Building Trust and Standards: Lessons from Hostmaker's Rise and Challenges w/ Deepti Patankar | Hostmaker

Deepti Patankar: 0:00

In order to have a very smooth operational process. Yes, youneed time to hire people and then test them out and train them. I thinktraining is really really important, right? So you have to have certainstandards. That's why the customer comes to you is because they really respectyour standards. That's what made us really successful is we had very highstandards. We really cared. In order to like enforce those standards. You doneed a lot of training and you need supervision, and that takes time and I wouldsort of slow down on the expansion.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:34

Today on the podcast we have Deepti Petankar, who's theco-founder of Hostmaker. They're a platform that help people to run theirAirbnbs much more effectively. Now this is a fascinating story that we don'toften get to see on this podcast. Deep grew the company incredibly quickly andthere is a Series B that huge amount of traction, huge amounts of money pouringin but it became more and more hard to manage and this challenges just keptracking up and racking up and it existed just before the pandemic, in somethingwhich was very lucky at the time time because obviously the travel industry wasso disrupted. But Deepti  is reallyhonest about the different struggles she had during that time and it's one thatyou can really learn a lot from. So I hope you really enjoyed today's episode.I'm Amar from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC InnovationBanking. So great to have you here today and you've done lots of differentthings in your careers and it's a really interesting story. But if we start offright at the beginning, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Deepti Patankar: 1:38

Firstly, thanks for having me, Amardeep, really excited tobe here and talk about my life. When I was growing up, all I wanted to be was acivil servant, and I know that sounds very boring, but in India a civil servantIAS officer as they call them has tremendous power. The person is like the Rajaof the district and has this like amazing car with like the red light on topwhich signals to the world that the Raja has arrived. So it was all very likepower and you know you also get to do a lot of good. My father really wanted meto be an IAS officer, so that's all I wanted to do when I was growing up.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:14

And what took you off that path?

Deepti Patankar: 2:16

Money, I have to say. No. So I actually, after I finishedlaw school, I got a job at Linklaters and I got the training contract and itwas in sort of you know, I had to make a decision do I stay in India and godown this path of being a civil servant or move to London? And I think if youare growing up in middle-class India, the chance to go to London is just sorare that you just feel like, okay, I'm not gonna give that up and I'm gonna gotry it out. So the idea at the time was okay, I'm gonna to do two years oftraining contract in London and then see. And then I stayed and that is how Iended up where I am.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:52

And so when you study law, is that something which helps youto get a civil service job?

Deepti Patankar: 2:55

Yeah, apparently it does, because there's this whole list ofsubjects in civil service exams and law tends to do really well and lawyers aresort of quite heavily in demand, which in India is again rare, because India isall about the math and science, as you know. It's about becoming an engineer.So actually civil service is great for someone like me who is a lawyer. So thatwas very much on track and on path. And then, yes, the job here took me offtrack.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:20

So when you moved across here and obviously you knew thatyou'd given up this opportunity that you wanted to do for like a lot of yourlife how was it? When you first moved, did you feel like you'd made a gooddecision?

Deepti Patankar: 3:32

I think so, yeah, I was really excited. I think I was readyto, you know, seek a new adventure and to explore the world. I had never reallyleft India before that. All our holidays were in India meeting family. So thisis my first sort of you know, step outside and and to really discover thewestern world and the western culture that I was just reading about in booksand and watching in movies. So, yeah, no, I was very excited and I loved everyminute of those first two years that I was here. It was amazing fun.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:07

So once your training contract was up, is it then you haveto decide do I go back or do I continue here? Yeah, yeah. What was behind thatdecision? How did you just make that?

Deepti Patankar: 4:18

I think one of the things which kept me here was, I mean, Londonand the kind of work I was doing. My firm is like number one for that. So I wasat Linklater's and the work we were doing was the best in the world. It wasfront page FT news every day. You can't match that in a job in India, at leastat that point of time.

Deepti Patankar: 4:39

I also loved my life here and the freedom and the you know,the lack of sexism and I mean you know there's no pollution here. There's somany things on a daily basis that make your life so much livable and I reallyenjoyed that. I wasn't ready to quite give up on that, so I stayed. You also,if you know this from other Indians you need a visa to be here if you're bornin India. So I really thought, ok, I want to stay here long enough, get mycitizenship, so I at least always have the option if I ever wanted to comeback, if I left. So I thought I'll do my five years here, get my citizenshipand then see what I wanted to do. So yeah, so I stayed.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:21

So I guess you've got these different decision making pointsright. Two years in training contract, then five years in when you got yourcitizenship and obviously you decided to continue and stay here.

Deepti Patankar: 5:29

Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:30

And at that time again, were you just really enjoying yourjob and your lifestyle here? Or were you thinking, oh, is it more of a pull?Okay, maybe I do go back now. Where were you thinking?

Deepti Patankar: 5:38

Yeah. So I mean, every like three years I think, oh, maybe Ishould move back to India, and then it doesn't happen. But at that time so I,when I, when I was at Linklaters, I did sort of four years of being anassociate and at the end of it I kind of got sick of my job and I was like,okay, I don't want to do this anymore, I want to start a business. And again,because I was quite familiar with things here and by then I'd met my husbandand he was in London. So we were like, okay, we're here now and we're going toembark on a new adventure doing a business. So that's how we then ended upcontinuing to be here.

Amardeep Parmar: 6:15

So what was that first business?

Deepti Patankar: 6:17

So we co-founded a company called Hostmaker. It was aservice layer on top of Airbnb. It was a service layer on top of Airbnb, so ifyou're a landlord going away for holidays or for a few months, we could thenput up your home on Airbnb, look after it, make you some money, and then wewould take a cut out of it. So that's what the startup was.

Amardeep Parmar: 6:36

Where did the idea come from? What made you decide to takethat on?

Deepti Patankar: 6:39

Yeah, so we actually put our own home on Airbnb when we wenton holiday and that paid for our holidays and we were like this is brilliant.But the hassle of trying to, like you know, get your friends to hand over keysand then like coordinating with the cleaner and storing six sets of sheets forthree different guests was just such a pain that we thought OK, there had to bea better way of doing it. And then we thought, oh, what if there was like aconcierge service that would do it for you? So that's where the idea came from.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:08

And then, obviously, going into business with your husband.How was that? Initially, because obviously deciding on a co-founder isobviously such a big challenge to many people. And obviously you know eachother very well. Yeah, but at the same time it's personal relationship versusbusiness relationship very different. How did you do anything at the earlystages to decide how you're going to split your roles or who's going to be incharge or how you're going to mediate when there's any issues come up?

Deepti Patankar: 7:31

Yeah, it's a really good question. I have to say, like wedid not have that conversation, which is a really bad idea, and you must um. Soin our case, I think, naturally, Nakul my, he is very much the optimisticfounder with the big vision and the fundraising chops like that's what he was.I am definitely the more like operational, what can go wrong process person. Sowe both fell into our roles quite naturally with our skill sets, with our skillsets, but the, the lack of, like, you know, having a break and just not havinga life, I think just adds up over time and one of the things I would advise anymarried couple trying to do this is please try and like, have breaks and haveyour date nights and just switch off for a little bit. We weren't very good atit, we just worked, but um, and we were very lucky that everything worked out,but it that could have ended badly as well another thing I think.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:29

I think I see, especially when it's say, families orpartners who build relationships, uh, build companies together is the wholeidea about the financial security element right? Because if both of you areembarking on the same journey at the same time, then both of you are doingsomething very risky when sometimes it's like, okay, one person keeps a stablejob, and I think it's always very difficult within entrepreneurialrelationships. Are we having one person stable to keep the fort going, or arewe both going into this together, but then if you go badly, then maybe you losea house, maybe we do this. How did that conversation come up?

Deepti Patankar: 9:02

That is one conversation we did have. So I think I thinkit's really important to plan your finances. We were very lucky that not justlucky, but we did think about it. We were like okay, from a timing perspective,we didn't have children, we had a very small mortgage. We um our parents werein good health and didn't need any financial support. So that was a moment intime where we had no responsibilities, which meant that whatever savings we hadand we did have a bit of savings we could live on those and use that to startthe business.

Deepti Patankar: 9:34

We also had a very clear timeline as to when we're going tohave these checks on ourselves as to how much more we're going to invest inthis. So you know, we had like 50, 100k to begin with and we were like we'regoing to invest in this. So you know, we had like 50 100k to begin with and wewere like we're going to do this for 18 months, but if at the end of 18 months,we don't have proof points of success which was meant to be our first angelround then we're going to stop and we're going to go back to our jobs. Uh,luckily we did end up raising that round. So we said, okay, we have another twoyears now of runway to do this, but at every step we thought very carefullyabout the next sort of couple of years.

Deepti Patankar: 10:11

So things did get tight many times when you are sort oftrying to raise money. But we always knew that we're not going to bankruptourselves doing this. We are going to be careful and it helps to have gooddegrees and work experience. So you always have that fallback that, okay, ifthis doesn't work out, I can go and find a job and go back to the place Iworked at before, so that that helps.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:38

So you've had this idea and you've had this conversation aswell. How do you get those first steps of actually starting that business andgetting that first proof point right?

Deepti Patankar: 10:46

When I think about it. There were so many random people, andthe other day I actually read this quote by Jack Ma, who says that friends andfamily don't really help, it's strangers. You know, you rely on the kindness ofstrangers and they are the ones who will probably give you your first break andif they like what you're doing, they will, you know, talk about you and spreadthe word. And once you've made money, that's when your friends and family willlike, come to like, claim. You know, oh, you've done this. So initially we justwent to these Airbnb meetups. So Airbnb had a really amazing communitymanagement program in London because they were trying to recruit hosts who aregoing to put up their homes on Airbnb. They had a big program. So we just sortof jumped onto that, thinking, okay, their customers are our customers, right,and if we can enable more people to host by giving them these services, thengreat, you know, Airbnb will support us.

Deepti Patankar: 11:44

And that theory like worked out. So we went to all theseevents and handed out our cards. Initially, like, there were a couple of dayswhen I had to go clean people's homes because, you know, I didn't have acleaner and so I would just turn up there with like sheets and mop and bucketand going hi, I'm your cleaner um. So we did all of those things. You know,just got my hands really dirty doing that um, but that's how the business grew.And then word of mouth was really how we got to our first sort of first 50customers you mentioned as well that you were the operational mind side ofthis.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:16

When you're looking at those early days, obviously you saidsometimes it didn't work out, you had to go and do it yourself. What were youlooking at as the biggest challenges that you were worried about and how didyou decide to overcome those?

Deepti Patankar: 12:27

Yeah, I think quality control in our business was veryimportant, right, gaining the trust of a homeowner. Your home is our mostprecious, most expensive thing that you own. You have so many of your personalitems in there. To give someone keys and say, okay, you clean and then theseguests are going to come and stay and then they're going to leave. There's alot that you're trusting other human beings with, so building trust was thenumber one thing we had to get right. So when we first hired our housekeepers,we made sure that they were like really trusted, vetted, we had good referencesfor them and we paid them above average wage. So at that time I think the goingrate was like eight pounds an hour. We paid them 12 pounds an hour, you know,but we really wanted them to do a good job. We and we wanted to ensure that wehad the house like homeowners’ trust and I think I really focused on that whenit came to like ops at the beginning.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:22

So you went about the angel round. How did you go aboutthat? Where did you find the investors to support you at that stage?

Deepti Patankar: 13:28

Yeah, now, when I think back, I don't know how we managed tofind these people um, but it helped that again, my husband went to um in Insead,so there was in Insead angel network that helped. Um, we had, through our, youknow, people that we had sort of met as customers. Some of them were quitewealthy and they were very willing to invest um, some of our friends, like Anta who was on your podcast, he was one of the people who invested and he got someof his friends along, so it was a rack tag pool of sort of different people uh,putting in, you know, small checks of 20k, 30k each.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:03

So you’ve raised your Angel round it's obviously excitingbecause you had this career at Linklaters where you were doing well. But thenyou said, okay, I need to do something new now and you're going on this newjourney, which is very risky. You're doing it with your husband. It's all thesedifferent things that could go wrong. And now you've got to this point where,okay, we've seen a few points of when did you start to think about how big thiscould potentially come, or what were you at that point? What was the next planfor the next few years?

Deepti Patankar: 14:31

Yeah. So again, you know, talking about big vision, Nakulwas always this is going to be my billion dollar company. He was very much likethat, whereas I was always the one saying no, no, let's see, like, let's justget to another like 50 customers and then we'll talk. So we had that like goodbalance, I think, sort of like crazy ambition versus, you know, just sort ofdoing the right thing on a daily basis. But after the angel round, whathappened was we actually sort of grew really fast and we just needed lots moremoney.

Deepti Patankar: 15:07

We realized that like within six months, that we are runningout of cash and Nakul decided to sort of fundraise with vcs. I had no idea whatthat meant, by the way, at that point of time. So I had to like bone up on vcfundraise and y combinator and Paul graham and all of that. I just figured allof that out. And then we we got a term sheet from um passion capital for like500k and I was just like I don't think that's going to be enough. Actually, Ican see that this is going to be way bigger than that. So we needed to raisemore. We ended up raising about 1.4 million from DN Capital and others, whichat that point of time was a very decent seed round. Now I think you know 1million seed round is not a big deal.

Deepti Patankar: 15:51

But back in 2014, 2015, that was still quite a significantround, yeah, and we were completely bombed that Avicii had given us money. Wecouldn't believe it. It's just insane.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:05

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want togive a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. Oneof the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank tosupport them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank,but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistantor you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you'vebeen trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to makesure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertiseand they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams cometrue. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking.com. So yousaid about how it's scaling really quickly now and, as a person on theoperational side, there's gonna be so many things that are now going topotentially break. How did you cope with that scale and growing?

Deepti Patankar: 16:51

Yeah, I think I worked 24/7. Firstly, there was no breaks.Um, we had some really good people joining our team. I think that kept usgoing. It's we got lucky, or maybe we we’re so great at hiring, I don't know. Ithink it was more luck. But the first couple of people that we hired on, let'ssay, the guest experience side you know people who used to communicate with theguests and organize everything there was this girl called Emma who is now inAustralia. She was just so amazing at the whole thing. She just ran with it andset up processes and I didn't have to manage her and she did a great job. Andthen we had this other woman. She joined us actually as a housekeeper, Mary andshe was just so bright at all the scheduling of. You know every day where thehousekeepers need to go. She's, I mean, like we just promoted her to opsmanager and she took care of that. So it was hiring really great people whowould just take ownership and run with it, which really helped. I was justtrying to like keep up with them.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:49

And you mentioned as well how, with what you're doing soobviously enabling lots of people to do Airbnbs and did this get picked up likethe central Airbnb and on their radar of like you're the work you're doing andhow is that relationship?

Deepti Patankar: 18:04

It was actually, like in week three that had happened, wegot an email from sf Airbnb saying, hey, we would like you to, you know, fly tosan francisco for this airbnb host conference. And we were like, are they mad?We have like five customers. We thought it was a joke. So we wrote back saying,um, have you got the right company? And they're like yeah, yeah, we know,someone has posted about you guys on the airbnb community. They were like,yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, someone has posted about you guys on the Airbnbcommunity, so you know, we'd like you to come. So we went and actually met JoeGebbia in like the fifth, fourth month of doing this whole thing. So that wasagain a crazy experience.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:42

And so, obviously, as you're scaling now and getting biggerand bigger, there's going to be more and more problems coming up and more andmore scale. That's coming across that as well, and you continue to raise money,right, yeah, so can you tell us a bit more about that? Like, where did you getto on that scale?

Deepti Patankar: 18:56

Yeah, so I think in total we raised about 45 milliondollars, or the life of the company, um, and all of it was used for expansionand, um, you know, running some projects. When I look back now I think like wecould have slowed down a little bit because, again, this is a very heavyoperational business. This was not like a piece of software that just scales,and operational businesses need more time and you just need to be, you know,really like thoughtful and careful about how you scale. We also didinternational expansion. So we were in Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Lisbon andagain, the challenges you know the cultural challenges, the regulatorychallenges in each of these different places. That was a lot to navigate andagain, hiring different people there, having the money to make mistakes with,you know, projects that you run or people that you hire. So there was a lotgoing on. It was full-on. If I look back now, I would have slowed down a littlebit and maybe not have expanded as fast and taken a bit more time. But yeah, Ithink the hustle culture sort of gets to you right, yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:05

Because which part of the journey do you think you enjoyedthe most? Which like year of the lifetime of it do you think it was yourfavorite time?

Deepti Patankar: 20:16

I think the first couple of years and I think a lot ofstartup founders will say that because you're in a room, you're a tight-knitteam, you're this little family that is trying to do the impossible, you'rewalking through walls. You don't even realize how painful this is and I thinkthe bonding that you have with your team at that time and every win youcelebrate is just um, it's the best experience ever and, yeah, as you said, asyou're now in multiple countries you're, you're scaling so quickly, you've gotso many different hosts to manage and you said it's an operational business.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:49

I think it's probably important for the audience as well tojust understand where, when we've been to scale businesses, ideas that kind ofscale massively right, and there's always this stereotype of lots of times it'sb2b saas, because once you've got the product working in order to scale isn'tnecessarily much more work, but for a business like yours it is. It grows andexpands. You've got to keep hiring new people to be their housekeepers and gotto be high quality and there's a limit on some of that stuff. And where do youthink that as you scaled, which bits would you maybe done slower, that maybeyou needed more time for? Was any particular areas that you think were?

Deepti Patankar: 21:26

Yeah. So I think, uh, in order to have a very smoothoperational process, yes, you need time to you know, hire people and then testthem out and train them. I think training is really, really important, right?So you have to have certain standards. That's why the customer comes to you isbecause they really respect your standards. That's what made us reallysuccessful is we had very high standards, we really, really cared, and in orderto enforce those standards, you do need a lot of training and you needsupervision, and that takes time, and I would sort of slow down on theexpansion and not accept as many customers on the basis that I don't have thestaff that can service you.

Deepti Patankar: 22:05

I think technology can really help and it did. We built thiswhole algorithm, which is a bit, like you know, like a scheduling app, whichbasically we would just feed in all the services that needed to be done on aparticular day and then it would schedule where the housekeeper needed to goand when the linens had to be, had to be delivered. And this automation took usa couple of years, but when it did it, it saved us a lot of money and we didn'tneed, like auto, like you know, actual manual scheduling, we didn't need fiveextra people, so that takes time and again you have to do piece by piece likebite size. You solve one problem, you move to the next one. Trying to do like10 different things is very difficult. You need a lot more money to be able todo that successful.  

Amardeep Parmar: 22:49

So tell us about how the journey continued from there andwhat obviously different things happened from that yeah, because tell us a bitmore about that side of things and what happened?  

Deepti Patankar: 23:05

Yeah, so we um, so yeah, things were going great.

We had we were in all these different countries we wereobviously trying to raise. So we raised a series B round, I think, in 2016,.November, and then again more expansion, hired more people, hired a lot moresenior people. Some of those decisions didn't quite work out in the way wethought. At the time, I felt very disappointed, but now I see this happeningevery day, that you know you hire the grownups and it doesn't really work out.

Deepti Patankar: 23:35

We then were trying to raise a CDC round in sort of the backend of 2019. And we had support from Airbnb and some other strategic playersand it was all fine. But we're trying to raise a pretty big round and we had aterm sheet from an investor and then come February, you hear these wordslockdown and China going into lockdown and Hong Kong going into lockdown, andthen suddenly Spain and Italy were our two big markets going to lockdown andthat just sort of you know, creates a lot of uncertainty and we were like, ohshit, I don't think we're going to be able to complete this fundraise. We'regoing to have to do something because the business is not going to work ifthere are these lockdowns happening. So we had to make a choice and I don'tknow, it was my intuition at the time and Nakul just wanted to continue, but Iwas like I think we should sell the business.

Deepti Patankar: 24:36

I am really I don't think that this covid thing is a smallthing. I don't think it's a passing fever and if this lasts longer than three,four months, we are not going to be able to deal with it. We don't have thefunds. So we decided to sell the business and we managed to like exit withinlike a month and we closed the day UK went into lockdown, like just the weekbefore. Yeah, I think that in that week we we closed and then obviously, youknow what happened next and you know world travel economy is down, nobody istraveling, Airbnbs have no use and yeah, I mean I feel very lucky. I got out atthe right time and I didn't need to deal with that chaos and to deal with allthe people, and you know. So that was very useful, but it was also verydisappointing on one level.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:29

So selling the company within a month right after running itfor such a long time? How was that experience? How did you find a buyer? Howdid you, how were you able to turn around so quickly?

Deepti Patankar: 25:38

We knew a lot of different people in the market and that'sone of the things that I say to like founders that your buyer is going to be apartner or a customer or a competitor. So be nice to everybody and you know,throughout your journey, keep talking to people, keep those you know bridges,you know connected. So we knew a lot of these people who were looking to buy.So it wasn't very difficult to run a fast process and people were quite good atsaying yes and no quite quickly. So that helped.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:09

And I guess one of the other tasks. Things is like trying tovalue the company at the same time, right, yeah, and you obviously don't haveto say what you value that, but how did you come to that process? How did youtry to work that out?

Deepti Patankar: 26:20

Yeah, so, we didn't really have the biggest exit on thisplanet or anything, and I didn't, we didn't really like make any money out ofit. It was more about just making sure that the business had a home withanother company that would be able to carry on, because we didn't think wewould be able to.  

Amardeep Parmar: 26:39

And at this point, how are you feeling? So you've just donethe exit. You've been working for such a long time. You said at some point,you're working 24 hours a day. How did it feel once you had, I guess, let go ofthat baby?

Deepti Patankar: 26:48

Yeah, I think I must have cried in my room for about threeweeks. I think I was just so exhausted and we've been trying to raise money, sothere was just exhaustion from like months of trying to fundraise and sale, andthere were lots of people who were interested in lots of processes that we hadgone through. Um, I, I felt like a fast train that had been stopped in itstracks like and, and just felt so destroyed. But again, like you know, afterI've stopped feeling miserable for myself, I looked up and saw people dyingright and the world in lockdown and suddenly our prime minister is in thehospital, uh, with covid, and it was just like, okay, you know, my problems arereally small in comparison to what's happening in the rest of the world. Ithink that just gave me some perspective and I sort of got over it. Um, I thinkif the world wasn't in lockdown, I would have, well, you know, been inself-pity for longer, three weeks. Yeah, I felt really sad and then I got onwith it, um, but yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 27:43

And I guess it's something at this point, right when you'veworked for yourself for so long and then now you're thinking about what's thefuture look like. What am I going to do? Am I going to go down another company?Am I going to work for somebody else? How was your thought process at thispoint? Did you think like I need to get back into something else soon, oryou're like I want to have a bit of a break?

Deepti Patankar: 28:06

Yeah, I took quite some time off. I had a year off. I'dnever taken a holiday of more than three weeks ever in my life, so this waslike this was my gift to myself. I was like I'm just going to take a whole yearoff, I'm going to work on my health, fitness, all of that, and there wasnothing else to do. Right, there was no place to go. I did manage to escape toIndia for a little bit to see my family, but I just took a year off.

Deepti Patankar: 28:40

I read a lot of books and then I started thinking about whatI wanted to do next. I definitely was not ready for another business because ithad just taken so much out of me. But the one thing I learned in my journey wasI was happiest when I felt I was making a difference and I was adding value toa power bigger than just myself. Right, um? So I was like, okay, whatever I donext has to be something about helping people. Now I was ready to sort of, youknow, go and work in some sort of big company, because I was like I can't goback to being a lawyer. But a lot of people told me that you are actually goingto be a really good advisor because you've been through the process, you knowyou've been, you've started a company, you've expanded it, you've raised money.Why don't you, like, advise founders? You know in in that. So I just starteddoing that on the side for free and I was like, okay, actually this is reallygood fun, and I'm good at it and I'm helping people, so let's just leave theego aside and do it, and I'm really really pleased that now I'm sort ofadvising founders.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:29

It's good to see that as well, where you took that time toactually look after yourself, because I think there's always this worry withfounders that you said the hustle culture mentality is that in some ways, Ithink a lot of people you need that at some level in order to get ahead, but itcan't go on forever and you've got to be able to take that step back and belike, okay, I've got to look after myself.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:07

Now. I just said you're hiring senior people in your, yourcompany as well and at any point, because I think a lot of people worry aboutokay, if I sell my company, I'm gonna be bored, I'm gonna have anything to do.But obviously you took that time out. How did it were you? Did it feel likequite peaceful or how did it feel, was it? Or did you have anxiety about? Ineed to find something now.

Deepti Patankar: 30:26

No, so I had not thought I would be able to take a year out,because I can get quite anxious if I don't have much to do, like even at workright now.

Deepti Patankar: 30:36

I'm like okay, why are there no deals happening? What'swrong? People don't like me. You know I get very anxious, but there was amoment of peace there when I just stepped back. I just thought that in order tosort of live a happy, fulfilled life, I need to use this time to introspect andto really just reflect on everything that's happened over the last sort offive, six years. Because when you go from sort of you know zero to like acompany with 250 employees in a period of five and a half years, it's a lot,you know. So I never stopped to think, so I just gave that time to myself tojust mentally take a step back and say, okay, what happened?

Deepti Patankar: 31:18

What did I learn? What went well, what didn't go so well?Um, and what do I want to do in the future? Because I don't want to be a personwho is just wasting time or is going to have regrets. So I yeah, that was veryimportant to me and I'm glad I did that.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:38

You mentioned as well that you read quite a few books inthat time.Was there any that you think really helped you with your dealing withthe different things that have been happening?

Deepti Patankar: 31:43

Yeah. So there's, um, I mean, this is like a mind-blowing,game-changing book, okay, and maybe everybody knows about it, but I didn't knowthe Carol twikes mindset. Uh, growth about growth mindset. I never had growthmindset. I like primed to think that I'm really, you know, you have to bereally smart and you have to be amazing and you have to always win and ifyou're wrong then you're an idiot. Maybe that's the Indian upbringing in me,um, but I was like, oh, my god, there's another way of thinking about thiswhole thing, as if you don't know something you don't know to. You don't knowit now, but you will, you can figure it out, you know. If you fail, you failnow, but you can figure it out, you know. If you fail, you fail now, but youcan fix it. And that to me was like, wow, this is great. And it was, yeah, lifechanging definitely.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:33

And then when you look forward to the future so you'reenjoying what you're doing now, do you think you'd ever go back to being anentrepreneur down the line, or do you think you're quite happy?

Deepti Patankar: 32:40

Yeah, it's a tough one because I really enjoy what I'm doingright now. I try and keep my entrepreneurial spirit going. So I've got a coupleof side gigs. One inside the firm that I work for. We've launched a platform toautomate documents where founders can do some early rounds on our platform.They can sign employment contracts and things like that. So I sort of helpwith, you know, product and sort of user testing and thinking about likeproduct market fit and all of that. So I've sort of done that. And then I alsolove talking to all my founders that I advise and see what they are up to andtry and advise them, which means that I get to be part of it without reallyhaving to, you know, take all the risks. So, happy for now, but we'll see howit goes.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:28

So with the side of things as well, where a lot ofentrepreneurs they say, oh, I could never work for somebody else anymore, andobviously that's something which you're now experiencing. Have you found thatprocess? Because I think sometimes people use what fixed mindset and growthmindset there? It's this whole idea if you're an entrepreneur, okay, I can dowhatever I want, basically, oh, but I can't work for somebody else. You'reputting that limit on yourself, right?

Deepti Patankar: 33:51

Exactly, yeah. I, I've never felt like that. I always feellike I want to be surrounded by people who are better than me, and I want tolearn from them. So that means being led by someone else. That's okay with me.Um, I definitely learned the value of leaving ego outside the door and just youknow, if there's a higher purpose that you want to achieve, it doesn't matterhow you do it right. You do it yourself, you do it under someone. To me, it'sirrelevant as long as you get to the goal. So I'm okay working for other people.

Amardeep Parmar: 34:19

And you mentioned about you enjoy advising other startups.What's something from your experience that you think has really helped thepeople you advise that maybe they wouldn't have found out otherwise?

Deepti Patankar: 34:32

Yeah, I think sometimes founders are unable to think aboutthe long-term impact of some of their decisions, because it's very much in thenow and here and they want to raise the money and they want to sign the termsheet, but they're not thinking what is going to happen four years later on thebasis of what they're signing up to today. And because I've gone through thatjourney, I know what the pitfalls are, I know where it's going to go wrong andthe debt you're going to pay in four years time, when you know this all comesto fruition. So I feel like that's where I can add value to say I know you wantto raise this money, I know you want this term sheet, but that clause that'sgoing to like kill you in four years time. So I wouldn't sort of do that.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:14

I've seen this before quite a few times, like I said, wherethere's people who just sign things at the beginning which they reallyshouldn't sign and it causes problems, like you said. So thank you so much forsharing your story and it's been really great to hear it from such an honestperspective. We're now going to go to quick fire questions at the time. So thefirst question is who are three British Asians you think are doing incrediblework and you'd love to shout out?

Deepti Patankar: 35:39

Yeah. So I'm in awe of Reshma Sohoni at Seedcamp. I thinkshe is absolutely a trailblazer and the number of companies that she hassupported through seed camp is and and their successes. You know everybodyknows about that, but she inspires me on a daily basis. Um, there's Eileen Burbbrige,who is, you know, the founder of Passion Capital. They are one of the best sortof places to go for if you're looking for seed money, and she's also anoperator. So she's one of the very rare VCs in the city who've done it and noware investing in people. And the third person is my friend and client, Farzana.Farzana Rahman is the founder and CEO of Hexarad. It's a radiology platform. Ithink, Amardeep, you know her. She's an absolute force of nature and she's astar. She's going to be a bigger star in a few years time.

Amardeep Parmar: 36:35

Definitely agree with that last point. And if people want tolearn more about you, learn more about your story, where should they go to?

Deepti Patankar: 36:42

LinkedIn. So I try and post regularly about the work thatI'm doing on LinkedIn, um, and if you dm me, I will try my best to respond.

Amardeep Parmar: 

Is anything that youneed help with right now, or you'd love people to reach out to you to help youwith?

Deepti Patankar: 

Yeah, I mean for now. You know, if you have a problem, youwant to talk, you want free advice, I'm very happy to do that because I would,I really believe in paying it forward. So Yeah, just uh reach out.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:06

So thanks so much for coming on again. Have you got anyfinal words?

Deepti Patankar: 37:13

Um, no, thank you, and I think you guys are doing a greatjob of building this community and I'm very excited to be a part of it.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:21

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See younext time.

‍