I had the great pleasure of interviewing Anup Dhalwani, one of the sharpest product minds I know in Silicon Valley. Anup is originally from India, and has spent over a decade working both at high growth startups and some of the world’s most important tech companies like Facebook, Uber, and Snap. Having lived and work in both India and the US, Anup has true East West perspective and I’m happy to share our conversation.
You can find Anup on Twitter —> @__anoop and here’s an introduction from Anup…
I’ve created technology products from the ground up as an entrepreneur starting with Ospinet, a consumer healthcare product many years ago. The last few years I’ve invested time in shipping products in the consumer space at Facebook, Uber, Snap and other companies. As a startup advisor I help about 2-3 startups at any point in time scale their offerings or find product-market fit. I came to the US in 2008 as an engineer and have built startups and worked in tech my whole career, except a couple of years at McKinsey & Co. after business school.
Over my many years shipping products I’ve developed a sense for what makes successful tech companies in the Valley tick and what features separate the winners from everyone else. The other area I’ve gained a lot of insight on is what makes a consumer product successful. There are some higher order features that are a must but then there is always some secret sauce. I love spending time with my family, watching foreign language movies, and generally building products and helping other entrepreneurs build and ship successful products.
What are the most exciting trends you are seeing in Asia today?
Many come to mind but a couple standout: 1) Innovating from Asia for a global market and 2) Adapting a global trend for the Asian market. Both of these are meta-trends but I feel capture the key trends in a Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) way.
On 1) I think the single best example is Postman [which was founded in Bangalore]. If you’ve ever dealt with startups that have an API layer, you’ve seen this be a key part of their API strategy. Postman recently raised a massive private round and I think it serves as great proof and inspiration for an entirely new crop of startups from Asia building for a global market. Postman used many of the best practices that’ve made Silicon Valley SaaS type companies successful, including the classic ‘Freemium Model.’
On 2) We see the other end of the spectrum. Taking a concept like Instacart and making an Asian version of it successfully. My friend Albinder started Grofers in India and it’s a massive hit because he and his co-founder could tailor it for the Indian market. This is an example of the second key trend I am seeing. I anticipate both of these trends to continue and fork over time, spawning new models.
How has the coronavirus affected your business and other businesses in your industry?
It’s an understatement to say there has been a massive impact of the virus on all industries. Within consumer tech though, it’s a different story. It’s been a boon for many of the core consumer companies. The reason is simple. As people are staying at home and are not able to spend time with friends and family in real life, they’ve had to expand their use of social media (which was already quite high) and similarly we’ve seen people start using Robinhood for trading in record numbers. So the companies that were well poised to benefit from a pandemic did just that.
There is another crop of companies that got hit hard though, especially in the travel space. From AirBnB to TripActions to expense reimbursement cards and others. Not to mention WeWork, which was already in a tough spot. So it's a case of haves and have nots even within the consumer technology space.
What is one thing that people outside of Asia misunderstand about the region?
The number one thing would be how upwardly mobile the region is. People, especially the younger ones, are very focused on increasing their standard of living and until the pandemic hit, they were executing quite well on that. Now the employment picture has become a bit bleak. However, I am confident this will be a short term hit and the region will come roaring back.
The other thing people might misunderstand is that building technology products for the Asian market isn’t as easy as it is in the USA. The reason is the amount of diversity from language to local regulations is quite a lot. While many might know about the amount of diversity in the region, its impact on shipping products might go unnoticed. For example, alcohol and age related laws are different state to state within the same country sometimes, and if you are a food delivery app for example, you’d need to account for that diversity.
What are some companies you admire in Asia?
In technology, Flipkart, Oyo, Grofers are some of the modern ones but there are a lot of companies from the 90s and 00’s that laid the foundations albeit from a services standpoint, like Infosys.
Outside of technology, I think there is a vast range of companies and industries I admire. One example is Sula Wines in India. They’ve done an amazing job of fusing the wine business with lifestyle and culture. There are many, many such examples I feel aren’t as known outside.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone trying to get their business to thrive in this time period?
Borrowing from Taleb, the one thing I’d say is try to be antifragile. The world is only going to get more volatile in the coming years and simply being robust won’t help you thrive. If your startup’s business model isn’t one that will benefit disproportionately with volatility, it’ll be hard to thrive. More and more it seems the world is living in the ‘tails’ of a distribution where Black Swan events come from and have driven almost all of the outcomes in human history. We’ve already seen this with the pandemic (which isn’t even a Black Swan as it was predictable and predicted) and even there we saw companies like DocuSign benefit and those like AirBnB get hit (the antifragile vs fragile model).
Quickfire Questions…
A - What’s the best thing you have watched recently? (Film, TV Show, Ted Talk, Youtube Video, etc.)
I’ve seen some recently uploaded old Steve Jobs clips from the 80s and 90s, which to this day are some of the most outstanding marketing examples I’ve seen.
B - What’s the best thing you have read recently? (Book, Article, Research Report, Tweetstorm, etc.)
I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring the art world and there's a bunch of really great art podcasts I’ve been discovering. There isn’t one specific channel or podcast but rather a collection I’ve been curating and thats’ been a lot of fun.
C - What’s the best thing you have listened to recently? (Song, Album, Artist, Podcast, Audiobook, etc.)
The Biggest Bluff, it’s a great book about Poker and how it applies in life. And then, Kings of Crypto on Audible.
My Interview with Anup Dhalwani - Startup Advisor and Former Product at Facebook, Uber, and Snap