This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Arjita Sethi, Founder of Equally and New Founder School. In this episode, Arjita talks about getting started in entrepreneurship at the age of 16, the value of building a strong tolerance for ambiguity in business, and her goals for positively impacting more than one million founders in ten years.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Arjita Sethi, Founder of Equally and New Founder School. Equally is a venture-backed, Silicon Valley, ed-tech company that's building a universal platform for kids to ignite their curiosity and imagination. New Founder School describes itself as a place where new founders can build and launch their dream startup ideas without going to a business school.
Arjita began her entrepreneurial journey in India at the age of 16. Since then, she’s founded two successful startups and has been granted the Alien of Extraordinary Ability Visa for her work in social entrepreneurship. In 2017, her startup Equally became a semifinalist in the Global Learning Xprize sponsored by Elon Musk. Arjita also trained more than 400 women at Google's Women Tech Makers Conference in NYC, Cambridge, and Nigeria. In 2016, she got the SOCAP social entrepreneur scholarship, and in 2015, she completed her Masters in Social Entrepreneurship from Hult International Business School. In addition to managing Equally and New Founder School, Arjita is currently a co-founder at Startup India Advisory, sits on the Advisory board of Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, and teaches entrepreneurship, innovation, and Media at Hult International Business School and San Francisco State University.
In this episode, Arjita talks about getting started in entrepreneurship at the age of 16, the value of building a strong tolerance for ambiguity in business, and her goals for positively impacting more than one million founders in ten years.
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Guest Quote
“Earlier in my life I wanted to be an activist. I've been part of some of the biggest movements in India, whether it was for security of girls, whether it was the anti-corruption movement. I went everywhere, and I tried to join, but I realized that making a change at a policy level is such a long process and so much is out of your control. And then I realized, wait, I can create solutions being a founder. So that fascinated me even more and I realized I'm never giving this up. So from that activism to entrepreneurship, I think it gave me more control and made me feel more powerful to see that change actually come into life. And that's how I became an entrepreneur, a founder.” - Arjita Sethi
Episode Timestamps
(03:18) Arjita’s role
(05:31) Becoming an entrepreneur
(08:29) Arjita’s ‘aha’ moment
(13:06) Defining impact
(17:32) Founding New Founder School
(22:51) Running an functioning organization
(29:26) Building tolerance for ambiguity
(36:39) Organizations that inspire Arjita
(43:04) Final thoughts
Links
Phil Dillard: Hello, and welcome to Thruline to the 4th Sector, where we're exploring fourth sector capitalism and impact investing as an invitation to innovation and changing the world. This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, founder of Thruline Network. And Arjita Sethi, Founder of Equally and New Founder School. Equally is a venture backed, Silicon Valley, ed-tech company that's building a universal platform for kids to ignite their curiosity and imagination.
New Founder School is where new founders can build and launch their dream startup ideas without going to a business school. Arjita began her entrepreneurial journey in India at the age of sixteen. Since then, she's founded two successful startups and has been granted the Alien of Extraordinary Availability Visa for her work in social entrepreneurship.
In 2017, her startup, Equally, became a semi-finalist in the Global Learning Xprize, sponsored by Elon Musk. Arjita also trained over 400 women at Google's Women Tech Makers Conference in New York City, Cambridge and Nigeria. In 2016, she received the SOCAP Social Entrepreneurship Scholarship, and in 2015, she completed her Master's in Social Entrepreneurship from Hult International Business School in San Francisco.
On top of managing Equally and New Founder School, Arjita is currently a Co-founder at Startup India Advisory, sits on the Advisory board of NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center and teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and media at both Hult International Business School and San Francisco State University.
In this episode, Arjita talks about getting started in entrepreneurship at the age of sixteen, the value of building a strong tolerance for ambiguity in business, and her goals for positively impacting over 1 million founders in 10 years now. Please enjoy this conversation between Phil and Arjita.
Hello everybody and welcome again to another episode of Thruline to The 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, and I'm here today with Arjita Sethi, Founder of Equally and New Founder School. How are you doing today?
[00:02:18] Arjita Sethi: I am doing great. Thanks for having me, Phil. So excited.
[00:02:24] Phil Dillard: Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to have you.
We try to get on this podcast leading people in the world who are doing things around how we make democracy or and capitalism work for everyone. I'm just tripping on my words today. Um, we believe that democracy helps with, uh, with capitalism, but you know, we wanna make capitalism work for everyone.
We're gonna believe that the practice improved the practice of capitalism so that we're doing new and better things. And I can't think of a better person to have on one of our. Uh, episodes than Arjita because, you know, we met in a very interesting way and learned a ton about her organization and [00:03:00] the people she chooses to serve.
And literally she is inspiring legions of global entrepreneurs to do amazing things in the world. So, so happy to have you. I'll start with some simple softball questions so we can kind of get to know you a little bit, and everybody here can understand a little bit about you and your mission. So when people ask.
What do you do? How do you describe your role? .
[00:03:23] Arjita Sethi: Wow. Um, How do I describe my role? I generally tell them that I am a founder and an educator. Those are the two things that completely and can pass everything that I do because I teach at two business schools here in San Francisco and I love building.
Companies that impact and solve problems and, and when I say solve problems, I go for the big ary school, so I am less attached to the title of C E O C T O C O O. I generally stay away from those and say I'm the founder. of this and this. That's how I would say I introduce [00:04:00] myself.
[00:04:01] Phil Dillard: Well, it's great because people will read in the show notes the amazing story behind it, how you started it and where you are.
And it's interesting. You stick with the title of founder. What is it about founder that excites you?
[00:04:12] Arjita Sethi: It's actually a weird mix of the safe zone where I feel comfortable creating ideas, but also the hard zone. Everything's unknown. So basically you have the liberty to go out venture into this area to figure out solutions where there has been no rule book, no paths laid out for you.
So it's the hardest and, and probably the easiest or the freest experiences of your life to go and, and that's what excites me. You know, to be a founder, and that's basically why I want more and more founders to be there so that they can pursue this path and they can go ahead and create that change and build some great
[00:04:53] Phil Dillard: companies.
I can definitely relate to that, right? Having a careers in, I should say, having a career that has spanned a [00:05:00] couple of different industries, one of the most liberating things on the planet is to be a founder in a way, because you create that thing that is deep within. But it is also one of the most challenging things because everything is on you.
You are very alone, you're a very much, everyone you bring into your orbit is dependent on you and not only dependent on you, but they are trusting you with their time and their, their money and part of their career, and it's a big responsibility. So can you tell us a little bit about, how you got here.
How did you figure out that Harita should be a founder and not only a founder, but a founder of Founders ?
[00:05:40] Arjita Sethi: Wow. I wish there was a fancier answer to this, but, uh, since I've been a founder since I was 16 in India, honestly, the first time I decided to create something or build something was because I was bored of my high school.
I was so bored of my high school education. We would go every day, just sit and read books, and we were told to learn [00:06:00] things. , which just did not excite me or did not have any real application in the world. You know, I saw my mom running this amazing social enterprise, which was a vocational school, and one fine day.
I was so tired of this boring education. I went to her and I said, I want to be your partner in this business and I wanna be your co-founder. And she said, I hope you know, is this is not just a seasonal thing. If you are getting into this, it's going to be hard. And it was hard, but I think it was the best decisions of my life.
So I, I would say boredom got me into it. But then the more I learned about this field, , I saw the quintessential video of Steve Jobs at that Stanford and, and I realized, oh my God, it blew my mind on what startups and businesses can do, and that's what kept me into this field, the ability to make change.
Is so high. Earlier in my life I wanted to be an [00:07:00] activist. I've been part of some of the biggest movements in India, whether it was for security of girls, whether it was the anti-corruption movement. I went everywhere and I tried to join, but I realized that. Making a change at a policy level is such a long process and so much is outta your control.
And then I realized, wait, I can create solutions being a founder. So that fascinated me even more and I realized I'm never giving this up. So from I think that activism to entrepreneurship, I think it gave me more control and made me feel more powerful to see that change actually come into life. And that's how I became an
[00:07:36] Phil Dillard: entrepreneur and or a.
That's awesome. That's awesome. It's a really important distinction too, between the, what we did like to describe between the public sector, the private sector, the nonprofit sector, and the emerging force sector, which we aspire to build because they move at different paces and they have different measures of success.
And you learned early on, which is a great thing. Which [00:08:00] one was the right one for you? Was there. Aha moment or big lesson or a learning point that you can pinpoint that kind of flip the switch for you. Or, I'm always looking for something that we could share with folks in the audience who say, well, that's great.
She's super smart. She's doing all this amazing stuff. This worked for her, but you know, how can it work for me? So I guess this is a two part question. One part is, where was a tipping point or a switch or any sort of moment that gave you an aha, and what would you recommend people look for if they're trying to figure this out for the.
[00:08:33] Arjita Sethi: I think that it's not one single point of aha multiple. The first time was when I failed physics in 11th grade. I loved physics, and here I was, I was failing physics. I understood it like the practicality, but the thing that I was being marked on or graded on was the theory of it. And that just made me realize that this is not the way I want to progress and go ahead and pursue my professional life.
So [00:09:00] the first thing for me, Where can I use my practical knowledge more than theoretical knowledge? And the one place where I saw that was entrepreneurship. So I was 16 and I failed physics and, and, and I was looking at myself. I understand everything. I love this. Subject. It's fascinating. So that was one moment, but the second moment was actually when I started doing my master's in social entrepreneurship here in San Francisco because up until then, while I was running this vocational school in India, it was great.
We were teaching 10,000 people a year, and I knew that was the limit. But this course, masters of Social Entrepreneurship flipped my thinking of how startups can also be impactful at the same time. There is not just one formula of being a startup. You don't have to work in a garage all day and then create something and create a billion dollars rather.
You can go ahead, work hard, create a solution, and impact a billion. And that [00:10:00] just flipped that entire switch in my mind on how you can create bigger visions. I mean, I can say a number of things that were aha moments for me during this journey, but I think those two big things that happened in my life were really great.
I think that failure also set me up for this success that. If I can fail physics and live through it, then I can fail multiple times as a founder and live through that as well. So those are few lessons I would say that really happened. And a lot of people, that's why when people say You're really smart, I tell them I failed 11th grade physics.
So I'm not that smart. Going from a basic standard, you would not consider me smart, but this is where I. Today?
[00:10:41] Phil Dillard: Well, there are different layers of intelligence and there are different ways that intelligence evolves itself and lots of people who are bored in traditional approaches in schools turn on to show their genius in other places.
I just think we just have another, another example of that , but it's also encouraging for other folks who have said, I don't thrive in this, that, or the other, because I've [00:11:00] seen that manifest itself a number of different ways. But to those folks who say, well, wait a minute, you had this big turning point in your master's degree program.
I would go back and. What drew you to the Master's degree program? How, how and why did you do it? It's
[00:11:15] Arjita Sethi: a very funny story. So I was running the school in India and this guy from San Francisco sent me a message. I work in a gaming company. I see you work in education, I build games, and I would love to help you out.
And that was the tipping point where I was going through issues of scale. Like I said, 10,000 people were the most number of people that we could actually. Into that brick and mortar building. We couldn't do more. And I told him, great, I'm looking for someone who can help me scale. And he said, wait, there's this business school in San Francisco that has a social entrepreneurship program.
Maybe they can teach you how to do it and I can support you. We had multiple conversations over Facebook Messenger. Fell in love with each other's vision and then with each other. Nine months later, [00:12:00] got married, I moved to San Francisco, started my course, and we started building a company. The day I joined the course, and this is basically how we realized that.
And we went in going with no expectations that it is going to change our lives and perspectives on startups because we thought we learned everything. We were in Silicon Valley, we attend networking. You do the hustle, eat the pizza, and you're gonna do it, and you're gonna build a cool company. And here I am learning about with the Grameen Bank and Kiva and the things that they have done.
And there's this amazing sector that actually exists that is impacting people in a whole different way. And I think that is what motivated me. I went into it thinking, I learn about entrepreneurship, but I discovered the impact of entrepreneurship in this master's program.
[00:12:50] Phil Dillard: I love that. That's an amazing story.
Uh, there's so many interesting little tidbits along, along the way, and the bottom lines are, well, the bottom lines are not done yet, right, because you're still in the [00:13:00] middle of the story. But a big question that comes to mind for me is whether at this university or you know, whether at halt or on your own, how do you define impact?
Wow,
[00:13:12] Arjita Sethi: that is such a tough question because I think impact means different things. for different people, first of all. Mm-hmm. . And it also means different things for different industries. Mm-hmm. . Yep. Many a times impact is more of an assumption because we haven't really found a way to measure impact just the right way and, and, and, you know, uh, make it universally acceptable.
So we are still figuring that out. We are still in that zone, but honestly, for me, impact means, Phil, when I can go ahead. . It's really simple. When we created our first prototype for equally, impact for me meant when that mom gave me a call and said, , my kid is moving. My kid is no more addicted to technology.
I was going ahead and thinking I need to have a million users. I need [00:14:00] to grow, and then I'll be venture backed and then I'll be this. But when that phone call happened, it was amazing. Another parent who gave me a call who said, I've been using your product for a year, and you know what? I've given it to my entire school.
I've, uh, pitched it to my pta. That was impact for me at New Founders School. I went ahead thinking I'm just gonna help a few founders, and one of the founders just reached out and they just secured a $10,000 grant. That's literally on an idea. They just secured a $10,000 grant. That is impact for me for now.
But yes, I have my eye on that big vision. I want to impact a billion lives, but I think it's important for us to realize what impact means smaller term and longer term. But this is all external impact. I'll tell you about the internal impact at the company. We named the company equally because we wanted to give equal education to everyone, but within the company we wanted to create a culture of equality as well.
So we worked really hard. My co-founder [00:15:00] and I both are co CEOs when it comes to the title. , we have different job positions, but we are co CEOs. We're a public benefit corporation, and we knew being a husband and wife, dean, co CEOs, public benefit corporation, nobody's going to invest in us, but we did get venture back.
So these are the small tales of impact that we have been trying to create and, uh, tackling it one at a time. But yeah, it's, it's how you define impact.
[00:15:29] Phil Dillard: Well, first off, it's great to hear how you, uh, worked your way through that analysis and worked your way through that understanding. And, and with a lot of people, I, I hear a similar, a similar challenge.
Everybody says, well, gosh, it's hard, but we know we're, we know what we're working for. It's like, You know, it's like love or it's like fit. It's like the, the perfect shirt or the perfect shoe. You don't actually know how to describe when the perfect thing shoe or shirt fit. You just know, ah, that one feels right.
It just feels right. Right. And the [00:16:00] scientist in us, you know, I, I love physics too. I studied it in college, but I didn't excel in it. But I had a similar challenge with, with calculus in high. The scientist in us looks at it and says, how do I break that down? How do I analyze it? How do I get to the raw components?
Because if I can understand the raw components, then I can break it down into essence, or I can share it with other people. And the more I talk about this, the more I think about this. I believe this is an evolving practice for those of us who are trying to really define impact. And I love when you said over the short term versus the long.
Because there are immediate impacts and then there are ripple effects that we can't imagine, and that can actually help us understand more and more of what impact is. So for people who are aspiring to be impactful in the world, who are aspiring, to be entrepreneurs, who are aspiring to, to, you know, to use, you know, your experience as an example, you share, I mean, In describing that journey, I think you showcase a lot of what, a lot of what impact is and can be and what's [00:17:00] possible for people who don't necessarily believe it is.
Um, just by listening and you started to talk about, this leads me into the next second, second act of this show where we really started talking about you and your organization, right? Because you talked about how New Venture School came about and it. It seems like in hindsight, a very linear path. And feel free to, to, um, help us see that it, that it may not have been as, as, as directly linear as it sounds.
But the first question I think about here is how does your organization then drive, change, deliver impact for the people you choose to serve? What's it about?
[00:17:37] Arjita Sethi: I think everybody has a different gene of a founder and I, I've been working on this and I've been writing a lot about this. I, I feel there are, As, as a founder who wants to create an impact, I'm not talking about any founder who wants to build like any company, but any founder who wants to create impact has these four, four types of energies that they dabble with.
[00:18:00] One is that resilience. You know, even if I'm going to fail, I'll go ahead. and um, get to the impact. You know, this might not be the right way to reach my vision. I'll go ahead and reach that vision. Then it is the imagination, the child in you, the curiosity, you know, you're always curious about, wait, this is the problem that is occurring.
What's happening? And then there is the skeptic, which is like, wait a minute. You know, you think you know everything. What about your biases? What if you fail? Do you have that financial, psychological security to even go ahead, take a step back, analyze everything. Why would people like it? And the last one is that empathetic.
The one that can understand the people going through the, uh, problem either because they understand and they talk to their user, or they. close to the problem. They faced it, and I think in my case, and I call this format the. R i s e of a founder, where you have to dabble between these four things [00:19:00] constantly if you truly want to make an impact, because that gives you this balanced approach where you are not giving into one of your energy.
You're actually balancing it out. But here's the thing, why I start a new founder school was for a simple reason. I went through my founder journey as an immigrant, and everybody before that had been telling me entrepreneurship is. Then I said, if entrepreneurship is hard for people who are not immigrants, I, I can.
Imagine like the things that I have to go through every time. If I have to expand to a country, I have to go and stand in a visa line two months before I have to travel, and I have to show them all my bookings prior. This is not a small thing. I mean, if they don't gimme a visa, I lose all that money plus the cost of the visa.
Plus I never get to expand my business. Country. Now here's the thing, I, I went ahead and I started asking people, do you want to start a business? Have you ever thought of starting a startup as an immigrant? And a lot of people said yes, but a lot of [00:20:00] college students started reaching out and said, wait a second.
Why are you doing this? Only for immigrants? We in college went to business school thinking we'll start a business and college isn't preparing us for that. And that's when I realized create might have stemmed from my problem. But the solution applies to so many different people who are not getting access.
So I think at New Founder school are impacted. For now is access. For now any founder wants to start a company doesn't have an ecosystem around them, thinks, oh my God, you have to be in the heart of Silicon Valley knowing the who's who to start a company. But can we break that down and make up for all those lost Einstein's anywhere in the world?
You have an idea. Go build it out. We are here for you. So that, that's how we are thinking about that change that is gonna come about. impacting probably a million founders over the next 10 years. That's the goal. Mm-hmm. , but let's see.
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I first wanna go back the four types of energies I have. Imagination, skepticism, empathy, and what was the first one? Resilience. Resilience? Yes. Okay. It was funny because when you first said it, I thought you were gonna say, yeah, people have a strength in all in one of these. And I was like, wait a minute.
Um, what if I feel like I'm doing all of these as a, as a fa as an entrepreneur? And you're like, oh, great. That means you're doing the right thing, which is awesome. So remember those folks and then. You know, I think the other thing that's really interesting, um, and I came at this from the African American, you know, I should say the Black American perspective cuz I call myself a black American, um, is that a lot of times groups look at themselves and then when they start to look out.
At other groups and they realize that other people are feeling the same sort of challenges too. You go, Hmm, your perspective grows. And I call this like the evolution of multi-dimensional diversity, right? Having the ability to see people in multiple different [00:23:00] ways. And I think it's really interesting that you see that because.
What's the key? Let's find those lost. Einsteins. I think humanity needs all the horsepower of all these different brains on the planet. We need to bring them. We need to give them the opportunity to experience abundance, and there's capacity for abundance for all of us. Even though the resources on the planet are limited and the ecosystems are in interconnected, there's so many spaces of untapped value that we, we have the ability to create all this, all this wonderfulness, and, and we need it.
Everyone should be living a, a fulfilled life. I think we're, um, aligned on that and I really appreciate the way you describe it. So if I were to shift into going, okay, got this great. , you've covered a lot of ground. Um, you've done things that sound pretty amazing to people who go, wow, I didn't know you could do that.
I want some more of this. So share with us a little bit some of the challenges of setting up and running an [00:24:00] effectively functioned organization. Oh,
[00:24:02] Arjita Sethi: wow. , it's full of challenges. Um, I mean, the first few things that you do have to consider, and, and these are the qualities of the founder that I generally tell founders need to have.
The first quality is scavenging. If you are passionate about an industry and you are not an expert scavenge information, just go online. Literally go online for the next month. Read nothing else. Just read about this and, and I'll give you an example from. not the impact side. Actually, uh, back in 2016, I got interested in blockchain and cryptocurrency.
I had no idea what this is, and of course, I don't come from a, from a coding background, so there was no understanding. And then I went ahead and learned everything about it. In 2017, I started teaching cryptocurrency to a lot of women and getting them to invest in it, getting them to become angel investor in blockchain, which empowered so many women to.
You [00:25:00] know, start getting financially independent. So whatever industry you are passionate about, you have to start scavenging because if you don't do that, you just go with these limited information, this limited information, and a bias, and that is going to hold you back. You will never know what you don't know.
Mm-hmm. . And that is something that is going to be the biggest challenge, starting out an idea because the day that idea hits you, I want to create a change. You are going to think that it is. Wow. This is, this is like gift of God. Nothing could be better in the world than that. And this is where I say that skepticism comes into play where it says, Great.
This is your idea. Why don't we go ahead. Research it, make it foolproof. Does it really need to be solved? Uh, when we started creating our red tech company, initially we wanted to teach, uh, people in India, our kids in India, high school, students in India, about English language, and build on their vocabulary.
We built a prototype, took it to India, and what happened there was these [00:26:00] kids didn't really do well. Even after using our prototype and we started researching and scavenging around why this is not happening, it's such a great product, why isn't it working? We realized that the learning gaps that were developed in these kids were at the age of five or.
And no matter what I try to do right now, it'll just give probably an incremental change of probably 10%, 15%, and that's it. And that's what we came back and said, no, we have to tackle education first for kids between five to 10, and then take it 10 to 15 and then 15 to 20. So one is this, is that assumptions, all the assumptions that can take you down.
Go ahead and validate all your assumptions, ask. The second thing that can happen, that's one of the biggest challenges. Um, tolerance for ambiguity. I mean, you need to have that tolerance for ambiguity. As a founder, not two days are same. You're going to be thrown with a new challenge every day and. [00:27:00] This is where I pride myself on the fact that I've, I've failed so much in my life that I'm okay not knowing I'm okay failing again.
And this is why. If you are someone who wants to control you are somebody who needs to know what's gonna happen next, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you. And then take a step back and work at a startup. But if you are okay, every day waking up, wait, it's going to be new, it's going to be challenging, and I'll have to figure it out.
Go ahead, do that. And lastly, I, I think the biggest challenge that can happen is, Working with the people who don't have the same values as you, and their intentions of starting a company were very different than you and have these tougher conversations early on, uh, because the earlier you have these conversations, the better it is for the future.
Of your company and the people that you're going to hire eventually. I remember, um, my partner and I, we never had these conversations around, you [00:28:00] know, what happens if we do get separated? What happens to our company? And these difficult conversations had to be brought up when we were raising our money because all investors would ask, and I never realized this was their first question instead of what a great product.
I wish we would've had those conversations early on because it did delay our funding a little bit. But now that we have those things in place, nobody can break us. We know we are unbreakable and, and that's what I feel with every bump in the road that happens. If you overcome it, you just come out 10 x.
Stronger. So those are few things that I can think about, but also as an immigrant, I would tell people, be careful legally, ethically, morally, from all those different sides. Get experts to help you get a mentor to support you, uh, so that you can go in the right
[00:28:46] Phil Dillard: direction. Those are outstanding recommendations.
Um, and I love how you, how you nail 'em, right? Be a better learner, right? Lean says validate. Validate your assumptions. Always test because there are very few [00:29:00] things you actually know is certainty. And then things change over time. So you always have to be learning yes. Tolerance for ambiguity, and get clear on your values.
Of your team, of your investors, of your partners, all that sort of things. Actually, for me, lots of things changed when I just said I'm only going to seek people who have share the same values. And it gives me a real easy ability to say yes or no and to know which direction is north because I know my values and I know where I'm headed.
So it's easy to find just only the right sorts of people around. The interesting thing I wanna press on a little. Because it's hard to develop tolerance for ambiguity for people that that can be a really tough one. Right. You know, having gone through it like you and built up the scars and being like, someone says, you know, what system do you want to use?
I'm like, I don't care. Like, what do you mean? It's like project management system's fully agnostic. What platform do you wanna use for this? I'm like, I don't care. It's like, it, it, it doesn't matter. Whatever one makes you more comfortable. Right? Because we've built up enough to [00:30:00] know enough experiences to know, uh, that a lot of things we sweat really don't matter.
No, I might, I have some ideas in mind of how else someone else can build up tolerance of ambiguity without failing with, well, you can't do it without failing. Everybody's sound of your voice. Of our voice, you're going to fail . And the, and the more you're failing, right? The more you know that you're pushing yourself, because now you're experimenting and learning.
Are there any other ways you could think about, you think that people can build this tolerance for ambiguity rapidly? Because you seem to have done it pretty quickly, but maybe it's because you started early as a teenager working in a challenging business and you know, as a young woman working with your mom.
But what do you think? What else would you add? The
[00:30:44] Arjita Sethi: key for this is actually a tribe, having a youth to surround with people who have done that before. That's why I keep going back to that speech of Steve Jobs because in his speech, what is remarkable, most of the people talk about in [00:31:00] their speeches about the glory and everything that they've achieved.
But what, what he talks about is I slept on the. , and this is what I have done. I got kicked out of Apple and this is what I have done. He kept going back to the failures. Mm-hmm. , and these are the failures, which are very normal, which hits each one of us. Mm-hmm. . So I keep telling founders, surround yourself with other people.
Again, I do not have that. When I moved to San Francisco, I only had people who had their experiences of entrepreneurship being hard. But was it hard? As an immigrant, nobody could tell me. I had to pay the most expensive insurance and 60% of my salary was going to pay the insurance because as an immigrant, I cannot get a cheaper insurance or I will not get a green card.
That is something that people would not understand. So surround yourself with people who, who are at least a step ahead. or two steps ahead of you. Mm-hmm. , and they've actually done this. They've built this muscle. And honestly, Phil, you would love this because I [00:32:00] learned tolerance for ambiguity, not from my mom.
She's amazing. And inspiration. She taught me about scavenging. I learned it from my army dad. He was in the Indian army and he said, this is how you go to fight. You go for the unknown. Mm-hmm. , it could happen. Anything could happen from anywhere. And the way we prepare, we don't just prepare scenario A and B, we prepare a hundred scenario.
This could happen. So I think surround yourself, we are generally surrounded by people who are perfect. They've designed their milestones. Buy 25 this, buy 30 this buy. And that's where it takes time. But if you surround yourself with people who said, I failed three times here, and then I build this. Wow. You start to normalize it.
I think that's what we have to do. We have to start normalizing. I'm not going to call, call it failure. Like you said, that scientists had, we need to normalize experimentation and 99% of experiments fails so that they could reach to the right conclusion at the end, [00:33:00] and that's what your job is. Taking those little bets, those small bets, going ahead, proving something that doesn't.
So that you can prove what works. So that would be my
[00:33:11] Phil Dillard: suggestion. Yeah, I love that. Right? We need to normalize experimentation and reclassify failure as well. What we say in lean parlance, it's validated learning, right? It is learning through experience and saying, Hmm, I didn't know if this is right or wrong.
Test, test, I was wrong. The why is in the learning. Okay then how can I apply it? How can it be smarter? Great. Go for it. Wear your scars with pride. That's what I'm hearing you say. And I love it. So I wanna, I want to drill into this a little bit. There's a bunch of ways we can go, but we don't have forever.
So I wanna drill into stuff that I think is really, really interesting. So you've been through, you've been down a road, you've gotten comfortable with uncertainty, you've had some wins, you've had more losses. Now you start to get pattern recogni. So how do you know whether or not something is working? How do you get [00:34:00] closer to making the decision to pivot?
Oh, I should say to pivot period.
[00:34:04] Arjita Sethi: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there is a pattern recognition, honestly, that that muscle yet, because the moment I start forming that I've realized I've given to some of my biases and I start thinking, wait, this is never gonna work. This is always gonna work, and I want to stay away from that as much as possible.
Here's the thing, I think earlier. I would go longer to prove an idea. Mm-hmm. versus working on, wait, what is my overarching mission? But I've realized, let the experiments be shorter. Let them be just a couple of weeks instead of talking to 200 people, talk to 20 people, probably talk to 10. And then pivot, then make that time shorter, and that's making me a faster innovator.
Like the amount of changes that we have at newfound school and the stuff that is coming at equally. It took [00:35:00] us probably three years to get to our first version of Equally, and now it's taken us less than a year. and we are talking about very deep technology. We are building computer vision along with augmented reality, and it's taking us less than a year to actually pivot and create something.
And at New Founder School, month over month, things are changing according to the types of founders that are joining and what they need. So I think that is what has become really good and. That is why it's, it's generally said second time founders do better, third time founders do better because you know, that garb of ego that I have to prove something to somebody just goes away and now you're really into this to make a change.
To make an impact.
[00:35:42] Phil Dillard: Yeah. The second time you go through it, you, you're, or the third time you're, you're starting at scratch. With all the stuff that you had before and you got all these different, you know, and you're like, you know what? I can grab that document and if I were to do it from scratch, knowing everything I know now, I would rip out all this stuff, then this is the essence of what, what matters, right?
And the [00:36:00] faster you could cycle through that, that's really, really good. I think all those things are great. I think when you say focus on the mission, it's really, it reminds me of folks who say, focus on the outcome. This is the tough thing for me to I one. Detachment from outcome. Right? I was like, what's that supposed to mean?
Right? But if you focus on the mission is get like your army dad, you know, somebody's gonna go in the army. They, they, not everybody can be a marine , but, um, um, you, um, you focus on the, on the, on the, on the mission to get to the top of the mountain. There's a bunch of different ways to get there. And if you think of only one way you could, you could literally die on the way up.
Right. So you really wanna start to think what are some, some different ways, because as one one said, um, you know, all battle plans are great until you have first contact with the enemy or said more colorfully by Mike Tyson. Everybody has a, a, a strategy on how to f. How to fight until they get punched in the mouth.
Right. . Um, and that makes you think a little bit differently and No, yeah. You're [00:37:00] gonna get punched in the mouth, especially in this impact space because, and this is the area I wanna dig into a little bit, because you're highly inter-dependent in carving out a new space and you're, and you're parlance is as being an, an immigrant or being an outsider in general.
Right. Or someone who's, who's has less resources than. Mainstream folks who are trying to do this, but we're, we're trying to do a couple things. We're trying to fix the financial and the impact returns for the investors at the same time. So it's, it's even harder. So I'm curious if there are examples of Mission Del driven organizations that inspire you or, um, examples of.
Ways you've overcome the extra challenges of being a mission-driven social entrepreneur that, um, you tackle, or the startups that you work with tackle? Yeah.
[00:37:52] Arjita Sethi: Yeah. That's such an interesting question. Um, I'll give you one example, which I really like. I, I think there are, Three. One from [00:38:00] Canada, one from India, and, and one from the us.
But the one thing that I am, I'm really inspired by this company all the time, and I generally give this example because it's also commercial so people can resonate with it. It's Patagonia. Mm-hmm. . They've changed my thinking about consumption. They've changed my thinking about the environment. They've changed my thinking about weight.
Climate change is such a big problem. Leave it to the scientists. No, I can contribute. They've, they've made it. So simple, but at at the same time, they've stuck by their values. And then if you see their internal culture, it is phenomenal the way the employees are hired, the way they build the company. It is so value driven and there are the storytelling.
Is phenomenal. I think a lot of places where people do do that impact, either they continue doing the work and never get recognized for it, so they do not have that art of storytelling because we have stories of [00:39:00] people working in Tanzania and people working in India and people working in Poland and Estonia and all these places, but on Brazil, but we never get to hear about.
or there are people who just go ahead and tell great stories and don't actually do the work. We don't see that metric around it. So I feel Patagonia somehow has actually gone ahead and covered both those areas and proven that yes, you can be profitable, but wait, you can also be awesome. But that doesn't mean we are the perfect people.
We have our flaws and we are going to communicate about those flaws transparently. But this is the overarching mission that we are going to achieve. So I think that is the example that I would like to share. For anyone who wants to read like Ivan Sard and, and I have tried to find dirt on Patagonia a lot.
I haven't, I haven't succeeded, so, and I cannot believe that they have been through this hard journey, but here is a lesson that I generally want any [00:40:00] founder to think about when you are creating impact, it's going to be a hundred x. , you're not just thinking about the bottom line. You're sometimes thinking about double bottom line or triple bottom line.
You know, people, planet, and profits. Mm-hmm. . So what it's gonna be is most of the times when people go ahead create an impact, they're coming from this idea of scarcity. They, they actually don't have enough themselves and they want to go ahead and make an impact. And I want these founders to be a little selfish here and first think about their psychological and financial stability.
And then go ahead and make an impact. Because once you are fed, once you can actually create, you'll be able to create a long-term vision. If you are not psychologically or financially secure, you are going to give up. And this mission needs people, needs literally warriors and fighters that can last A lifeline.
Mm-hmm. . So first do that, like charity begins at. Serve yourself and serve with an intention that I'm solving myself so [00:41:00] that I can solve the world and solve this problem. And the second thing is, Be patient. It's a long, long road. This is not a unicorn mission that you're trying to achieve over the next five years or 10 years to get that perfect term sheet or go i p, this is not your exit strategy.
There is no exit strategy. As an entrepreneur. Your exit strategy is, wow. If you're working in the climate space, you save the. You saved Earth. Your exit strategy if you're working in education is every child in the world has got educated. That's your exit strategy. So being a have that patience, this is not something that's going to be done in just like the next.
Three months, six months. And that's the value at New Founders School as well. Now we have founders who been working for a year and they are, you know, going ahead and they know they, they'll take another year to even go ahead, reach their first thousand impact and they with it. So yeah, [00:42:00] those would be the few things that I would say.
[00:42:03] Phil Dillard: Yeah, I really love that. Really appreciate that. I mean, I think, I think, you know, it's really hard for people. Uh, sometimes they, they think that they have to suffer for their, for their art or for their passion, but you're no good to anyone if you can't really take care of your yourself and you're going to take your lumps, you're gonna take your financial hits, and you have to be resilient enough and be willing to make the sacrifices and the trade offs to, to get there.
But definitely, and you know, the, the, I think you're also touching on something that is possibly a shift here in thinking and ethos or whichever. Um, early on, In the tech world, in the nineties, people were building companies, you know, to change the world. You just talk about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs wanted to change the world.
He wasn't building for a flip, he wasn't building to sell to some monopolist. He wasn't building, you know, he wasn't building for the I P O. He was building to change the way, empower people to do amazing things from their home. You know, I'm sitting here on Mac now and haven't been in an office for two years, right?[00:43:00]
Because of some, some of that. And people around the planet. My team who's here, they're halfway around the planet, never met them in person, loved them to death. Right? You know, we do things to, to support each other. That's the con connectivity on the in the world, that's completely unexpected. But what people do when you build things, Patiently to last to change the life of humanity on the planet.
To me that's like, that's sort of real impact and it's really good to remind people of why are you in this, know, why you're in this, know what your space is and where you deliver and, and find the time to figure it out. I hear that, heard that a couple times in what you said. I love the Patagonia example.
Um, I don't even need to ask the, the next to last question I always ask, which is like, why the work really matters to you, because it's obvious in the smile on your face and in the voices. You talk about this of how important this is to you and, and how much, you know, the mission really matters. But we have about, uh, a minute left.
I'm curious if you have any final thoughts that you would wanna share with people [00:44:00] that they could, should take away after this
[00:44:02] Arjita Sethi: convers. I mean, I've spoken a lot about the skeptic, the resilience, and it might sound that it is, it, it will sound, I'm gonna change those words. It'll sound that being an, being a social entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur, being an innovator, especially working in the fourth sector is hard.
It is hard, but it is also, I don't know any other way of life honestly. I, I, I don't even know what I would do without that impact that I want to create. So here's the, Keep, keep that skeptic alive in you. Keep that resilience going, but keep that imagination going too. That is what is going to help you light up the dark days.
That is like turn on the music and dance like crazy, like activate your vagus nerve and and there would be days you would be just by yourself. . So you need to be in this state of positivity where you can go ahead and keep asking yourself, [00:45:00] why am I doing this? I may not have figured it out, but I do have a big vision.
Why am I doing this? Am I able to serve that big vision? Can I go ahead and keep creating that change? So I think that hopefulness is really required by this sector. So keep being hopeful and I would love for, for people. From all ages, I've, I've realized that there is this certain connotation that after a certain age and before a certain age, you cannot be a founder.
You've just got this limited time in life to take risk. That's not true, and, and I wish I had a better example, but. Richard Branson, he's in his seventies and he's thinking about space. Jeff Bezos is thinking about space. Elon Musk is in his fifties. We've had founders who started company when they were 15, 16.
There is no age. You have enough time, so don't go with this scarcity. I don't have time and I don't have enough people or I don't have hope you [00:46:00] have that. Just go ahead and.
[00:46:03] Phil Dillard: So well said. Nothing to add other than that's probably the reasons that I think you're so amazing and very inspired to be with you on this journey.
Thanks so much for sharing some of your light with us and your time today. I really appreciate you and I'm sure everybody who listens to this will thank you again for coming and for everyone who's out there, we'll see you again on the next episode of Through Line to the Fourth Sector. Talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating and tell a friend. To learn more about the fourth sector economy, visit throughline networks.com. That's T H R U L I N E networks.com. Thanks again, and we hope to have you with us in the next episode.[00:47:00]