pedigree on my resume to to truly make it up the ranks. But Mhm. Peak reached out through a headhunter. Mhm. Uh, so Rajan and Nandan had joined Peak six months before me. Uh, he had joined to lead our seed business, which is Surge. But he started to build his own team out. And, uh, they were hiring for their first crop of analysts. Can you tell us a little more little more about Surge because I don’t think everyone would know what Surge is. Sure. Um, so if you can like fill in that gap. Yeah, so, uh, basically in 2019, I think Shailendra, uh, obviously been with the firm since the start, and Rajan, uh, identified that there was an opportunity to build a dedicated seed franchise in India. Hm. Hm. And what do you look for while you write this check? Because uh I think it was very clear that these are pre-revenue, not even pre-revenue, like pre-product startups, right, in most cases. So, like what are you really gauging? What is the proxy that you use? Um, I would love to like hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. Yeah, so look, you’re you’re you’re bang-on. About a third of the companies we back uh, are before a single line of code is written. So, it’s literally, you know, two founders and a business plan. Um, I think for us at seed, it comes down to, you know, the team and the market. That’s largely the the extent of which um, it is. We want to back exceptional teams uh, that are going after large market opportunities. And large market uh, roughly defined as, you know, we don’t know if this will work, but if this does work, then it can end up being a really large company. Um, and so trying to build. So, that’s that’s broadly what we look for. Um, but yeah, on the team side, it’s there’s no one-size-fits-all answer because every business kind of has very unique requirements on what makes for a great founding team for that business. Um, and so, you know, we we try really hard to not force fit a very specific formula along these lines. We back young founders, we back old founders, we back solo founders, we back teams of four founders. So, I don’t think we have like a set of heuristics on uh, very specific credentials that make or break a founding team. But pedigree matters, right? Um not as much as I think people care for. I think pedigree is a proxy for excellence. And excellence matters. But if you can demonstrate excellence in any other capacity, that is totally fair game. What would an example be? Um, we recently led a pre-seed investment in a you know, second-year college dropout from, you know, like a tier three engineering college. Uh but this guy has basically spent the last two and a half years uh being knee deep in robotics research and understanding what the frontier is, what are the missing gaps, um what do you need to build in the data stack. And he has a very cogent view on what needs to be built for us to for robotics to have its ChatGPT moment. Uh nobody asked him to do it. It was not required by curriculum. He comes from absolutely no pedigree. But it’s a proof it’s proof of excellence. So I think you know, what we care for yes, we definitely care for proof of excellence. We want to know that, you know, most markets are going to be competitive. You’re going to have 10 companies that are going to go after space. Why should this team win? And there I think the most excellent team should win is the is the rough heuristic. Uh so we care for excellence, but we don’t really care for pedigree. And so I think like one thing is dedication, right? Like being persistent, having that dedication, that is one signal of excellence. Um can you run me through like more signals that you look for? Yeah. Um so look I again as I said the uh I we try really hard to not force fit a specific framework. Uh and I think different people at the firm also gravitate to different attributes in founding teams. Interesting. Okay. I think what where I’ve grown to really fall in love with founders over the years um there’s probably two three, you know, very sort of unique traits. I’d say the first is um I love people who have a who are very very deep and have a very cogent articulation of a certain space. Um they almost think of it as, you know, they know all the chess moves that have happened before them. They understand all the players. Uh they know the history of the category. They know why something has happened, why an opportunity exists, what is the vector of attack. Why has it not been tried before? What are the pitfalls that they might run into? And they’re almost like a historian of the of the business. I’ll give you an example. We backed uh uh Amod Malviya in his new venture. It’s a company called Pre 6. They’re building AI for manufacturing. Amod, you know, obviously a phenomenal guy. Used to be CTO at Flipkart and then before that was CTO and founder at Udaan. But he does not come from manufacturing software. But when we met him, he knew exactly, you know, he could go down as deep to explain to you what a geometric kernel is and why geometric kernels have not been innovated on in the last 20 years. And he could go as abstract as telling you why the quality requirements in aerospace engineering require a different type of software company to be built because the compliance burden is going up on tier one tier one suppliers to these companies. So this ability to straddle and to really be very very deep in the category, I think that is a superpower. So anybody we meet who is this deep about a category, it’s almost in my view like sweat equity. You care about it so much that you’ve gone and done the work. And you know, you need not invest your own money into the venture, but you invested your time and your thinking cycles and that alone is like a huge proxy for whether you can win. So I think that’s one attribute that’s really interesting. Um A second attribute that I’ve really grown to uh again, you know, gravitate to is this idea of somebody who’s both earnest and ambitious. Um so you know, just taking a step back, I think you know, venture capital is very unique because in the ’90s if you wanted to start up in India, you either needed like you needed to come from a rich family. Uh because either you would get, you know, your father would give you some startup capital to you know, get get started or you would have assets that you could collateralize and then you could take a bank loan. Uh but if you were if you didn’t come from a economically well-to-do background, it’s actually really hard to consider being an entrepreneur. Right? So one of the joys I think of of the job that I get to do is we actually don’t care for uh how well-to-do you are and whether you have a single dollar to your name. Like it’s, you know, in some way it’s a very meritocratic pursuit of you you’re doing it for the right reason. So I I am really drawn to earnest founders. And at the same time, somebody who can be both earnest but ambitious. Which is imagine the you know, you could call it hubris, but imagine the confidence to say I don’t really come from this space or I don’t really have the resources to do it, but I will change the world. Like that is like extremely seductive and when we see that we are again like totally in love. I think one thing I want to understand is let’s say today I’m a 23 year old, right? Like Let’s just say I take the leap of faith, I quit my job, I I start my own startup with my friend. And my ambition in life is to get funded by Peak, right? How like give me like a clear road map on what is the right way to get a check from you? I’d say step one is put in the work. You know, part of what’s happened in this AI cycle is your ability to prototype, your ability to build something really simple, your ability to get feedback has dramatically changed, right? I mean, 5 7 10 years ago you raised capital to build a product, but now you can build a product in your dorm room. You know, you don’t need anybody’s permission. And then two, you can also learn about a space, a category, you can talk to people, you can go do a bunch of research. And so I think putting in the work for why you are building what you’re building is I think step one. And it’s actually, you know, quite shocking how rare that is. We’ll often find people who are starting up for the sake of starting up, but it’s more like starting up as an act of defiance key job maker nice little startup quality. And then yeah, startup career to your go to idea to share. It’s more of that versus people being genuinely thoughtful about hey, I’m going to commit a decade of my life to this. I know that startups structurally are set up in a way where success is really hard to come by. And so I’m going to go and do a lot of work to actually build conviction for myself and then over time to my stakeholders for why I should be building this. So I think that is number one. Get get to me. do that I think that’s like yeah, just like put in the work to why you’re building this. Yeah. And then yeah, I think the second thing is you kind of need to have this quiet confidence Mhm. that you are building it regardless of whether Peak XV comes on board or not. Mhm. Uh we’ll often meet founders who will tell us yeah, if you fund us we will do this. Uh but that’s not interesting, right? Because I mean we’re not going to be the only people that back you. That’s a red flag. It is a total red flag. Like you dropped the person that total red flag if you are coming to us to seek validation and to say that if you fund me then I will start up. Mhm. Uh you by design and by virtue of being the entrepreneur need to take the most risk. So it’s your company. motivation to get funded by a like a fund, right? Like if someone is building just because they can have Surge or Peak on their resume, it’s the wrong reason to build. I think you should be building regardless. You of course your business may require capital. So I’m not saying don’t fund raise. But if you’re almost looking for permission from venture capitalist to say if you give me money then I will quit my job and start up. Big red flag. Okay, now interesting question. Who should fund raise? Uh yeah, so Look, I think there’s there’s this classic bootstrap versus venture debate. You know, and and sort of going back to the the previous point Look, I think there are some business models and some founders who need not fund raise. And if you, you know, need not fund raise you should not fund raise. Cuz every time you are fund raising, you are one giving away uh a portion of your company and you are inviting other stakeholders who have their own interests and you know when you are signing up to fundraising you are cognizant of that and you should be aware that you are solving for multiple stakeholders right it goes from being just your company to being our company and and you’re now catering to multiple interests. So if you do not need to fundraise you should not fundraise. But I think that uh there are many ideas that kind of require you to fundraise. It requires you to build a team it requires you to uh you know build a product there’s likely a deep R&D cycle for a year or two years before you can put out a product. You need to invest in go to market for which you need to fundraise and if that’s the case then you know by all means you should fundraise. I think you want to be cognizant of which direction you’re taking uh but I do think that if your idea is such that it requires you to fundraise and you don’t happen to have the capital to do it yourself then by all means I think venture capital is a beautiful instrument and think about it right it’s never in history have you had a zero risk proposition you can raise money try your best company does not work out we’ll both shake hands we’ll likely continue to be friends but no harm no foul I’m not going to come after you and try to put you in prison for not paying me back uh you know the the expectation of failure is embedded in the business model of venture capital uh and that’s very unique which is the opposite of you know taking a bank loan From someone who writes checks for a living what do you think are three problems or three industries that people should really look at and people are not looking at right now? Yeah so look this is I I I’ll give you an answer because you’ve asked the question but I also want to caveat that every time somebody is prescriptive about what to build and somebody takes that as gospel it likely backfires. So these are directional answers but I think the the recommendation is you kind of have to go through your own journey of discovery and fall in love with the problem independently of our recommendation. So, think of this as a starting point for you to to begin with, but not guidance, right? Look, so I’d say a few areas where I’ve been spending a bunch of time. One is what I’ve been calling deep tech software. So, if you actually, you know, look at software companies, everyone talks about Salesforce and Workday and ServiceNow, but these are largely workflow software, right? But if you actually look, there’s a whole class of companies that have built really deep computational workflows and really deep products that solve very bespoke industry problems. Autodesk builds software for construction industry. PTC does software for manufacturing. Ansys builds simulation software. Cadence and Synopsys build semiconductor design software. And if you actually go into this, there’s a lot of really deep IP in building these platforms. Three, four, five years ago, trying to compete against these people was a totally foolish exercise because the it was so difficult to even start to build something. It would take you $30 million and five years for you to even put out a working product. But now with some of these AI coding agents, you can actually build this very cheaply and very quickly. And so, I think there’s this class of companies that were historically considered to be very moted and really hard to compete against. You can now realistically compete against. So, that’s a category that we’ve been spending a bunch of time which we think is very interesting. I’d say the second category is um there are some jobs um where the feedback loop um is actually very quick and very clear, right? In that it’s not as subjective as he did you do a good job? It’s very clear whether you did a good job or not. Performance marketing is a great example. Your job is to deliver a certain ROAS, and at the end of the week, at the end of the month, you either delivered the results or you didn’t, right? And if you, you know, sort of go deep into reinforcement learning, this is the type of problem statement which is super exciting for what RL can do. So, I think if you are building a agentic system that is able to leverage reinforcement learning to go after these types of problem statements, you can now actually build for superhuman performance. I think you can actually build the best performance marketer in the world because the ability for AI systems to experiment, iterate, self-improve recursively is actually quite magical. And so, that’s probably, you know, another area. Today, who does that work? Like I’m thinking about what you just described, right? Like someone someone who is self-learning who like understands KPIs, like how to meet them. Like who is doing that in companies today? Yeah, I think this is the difference between great versus good versus mediocre. Like you actually look at what the best performance marketers in the world do, they are experimentation machines. They will look at every creative, break it down, what worked, what didn’t. They want to parallelize and run as many experiments as possible, get as much feedback as they can. And the mediocre performance marketer probably does not do that. I think with AI now, you can actually get the capabilities of the absolute frontier. And that’s what’s super exciting. Where now a company can get you know, world-class performance marketer as a software product. That’s Okay, so I have a hot take, all right? I think what you just described is the brain and hands model. Right? So, a performance marketer who just does what he’s told, right? Like put out this ad, this is the creative, run it, put a budget on it, etc. Versus someone who actually just gets a brief and then like breaks that problem down into 100 experiments and then runs all of them with AI, right? That’s a brain. Now, what AI has enabled us to do is that a brain can function without a person who is the hands, right? AI becomes his hand. Do you think folks who just meet requirements, right? Are they going to be the first ones to to lose their job? Yeah, it’s a good question. I think um I think the people that will succeed will be uh those that are very AI fluent Mhm. to the extent that they are able to use multiple brains and multiple hands. Mhm. And that makes them superhuman. Mhm. Um because, you know, to your point, I think AI can go execute. So, it is definitely the hands. Correct. AI is also able to think, so it is definitely the brain. Mhm. So, I think the this analogy of, you know, you being an orchestrator of agents Mhm. and you effectively orchestrating this system Mhm. and you, you know, uh measuring evals, you setting guardrails, uh nudging creative direction, um changing priorities, and then mapping that to business context. Mhm. I think that will continue to become more valuable. So, uh I think the the winning set of people will be those that uh can actually abstract themselves one level above their brains and hands. Mhm. Um and and, you know, leverage a bunch of these AIs to go do work for them. Mhm. Now, I want to ask you a little bit about your work, right? Um talk me through your day. Like, what does AVZ do? Sure. Um yeah, so look, our job is um is broadly in in four buckets. Uh so, one part of it is sourcing. Mhm. And by that, it effectively means going out there and meeting new founders. I mean, we try really hard, but many founders still think that they’re too early for Peak XV. Mhm. Uh but, we kind of need to reinforce the message that, you know, Top one could I give you the key by two ready at two hours? That’s right. We are happy to we are happy to back you before a single line of code is written, and it’s never too early to talk to us. So, outbound is a huge part of our strategy. Um the second part of the job is once we meet a company and we think it’s interesting uh is evaluation. And, you know, this can last couple of days. This can usually last about 2 weeks where we want to spend a lot of time with the team to understand the team, the market, and the competitive landscape, the product. We want to talk to customers, and we want to build a point of view on, you know, why this could end up being a special company. So, our job, you know, in that way is we meet 300 companies, but we just need to say yes three times. Right? And so, 297 of those are no’s. And so, we do a lot of work to try to get to why should we say yes. So, you invest in three startups a year? Uh each of us would end up investing in three, four companies a year. A year. And aggregated it’ll end up being much more, but yeah. Wow. And like you personally meet 300 teams. Yeah, easily. Easily. Damn. And like 1% of them make it. Roughly. Somewhere in that support. But But so, that’s the second part of the job, which is evaluation. Um that’s like the most intense part of the job. Uh and then once we’ve made the investment, it’s portfolio support. Uh we want to work with founders very actively and help in different aspects of company building. It can be product strategy. It can be hiring. It can be fundraising. It can be financial planning. It can be um you know, some sort of strategic decision. So, a bunch of those aspects. We work very, very closely uh with founders. So, that’s sort of the third part of the job. Uh and then finally, it depends, but you know, if given enough time, we’d also love to do a lot of thesis building. Just try to take a little bit more of a proactive view on where is the world headed and what can get built. So, you know, as an example as I shared, which is uh I’ve been spending a lot of time on thinking about what is like deep tech software. So, that’s like a area where I’d spend time trying to learn about the space, etc. And um I want to understand your take on AI, right? Uh you can probably speak about two things. One is in the age of AI, how are founders hiring? Has anything changed? Second, in the age of AI, which founders are going to win. So on the first question um I think there’s basically this super cycle of stratification of talent. Where Stratification as in? Um founders are becoming very discerning about understanding who of their prospective hires is very AI fluent. Interesting. So I think that there’s like a strong bias for is this person AI native and am I increasing the density of AI talent in the building? Mhm. And so I think that is the big change in how founders are thinking about hiring. Right. Um and to, you know, the the corollary to that is the founders that will win are the ones that uh embrace this sort of fast-changing landscape most aggressively. Mhm. Uh that are constantly kind of revisiting their assumptions. Uh and that are not beholden to past playbooks. Mhm. Uh of how you need to kind of build this. I’ll give you a good example. Yeah. Um historically GTM was considered to be devoid of engineering as a function. Right. You hired SDRs and AEs and, you know, um people for demand gen and things like that. But actually the fastest growing and the most interesting aspect of GTM right now is actually GTM engineering. Mhm. Where you get technical people to build GTM systems Mhm. that can allow, you know, one, two, three AEs to do the job of 10 AEs. Mhm. Uh and so how you think about adding leverage to each function and and that’s sort of org design is is how I think the best founders will win. How have you seen them avoid these rare traits? I think the best companies are very aggressive on um sharing the wealth. Mhm. And they’re very open and honest about it. It’s not an uncomfortable conversation. Uh they treat ESOPs uh and grants with um you know, clarity and significance that it deserves. They want employees to be very cognizant of the path that they’re on and what success could look like. Mhm. And then they’re very generous about sharing the wealth. Mhm. And these are companies that aggressively pursue ESOP refreshers. These are companies that aggressively do forward grants to people, you know, that go above and beyond. Just because you’ve agreed upon a, you know, grant on day zero, but like year two the person is crushing it. Why should you not, you know, grant them extra equity, right? So, people who are able to do that. So, it’s it’s it’s it’s really thinking through that philosophy. I don’t think the levers are well understood. Is how do you share the wealth? But, I think people who do that very thoughtfully are the ones I think who get this right. Very interesting. Now, switching from the founders you work with to your colleagues, right? What does an ideal colleague at Peak XV work like, think like, what are traits that they have? Yeah, so I’ll limit this to, I mean, I’ve been involved on the hiring side for us only largely with our analyst program for the last few years. So, I’ll limit it to what we look for in an analyst. So, look, I think the the baseline obviously is we want to get people who are really smart, very high clock speed. Because, you know, as I said, we meet 300 companies a year, but these are not 300 companies of the same type. And so, the nature of it requires tremendous context switching. You’re constantly going into new ideas, coming out of ideas, and you’re constantly having to refresh yourself. So, to just give you an example, this afternoon I met a company that is trying to build in casual gaming. This morning we met a company that is trying to build GLP-1, like Ozempic for India. Last evening we met a company that is trying to build cursor for 3D. Yesterday afternoon we met a company that is trying to build AI for pharma regulatory workflows. And this is all in Bangalore? And this is all, you know, like whatever, over Zoom, etc., but in in in just like the last 24 hours I’ve had to go from pharma to gaming to GLP-1 and everything in between, right? And it takes a fair bit of horsepower for somebody to be able to deal with that context switching. So, that’s that’s part one, which is we want you to be really smart. No no two questions about that. Beyond that, I think the the second thing is I think there’s three or four things. The second thing I think is um we really care for people who are very enthused. And this seems like a little bit of a cliché, but if you actually think about it, this is a very unforgiving job. You’re meeting 300 companies, you’re going to say no to most of them, uh you know, and you’re kind of having to go to work every single day. You make a decision today, you don’t know the outcome of it till many years later. Uh so, it’s very unforgiving. So, I think you kind of need to have this innate passion for startups. You love meeting new people, you love hearing new ideas, and you’re just really excited by it, right? And so, I think enthusiasm is a huge driver for what somebody who ends up doing well in an analyst program looks like. That’s one. Um two I think is we really care that you have a smell of money. Um you know, some people call it commercial acumen, but I think it’s actually been quite interesting. I think there are some people who understand how the world works, uh and how money moves, and some people who just don’t. Uh and we definitely want the former cuz there are lots of cool ideas, but very few of them make for good businesses. And so, I think somebody who almost feels like, “Hey, I had to pay to make a profit that made a profit that made a profit.” And somebody who has a very intuitive feel for that, I think ends up doing really well. So, we you know, that’s like the smell of money. That’s probably the second thing we’re kind of trying to gauge through the interview process when we’re trying to spend time with you. Awesome. Let’s go Let’s go deep on that. Each of those three things, how does that come out in an interview, and what kind of questions do you ask to get to that? Yeah. Um so, look, I I it varies, um but you know, on the on the first question, which is around you know, just generally smarts, I think what really matters to us is how cogent and intentional you are about what you articulate. Mhm. Uh so, it may be as simple as tell me about the work that you’ve done. Mhm. And you may now go on to blabber and, you know, ramble for 7 minutes in an interview describing some random stuff, or you may be very intentional about it. Mhm. And I think, you know, being very intentional with your language is a proxy for intelligence. The second way I think we test that is our interviews tend to zig and zag a lot. Mhm. So, 1 minute we may be talking about Zepto. Mhm. The second minute we may be talking about, you know, AI. Mhm. The third minute we may be talking about US politics. Mhm. And does that throw you off? Mhm. Or are you comfortable switching context? And how do you deal with new information that comes your way? Uh I think that’s probably a good example. So, that’s that’s one way that we test for smartness. Uh smartness. Mhm. I think the way we test for anthu is just generally energy. Vibes. Vibes and energy, you know, I think it’s very clearly evident, especially on a Zoom call, but, you know, even more so in person. Uh is this person really excited to do this, or are they doing this to tick the box on a resume? Uh because venture has now become a very glorious job, right? And so many people want to do it because they think it’s cool and sexy. Yeah. Uh but very clearly shows. Uh like, are you really motivated to do this versus is this like a tick the box endeavor? So, I think that’s that’s on that. And then on the third part around smell of money, uh we do try to uh get you to think about the business, not just the idea. Mhm. So, you know, we may discuss whatever it is, but how do you think about a a business, right? Like, what makes for a good airline business? What makes for is Zepto a interesting business? It can be about absolutely anything. I think we are usually not trying to see if this person is educated about a certain business model, Mhm. but if they were to apply themselves from first principles and try to decompose a business, can they actually think about it? And do they just have like a you know, feel for it? Mhm. What is first principles? First principles is saying you don’t really know, you need not be a subject matter expert on it. You need not have studied anything about it. You need not have read up about it. But through just sheer logic, you’re able to break it down and and understand it in a simple way. And the folks you work with, is there a pattern you see across what they’ve done in their life before they join Peak team? Yeah, not really. We’ve hired operators, people who’ve been operators in their past life. I mean, obviously consulting is a big pool that we end up hiring from. Um Those are probably the two big ones. Mhm. Uh and I think both have gone on to succeed really Mhm. So, I don’t think there’s like a a clear answer to that. Is VC a stressful job? Uh it depends. Um so, I think the the the single most unique nuance about venture is the is the length of the feedback cycle. Mhm. You do something today, you find out if you’re right or wrong in four, five, six, 10 years, right? Um and whether you’re right or wrong is also not very deterministic. Mhm. But actually has so many variables that are outside your control. Mhm. Uh and so, there’s like a ton of, you know, luck and serendipity involved in whether or not you succeed, right? Um and that part uh can really eat away at people. Um you know, I made an investment, I made six investments over the last 1 year. Uh how do you know if they’re working, right? And they may take forever to pan out. And through that period, uh you know, you can you can really think about it and internalize it and reflect and, you know, it can be uh very stressful. Yeah. Uh but you can also I think that is for some people they’re also able to distance themselves from it. And it’s a little bit of like focus on the inputs and the outputs will take care of themselves. If you can do that and you can dissociate yourself, then I think it’s you can maybe manage the stress. Mhm. But otherwise, I do think you kind of beat yourself up over it. Um yeah, I think of it almost like game tape, right? Um athletes go back to the dressing room to watch what what have done differently on the field. Mhm. Um My next match may be much later in the future, but I obsess over the game tape. What could I have done differently when I met a founder? Did I read the market wrong? Did I misunderstand the business model? Did they say something that I should have appreciated? Did I hear something in a reference that did not reconcile with what turned out to be reality? Uh so, I take a lot of stress, but that’s probably because I’m beating myself up over the game tape of what could I have done differently from that standpoint. I think that’s a killer analogy, and I have one for you. Um the way I look at talent, right? Um it’s very simple. Pushpak invests his money in a startup, and a fresher invests his time in a startup, right? Both are both have skin in the game. Both are investing something, are sacrificing something, and expect the best return out of it, right? So, now to a fresher who is graduating from college, and the only thing he has clear, right? Like like you did is he doesn’t want to work in a couple of fields. He knows that he wants to work in a startup. How should he go about choosing the bet that he makes with his time? Yeah. Early 20s, right? Like how how should one go thinking about this? Yeah. Uh look, that’s a that’s a very good question. Also because as a venture capitalist, I will have a portfolio. Yeah. And even if one or two of them work, I will likely do okay. Correct. But um as an employee, you are effectively committing your you know, two, three, four years to one company. And so, you’re kind of locked in. So, I think the stakes are very different, and which is why I think it’s really important. I think there is a um wealth creation answer, Mhm. which is probably true four, five, six years into your career. Mhm. And then there is a setting yourself up for wealth creation answer, which I think is the right question for freshers. Mhm. So, as freshers, I think you want to take the first two, three, four years to build this foundation that allows you to do really cool things. Mhm. Uh and so at that point the things I would over-index on, uh you know, is one I would over-index on the people. Uh I was not as cognizant of this back in the day. I wish I knew more about what this looks like, but I think working under extraordinary people completely changes your perspective on what excellence looks like. Mhm. Uh and if you’ve tasted that, it’s really hard to go back to mediocre setup. Uh I think if you work with like a world-class designer, you will just, you know, have a visceral reaction when you see bad design. And I think the same thing happens for like every field, right? So like uh just how do you surround yourself with excellence very early on? Because once you’ve tasted it, it’s it’ll change you forever. So I think that, you know, being able to find great teams is is probably the first attribute. Second I’d say is just like being able to do work that uh does not bottleneck you into a very specific execution role, but allows you to do a bunch of different things. Uh you know, consulting from that standpoint was great. My first client uh I was working on was like a uh online travel agency. My second client was like the largest alcohol distributor in Telangana. My third client was a chain of multiplexes in uh Chennai. My fourth client was a education services business. So in, you know, in in in a year and a half I got to do lots of different things. Mhm. And I think at that point you actually want to solve for some diversity versus getting locked down into one very narrow definition of what work could look like. So I think jobs that give you uh some flex and diversity, which usually early stage startups do, right? Because early stage startups, you know, new expectations and new opportunities keep popping up. And if you’re willing to put your hand up and say I’ll go do this, then nothing like it, right? So uh I think that’s that’s clearly like probably the second axis. And the third axis I think is um actually working in a place that is moving. Uh I I’ve I mean, this my my perspective on this has changed a lot, but I think being in a culture that is winning and seeing what momentum and you know compounding looks like again has a very visceral impact on how you think of life because you know being able to see how a company grows and you joined as employee 25 and then in like two years you’re now at like 500 people has a really nuanced way on how you think of success failure risk you know all that type of stuff so I think getting to be in that culture where you taste winning it’s it’s so much fun to win right and being part of those offsites and those office parties where you’re winning as a team I think is really really conducive to long-term career versus if you’re in a place which is very stagnant Now now I want to sort of like pivot the conversation to your thoughts on AI right because you’re also someone who’s deeply invested literally invested in deep tech right and AI seems to be something that is of interest to you Do you think AI is a bubble? No I don’t um And and I think the follow-up to that is even if it were so what is sort of the the way I think about it Look is there hubris is there excitement is there you know craziness around it for sure as it should be But is this technology absolutely transformational and have we ever seen something like this in history also no like I think that’s the that’s the part that people find really hard to reconcile which is all of the you know is it frothy valuations or you know overhyped are companies getting funded like crazy all of that is true but at the same time have we seen something that comes remotely close to being transformational absolutely not you know I mean you have these thinking machines or as Dario calls it you know geniuses in a data center Um, the ramifications of which I think we are only starting to process. Mhm. Um, and it continues to be on an exponential rate. I think the other part that people almost always forget is today is the worst that it’ll ever be. Mhm. And that, you know, this is like at this point in time, this is the worst it’ll ever be. It only gets better from here, right? Yeah. And so all, you know, the the qualms about, oh, it doesn’t work for this, it doesn’t work for that, like I think about it a year ago, you would complain about hallucinations and it, you know, thinking through random stuff. And today, you don’t hear about that as much. Yeah. And I think, you know, like if you internalize that, that we are on an exponential, today is the worst it’ll ever be, and it’ll continue to get better, and that we are actually living in a world of accelerating change. Mhm. Uh, you know, those two words are very intentional, which is not just that we’re in in a world of change, but that the rate of change is accelerating. At that point, you’re like, even if it is a bubble, it doesn’t matter. Uh, and that’s sort of at least the way I think about it, which is, yes, there will be excitement, but I mean, if you’re not excited about this, I don’t know what you’ll be excited about, right? So. And my my, uh, follow-up to that is, uh, while there is accelerating change, there is more happening with talent, right? Like, the way companies will look at talent is going to change. I I think it is already changing, like you said, right? Someone who is not AI native, AI fluent, is is out of business, right? Like, in a couple of years. So, uh, my question to you is like, which jobs do you see going first and second? Let’s say today I woke up. Today I’m like, okay, I don’t know anything about AI. Today I want to learn about AI. How should I go about it? Yeah, so look on the former, I actually I take an abundance view to this. Mhm. If you were to come and ask us from a Peak 15 perspective, are you seeing uh, the number of software engineers that your portfolio companies want to hire go down? Mhm. The answer is absolutely not. I would argue that that number is going up. Interesting. Because these companies are no more bound, and they want to build so much more software. Mhm. And like the number one, you know, board meeting topic with all my portfolio companies is like, “Hey, where are we on hiring? Oh my god, hiring is so painful. Oh my god, we want to ramp and hire more people.” So, I actually think the impact is inverse because if you take an abundance mindset, you can now do so much more, right? Mhm. Um look, there is a class of companies that is thinking about cutting roles, etc. But, I think there’s just like a lot more abundance as well. So, I at least I don’t think about it as uh AI taking away jobs uh just yet at least. I think the demand for each of these roles is actually just gone up. Mhm. Um but, for somebody who’s getting started with AI, um look, I think the um you know, one of the things we’ve actually been doing in our interviews is we get people to screen share Mhm. and ask Claude or ChatGPT questions Mhm. and go research a topic in real time. Ah. And it tells us a lot about how curious you are, which is you asked a question, the AI gave you a response. Mhm. How do you frame your follow-up? Mhm. Some people are able to frame an excellent follow-up and actually go deeper and deeper and deeper. And some people are like, “Cool, asked a question, I got an answer, and I’m done.” I think being able to find that way to tap into your curiosity and and leaning into that is probably just the single most thing. So, be really curious, tinker with these tools. Um you’ll very quickly learn and adapt, and and it’ll sort of take you to pretty interesting places. Interesting. Do you think someone can have work-life balance while they work in a startup? I think so. I think um look, it is a it is a function of the founders and how they think about setting expectations and scoping work. Mhm. Um some people um are very intense Mhm. and are trying to push the team a certain way. Some people are very methodical um and very intentional about how they want to scope it down. Mhm. I think if you’re the latter, you can very easily uh create for work-life balance. It takes a lot of care. It takes a lot of intentionality because you as a founder need to have a very opinionated view on where the company is going. I think the the folks that have it extremely figured out, it’s crystal clear. You can lay it down into very concrete chunks of work that need to get done. And if you are very clear about communicating those expectations with your team, they can build their life around it. But I think companies that are kind of figuring it out along the way, they tend to be a lot more intense and and they will probably have more mixed work-life balance. Yeah, I used to be of the view that it’s almost impossible. But over time I think it really comes down to the founders style and the way the founder sets expectations. You work with Rajan, right? Like and Rajan is is like a legend because I mean, for the audience he’s like my boss’s boss, right? So that’s the hierarchy I look at. What is it like working with him? Like what have you learned uh just like being around him? Yeah, look it’s it’s amazing. He’s now I mean, I’ve kind of worked with Rajan for five and a half years, which is longer than anybody else that I’ve kind of worked with. So um it it kind of defines a lot of my world view on what I think excellent leadership looks like. So look, one he’s amazing energy. I think you know, this idea of bring your best self to work every day, he embodies that beyond anybody else, right? Like you know, they could have he could have any personal troubles, any anything that may be on his mind, all of that gets left at the door. When you come into your work, you bring your 100%. I think just he he’s a living embodiment of that. He’s extremely contagious just from an energy standpoint. Two, I think he’s a great champion of his people. Look, I mean, I’m so privileged and grateful for what I get to do at 29. I should not be allowed to do what I get to do at 29. But it happens because I think he’s so trusting of his people to say that look, I trust you. I back you. Go out and make mistakes and we’ll figure it out together. That is extremely rare, but that can be very transformational to a young person’s career. So I think he’s he’s very empowering from that standpoint. And then three, I think he’s a very intentional communicator. I think with Rajan there’s less fluff, no politicking. If he doesn’t like something, he’ll call it out. If he does like something, he’ll call it out. You know, just being direct and being honest and saving the calories of having to read between the lines. I think he’s very very good at that. So I think uh yeah, probably just crazy energy, great champion of people, and then like a very direct communicator. I think that brings us to the close of the pod. I think we had a bunch of great insights on AI, on hiring, especially on VC because it’s not talked about as much. Hopefully now whoever watches this pod will sort of go more educated about what VC is, how to get into it, how do the folks who write checks think about companies and like founders. So yeah, it was lovely talking to you Pushpak. I think very enlightening for me as well. Thank you for having me. He’s also technically my boss’s boss. So I’ll have to keep things little I don’t know, bro. Like I’ll try to make the best possible.