I Woke Up in a Bathroom: The Brutal Reality of Indian Boarding School

Sean Weisbrot: Vikram Saxena is the founder and CEO of better commerce, an all-in-one scalable and reliable cloud-based e-commerce platform. I wanted to talk with Vikram because during our intro call, I. He talked about the term work-life balance, and it instantly caused me to question the idea of work life. Why don't we say life work? So we decided to have that be the topic of today's interview, and from there we got into why he runs his company, what he's living. For, and would he ever sell his company? Would he ever work with his daughters in his business and how he was raised and how he views the world and what drives him. This is very much a psychology of entrepreneurship mixed with the Founder's Journey episode, and I know you're going to love it. Let's get to it. Vikram. When we originally talked, you said that something that drives you is work-life balance. I instantly said to you, why not life work balance? What do you think about that?

Vikram Saxena: The biggest thing is if you really look at it at this stage, you know, once you get out of college, the biggest, what is the biggest thing that occupies your life? It is primarily your work. Where do you make most? Where do you spend most of your life? After college, it is work. Where do you make most of your friends? Maybe not as good as friends as they were in school or college, but you still build a circle of friends at that time. And where do you spend most of your time when you are open with open eyes? You know when you're awake, that's where you spend it's work. So it pretty much dominates majority portion of your life. Any which way you look at it, and I think that is why it probably just came out to be called as work-life balance. Life is an overarching element across everybody's, you know, of course this whole universe. In, in itself work is the second most element with which you pretty much are known everywhere, even by the strangers, even by the people in your circle. They all know you by what you do. And that's the legacy, which I believe everybody leaves behind as well. When you pass on, you know that what work you did. Is the legacy of course, besides whatever good deed you did in your friend and close, close circles or whatever circles you did, social work, you did. But besides that, that is a legacy we leave and this is why I think a lot of times people bring work life balances rather than life work balance, because life is in it anyways. Implicit

Sean Weisbrot: thing. So it was only when we talked, uh, very recently that I even came up with this idea of questioning the term work-life balance. I, I think people of my generation, millennials, I'm a, I guess you would call, I'm an older millennial, millennials, started to see probably around 2008 when we just finished university. Hey, you know. Like the financial crisis is going on, things are happening. It doesn't look good out there in the world. Yeah, and I think Gen Z came along and started to really question what does work mean and what does, what do I wanna do with my time? I think a lot of people that start companies chase this idea and hopefully attain it, which is I want to be able to be in control of my time. Where some people will say like Elon Musk, I'm gonna spend all of my time at work. And then you have other people like Tim Ferris that say, I wanna spend all of my time not working. And I think society kind of created this term work-life balance where people were trying to define how they were going to figure out how they can live and work, but because it's more beneficial for society if people work rather than live. That the term work life balance was the one that was chosen. And I think after COVID, we've come to realize, especially among Gen Z, that we would rather live than work, which obviously capitalism doesn't survive when people decide they don't wanna work. So I strive for something in between an Elon Musk and a Tim Ferris where I, I work only when it's necessary, and I live as much as, as I can. The reason being is because I feel like you could die at any moment and a lot of people. We'll end up, you know, they, they die in a car crash. They die in a plane crash, they die, you know, getting hit by a bus on the side of the road. They die from some sort of, you know, drowning whatever. Something that happens so fast that they don't have an opportunity to get their affairs in order. Yeah. And, and so I feel like we should be thinking about this not as work-life balance, but as a life work balance. How do we fit our work into our life so that we can live the lives we want?

Vikram Saxena: Okay, so Sean. When you say, you know, I'd rather live rather than work is a very subjective element. You know, how, what is your, and then, and that goes into a different direction. What is your definition of live? There has to be certain. Meaning of living that right. You can't just be idling away all your time sitting on a beach, you know, after a few weeks, you know, a, a never ending holiday. I, I don't know. I really, I haven't thought about it, but a never ending holiday. I'd probably be bored to death. I mean, I'm no, no Elon Musk that, you know, work is my entire life. It is not. But at the same time, work adds a significant meaning to my life as well. You know, there's something that I get up to look forward to that this is what I'm gonna create. I add value to other people's lives through my work. So, uh, and I add value, and it's not, I've never, you know, when I, even when I started my career, my salary, my first salary was probably 30 pounds a month. And I worked even then, you know, almost I, I had a very unknowing hunger for learning new things and new stuff. I used to be just sitting on the computer and for me, computer was a new world at the time. I used to be just sitting there and asking my friends and, you know, calling them up. How do I install Windows 95? How do I do this in Microsoft Office 97? How do I do this? How do I do that? So I had this quench thirst of, you know. Learning new stuff. So how do you add meaning to your life in which, and of course everybody can add their own definition. Now you, for you, I mean for anybody, you know, you could say, you know, I don't wanna be doing anything and that's, I just wanna be sleeping 18 hours a day. I don't think that's a life well lived. My definition, of course, everybody will have their own right at the end of the day on Sunday, if I sleep until 8 39, that's good. That's good enough for me. That's good enough sleep for me. And I, I look at sleeping as more of a thing to refresh my body. It's not, my goal of life is not to sleep, but you meet so many people for whom sleeping is like, I just wanna sleep through the whole week. I. Right. So it brings back that question, you know, what is the meaning of life, SPU, and that is when the dimensions change a little bit. I think

Sean Weisbrot: for me, I wake up at like five or four 30 every morning. Brilliant. I love sleep, but my body doesn't want me to sleep. Exactly. My body keeps telling me, wake up. Wake up. So I wake up without an alarm. The, the thing that drives me on a daily basis is. Dependent on where I am in the world, part of that is where do I want to be in the world? And by having some measure of control over my life, I can decide where I wanna be. So right now I'm in the US in Miami, visiting my family for the next month. I was previously in Atlanta for a week visiting my family. Before that I was in Europe for the last five months where I live. And. When I am in Europe, my time is spent, you know, there's a probably four or five hours a day of working. But other than that, I'm walking around the city, I'm in the cafes talking with the employees, other people that I meet, I'm doing table tennis and, uh, board game nights and archery and golf and these kinds of things. It's, the way I look at it is like. How can I make as much money as possible while working as little as possible so that I can basically be retired. It's like semi-retirement, I guess. It's like, yeah. 'cause the American dream is to work until you're pretty much ready to die. Yeah. And then start living your life, which I point to it. I reject. And so I started traveling when I was 18 because I wanted to live my life. Doing what I wanted so that even if I possibly made less on a, an average basis, I had more experience to speak of so that if something happens to me and I can no longer travel or I die, I know that I've done as much as I possibly could have. I've been to over 40 countries and I'm 37, almost 38. Most of the people I talk to have only been to like one or two, so yeah. Well that's,

Vikram Saxena: that is sad. To be honest. Yeah. People who, to one, one or two countries. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I am just about 10 years. I'm 46, you know, and just like you, I have traveled pretty much, I don't think I've traveled anything less than 40 to 45 countries of maybe 50 countries as well. Across the globe. I mean, Europe, you name a country, and I've probably been there except a few exceptionals. I've probably been all over Europe, pretty much most of the cities. I lived in Germany for about three years and then traveled pretty much every second or third weekend. Uh, anywhere we could. Small towns of Germany, you know, buying area, various places, anything new. I, it's always excited me and coming from India, you know, where. Especially, you know, where, uh, the education was a very high priority for parents and there was always, there's always been a pressure, you know, for you to either become, you are an intelligent person and either you become a doctor or an engineer or pursue a career which is established. And I was way below average in studies. So, which was a difficult time. I was completely disillusioned. At the time of the college, I had no idea what to do. Somehow, you know, I found the computers. The computers found me despite having no education or background. In computers and somehow programming found me and it, it just got me fascinated that I could create things and I, I was never very good at, you know, social skills. I was a bit awkward always in terms of being always an introvert kind of a person. So I could not interact very well in the social networks, but I love talking to close friends. Whatever friends I had, I always believed in quality rather than the quantity. Have a smaller circle, but a meaningful circle. You know, people that you could just open your, bare your heart to, you know, you don't have to have any faces in front of them. And that's what has added significant meaning to my life. And I've traveled, you know, I've traveled. You can't even imagine. I can't even tell how I've traveled in buses. Walked 18, 20, kilomet 30 kilometers at a stretch, lost my bag in the bus. The bus went away. I was stranded on the highway. No way to get to where I was going to took a ride in a truck full of people who are high on weed. I'm a tea toler. I don't smoke going in that kind of, so I've experienced pretty much a huge different variety of life through an adventure of up and down, and which I has enriched my life in so many ways. I can't even put in words. It has made me what I am today. I mean, I, these days now, I spend about two, three weeks in uk. I spent four to six weeks in India where my office and my family lives and in UK where my customers and most of my product is based out of there. Everything is pretty much based out of there, so I keep traveling and pre COVID, I was practically living alone in UK because my family just refused to move and I was there alone because I had to establish my product. And I could only travel, you know, once or twice, uh, in two months, once in a two months period. So, which was slightly difficult. But then gradually it's gotten better. And I agree with you, you know, it's, it's not a good thing to work until you die. Until you're ready to die. I am also looking for that space or where I can, you know, easily just say, I wanna get money out of the equation altogether. And my goal is next five to six years, I'm gonna get money out, out of my equation completely, where I just, I can still continue to, and even today, you know, a lot of people say you are the CEO and the founder of the company. You have a hundred people working under you. Why do you still have to code? You shouldn't be coding. I said, no, it, I draw joy out of it. It's not out of compulsion. It's my personal joy. If I give up my joy, what am I living for? So why don't, so you hire a,

Sean Weisbrot: why don't you hire a CEO so you can be like the CTO or just a coder? I,

Vikram Saxena: I, I tried that as well, actually a couple of times without many good results. So then I decided to continue doing what I do best, manage people, I and all the people that work with me. I have pretty much first name relationship with almost all of them, and that's. When I set out to build a company, I, my goal was I want to know each one of them working in my company on a first name basis. I wanna have a relationship, and I've been very reluctant to increase the people count just because somebody tells me I question it very, very hard. Do we really need to add somebody in there? We want to keep it a very closed, a very family environment, a friendly environment. Where, you know, it's growing organically on a pure need basis rather than just fancy titles. So in our culture as well, in our work culture as well, you know, it's, it's a very flat hierarchy. There are barely any managers, pretty much everybody's hands-on person, everybody works, everybody. There are no middle management, pretty much almost. Everybody is an executioner. Of course there are team leads, but everybody does whatever is needed to get moving. There are pros and cons to every approach.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think it's possible to maintain that kind of system? I. And grow. I feel like it's very difficult at that stage. Uh,

Vikram Saxena: yeah. Sean, I have, I was told this when I was doing 20 people company that it is not possible to do this beyond 30 people. Well, I managed to do it beyond 30. Then somebody said, you can't grow this, grow like this, have the same system beyond 40 or 50 people. Well, it's still there. And now we are more than a hundred people and the system still runs and it runs beautifully.

Sean Weisbrot: So do you think it could take two weeks off and the company would still be running without you when you get back? I.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, I think it definitely would be.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you tried it? Yeah. Yeah.

Vikram Saxena: I've taken one or two weeks off. But that doesn't mean now my off, doesn't mean I switch off everything. Like I said, I think in one of our conversations, you know, when you look at it, for me, my work and my personal life, or my two legacies that I'm gonna leave behind and they're like my child, they're my creations. So if you tell me, you know, I'm gonna just leave my child. For two weeks, I'm not gonna talk to him because I've decided that this child is more important for these two weeks. That is not what I call work life balance for me. Whenever what is, whatever needs me more, I'm gonna be there. So, I mean, there have been occasions, you know, where I, where I was away for my brother's wedding or anything. I was away for two weeks. Sometimes three weeks when I travel to uk, I am sometimes even away for almost four weeks, six weeks. The business continues to run on its own.

Sean Weisbrot: When you're away though, what do, what do you mean by that specifically? Like obviously I, I guess you have an office right? When the people are working in the office, or no? Yeah, yeah.

Vikram Saxena: It's all, it's all fully, uh. Based office. We've got about a hundred people sitting in the office. It's about a 7,500 square foot area. That's in India? That's in India, that's correct, yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you have any people in an office in the uk

Vikram Saxena: we did have it, them two, three people, but then, uh, gradually, you know, we cut short on them. We weren't getting enough value out of that. So we cut short of them. And I do most of the out teach and sales is what I do myself now. Okay. And we have a sales and marketing team, which is quite distributed actually. Our CRO guy sits in Mumbai. Our rest of the office and team sits in, uh, Delhi. I. One of our tech architects, it's in Heba, so we've got a bit of a distributor team, but it pretty much operates on its own. Okay. Would you ever sell the business

Sean Weisbrot: at some point? Possibly, yes. What conditions would there have to be for you to be willing to sell? It's

Vikram Saxena: very difficult to, you know, pinpoint what I'm gonna do after five years or six years. Of course, you know, I would prefer to have. People paid off very well because I've shared, you know, equity with people who are working in the business to ensure, you know, that there's good amount of motivation, there's certain level of, so that has, there has to be a decent value generated for them and it's worthwhile, their hard work in the business. So that's definitely one of the important elements. Okay.

Sean Weisbrot: How about, I

Vikram Saxena: mean,

Sean Weisbrot: like. What situation would the business need to be in for you to be willing to sell it?

Vikram Saxena: I think if I get to, and eventually, I don't wanna be running any large business to be honest. I want to build it to a good state, potentially sell, it's about 40, 50 customers and that's when I would start considering, or maybe more than 30 customers, I would start considering doing that. So

Sean Weisbrot: how many

Vikram Saxena: customers do

Sean Weisbrot: you have now? 'cause you have so many people. We've got

Vikram Saxena: about 10, 12. Yeah, we have about 12 people. 12 customers. So you have like what, 10 people per customer? It's not that per average perspective, because we have customers ranging from different sizes. So we've got, our product company is about 50 people and our services business is another 50 people that works for a large business separately and on its own. Our product company is about 40, 50 people. That's, that's the business that I would look to potentially sell if, if I ever have to.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. Is there any kind of number you have in your mind of like what you need to be willing to walk away?

Vikram Saxena: Not really, to be honest, Sean, I've never given it that much of thought that I. Of course people reach out quite often. You know how, when are you willing to sell? Do you wanna sit down, have a discussion? We will help you increase valuation. I just don't get involved into that For now, I enjoy doing what I'm doing and I generate decent amount of revenue for the business, and we'll get to profitability as well this year. So next, within next to two years or three years, I will start looking at those possibilities as well.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, typically a company will sell for three, four x something like that of the, um, profitability of the, yeah. So if people are making offers, but it's interesting that people are, are making offers now even if you don't have profit. But so have you, you haven't taken any, you haven't considered taking any of those meetings. You just go, no, I'm not interested things anyways. No.

Vikram Saxena: No.

Sean Weisbrot: Yep. So I interviewed a guy a year and a half, two years ago, and he had been running his business for 20 years, and the year that they sold, they had done about 30 million in revenue. Mm. I don't know what the profitability was, and they didn't say how much they sold for, but he said that he had been receiving many. Offers and he kept saying no to even listen to any of them. And one day he said, you know what, let me just listen to what they have to say.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And he didn't sell to them, but he found what they said very interesting. And it helped him to build the company into something better, stronger, more sellable.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: So I, I get your point. I. I think it would be interesting to, to see what they have to say, even if you have no intention of selling because it's, it's basically information gathering. You get free information. Yeah. They're willing to tell you everything and you don't tell them much. And, and at the end you have a better idea of, of that. Um, and I know you're not looking this out, but maybe there's a way to like put together a spreadsheet of all the people that contact you and all the things that they tell you so that one day. You can go, yeah, you know what, I am interested, you know? Yeah, no,

Vikram Saxena: absolutely. I'll, I'll probably do that. See

Sean Weisbrot: all those emails that come through from that perspective, they go in. Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would. Love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic. And no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show. Now do a

Vikram Saxena: separate folder altogether, so I have a separate email folder, which where all those emails go, and I've thought, you know, probably one of those Christmas breaks. I'm gonna sit down, go through that email folder and put together that list and see when I want

Sean Weisbrot: to reach out to them. Yeah, it's a good idea. 'cause one of the things I, I've found companies don't do well is make themselves sellable. Like I'm, I'm working with a few clients right now and they're like, yeah, we wanna sell. And I'm like, great. But you don't have anything that people are willing to buy. Like you have millions of dollars a year in, in revenue and profit, but you don't have any of the documentation, you don't have any of the financial audits. Like you're just not prepared to sell. You wanna sell, but it's gonna take you six months for, for anyone to be willing to buy you. Preparation. Right. And so what he had said was that this guy that had sold, he is like one of the best things I could have done was taken seriously the idea of selling earlier on so that when I was ready, it was just done. He's like it. It ends up taking them, I think. A year to, to complete the sale.

Vikram Saxena: No, I can imagine. But the way we do is, you know, all our financial bits are very clearly audited every year. It's all done really well, and we keep our documentation from a product perspective, people perspective, everything quite well structured, and there's a lot of processes built into the organization from that perspective, despite having, and the flat hierarchy helps in that actually.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I, I think when you're. More like software focused. It requires you more, more software than, uh, like service. It requires you to be a lot more clear about, uh, feature specifications and technical documentation and things that a buyer could actually use.

Vikram Saxena: Correct, correct. And a lot more information they would typically need, you know, from the perspective of customers and all the historical data analysis, everything around that, you know, so we ensure that all of that is very well tracked. Very well maintained across the board.

Sean Weisbrot: Exactly. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm glad you're getting, um, people coming to you at least that tells you you're on the right track. Um, what he had said to me was when he got onto the Inc 5,000 list. Is when people started really approaching him, but I'm not sure you can apply for the Inc. 5,000 as a non-US company. I could be wrong.

Vikram Saxena: No,

Sean Weisbrot: I

Vikram Saxena: haven't really explored that, to be honest as yet, Sean.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, it's something to check into because it might bring you absolutely. More prestige and therefore more clients as well.

Vikram Saxena: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Sean Weisbrot: It's something that I think you just have to like show them, uh, your fi, your audited financials. They like, you just apply and you need to show them proof that like your company is growing fast and then they like consider you for the list. Um, but I think it's free to apply. I'm just not sure if you have to be a usb, uh, US company. We'll definitely check,

Vikram Saxena: we'll check, we'll

Sean Weisbrot: check for that for sure. Yeah, it's, uh, something that, uh, like I, I am definitely guilty of checking the Inc. 5,000 for potential clients. Because it's easy to see, oh, this is their revenue, this is their headcount. You can see details that otherwise you may have to scour like cr, uh, Crunchbase or LinkedIn for.

Vikram Saxena: Yep. And a lot of times even Crunchbase or LinkedIn doesn't have the accurate information. Really.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. Like LinkedIn will say, there's 300 employees connected to this company. But if you actually go through the list, there's, there's people that like, say they worked for the company or maybe it's like an investor in the company. Um, or people that don't work there anymore, but they forgot to change their thing to say they don't work there anymore. So it still counts them as an employee. And then Crunchbase will say it's like a hundred to 250 employees, and you're like, great, but which one is it? Is it a hundred or two 50?

Vikram Saxena: Yeah. It's a very broad range. Crunchbase has very broad ranges defined in there, which are really helpful.

Sean Weisbrot: So is there anyone from your family that's involved in your business or you keep those lives separate in that way? That I keep slightly separate. Is there a specific reason for that?

Vikram Saxena: No, it's just natural and organic. There was no need. I mean, in my family, if you really ask me, I really don't have anybody. It's my brother who does his own business and my wife, uh, is more of a homemaker. There is nobody really involved. And that's, that's it about my family. It's a very small family from that perspective. You have kids,

Sean Weisbrot: right? Yes. I have two daughters lead. Would you ever consider working with them? Yeah, yeah, of

Vikram Saxena: course. Why not? My elder one is actually looking to apply at the uni, uh, going for computer science and ai. If she's willing to come and work with us after some years of experience, absolutely. Why not?

Sean Weisbrot: So the reason I ask is because I just interviewed someone yesterday and that episode will be live the week before this one comes out. And the specific topic that we had was, what is it like running a business with your adult child? And so his son is 35 and he talked about, you know, the. The ways in which they butt heads, the ways in which he makes him better, the ways in which the, is this me being the father or the boss, you know, kind of thing in his head. So I think there's a lot of interesting things. I think in your situation it would be different because you have a lot more employees. This company is a lot smaller. They've got about five or six people. Um, they're doing like a consulting business, so they have, uh, I guess a smaller number of clients, but they charge a lot more. Um, so. They, yeah, it's the, the, the experiences they've had from working with each other has expanded both of them, but it hasn't been the easiest. I've also had an interview before with someone who worked with their spouse and they, they built a brand from zero to 20 million in revenue. With a few employees as well, and then they sold the brand and then they went back and did it again, uh, and, and built it again to to, you know, another business to 20 million a year. And how that almost ruined their marriage at one point, and how they figured out how to solve their issues. So I think, uh, working with someone, you know well and, and love, uh, can be very rewarding and very difficult. I did it as well. I worked for my dad for a number of years and uh, that was very frustrating, but also rewarding. So, yeah, I was just curious on your thoughts on that.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, no, I can imagine. See, my dad, when I was young, you know, I said my dad was a very successful lawyer in a very small town in India. And he always said, you know, you be anything but you don't become a lawyer. I said, why? But wouldn't it be easier for me that if I just become a lawyer and come and sit with you and potentially, you know, uh, garner some of your reputation, you know, breed off your, your reputation and build that further? He said, yes, that is possible. Technically, that is possible, but for being a lawyer, you need to be a different kind of a person. Your personality just doesn't go without being a lawyer. You know, being a lawyer, you have to be a little bit of a thick skin. You have to ensure that you are not always too blunt and too honest, and you're not too emotional. And these are the qualities that you have naturally. And I don't want you to change your inherent qualities and natural qualities for your profession because you will not fare very well in the long run. And if you do commercially fare well, you may not be internally happy because you'll be fighting against your own true nature. You have to find something which is in alignment with your true nature rather than, you know, just do something because you'll be successful at it. You may be successful at it. So find something which is aligned with your true nature, and you have to find that yourself. I can't tell you that. What

Sean Weisbrot: it is gonna be, and that's great advice I wouldn't have expected. Like I, I've, I've been around Asian cultures for a long time, and that, that's like so different from what I would've expected an Indian parent to say.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, yeah, I know. I know that's not typical parents. My father was very, very open-minded, very, he gave me all the freedom that I needed. He just gave me all the time, all the support, all the money that I needed. In my struggling days, and I told him, I'm trying to figure out, he said, no problem, take your time. But whatever you do, do it right and do it well. Do you have any sisters? No. I have one younger brother. That's it. Okay.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think your father would've done the same if you were a woman?

Vikram Saxena: Yes, he would have. Absolutely. Actually, because I had two younger first cousins and my uncle passed away, so my father actually brought them up as well. Mm-hmm. Although slightly different geographically, slightly different because, but he did bring them up as well, and he said the similar thing to them as well. It was entirely up to them what they wanted to do, but he did the same thing with them.

Sean Weisbrot: That's awesome. I wish more parents would do that. Yeah. Especially in Asia. Yeah.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, absolutely. I was quite blessed from that perspective, and he was always very open and very friendly. Hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned in running this business?

Vikram Saxena: I think people, a lot of times, of course, customers are always very important, but the people that work with you, I put them at a higher. You know, pedestal. For me, they're even more important and I, for me, I always ensure that they are happier. Because a lot of times you find, you know, sometimes customers, mostly customers are right, you know, of course. But sometimes they may cross a boundary and they get little rude with your people and a lot of times business owners will typically defend customer and, you know, tribute the employees or the staff in the business. I generally do it, evaluate it very objectively and ensure that, you know, people in the company are happier and they're always well protected and have a safer environment from that perspective to ensure that they are free. And I always tell them, you know, be happy and doing whatever you're doing. If you're not happy, don't be here. Find another thing to do, find another job, another career change. Switch gears, do whatever. But you have to ensure that you're happy because without that. There is no meaning to be all, any of this. You're spending more than 30%, more than 70% of your waking hours in this place. So if you are not happy, I don't want you here and you shouldn't be here.

Sean Weisbrot: I think Gen Z are really good at going. Yeah, I agree. Bye. Yeah. Do you? Yeah. Would you say a large number of your employees are Gen Z? 'cause I mean, developers and specifically like computer science people coming out of India. Like there's so much talent in that, in that generation.

Vikram Saxena: So we do, almost every year we bring in about 10 to 15, uh, people fresh out of college. And so far we haven't seen this. Okay, bye. So far what we've seen is that some of, of the people that we have in the business have been there for seven years and there are a few people who've been with us for the last 10 years, 15 years as well. In fact, 17 years. There are a few people who've been with me for the last 17 years. Now those of course won't be Gen Zs, but uh, you know, people who come fresh out of college, a lot of them stay around for quite a long time. On an average, they stay with us for more than five years, six years, seven years, a lot of times.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay.

Vikram Saxena: And what do you think of the.

Sean Weisbrot: What do you think the hardest thing has been about running this company?

Vikram Saxena: I think running any company, the hardest thing is you are always the bad guy, even in front of customers, in front of your staff, so you always have a very tight rope to walk. How do you balance it all out here and over there as well at the both ends? And how do you, the way I do it is, of course, look at things more objectively and add a bit of empathy at both ends.

Sean Weisbrot: Where do you think you learned empathy from? Because I would say it's not common for someone who's technically focused to be great at people.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, great at people. There are two elements of it, you know, great at people in a larger group. So if you put me in a group of strange people, you know, put me in a networking event, I would be worst. I probably would not connect. I probably would connect with one or two people maximum. That's it. I'm done. You put me one-on-one with anybody, and if I like the person or the person and I find some really positive vibes from the person, within an hour, we will have a relationship that will last for life, and that is how I've managed to build good relationships. This is where, you know, my quality, my perspective on quality of relationships, rather the quantity has always been very helpful, right from my childhood days. So that's always been very helpful because I've always focused on, you know, having meaningful conversations, meaningful relationships, rather than just build a network of thousands of friends. I don't have thousands of friends, in which phrase,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah, one of my mom's friends is like that. She has like, she knows everybody. If you talk to anybody in, let's say South Florida, whatever, like they know who she is. And when their, uh, when her children had weddings, they had like 500 people at the weddings and it's like everybody is there. And I always felt like, sure, I know her, but I never really felt like I knew her, even though I've known her since I was born.

Vikram Saxena: But you didn't really have a connection to her.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and, and her children either who I spent a lot of time with in a way and, and grew up with, but as adults, I feel no connection to them whatsoever. My mom would be like, oh, this, you know, this one, uh, just had a second kid and they've done this. And I'm like, I don't have a relation. Like, why, why are you telling me this? Oh, well you grew up together. Yeah, but I don't feel it.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah, exactly.

Sean Weisbrot: I don't recall Then.

Vikram Saxena: Exactly, so this is why. So my focus has always been on that meaningful part of a relationship. I rarely have relationships where there's no meaningful conversation.

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like this is something that happens when somebody hits 30. They start to look at the world very differently and go, I. I don't want that anymore.

Vikram Saxena: Yeah. But that's a very good perspective. Interestingly, probably, you know, because I had a little bit of a tough childhood in a boarding school, so I think I grew that perspective quite early on. What was tough about it? I think boarding schools in general are all anyway tough, and especially because boarding schools, I don't know how much you know about boarding schools and especially in the Indian world, you know, boarding schools are pretty much your, uh, fit survival for the fittest kind of, uh, environment. And if you are a very lean and a very weak child, and if you have some medical conditions as well, that makes it very interestingly difficult.

Sean Weisbrot: All I know of boarding schools is what I see on Hollywood films.

Vikram Saxena: Oh, that's far from any reality.

Sean Weisbrot: Worse, the reality is worse.

Vikram Saxena: Reality is way worse. Okay. '

Sean Weisbrot: cause I feel like they do a pretty good job of making it seem like this kid's getting beaten up all the time and like whatever situation is, the reality is worse.

Vikram Saxena: Much, much worse than that actually. It's not just getting beaten up. Beaten up is a very small part of it. Physical violence is a very small part of it. It's the. Mental element of it, which makes it even more difficult at the time.

Sean Weisbrot: So like, what would the kids say to you?

Vikram Saxena: It's not about saying, you know, for example, a very simple thing, you know, uh, a lot of times, I mean, there was one incident, you know, when I actually woke up, uh, my bed was right in the middle of the washroom. Middle of the bathroom, I woke up and everybody was just brushing their teeth and I had no idea. I mean, people just carried my whole bed and the bed could not go straight through the door. So they probably tilted it, held me, and yet put that bed right in the middle of the bathroom. I almost have to like applaud them for that. Absolutely. And this is, this is, I mean, it could be, uh, there are different angles. You know, one man's tragedy is another man's comedy. Like they say. Right. It's, it's funny. Comedy is, it is funny. It is funny. You know, when I look at it today, I find it very funny. Yeah. I woke up and every, everybody was just brushing their teeth and they were looking at me. But people, kids who did not know about it, of course they were looking at me in a, with odd eyes, but some just ignored. And it is, and this is just one small incident and there are several of these kinds, which happen pretty much every day through the day. Anytime and day.

Sean Weisbrot: Why do you think they, what? The kids that were in the bathroom, like brushing their teeth, why do you think they didn't wake you up to be like, Hey, you know, you're in the bathroom, right?

Vikram Saxena: In in a boarding school, you typically become part of groups. If you're not, you are generally singled out. If you're part of a group, sometimes you may be part of a stronger group or a weaker group, but then you are part of a group. If you're not part of a group, then you're singled out and then these things happen quite a lot and there is so. Boarding schools are quite like that.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I'm never gonna send my kid to a boarding school. No, I, I did not send any of mine. What do you think your parents' goal was in sending you to a boarding school?

Vikram Saxena: See where my parents lived, there wasn't decent amount of education. I mean, the, the whole education, there weren't any good schools at the time. So if I, they had not sent me to boarding school, you know, I probably would've ended up with a small corner shop or grocery shop running. Running a small corner grocery shop. Nothing that, not that there's anything wrong with it, but I would've probably be just running a small shop somewhere in a small town of India rather than running a software company.

Sean Weisbrot: And so you feel like the boarding school was worth the suffering you went through?

Vikram Saxena: Yeah. I think it gave me a different perspective on life. It gave me a perspective on how to find the right, connects people that, and typically, you know, I've seen that most of the times in the professional world also have been very. Lucky and mostly accurate in terms of, you know, observing people. That observational skill that developed in me, I think came through that hardships of the boarding school.

Sean Weisbrot: So then, what's the most important thing you think you've learned in life in general?

Vikram Saxena: Like I said, show empathy. Be happy in life. I think being happy is the most important thing in life, irrespective of the circumstances. Happiness. Of course, circumstances are gonna be good and bad, but happiness you can control to some extent. And I have found that, you know, for example, you know, uh, a year or two year ago it was going, was really tough for my business, for this product, company, and all of that. Somehow I started golf. That just changed my mental state. It just became my source of meditation. I mean, for me now, golf is meditation. I leave just like you. I wake up at four 30. I leave my house at five and I tee off at five 30 in the dark with glow balls, and I do that because then I can finish almost 14 to 15 holes by nine, get shower and get to office by 10, 10 30. That's pretty much three, four days routine in my life. Every three, four days, every week. That's what I do. And that has generated so much of happiness in me and it's just made me a much more calmer person. So I think being happy is very important. Things will come and go. Circumstances will change good or bad, but that is very important.