Connecting with Mahesh Muralidhar—Canva’s first Head of People Ops, Airtasker’s VP of People, and Simply Wall St’s COO. Today, he’s an investor at Phase One Ventures and is stepping into politics.
Laura Nicol dials into Mahesh Muralidhar.
From day one, Mahesh has been obsessed with making a difference. He was early in Sydney’s startup scene in the 2010s post-MBA—first chasing his own idea, then finding impact (and peace) in helping others build.
What followed? A career that reads like three lifetimes in one.
Inside:
Also mentioned:
Connecting with Mahesh Muralidhar—Canva’s first Head of People Ops, Airtasker’s VP of People, and Simply Wall St’s COO. Today, he’s an investor at Phase One Ventures and is stepping into politics.
[Note: This transcript is AI-generated via Descript. Please expect typos]
Transcript
Laura: [00:00:00] Welcome to Calling Operator a podcast, dialing into the stories of startup operators. Tune in as they share their incredible and often challenging journeys of building and scaling startups. Operator? Hello? Hello. I am coming in with exciting news. This week is the week that Ben, my partner, Seth, and my dog and I, we moved to Australia.
So for those tuning in for the first time ever. I'm originally from the uk, as you can tell. I have been living in New Zealand for the past 12 years, and now we're moving to Melbourne. So come this Thursday, I will be there. So to celebrate, I'm connecting to somebody who's been there since the early days of Australia's tech scene.
Mahesh Muralidhar, ask him what drives him today, and he'll probably say, I want to make New Zealand a significantly happier place. But his path there has been founder, operator, investor, and political candidate. We go into [00:01:00] all these stories. So back in 2010, Mahesh was in Sydney running his startups jobs, mid raise, pitching to companies to come on board.
One of those pitches was Canva. That meeting with Cliff turned into contracting in house and soon Mahesh went all in as Canva's first head of people operations. Even then, he says it felt like they were winning. From there, he was VP people ops at Airtasker, COO, at Simply Ball Street, and eventually he headed back home to New Zealand for his next chapter.
So Mahesh sees a startup like a little kid at hyper speed becoming an adult. I literally just felt like I could relate to that metaphor so incredibly well. And with that framing, this conversation is part ecosystem history, part showing what's possible and part coaching operators to deeply understand people for the good of a business.
Huge thanks to my caller friends Vincent w Ema McCann and Alistair Bentley, and to Shipper [00:02:00] Mahindra for the referral. Enjoy the episode.
So Mahesh, welcome to Calling Operator. How are you?
Mahesh: I'm good. I'm good. Laura, thank you so much for having me. I am in fact in beautiful Ko Marma. I will give you a little bit of a, uh, tour. Please gimme a tour. Yeah. Uh, this is the look.
Laura: Oh, wow. For anyone listening on audio is just horizontal horizon line of ocean.
Mahesh: Yeah.
Laura: Is that a volcano?
Mahesh: Yes, yes. It's a rain total.
Laura: Awesome. So currently you're in New Zealand, but let's take it back a few years. So you immigrated to New Zealand at 14 on your own.
Mahesh: Yeah.
Laura: Tell me this story.
Mahesh: Yeah. So the Ministry of Education in New Zealand came down, did a roadshow. I was in Singapore. My parents went for the roadshow.
I went to the roadshow. There were a bunch of high schools. That were had little stalls. [00:03:00] My dad and I, we went through it and we flipped through the booklet and my dad turned around to me and he had done boarding in Bangalore away from my parents' ancestral state, which is Kerala. So he had done boarding as a young teenager and he said, this is how young men go.
If you want to go, you can go. And it took me a couple hours to say this and looking back and I see 14-year-old kids now, I'm like, whoa, what? I just kinda like what I said, like little people. What is she doing for me? Freedom is really important. The space to grow and learn and falter is really important.
I realized learning to experiment was really important and Singapore is a phenomenal country. Singapore and Liko U, the first prime minister of Singapore are huge inspiration for me. But a little bit more contained and constrained. Mm. [00:04:00] So the opportunity to Napier and they had like second 11 sports teams and third 11 sports teams and fourth 11 sports teams, like, oh yeah, let's go.
So then, yeah, got on a plane. My parents dropped me off. I started home staying and in the third or fourth week I was the lead role in my school musical. So it was pretty fast. Like
Laura: you are like three weeks in I was a star. Yeah.
Mahesh: Uh, not so much my voice cracked as during the musical. So the whole town came down to watch who's this new like kid with quite a bit of a tan.
That's voice is cracking. He's quite a funny kid. Yeah. So.
Laura: That's so good. Do you know Kerala is one of my favorite places in India and Mana specifically with the tea plantations.
Mahesh: Wow. You sound like you know Carala more than I do. That's outstanding.
Laura: Yeah, it's so great. Absolutely love India. So it sounds like you grew up in Singapore, or no?
Mahesh: Yeah, I did. So I was born India. My [00:05:00] early childhood, two to 14 were in Singapore, and this was actually from 1982 to like 94, 93. And this was very powerful formative years for Singapore. It was really becoming a country and now connecting the dots backwards. I can see even from an organizational perspective, the decisions that the leadership there made to build a cohesive country, to build a powerful economy, to ensure that a social contract was set now and forever.
With that people. It's an incredibly young country. Right? So those are in Napier and New Zealand
Laura: to set the scene. For those that don't know you, so your career history, you've gone from founder to operator to investor, to a political candidate. What's the through line between all those paths, noting that We'll dive into each of these today.
Mahesh: The through line is a kid who was [00:06:00] always from day one, desperate to make a difference. A kid that compared to most grappled and formed hypotheses on seems like my identity. Mm-hmm. And so went out to the world testing that identity and got absolutely slammed for testing it. Right? Which is good. Then you like, iterate, iterate, iterate.
Who failed a lot in university, who started nailing it once you start working? Then when the global financial crisis happened, felt like my vocational connection to the world was severed. And my biggest, highest form of identity is my service to society, which is my vocational connection to the world. The fact that I'm my father's son, my wife's husband, my sister's brother, my Tottenham Hotz fan, mc Kiwi, all of these things are change.
You're divorced. Someone [00:07:00] passes away all of this stuff, right? But then I'm a servant to society never changes. So when the GFC happened and I was nailing it in consulting, I was like, wait, what? I thought I was done. I was like, I was making a difference. I realized though I didn't know how the world worked, did an MBA and then got on startup land in desperate desire to, I need to create value for the world.
I need to like do things that move the needle like a doctor does or a teacher does. That was my intent, and that has carried on through all of the decisions I've made ever since backing myself, putting myself in positions, and being honest with myself and the places that I have been at to go, Hey, from a first principle's perspective, is this true?
And are we delivering true value?
Laura: Wow, [00:08:00] we could end here. That's so powerful. Which kind of brings us to Sydney in 2010, which is where we're gonna start our story from today. So take us down a trip down memory lane to that path of what tech was like in Sydney in 2010.
Mahesh: Those were romantic days. The nascent Sydney startup ecosystem, Maru D was a thing, which was this tech accelerator that Telstra had launched.
Social Network had just come out. So I thought I already missed a boat on startups. Blackbirds Accelerator Start Mate had just kicked off. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go do a startup. And I wanna be clear to everybody listening my definition and Paul Graham's definition of a startup is something that aims to grow 5% week on week or something to that effect.
It's that growth rate, which defines a startup because that mirrors the financial model that is venture capital, right? Take a big bet, returns to that speed. So there's a [00:09:00] bunch of people, nobody really knew what they were doing. There was a small little incubator, I forget their names suddenly, but there were two people who were doing like Lean Startup, and if you remember their names, please remind me.
They had done a group on version. Had sold it to Yahoo. So that was like the first major, I think it was called Spree or something. Dean McAvoy was his name, who did it. And there was this gentleman, his tagline was Mr. Focus. So there was this like small little group of people that were like, Hey, we know what startup is.
So we all kind of like formed companies and did things and hustled. Alistair Bentley was there, melon Cliff, Canva were like half a step ahead. Luke from Safety to Culture was half a step ahead. Rick and Nikki were had just started Blackbird and it was just a beautiful time. And um, I hustled really hard.
I built a startup called You Refer Jobs. It was [00:10:00] to make finding great talent effortless. That was the tagline. It was basically a job referral marketplace. So people could refer jobs completely like it does not work. And I know now why it didn't work and stuff, but I bootstrapped had an amazing CTO Rin Pri and my original co-founder Matt Al Kangas, who then stepped away and it was all these emotional drama of like co-founder stepping away and working through all of that.
Bootstrapped built a product over a year and a half and to sell the product, all I could afford were three piece packet of Tin Tams and a sales proposal. And I would go leaving them outside the doorstep. And that's what I did with Uber, which had just launched in Sydney. And um, I got a call from the Uber country manager and he said, who are you?
What do you want? I said, blah, blah, blah. Try my product and you'll find great talent. And he said, sure, we'll try it. Please don't come here again.
Laura: Unsolicited tin taps. [00:11:00]
Mahesh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember getting rejected from accelerators. Rejection from Stop Mate way back when. Heartbreaking around so many rejections and no.
So I know what it feels like to be a founder. I know the insecurities, I know the social validation that you're looking for. I know how much you don't know, which has really helped me later on as an operator, as an investor. Beautiful times.
Laura: Yeah, it sounds, and I've actually got so many questions on there, but let's stay on your startup.
So you are actually mid raising, mid raising your seed round.
Mahesh: That's exactly right.
Laura: Yeah. How do I say it? U afa. Ufa.
Mahesh: Ufa. UFA jobs.
Laura: Ufa. So you're mid seed round reviewer for jobs. And then Mel and Cliff approached you and I wanna know what that conversation was.
Mahesh: I remember this so vividly. So I'm pitching for companies to like come aboard and I'm like, oh, this is like Canva's already starting to get a little bit of a n.
Something special is [00:12:00] happening there. Okay. And I somehow hustle my way after multitude of messages to Cliff and then I pitch and he's like, okay, swing by. Right? And I'm sure he wasn't interested in the product, but I think he was curious about who's this guy that seems to be like tenacious and like asking and like pitching and, and look, you look at Cliff and everything you post on LinkedIn, he is always closing.
He is always closing, right? Like he is where's great talent? I mean, Mel Cliff got it very early on. After you build incredible problem and customer intuition, it is about building a great company that delivers on that, right? So the people that come through. So I think he was just curious who, who's this guy?
He comes in like 20, 30 minutes late. Skates in, I'm pretty sure he had a skateboard and he had like shorts with like these [00:13:00] stringy like strings, like absolute budget shirt. And he walks in and then he listens to me and he is like, ah, okay. And I'm pretty sure he is like, you have no clue what you're doing.
But then he said, would you consider contracting with us to help us out on the people side of things? And I was like, sure. 'cause I was running out money. Well, I didn't say sure. I was like, let me think about it. Maybe this is a way for me to sell the product into Canva and I can make sure it's used. So then I started doing that.
So I did a few, two, three months of like contracting with Canva in house. And effectively now I think back. That was just a long interview process.
Laura: Yeah,
Mahesh: so that's how the relationship started.
Laura: Oh, that's so good. Asaid, you were contracting for a few months. What was the moment that you decided to kill your own company and join Canva?
Mahesh: Canva was probably about 23, 24 people around there. Somewhere around there. Right? [00:14:00] Straight away. I remember the first day walking in, okay, something's different here. Looking back on it now, it's clear to me what it was. It is that so many things were incredibly intentional within Canva. Incredibly. Where the logo was, what do we have for lunch?
What time? What were the rituals? What was the ceremony? How the desk, what was the floor like? Where was the screen? What did we talk about? It was so intentional, and I can see that now. So then like you could see things were working. There was some, amid all the chaos of mayhem, there was like, okay, this is happening.
This is happening. This is happening. Right. And there was a error of we're winning. So you're suddenly been invited and you're part of the All Blacks. Right. You know, like, Hey, what's going on? And then like after a while it became fairly obvious. So I [00:15:00] didn't actually choose to kill my startup. I chose Canva.
Mm-hmm. Right. Like it was a very natural progress. And my team, my usual jobs team had been working really hard for a year and a and a half. And I had the raise done. I was looking to raise a quarter of million. I had the investors all good to go, but my team was tired. And now thinking back, I didn't have deep customer understanding and problem standing.
That was clear too. So I'm very thankful that I turned around to the investors and said, no, I don't want your money. Because it's become clear to me that I don't really know exactly what to build. At the same time, here's these two amazing people, cam included, so three who are ready to pull out and push as much as I would've.
Right. They're inspiring. So, okay. I, I don't have a problem like jumping on their thing and like, let's go.
Laura: [00:16:00] Take me from there. Like, you became a first, a first functional hire at Canberra. Take us from there.
Mahesh: So Alexi Miko was already there. He was 24. I was like at 24, 25, me, 26. I was 31. Finished an MBA thinking.
I'm like so smart. And I remember seeing Cliff and Alexi Cliff. He's definitely way more sophisticated than he is now. Right. Always has been a tremendous operator. And I'd see them do these amazing things like. Close large rounds and conclude investors. And I'm like, wait, what? Like don't you need like more experience to do that?
Like how are you making these decisions and the talent, like a big part of my role is to bring on board top talent that set up the engine that brings up top talent, but the talent already there. There's this guy called Dave Herndon. I've worked with two geniuses in my life. One of them is Dave Herndon. I think recently he was the CTO at Canada.
I would learn so much like we'd have a lunch and learn session about [00:17:00] how we were gonna break up a monolith, the code base into microservices and the reasoning, the amount of five why's 10 why's 15 whys the level of detail that you'd go into when you make a decision. And Mel and Cliff were just, the standards they had were just incredibly inspiring.
I'll share a story. We were supposed to do some sort of shuffle. Things are constantly changing. Teams are constantly changing. So we sort shuffle and I took a lead in coming up with, hey, this is the, there'd been a decision on these people need to be here. These people need to be here on teams, so, so we just needed to do a shuffling of like laptops and desks and stuff.
So I worked through the Sunday, I had come up with, Hey, this is what's gonna happen. People are gonna come in and they're gonna move the desks and move the laptops. And Mel walked in, I think it was around one o'clock on a Sunday, and I was like, oh, so what's the plan? And I said, oh, like people are gonna walk in and there's gonna be a set of instructions and people are gonna move.[00:18:00]
The laptops easy. And she said, no, no, no. That's not the experience I want. I want everybody to walk in on Monday and everything's laid out. And I was like, wait, that's not like an efficient way of doing this. And she's like, no, but that's the experience that people should have. And so then for the next four or five hours, Mel Cliff.
Zach and I just like cleaned the whole place, moved all the laptops, moved this thing, set it all up. And that was one of so many instances where these two amazing people were just clear and executed right. Like, and definitely showed me and taught me an early salvo around the level of intention that you can have and that you need to have to deliver incredible results.
And that's not something that [00:19:00] they had on their own. That's something they learned through fusion books and all the times and all the trials and tribulations. They'd been through many, many stories like that.
Laura: Okay. So then if you had to, 'cause we could talk about Canva all day. So what did Canva teach you that set you up for Airtasker?
Mahesh: Yeah, sure. A lot of people ask me, how do you have a happy workplace? The simple answer is, A happy workplace is a workplace that's winning. That's it. What does winning look like? You have to define what is the goals you want to hit, and they have to be legit in regards to the context that your organization's at, and you have to surpass them, and you have to consistently, nearly like effortlessly surpass them.
That is the greatest thing that's required for a happy workplace. 'cause a person comes in to do a job, to do like great work and to make sure they have a difference. That's [00:20:00] the primary thing that we are looking for from our work. And if a company and a startup is not winning, doesn't matter. You can have all of the systems, top talent, everything else.
It's not good enough and what's required for a startup to win a loved product. That's it. So I always tell people, startups that fail, fail because they don't have a love product. It's as simple as that. And why don't people have a love product? Founders build a love product because they don't have customer or problem obsession.
And that Mel and Cliff, Mel specifically earn that through her time at Fusion Books. Three to four years of obsessively on the ground, understanding, building incredible problem, intuition, and therefore product intuition. That became so obvious to me because I went from my startup to Canva and then I was like, oh, this is what it's like everywhere.[00:21:00]
Great. Awesome. And then I saw how different places work differently, so now I tell all the basements, Rob. So that understanding helped the talent bar and what you don't compromise on helped. Canva does not compromise on results we deliver. That bar was set by Melon Cliff and I saw enough conversations between themselves challenging themselves around like, Hey, like we need to hit a certain bar.
So that was very useful. The other piece was obviously working with Worldclass engineers, designers, growth marketers, Andre Panitan, if you ever get him, was an OG growth leader. And seeing how he thought and then the opportunity to really set up a world class people function, right? So being able to take all of those lessons and see what I was able to deliver and so much, a lot of the pieces that we did way back then still exist in Canva in regards to how it thinks about people and stuff like that.
So was able to take all of that.
Laura: So I wanna [00:22:00] ask, what were the ingredients for world class people function?
Mahesh: In my opinion, a lot of people get confused about what the point of any function is in a starter. A startup is not a mature organization. A startup's, a little kid growing at hyper speed into becoming an adult.
A mature organization has to manage risk. Canva currently has 250 million users. Its risk profile is very different to what its risk profile was when I was there early on, right? When you're so early on, you have more or less a singular focus. The focus for every single function, anyone is to deliver value for the customer.
That's it. So what's the point of the people function? What's the point of the finance function? What's the point of procurement or whatever it is to deliver value for the customer In a mature organization, for example, a [00:23:00] finance function is to manage risk and like, you know, make it very clear, hey, don't do this 'cause we already have so much of value, so don't wanna reduce the value.
Early on when you're still finding your way, becoming a 50, a hundred billion dollars business, you're like, no, no, no. It is just the customer and that's all that matters. So having leaders who get that right, as opposed to I need to like do this to make sure that we have a great finance function, a great people function.
No, no, no. Whatever you do is to deliver huge value to the customer. I also had the tagline that to do that we had to be the best place in the world to work. So right at the beginning, and I think this is probably something with liked, I was like, okay, if I'm doing this, then Canvas be the best place in the world to work.
Like it's pretty simple. And I remember telling that to a couple other founders and they're like, ah, that's a great idea. [00:24:00] But you know, if you're playing a win, do you wanna be the best? So you state that going into a little bit more. You can break up people operations into three different aspects. Talent acquisition, team engagement was Mel back then called people happiness team.
Happiness vibe, right? Like office admin. Talent acquisition is the sales and marketing exercise. It is a sales and marketing function. You are out there in the talent markets, wheeling and dealing. It's effectively a growth function. You're wheeling and dealing, running experiments to identify the top talent and set them up for success.
So the way you want to think about metrics, how you behave, the culture is sales and market. Team engagement is a retention exercise. So it's actually you're building a world class product in a way. So you're measuring by how someone stays, what the engagement is. All this vibe is really kind of operations.[00:25:00]
So being able to contact switch. Across those three things because those are different speeds at which you're working. So you can actually think of it even like a product. So I had like a product lens on that, which was really useful.
Laura: Let's stay in the engagement layer. Everyone that I spoke to before this chat, so that was Al Bentley, EMA McCann, and Vincent Way, they all say that you're a natural coach.
You really, really get to people's core. And I'm not sure Ema asked me to fact check this phrase, but she said that you have this phrase, if I may,
so I wanna get into this a little bit because I wanna know how you think about growth in people.
Mahesh: So human behavior is affected most of all by incentives. You wanna know how a company is gonna operate. Look at the CEO's compensation letter. It's simple as that. [00:26:00] If A CEO is incentivized by annual goals, then they're not gonna be long-term customer driven.
They're going to be short-term annual driven. A founder with equity and with a story around, Hey, money's not so important to me. I wanna make a large impact. That person is going to be very long term driven. Neither is right or wrong. You can do whatever you want, but having an understanding of people's incentives go a long way.
So I don't judge people. I'm here to set people up to win. And all of this comes from me going, why doesn't the world understand me? Right? Like one of the most powerful ways to understand the world is to make sure that you have a deep conversation with yourself. We're all not that different. We're all scared of a bunch of stuff.
We'll get excited about a bunch of stuff. We have these identities that we create. It's kind of the same thing. So if you look at that and you go, okay, so what [00:27:00] are my incentives? Ah, okay, then maybe if I wanna help this person, I need to understand your incentives. Now, that's a delicate conversation to have.
'cause most people don't. But intriguingly enough, if you're brave enough and you're coming from a place of, Hey, I wanna help and I'm gonna share some of my stuff with you, then people start sharing. So then they start telling me, okay, this is my incentives, this is my story. This is what happened in the past.
This, okay, great. I understand what's moving the needle for you. Okay, Hey, we need to get this project done for these reasons, this way, and all these assumptions you made based on your baggage or story or whatever. Not really a thing. You know why I went through the same stuff too? Okay? Oh wow. Can you trust me?
Okay, here are these technical, tactical things to work on. Now let's just start winning, right? So it's [00:28:00] really understanding that nearly boring piece and unromantic piece around. Look, we're all scared, okay? Whatcha are you scared of? Whatcha are scared of? I'm scared of stuff. I'm scared of a lot of this stuff.
Whatcha scared of? So then, okay, let me understand what you're scared of. Cool. Okay. What do you wanna win at? Okay, if you do this, you win at this more. Great. How do we get there? Simple as that. Does that make sense?
Laura: It does. And I'm laughing because when I spoke to Al from Simply Wall Street, he was like, and one day I walked up the stairs and Mahesh just had everybody crying in a meeting room.
But I was like, what were they crying about? He was like, they'd all just gone on this journey on exactly what saying,
Mahesh: yeah, Laura, I'm not fooling around. You know, for me, people's trust, it's really, really important and I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I'm not consciously going [00:29:00] to make a mistake.
So we talked, you asked me what an operator was early on, so let's be real about this stuff. This is your life. This is my life. It's all gonna end at some point. Right? And that's true. Okay, what are we doing here? I mean, we don't have to be that honest with each other, but then it's probably not gonna work out the way we aspire it to be.
Totally. So let's just be real. Like it's usually real. Let's just talk about stuff.
Laura: Two following questions from that is like how do you build that trust?
Mahesh: Yeah, I think incredibly clear prioritization. So I said my highest form identity was my service to society. Vocational, right? Like and any of those places.
And today, and what I do, phase one, they will all tell you, wait, this guy is like intense. I didn't like that originally, a long time ago. People say, man, you're intense. I'm like, no, I'm a nice guy. But [00:30:00] yeah, I appreciate. Now, relative to others, I'm probably a little bit intense. So I'm very clear like this is my job.
I'm here to do a job. In old Indian scriptures, there's a word called Dharma, D-H-A-R-M-A. You may have heard of it. Yes. Mm-hmm. And the strong principle of at the end of the day, you have a job to do. It's not about your happiness or this or that. Do your job. Like peace is found by doing the job and focusing on the job.
So I try to be very clear about like, what's my job here? So people seeing that, that like, Hey, I'm here to help you. I'm here to serve you. I'm here to serve the mission. I'm not here for like play games, et cetera. That really helps. And two, vulnerability really helps. Something that my university friends were incredibly uncomfortable with and most people are still uncomfortable with that.
I don't know any other way, Laura.
Laura: I don't either. Yeah, you're preaching to the [00:31:00] choir. Yeah.
Mahesh: Let's just, let's just be honest about things and then as I got better and better at my craft, being very clear about the outcomes and tactics, right? Like how to give great feedback. What exactly should the goal be?
Oh, if we go that way, this is gonna be an issue. Hey, we can't have too many conversations about this because if we do. This is not gonna work. You're not gonna be around. So that learning kept compounding as well.
Laura: The second question was, what impact have you seen this approach have on people's work, and do you have any examples that you could share?
Mahesh: I mean, at the end of the day, that's for those people to stay, but I'd like to think like the Sydney startup ecosystem. If I was still in Sydney, there's Rebecca Jenkins at Canva. There's EMA at Simply Wall Street. There's the whole Airtasker people team. The original Canva people team. The first person I hired in Canva, Manila, [00:32:00] who was the first person I hired at the Canva, Manila people team.
Yani is now Manila's Country Manager.
Laura: Amazing.
Mahesh: And I'm incredibly proud. I'm incredibly proud. And I'd like to think all of those people would go, Hey, you know, you were there. Next to me and helped me out and taught me those early ropes in regards to how to do things. It's really important for me to take bets on people.
It's really, really important to me because that's all I ever wanted. Yeah. And I'm incredibly glad and thankful that Melan Cliff took a bet on a 31, 30 2-year-old Indian Kiwi. That's actually an unusual bet to take. But they were obsessed enough with winning, and they were early enough not to have any preconceptions to go like, ah, why not?
You know? And [00:33:00] that has had a huge compounding effect for the New Zealand market.
Laura: Mm-hmm.
Mahesh: Right. With phase one. I'm very thankful.
Laura: So moving forward on the timeline, we're gonna take the lessons from Canva and we're gonna place them into Airtasker. And if my research serves me well, you joined at a time that employee happiness wasn't so happy.
Mahesh: It wasn't so happy. Airtasker has had a successful listing. It was a real privilege for me to learn and grow. There was more change and transformation required at Airtasker back then because it, it's interesting, right? So it's also because of the product. When you build Canva from day.engineering, et cetera, has to be as at a certain bar because you are playing on old browser technology, dragging, dropping, et cetera.
So the bar has to be a certain, when you're building a marketplace, the product in the marketplace is actually the liquidity. [00:34:00] It's the economy. That's the product, the actual UX UI of the product doesn't matter so much as the person coming in gets what they want from the marketplace. So it's that chicken and egg that's actually, that liquidity is the core product.
So then engineering, et cetera, doesn't have to be at a certain level for it to get gone. Invariably, for a product to scale globally, it starts to have to be at a certain level, right? And any founder makes these decisions around organizational product design, tech debt at any given point. And different products have to, that you have to take these bets differently.
So Airtasker was in a position where the engineering and product faculty was not set up for scale because that was my opinion. So then we had to do a lot of change, which was hectic, like it was hectic. [00:35:00] That was a powerful time. I'm very thankful for Tim Fong, the CEO at Airtasker, founder from Founder Airtasker, to allow me and to sign off on that transformation program.
Very powerful. And then at that point, the capital markets had just taken a hit. So raising was a little bit harder
Laura: is what year are we in now?
Mahesh: So we are probably in 2018, 19 around that. So then like runway issues were a bit more of a challenge dealing with that. Never an issue. I can never, Laura, some of the things I'm most proud of is converting or helping to lead air tasker through that transformation program and make it profitable, which was, I cannot stress enough, the kind of challenging conversations.
[00:36:00] Transformation that had to happen, and this is all in the time of like trying to make sure that hey, team engagement, blah. I said that team happiness happens when you're winning. So that was the goal, right? It wasn't like Kumbaya, let's put our arms together, let's sure we gotta talk or do we vulnerable, tough set up sisters, but how do we get winning?
I was also fortunate after I joined, a few other top people joined Yev Bernstein, who is known and unsurprisingly known in the Sydney Army ecosystem because Yin's got an opinion or two. He joined, he had achieved a lot in Google, the senior joined leader. And he definitely showed me an even more clear sort of thinking at the executive level around how to execute, how to think, how to design, et cetera.
So that was a powerful learning experience for me and I, I am really proud of that time at Airtasker because going through that transformation program, very different. Canva Canva's. [00:37:00] Pure growth. Unbridled growth. This was transformation stuff.
Laura: Pure SWAT team mode. So for anyone listening that's thinking, okay, what were the three things within the transformational projects that actually were transformational?
Mahesh: One is making sure that the customer problem and market was front and center all over again. That was one, making sure you had the right fit people within the team. 'cause top talent is subjective to the context, right? So it's right fit people. And then extremely strong company-wide communication. Like I mean now as, as far as a veteran, I tell founders all the time, you're gonna learn this and it's gonna shock you how much you can never communicate enough.
Like early on, you're like, oh, I [00:38:00] said it didn't happened nearly about a hundred, 200 people. And you're like, oh my God. I just, I thought I just said this like 10 times in like 20 different meetings. Yep. Gonna have to say it again. Say it again. Which is why then keeping things incredibly focused, scoping everything down to as little as possible and being super clear allows for like a repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, right?
Yeah. It'd be those three things.
Laura: Operator, I have a quick ask. This show is all about creating space for tech operators and learning how to be a better operator along the way. Please help me reach the builders doers and multipliers behind great founders by hitting, subscribe or follow wherever you're listening.
Thank you, operator. And then you get to simply Wall Street and your COO there. And I spoke to Al before this call, and so I've interviewed Ema McCann for this podcast. Please go listen to her episode. I had no idea how she came into the business until Al told me. And it was [00:39:00] your first day that you solved recruiting.
IE you turned up with ema. I was like, who's that?
Mahesh: Yes.
Laura: And you're like, this is ema. She's got recruitment to do, so that's where I'm gonna pause.
Mahesh: Pretty much. So COVID had just hit and I'd stepped away from our tasker and I knew that I was on route back to New Zealand and I have so much time for Al 'cause Al and I had been founders together.
Laura: Yeah, he did mention actually,
Mahesh: right, like we'd started off together, we'd, we'd been at the tables together pitching, we'd done the incubator except he had been good enough to build a live product. I was just really proud of him. So we trusted each other and there was this irrational of trust and he needed a partner in crime and he trusted me.
So that really helped. And I seem to know what I was [00:40:00] doing from Air Task Cade, right? And I have to say, Laura, like it was a breeze. Like compared to, 'cause I, I'd learned so much I knew, right? I'd been through the wars and Al's a fantastic CEO. Okay? So you just need a partner in crime backing you up being a sounding board.
And when I say I'll execute on something, I got it. You don't have to think twice. I know exactly what's going through your mind. I know what you are thinking. I got you right. I'm not here to get anything. I'm here like for you. And there was this period of time where he just needed a stopgap person. It was wonderful.
He trusted me so much and I delivered, we set up operations, we set up a people function, we set up a finance function. I made sure that the team was happy, they trusted him. There was clear, like good hiring done, like we started to ship features all over again. And most importantly, for a founder, especially a solo founder, [00:41:00] he felt less alone.
That's what I'd like to think. It's for him to say because he is like somebody else. Okay, I got you. Like I got your weight. I got you. 'cause being a founder is a lonely exercise, as I know as, so er, pm n er is top talent. She just didn't acknowledge it loud enough early on. So I was like, all these questions and stuff, I'm like, it's not complicated.
Like I know other people have told you you can't do this and you can't do that. Like whatever. Like it's not complicated. Just gotta get it stuck in. And because she was very intent and she was purposeful, she was honest and she was straightforward. So it was a, a real pleasure to co-chair at Nani who was, who was also part of the operations function, and we set it up and I think he had a good amount of peace and calm ed for a period of time.
Laura: Something else he said that I actually think is a really important lesson to distill for this crowd is something that he really valued about you is that you challenged him. You challenged [00:42:00] him on his purpose and what he wants to get out of it. And he just said that not enough people do that. So what can we take away from that?
Mahesh: Yeah. With all of the phase one founders and even, I even had this conversation with Mel. I asked Mel what her personal lie was and it was a very powerful conversation. And let me just say that it's, she's delivering on it. A good signal is how much they've donated. It's my life, Laura. I've got certain number of hours in the day and okay, if I'm gonna do this, tell me why.
Tell me your why. So that I can give up so much of my life in pursuit of that. And because if I understand that and understand you as a person, then yeah, let's go to town. And it's also, I suppose the other side is maybe me thinking if I share with you, Hey, this is who I have as a person and this is what I wanna do and is what I wanna do good and I don't know everything, but I really want to just like do [00:43:00] good for a period of time, then you'll trust me.
I asked Mel that. I asked Tim Fung that. I asked Al that, right? So that, okay, I understand you. So that when I'm working I know what you doing. And I ask all the phase one founders that very uncomfortable. You can ask any of them. They're like, nobody asks us this for like hours on end. Because I think if a founder is not grappling with their why, they're gonna get found out.
I'm not saying you need to have an answer, but you've gotta grapple. Because fundamentally, some of these big powerful decisions come down to what do you want as a person, not about the company. What do you want? What's your story in 10, 15, 20, 30 years? Because then these decisions have to make sense for that.
So I kept asking Al like, Hey, like I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna be your brother in aunts right next to you. Where are you gonna be in five, [00:44:00] 10 years? Because whatever I help you with, I want to help you get there. So that's the reason,
Laura: and it seems so obvious when you frame it like that, but we're just not having these conversations.
Mahesh: Conversations. I think it's because I had the opportunity of failing a lot in life early on, and my father, who is a quality engineer, so total quality management, zen zero waste kind of mentality, if I ever screwed up. He would occasionally, figuratively, and often literally push me against the wall and go, why?
Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that? And if I started saying It's 'cause of this and that person that, no, you don't have anyone else to blame. There's nobody else. It's just you. The only person you have control over is you. So this notion of the sovereign individual, like at the end of the day, it's [00:45:00] me.
I've got control and I have to be proactive. It's not that I found my life's journey, no, I chose it. So because I had to go through that exercise when I was really young, this notion that, hey, at the end of the day I've got me, I've gotta like, then that internal conversation that I was able to have early on with myself, then it makes me, makes it easy to have that conversation with others.
That makes sense.
Laura: Yeah, no, it's just so powerful. And I actually started this quest to learn how to be the best operator I can be and be world class at what I do. And the more and more and more I have these chats, the more I realize it starts itself.
Mahesh: Yeah. And then there's an interesting exercise, right, Laura?
How do you do that? And I can only look at my lies is you've kind of gotta go put yourself in really tough situations. Otherwise the incentives just aren't there to have the tough conversation. So [00:46:00] when I was young, I saw kids who looked like me break rocks for a little bit. Like we didn't have much when we grew up.
I came to New Zealand by myself, right? Like all of these tough situations. So I tell people, founders who come from a certain level of affluence and or who have things, and I look at straight in the eye and go, actually, you're gonna have it harder. And they're like, why? Because you have optionality and optionality kills decision making.
You don't know what it means to like. Put everything on the line and I have to make this work and then fail at it. And then like I have to pick yourself up and do it again and do it again, and do it again, which is what's required to deliver huge outlier success. So if you want, you can step away from affluence and go to like a developing country and then like submerge yourself or cut away.
Will you do that? Uh,
Laura: I dunno. Okay, so then we've probably got to the end of Sydney. So I guess that's a [00:47:00] good bridge for us to like recap. What did Sydney teach you that New Zealand needed to steal?
Mahesh: I love Sydney. I don't think I said that out loud like that.
Laura: Oh, had it here first.
Mahesh: My, my, my wife who's a very, very proud Sydney cider through and through, she was not over the moon.
And I said, Hey, time to go to New Zealand at all. I had told her on a second date that I wanted to. Moved to New Zealand and served the country and many years later I was like, Hey, time to go to New Zealand. No, I actually, there's a disagreement here. I'm pretty sure I kept peppering her with that and she's like, I did it.
She does not say that. I didn't say that on the second day. And she said, her retort is food takes anything seriously on a second date. And I thought, you're just trying to hit on me on this grand notion of saving in the country. But just around that simply Wall Street air task. I was like, time to go to New Zealand.
And I had kept coming [00:48:00] back home to Auckland and giving all these startup talks. In fact, Amber and Toby, Amber from Next Work and Toby from Picky, had been 14, 15 year olds or something at one of the talks. And I had photos of them. I had seen the Sydney startup ecosystem become a thing. I was a key part of it and I was like, wait a second, we gotta go in New Zealand.
Like we've gotta go and we, we don't have enough like groundswell, we're not thinking about things the right way. We so came over and I made a very big decision not to connect with the New Zealand startup ecosystem because I believe in things, doing things ground zero. And I was not here to be recognized initially as the first head of people at Canva for all the successes I've had.
That wasn't I needed to meet founders and go, Hey, I've had these powerful experiences. I've been a founder before. I think I know things that other people may [00:49:00] not. I think, I'm not sure, let's run this experiment. I was flatting at that point, 'cause I moved here before my wife did with Mark McLeod Smith, the CEO at Halter.
Who should get on as an operators? Complete coincidence. Every Thursday I would invite founders to a white boarding session with a beanbag and I would just grow them in front of 20 other people. And I just did this nonstop and suddenly there was this guy who seemed like he knew what he was doing with cred being so incredibly invested into these founders, that was unusual and some sort of like community started forming, which was my goal.
It's basically what Paul Graham did at yc, and the mission was to like nurture the next Mel, the next cliff al all of these guys,
Laura: which just makes it so deeply human as well. Hmm. [00:50:00] Okay. So then insert phase one ventures. What is phase one ventures?
Mahesh: Yeah, so Phase one ventures is an early stage founder community, which has a fund adjacent to it.
The reason why I put it across that way is that's what it was. It's really important for me that it's seen and understood as a community first, A funds responsibility. So the customer of a vc, the customer of anything is the person that pays you for a service. The person that pays a VC is the person that's lent the money.
That, and that may be uncomfortable to certain groups in the VC sector, but that's the truth. And that economic truth is important because that's how the whole machine works. Like you go get money from someone, you better return it based on this covenants and this premiums that you've suggested it's gonna get.
Like otherwise, the whole thing falls apart. Right? But that's not why I started this. I [00:51:00] didn't start this, and I was very fortunate that due to the successes I'd had before that, I'd been part of that financially. I didn't have pressure. Then that allowed me to be really mission driven about nurturing an incredible new wave of global Kiwi founders.
That was a singular mission. And you know, when you start off these things, you don't know if it's gonna be true. And it is incredible. Laura, 85% of the phase one founders have raised global institutional venture. That is a unreal conversion rate. It's just nuts. Also, I think, I can't remember now, I think 40% or more are female founders.
So like these are real unusual stats, but it's because there was huge like economic value provided for free, right? Like and kind of someone who knew and, and I had support from a great team to pull it all [00:52:00] together. Shipra joined as part of the team and the Facebook founders know that I will always pick up the phone.
They know that it's gonna be a deeply personalization and not often something they're excited about because phase one is for New Zealand, that's like straight up, I need you to win 'cause I need New Zealand to win, right? It's not about returns or whatever I need. So I'm like super clear. So when I say, when I give feedback or that something's not working, it's coming from that place of intensity and desperation that if you win New Zealand wins.
So I'm not like, again, I'm not fooling around here
Laura: and we should highlight because it's different than other FE funds. 'cause you've raised one fund and you've fully deployed that fund and this is the experiment for them to win.
Mahesh: Yeah, that's it. As of now, I don't have any intention [00:53:00] of doing this again because it was very goal oriented.
I needed to have helped. Nurture and grow a new wave of powerful QE founders. Because in my opinion, the most powerful thing which encourages other founders is role models. Al is a tremendous role model. Tim Fung is a tremendous role model. Mel and Cliff are tremendous role models, so we just need more role models.
So it's not me that drives the change in the country. It's Harry from Code and mq, from Ivo and Amber from Next Work, Ben and Will from Q five Innovations, Bronte from Ring Radar. These are the people because then university students, there's gonna be newspaper articles. All these people be like, oh wow, they can, uh, maybe I should do that.
That was the goal.
Laura: It's so beautiful. It really is [00:54:00] so beautiful. So human congratulations. Thank you. And watch a space, I guess for that.
Mahesh: For sure. I am incredibly proud of them. I have explicitly stated in the media that I expect six unicorns to come out of phase one. I said that from data Laura. It was originally 10.
Then I like,
Laura: I do have 10 in my reset, you call them Kiwis. 10 Kiwi unicorns. Unicorns,
Mahesh: huwi unicorns. And the reason why I said 10 was I was looking at the GDP increase the country would need, and then I was like, oh, if we say 10, we'll probably get eight. Okay, great. Six is a good number. I genuinely expect it, which is great.
Laura: That's great and like I think it's a important question for me to ask, and I hope you don't mind me asking. Not a lot of operators have seen the equity eventuate to anything just yet. Just given the, I guess the maturity of the ecosystem in Australia and then even more so in New Zealand. [00:55:00] So what do we need to be mindful of as we're aligning to companies or, yeah, like I guess just in general, what is something that we should remember and note while we're all on this journey in a young ecosystem?
Mahesh: Sure. This is a true story that I think that's the most important thing. Like these things work. Incredible coincidence that we're having this conversation just after Canvas latest evaluation. Right. And there are multiple articles of how this weekend it's gonna be Party Town in, sorry else. Right.
Whenever I think about that, I think about Malosh and I think just freaking awesome people. They're just frigging awesome operators. Just unreal learned so much. Even looking back now, I think most importantly it's that American TV show and that American movie is a true story and I think it's really important, especially for Kiwis.
I'm a Kiwi, went to Navy Boys High School who failed a couple of years in University of Auckland who've been through [00:56:00] trauma tribulation, who has been part of that TV show, and who has the games for that TV show. So first thing is believing that and knowing that it's possible. Two, is what actually allows for that truth to occur at that level of scale.
Simply, it is a loved product that just goes berserk, usually predominantly to the US market. So if you want that kind of scale and that kind of growth, if you are not on the right track to deliver on a love product. To the US market and or haven't already done. So it's not gonna happen pretty clinical about this.
Those would be the things. It's really hard. But at the same time, if you are willing to put in the time, so all the phase one founders know this, in my [00:57:00] opinion, you have to spend 12 to 24 months on a windy road feeling like you're not winning, fooling around, wallowing with the US customer and their problems.
Because building incredible problem, intuition and customer intuition, which is the mirror of a product roadmap, is not a linear exercise like building the pattern, recognition of what is the right thing to build. So show me a founder. Who has spent 18 to 24 months grinding with very little frills on the customer and the problem, not because they came from the industry or whatever it is, just like Mel did with Fusion books, just like Amber has done with Next Work, just like MQ has done the legal space, I, I will show you a founder who's gonna go nuts.[00:58:00]
So if you're deciding on which startup to join a founder to back or whatever it is, look for that. Look for customer obsession. Look for product retention. Look for product engagement. Look about a founder that can't stop talking about the customer and the problem. Not often. You don't see it often. And look, I don't think anybody starts off like that.
Like I'm pretty sure Meldon turn off like that. Okay. But they have to learn that pretty early on in the journey that the strongest muscle, that the one persona that they can count on now on forever, outside of their co-founders. Is the customer. It's the one persona that they can count on because your, your whole identity as an organization, as a venture is based on the value that you are creating for the customer and the market.
We talked about this early on, right? In regards to identity and creating value and like, what's the point? You don't have a love product. Sorry. Sorry. What? What are, what are you doing [00:59:00] here?
Laura: Exactly. And then on the topic of personas, why start up Mahesh to politics, Mahesh?
Mahesh: Sure. My only mission in life, my last chapter in my, is to make New Zealand a happier place.
Right? That's it. I'm very clean and clear. I defined it a long time ago, but my dad helped me define a long time ago, he said my job was to leave the world better than he had. I'm confident materially, I've done that. Through Canva student clubs. I've formed Airtasker phase one. Yeah, I think I've, I've done that.
It's on north. The last sort of goals I've set for myself is to give back to this country that gave me so much, this amazing country that you reside into that you've been part of for 12 years. It is a special, beautiful, wonderful place. And given what I know and the experience I have and the capacity and capability I [01:00:00] have, it's not right for me not to deliver on that.
So that's the goal. When I was young, I was inspired, I yu and so forth in regards to, oh, this politician thing. Like, it sounds like a good story. Oh, these people make a difference. I have a much more pragmatic understanding of politics now. Yeah. Far less romantic, but on any given day, the budget of government is usually the largest in the country.
Laura: Yep.
Mahesh: The power wheels is the largest cumbersome as it may be. It's right. And very similar to people operations. You're setting up systems, the incentives, all of that, right? Tax, all of this nearly like a design experiment, systems experiment. And I think it's unusual that someone like me has a crack at this.
So that's an interesting story. It's an interesting experiment.
Laura: And it's one to watch.
Mahesh: Yeah. It's a worthwhile experiment.
Laura: Is your current skillset translating Well,
Mahesh: yes. I would [01:01:00] say it's more my experience.
Laura: Mm-hmm.
Mahesh: So the one thing I did was I went back to grassroots. I joined a political party and I just started doing the work.
Like every single time I didn't like ask to be shooting. At a certain level, or I didn't ask to use my plotted. I was like, okay, let's just, I trust the work. Let's do the work. And that has really allowed me to understand the political landscape. Just like a good operator does just do the work, right?
Something that people don't appreciate about the political landscape is most people, and this is one thing I didn't realize, is the entity that's a political party, which is the thing which actually connects government and politicians to mainstream. It's that that's it's middleware, right? And a political party's actually an incredible volunteer organization.
That's what it is. [01:02:00] And volunteer organizations don't have incredible systems and incredible things. But if you're part of a political party that's been around for a long time, then it has legacy, it has stories, it has rituals, which you are not getting onboarded into. There's no like, Hey, welcome, let me show you, this is your first day, this is your second day.
None of that. Right? It takes time to understand all of those things and the incentives and different ways and stuff like that, right? So it has been powerful for me to understand that and see that. Yeah. So that's, that's been good. Outside of that, I think it's just grit, usually. Grit, yeah.
Laura: Yeah.
Mahesh: I think my skillset in regards to my executive level experience comes through if I get the chance to serve.
Having said that, Laura, I think it's really important when you're going into brand new entities, especially like something like this in its own way, it's more powerful than a startup, right? Like your [01:03:00] volunteers irrational is showing up at 7:00 AM in the morning and like wiping the table and showing up based on a set of values that your parents have passed on in regards to this is like, we do this thing.
Laura: Yeah.
Mahesh: And to be part of that, you have to start off being humble.
Laura: What's so beautiful here is that you're dealing with just real everyday humans from all walks of life.
Mahesh: Yeah. Like I remember doing the campaign but likely put my hand up again and didn't get in the first time as the campaign happened. It just dawned on me, wait a second, like feedback's not gonna work.
Like people are being so kind and generous to make time to give their time. Like there's no professional contract and no one's getting paid or anything.
Laura: Yeah,
Mahesh: right. Like so what kind of feedback? Like what? What, you know, you're just thankful that someone is like, you're a good person and the party part is good.
I'm gonna help you. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that.
Laura: Yeah, [01:04:00] that's awesome. Well, can't wait to watch that journey and we are gonna end this with a tiny quick fire round. So say what you think and you'll be very impressed by my first question Operator. Why Tottenham Hot Spur.
Mahesh: Oh, love it. Yes. Uh, Tottenham Hot Spa is a club that I have cried over a lot.
His name is Paul Gaco. And Gary Leer. Gaza, as he is known in the 1990s and even now, is considered England's greatest ever footballer.
Laura: I'm so pleased you didn't say soccer.
Mahesh: Yeah. Yes, it's good. Play football. Uh, there's this iconic moment where England didn't get past the semifinals and he had done so hard or quarterfinals and he cried on a thing and Tottenham was always known for the glory days.
The glory of the game is the tagline, and everybody else, all my friends all supported me tonight and asked all like, nah, these guys. So it's been a twisted relationship with Top.
Laura: That's so great. One piece of [01:05:00] advice for operators who want to develop your coaching ability,
Mahesh: practice vulnerability to people around you.
Can you. Draft what your story is in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, what life is supposed to be like. Can you be really honest about what are your attachments and insecurities brutally? If you can write those things down and share it with somebody else and be very comfortable about nearly that nakedness, I think that's a good start.
Laura: The best thing you can do for your career as an operator.
Mahesh: If you're not a founder, join a startup that's winning that is very simply defined by engagement and retention. A good proxy for that is a startup founder that obsesses about the customer. [01:06:00]
Laura: Full stop. One to three leaders you admire and why?
Mahesh: Melly Perkins, she's just Claire.
Super clear. Like where she wants to get to. The thing about Canva is I trust Mel and Cliff not to lose. That's the biggest thing. I just trust them, like I trust 'em to win. They just want, they refuse. Mel for clarity, intentionality, and Cliff for getting stuff done, like just unreal. He taught me so much.
Liu. His vision for Singapore was unreal, like some of the social engineering that he did to form and forge a multiracial community and country. Unreal. Super brutal with about what the context was like. For example, it's like not so quick fire, but the second most popular politician in the 1980s in Singapore was an Indian [01:07:00] and for a National Day rally, he talked about his successor, like in front of thousands of people.
He just said, you know. Singapore's not ready for an Indian pm and he just gave reasons why. And this is the reason why. Because, yeah, like you know, people like try to pay off their mortgage and to rent. Okay, fine. Yeah. Totally makes sense. What are doing, what's next? Right? Third is, it's an unusual one. It's Kobe Bryant because it seems like he was not gifted athletically as others were, but he just showed up and he had incredible loads of grit.
He kept coming in. Not many people know this. He has an Oscar for his animation studio delivering that year's best animation short. He went for like MBA classes. This is a guy that grew up in Italy, and I love the fact that he was so like obsessed and clear about, I'm [01:08:00] gonna be the best. I'm gonna put everything online.
I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna show up again. I find that color inspired.
Laura: I love it when you look up to leaders that are completely outside of your field as well. Super inspiring. This one's from Vincent. What's the most embarrassing thing you've had to deal with at work?
Mahesh: There have been so many things.
Laura: You have time for one,
Mahesh: it's not gonna be good. I once to give like a safety presentation and to make sure it was memorable. I dressed up as a green dragon. This was suggested by like, I wanted to make sure it was, it was memorable. So I asked the team, what do you think I should do? Just so that it really cuts through and they're like, why don't you wear like a thing?
I was like, you know, it's one of those things where you have a joke in your head and you're like, oh, this is gonna be so funny. So I did it and it didn't have that effect. It was more like, wait, you're not taking this seriously? I was like, no, no, no. That wasn't what I.
Laura: I [01:09:00] feel like your number in my phone now is gonna have a little dragon emoji next to it.
Mahesh: Yeah, it was a good lesson against it. There are some things you just like just played dead straight.
Laura: This is so good. If I could gamify my leaderboard as top referrer for guests, that would be you. So I'm gonna ask for one more. Of course. So who should I get on the podcast next?
Mahesh: One of two people. You should get Mark McLeod Smith at Halter, and you should get Alex Fowler, who was the CFO and then the CEO of Vet, which is a good New Zealand success story.
Laura: Amazing. And then to keep you honest, if you had to name a female,
Mahesh: Elise Pete at Cake Equity, who is well mentored by Andrea Penon, the OG godfather growth of Sydney Startup Ecosystem, Vinny and a bunch of others. And she became the head of growth at Airas. And just a wonderful, wonderful person. [01:10:00]
Laura: Yay. Awesome.
What a great list.
Okay, so to end building companies is really hard. Scaling's hard. What's a mindset or a practice that has helped you stay grounded?
Mahesh: Know your why. What are you doing? What do you want to get out of this? Where do you want to be in five to 10 years? And that's not a career thing, it's a life thing. Your career is the tool.
Nearly the dominant outside your partner and kid is dominant thing, which drives that. So, okay, what do you want? Have that conversation. The more people who are honest, that'd be good. And also the the last thing, one of the last things I'd like to leave with is people don't understand how powerful.
They're not even close. Like all these things are hard. But it's not complex. Nuclear physics is complex. [01:11:00] Building a startup is hard, but it's not actually complex. Starts with a customer, get a bunch of people together, build something, love, get it going. It's hard. So it's quite doable.
Laura: Keep it simple.
Mahesh: Yeah, totally.
Laura: That's a perfect place to end. I will link your substack. Are you still writing in your substack?
Mahesh: I am. I am.
Laura: Nice. I will link your Substack in LinkedIn and if anyone wants to get in touch, what's the best way?
Mahesh: Interestingly enough, these days through my Instagram,
Laura: oh, outside of that LinkedIn. Awesome, and that's a wrap.
Today's episode was recorded by me, your host, Laura Nicol, with original music composed by Steven Shelton. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a follow and we'll see you next time