Part 2: Mukesh Bansal on hiring for loyalty to a mission, "no means not now", writing three books, and compounding sideways

First Principles

In this second part of the conversation, Mukesh Bansal discusses his pragmatic approach to entrepreneurship, focusing on how he identifies ta

Key takeaways

• Mukesh Bansal prefers evaluating talent through a six-month working relationship to bypass the limitations of one-hour interviews.
• He utilizes the mental model 'no means not now' to process rejections, citing Temasek's decade-long gap between first contact and investment in CureFit.

Main topics

• Talent acquisition and hiring
• Entrepreneurial mental models

Notable quotes

No means not now.

Conclusion

The episode provides a masterclass in building resilient mental framew

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome back to First Principles. This is part two of my conversation with Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra and co-founder of Kiofit. In part one, we followed his arc from a childhood in Haridwar to building and selling Myntra and his restless move from one company to the next. In this half, we get into how he spots and hires talent, the mental models he keeps returning to, his views on health and longevity, why he writes and podcasts, and what he makes of parenting and success now. If you haven't heard part one, I'd start there. Otherwise, let's pick up where we left off. Speaker 1 (1:05) Over the many years, the three decades, so many companies that you've been part of, one of the most important things that you must have done is find and hire talented people. Yeah. Right? What is your most common method to spot talented people? Speaker 2 (1:21) Work with them for six months. Let's say Speaker 1 (1:23) you're not doing that. But before you get... Speaker 2 (1:26) Let me dwell Speaker 1 (1:26) on that. Speaker 2 (1:28) Most of the really good people that I've found and I've done good stuff together, It's after that six months of working together. My hit rate on day one is very poor. But my hit rate after six months is stellar. And it's just, I don't know how to do the job of six months in a one-hour interview. I don't think I'm going to... Speaker 1 (1:46) So what do you Speaker 2 (1:46) do? Speaker 1 (1:46) Do you convince people to work with Speaker 2 (1:48) you? No, I Speaker 1 (1:49) think Speaker 2 (1:49) then you look for some of the things, you know, and there's a hiring versus investing, maybe two different lenses. But what I try to look for is track record. So for me, you know, biggest indication of you're going to have future performance is past performance. So most of my interviews, I just try to click what is the interesting work you have done and I try to gauge how much, whether... whether first of all you have created impact in the past or not and whether the company created an impact you are taking credit for or you really did a heavy lifting of that and you know through asking a bunch of probing questions you get a sense of that and there's also bit of becomes a character test like there are you know in corporate everyone knows how to over project but over projection is a very bad trade in startup startup you want people to brutally honest I think I love people who are you know who say I suck, you know, five times and only one time, look, I did something amazing. People keep, you know, touting their own honours, like, you know, again, a bad signal in my eyes, you know, because startup requires this brutal honesty and candidness. So some of those things you can gauge for. So that's what I look for, you know, honesty, track record, references. I, over a period of time, I had a lot more people from the network, people I have worked in the past or someone I know who's worked in the past. I think that is a very reliable. Someone has seen you perform in a job and is watching the Rohin did amazing job, you know, from 2016 to 18. For me, nothing else comes closer to being able to hire a person than the testimony of someone I trust who is vouching for the quality of your work. So some of these signals, I think, but despite that, I think a lot of mistakes happen. Speaker 1 (3:23) And in conversations, what are some of your most favorite open-ended questions? Speaker 2 (3:28) Just walk me through a journey and I listen patiently and... Sometime, you know, people also disqualify themselves. I've had many interviews where persons keep talking nonstop for 40 or 50 minutes. And then I just say, thank you. So how, you know, you get to get a lot of things, you know, how people are constructing, you know, their own story in their own head, how they are rationalizing, you know, choices they have made, but how mindful they are of the fact that this is only 30 minute interview or 45 minute interview. So you need to pace it or you need to tell the key points. What's reasonable is probably five to 10 minutes. Beyond that, you're taking too much time to tell something just because I'm just trying to orient myself about your career trajectory so I can dig into relevant areas, but you are not. And so I think there's a lot one can gauge just from how people approach that one question. Their ambition comes through. Like you can just say, matter of fact, say I change job from this company to that company or you can say. you know, I like this about that company at that point, therefore I change, right? So you can see like this, you know, you have this meta cognition ability. And some of it is, you know, I'm saying it now out loud since we are talking, but a lot of it is also intuitive. I just, over a period of time, I also changed my hiring to a lot more, you know, almost feeling driven. I feel... You know, I've learned some of the decision making requires a kind of higher degree of intelligence, which is both rational, cognitive, but also emotional. And it's very hard to put in words. So when you have an interview debrief, people try to somehow articulate. But ultimately, you know, what they're trying to say, I don't like this person. Speaker 1 (5:10) What's he saying, you know? That's very hard. How do you bring that out? Because especially in an interview debrief situation or... anytime somebody has to write down something formal about an experience that they had, it's very hard to put down saying, I don't like this person because then somebody else is going to ask you, can you explain that in very objective? So that's poison to culture. Speaker 2 (5:32) Like, I am okay if I am running the debrief. I am okay. Like, I like you and you are saying you don't like this person. That's good enough. You know, I don't need to... Like, the reason you are a proven performer, I trust your judgment. You know, so I will... I let you make a lot of good calls about investment or product choices, building product, killing product. Why wouldn't I let you make a good call even if you can't even explain Speaker 1 (5:55) why you don't like this person? Got it. You just mentioned that in startups, one of the things which is rightly valued is the ability to speak the absolute brutal truth. Right? But that doesn't always sit comfortably with a lot of people, especially in the last 10 years as a lot of experienced people from larger, well-established corporates have moved to startups. So in your experience, where does that friction, what kind of people don't make that jump? Because some do successfully make that jump and some don't. Speaker 2 (6:31) See, I think there is no difference between, there are people who want to win. at any cost. And there are people who want to look good every day. And somewhere, this is maybe painting the world in a very binary manner, but... on that continuum winning versus looking good right i just you know you can make me feel as bad as you want as long as i'm clear like this is whatever you're telling me is optimizing our chance of winning and that's the environment i keep repeating you know whenever i have frustrated conversation people i just keep repeating i just want to win i have nothing wrong with you you know whether i'm frustrated or upset angry it's not because you know i have some beef with you I just want to win. Let's figure out how do we win here, right? So now, I mean, sometimes I say it explicitly also, like literally these many words. Sometimes it's implied, but you can see that, you know, desire to win. And you need to have, you know, almost irrational desire to win because I think logically, if you do the odd, startup don't make sense. Like the risk adjusted rewards for startup don't make sense. If you like the entire venture capitalized class, their returns are far worse. It's just their top quartile. makes stellar returns and therefore they make the whole class look good. So if you take all the entrepreneurs who start and if you do the math, I've never done the math, but I'm pretty sure if you look at all entrepreneurs who start today, how much money they collectively make over the next 20 years is a lot less than the money they will make if all of them, you know, just pursue their professional career. So there has to be something, you know, very unreasonable. There comes the Speaker 1 (8:00) compounding argument again, which is why I was asking you, right? Because sometimes safe vertical compounding does deliver absolute returns over the long run, but there's something else you're Speaker 2 (8:09) seeing. And that is the right rational choice to do. Rationally speaking, no one should start a company. Least of all, because you think it will one day make you money or a big outcome. Because the day when the risk adjusted reward is a lot lesser than any other safer path. That's why those paths are called safer and they're proven in time. So something else, you know, you want to create an impact in the world. Like, let's take example of, you know, Pawan and Bharat Sky Route. For them, just building the rocket was so important. You know, they, when I invested in 2018, I just... They apparently cold emailed you on LinkedIn. They cold emailed on LinkedIn and all that. I met them. I had some interest in this area. But what was a clincher for me is at some point I told them, look, I don't know this whole rocket thing will work or not, but if it works, it will take at least 10 years. Are you willing to work on it for next 10 years? They said, we are willing to work on it for rest of our lives. I said, okay then. But I said, you'll have to sustain yourself. What is the minimum you need to sustain yourself? They said, as long as you get a salary Speaker 1 (9:10) of 50,000 rupees a month. Speaker 2 (9:12) I did some, you know, back of the annual calculation. I said, that's fine. I can guarantee that for next 10 years, you will get at least that much salary, whatever happens. And so, you know, it was not about that they want to build a company of certain size or there is some valuation aspiration or anything else. It's just that, you know, there was such a strong, they're willing to compromise, give up a lot of a safe path to have a shot at building, right? So it's like, what is the cost you are willing to pay for that shot? And how important is that shot for you? Speaker 1 (9:41) But now that you've mentioned, you know, your desire to win, I'm sort of seeing this two by two axis where your horizontal axis on the right goes to, am I learning? And the vertical axis on the top goes to, am I winning? So you're saying that you place yourself in that, am I learning and am I winning? And you iterate, that's your space. That's basically how the space where you... That's a good Speaker 2 (10:06) framework. I think that makes sense because I do, you know... Yeah, I do keep asking questions. Speaker 1 (10:12) Am I winning? You know, mostly answer is you're not. But that is the executing part. That is the iterating part. Speaker 2 (10:17) But yes, the drive comes from that. You know, the desire to like, what are you doing? Now that I'm building this, I might as well build, you know, aspire for the best possible product, best Speaker 1 (10:25) possible outcome, best possible customer. Because it is jagged, right? So sometimes you're not winning, but you're learning. And sometimes you're not learning, but you're winning. It's that jagged growth Speaker 2 (10:36) that happens. Let me double click on that. So when sometimes people ask me for advice about whether they should do a startup or not. I asked them to do one thought experiment. I said like, let's say you get this shot, you get some funding, you try it for five years and it fails at the final phase. How will you feel? Speaker 2 (10:53) the people who think they will have a lot of regrets, they should not start a company. I say, what I tell them, like, no matter what happens, you'll be learning so much every day. What is the value? If you give a lot of value to that also, then your risk adjusted reward goes up. You will be dramatically better professional. No matter which job you go back to or start a new company, you will be, you know, 100x better than you were today because of that five year experience. So how much value you ascribe to that? Speaker 1 (11:17) Good. Now, Switching to something else. You've written three books. You've written No Limits in 2020. You've written Hacking Health in 2023. And then you wrote The Startup Code in 2024. You meditate almost daily? Yeah, when I have good stretches. Sometimes I miss. Great. You write frequently. You apparently also do these five-year goals and lookbacks. Is that, have you done that? Yeah, yeah, Speaker 2 (11:45) yeah. I have, it's... After 50, I think it's, I'm thinking about how to do it better. Got it. But for, I would say, from the age of 25 to 50, I think the, so what I used to do is the annual goals. So I'll typically take last week off and I don't like to take a holiday last week of December because a few times I have taken it, I come back feeling, you know, more Speaker 1 (12:09) stressed. Speaker 2 (12:10) So like, yeah, stressed and exhausted and fatigued and suddenly, you know, January 3, Monday morning. So I, you know, if I, you know. take a holiday with family. I try to do it between 15th December, 25th December, and then just do nothing and really think, introspect, reflect on the last year, think about next year, but also next five years. So I think whenever I can, I try to write. I try to almost visualize. Like I distinctly remember when I was 30, I would try to visualize my life at 40, my life at 50. I have those notes probably written somewhere. Same, you know. There is, I'm trying to recall a book. I'm not recalling the name. But, you know, these are all make-believe milestones, whether new year or start of the month or start of week. Right. I mean, I was just thinking of that because Speaker 1 (12:56) when you said, I take the last week off to think about the next year. And I was thinking, I mean, there's nothing different between that week and the next. But I also understand all of us humans understand that something Speaker 2 (13:07) new is beginning. Exactly. And also creating, you know, kind of these windows for you throughout the year where you give significance to Certain day, certain day of the week, certain day of the month. It helps you zoom out of your day-to-day. Otherwise, so easy to, you know, just be completely swamped with what's happening every day or reacting to all the incoming stimulus. We should talk about that at some point as well because one of the perpetual quests I'm on is to limit stimulus in my life. Where Speaker 1 (13:37) are you on that right now? What have you cut off? This year is stellar. Speaker 2 (13:40) News. I don't know any news at all. if something significant happened in last week, you should tell me in the course of this podcast. So now I hear news is when somebody in the office is talking, you know, or my son end up telling me something or my parents end up, otherwise I have no idea what's going on in this world. And so happy for that. So I think, but I lost track, train of my thought. What was I trying to answer? No, Speaker 1 (14:02) we were talking about the annual look back. Yeah, Speaker 2 (14:04) right. So, you know, that's the exercise I do regularly. And I think. Reflection is very, very helpful. I'm sure I talked about my book pretty extensively about this as well, the first one. So I think this allows you to create a story for yourself and say who you are, what do you want, where you're going, what matters to you, what trade-offs you're willing to make and so on. And I think introspection is a very powerful skill for an entrepreneur. Most good entrepreneurs, I think, are very good introspectors as well as very good model builders. they are building some framework of looking at things, you know, so you can, frameworks allow you to process a very complex situation from a very, you know, mental model. Yes, you just create this two by two, which makes sense, right? You know, it's a, without that, you know, you're always lost in detail and you have like all this complex narratives running, but you sometimes don't see things in black and white, which is required to make a decision, you know. So yeah, maybe I'm rambling, but yeah, I think for me, this is, Speaker 1 (15:03) it's also this. I think the last week of the year is also this place where you're in some senses, if you're, since we're talking about visual models, et cetera, and all that, you're in some senses placed equal, equidistant between the past and the future. Like the next year is just starting and it's the best time for you to reflect on the past year. So it allows you to time travel in either direction in some sense. Yeah, Speaker 2 (15:29) partly also, it's a... know