Podcast with Sagar from Multiplier Part 3
Summary:
Imagine a world where education isgeared towards actual job skills rather than broad subjects. In this riveting podcast, Sagar Khatri, CEO of Multiplier, offers a peek into that future.
Listen as he delves into how digitalization is shaking up job markets and changing how we approach learning and professional development. Plus, discover why enduring companies prioritize both customer and employee centricity, and how Slack is revolutionizing communication in the corporate sphere. This is not just a conversation, it's a glimpse into the future of work!
Sagar Khatri, CEO of Multiplier,shares his vision of a future dominated by skillset-oriented learning over subject-oriented education. Discussing the transformation of job markets due to
digital connectivity, he envisions new training platforms that effectively prepare the workforce for the future. Khatri also emphasizes the importance of enduring, customer-centric, and employee-centric companies, highlighting the value of institutional stability and kindness in leadership. Lastly, he underscores the significance of async communication in their day-to-day operations, using Slack as a prime example.
[00:00:00] Andrew Liew Weida: Hi, everyone. Welcome tothe AI of mankind show where I share anything interesting about mankind. I'm
your host for this season. My name is Andrew Liew. I work across four
Continents and 12 international cities. Also, I work in tech startups across a
range of roles from selling products, making customer happy, figuring out fundraising,
making finance tick, building teams and developing sticky product. Apart from
building startups. I've also worked in fortune 500 companies as a chief data
scientist or technologist or people leader. You can call me Jack of all trades
or master of learning. I hope to make this podcast show [00:01:00] a great learning experience for us In each season,there is a series of interesting things where invite guests to share their
views about their life and interests.
[00:01:09] Andrew Liew Weida: Now let the show begin.
[00:01:26] Andrew Liew : In the previous episode, weventured into a rich discussion with Sagar Khatri, CEO of Multiplier,
highlighting the seismic shift happening in the world of work. Sagar emphasized
how the COVID-19 pandemic has not only propelled us towards remote and global
hiring but also placed the power squarely in the hands of talent. We learned
about the game-changing tool that revolutionizes hiring globally in mere
seconds and heard a bold vision where AI transforms business efficiency while
empowering humans to upskill and thrive in new roles.
[00:01:53] Andrew Liew : As we transition into thisepisode, we continue our enlightening journey with Sagar as he explores the
future of education, one that is [00:02:00]heavily geared towards actual job skills rather than broad subjects. We delve
into how digitalization is transforming job markets and changing our approach
to learning and professional development. We also discuss why successful
companies are prioritizing both customer and employee centricity and learn
about how platforms like Slack are revolutionizing communication within the
corporate sphere. The conversation promises to be compelling and insightful.
Let’s continue.
[00:02:23] Andrew Liew Weida: Do you see that multiplierwill eventually create a virtual assistant to help a business owner or
management to skill very effectively to say that oh, we forecast that you're
probably gonna Need to hire, 20 people in india or singapore and you need this content
right there from this skills and this guy Who knows JavaScript? Do you foresee
that? And what's your take on that?
[00:02:46] Sagar Khatri: To discuss it at a very highlevel you recently would have definitely followed the, all the capital that has
flown into Adtech space, . Yes. I fundamentally believe that the learning will
shift away from subject oriented [00:03:00]learning to skillset oriented learning.
[00:03:01] Sagar Khatri: I was in the beginning of thepodcast. I was just joking that day. I studied engineering, but I started my
career as a banking, as a banker. And so does so did many of my friends.
[00:03:10] Andrew Liew Weida: Yes.
[00:03:11] Sagar Khatri: In this digital first world,where you don't need to be in a physical classroom to have access, you can be
anywhere in the world and can still access the best learnings, the entire
narrative will shift from subject based learning to job based learning. Look at
the Indian startups, look at Scalar Academy, another Sequoia portfolio. They are
doing fantastically well. They pick up people from different... Walks of life,
train them for a year or so, and then they are ready to start working in some
of the biggest firms such as Amazon, Facebook as software engineers. And this
phenomena has started only from software engineers because they are the most in
demand and the least in supply. But it will touch every aspect of your life
where you will have a scalar academy or a lambda school for[00:04:00] marketing folks, for accounting folks, forsales folks, where from day one, You wouldn't study physics, maths or
engineering or let's say be taken civil and so on and so forth. But you would
say you would learn how to be a performance marketer in a targeted setting. So
that is what is very exciting for me and that's where I think once we're done
with this payroll and compliance stuff and payment stuff, one thing that really
excites me is this upskilling of people and today obviously a lot of good
companies are doing that And I see that obviously investors see that as well
and hence a lot of money is flowing. I see that has a very beautiful feature
because Andrew, we see a lot of folks who graduate and cannot find a job. Why
is that? Because they are called freshers, which have no experience of work.
But in the four years of degree that you have done, if I teach you exactly how
to bring the lead to a startup or a company or I teach you how to write C or
how to build an app. If the training is very experience oriented [00:05:00] and job oriented, I think our workforcewill be better prepared for what's coming in the future.
[00:05:04] Andrew Liew Weida: You also mentioned apartfrom the future... You're actually building the future. I see Multiplier as
building a future because you have managed to solve the compliance. You have
the payroll data. You have the local work hours, legislation. All you need is
just adding that skill set and capturing it over time when talents renew their
contract. And over time, would you be able to see that companies using Multiplier
able to say, Oh, what is the amount of dollars incentive that I can drive them
to learn a skill to eventually translate the skill into an organizational
outcome to sell a product and make a product to eventually make dollars and
cents. What are your thoughts?
[00:05:43] Sagar Khatri: Again very interesting question,Andrew. At Multiplier, we have an advantage. of knowing what kind of skill set
is required. Because we work with closely with companies across so many
markets, across the size of the company and industry. [00:06:00]We will fast forward it three, four, five years. We would have a pulse on the
market. We'd have a pulse on the job market as to what kind of talent or skill
set people are seeking. Once we know that, hey this is where the trends are
going, you will need more and more people who can code in React. You will need
more and more people who are very thorough with digital marketing. We can
really go back and help governments, institutions, build a future ready
workforce. And that's something that really excites me Andrew.
[00:06:29] Andrew Liew Weida: What is the best book thatyou read about digital transformation and why?
[00:06:34] Sagar Khatri: Again, I also have mentors inlife and then they keep recommending books to me. And obviously if you want to
be a leader in the business, you have to be hungry. You have to be constantly
learning and talk about self improvement. So I do read a few books and one that
I really enjoyed was by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier, the Beyond
Entrepreneurship 2. 0. It's a great book for entrepreneurs. I would strongly
suggest our audience to read it. Quote unquote, when [00:07:00]Jim Collins said, if you're going to do something entrepreneurial, then you
should set out to try to. create something truly worthy of lasting that can
endure. And our one of our lead investors is Sequoia Capital who talk about
building enduring companies. We do not have a building profitable companies. We
don't talk about building multi billion. We talk about building enduring
companies. which lasts . A company is not an individual, it has to be an
indulging institution itself. And here we are in an era of competing IPOs and
competing valuations, something that was once common only in Silicon Valley,
today is happening in Southeast Asia, in India, and in Europe. See, success is
not really defined by mere numbers of metrics, while it is important to measure
the growth of the business, but what really matters is about Making that
lasting impression and it's about building something that could last for long.
So really, and one of the reasons I partnered with, we partnered with Sequoia
is their philosophy of building enduring companies. So helping build legendary
companies.
[00:07:51] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah, talking about thisenduring companies. What do you think is the characteristics of an enduring
company, Sagar?
[00:07:58] Sagar Khatri: A few things. [00:08:00] An enduring company is built on institutionsand not people. I as a CEO may be important today, maybe tomorrow I may not be
important the institutions don't move. So building the extremely foundational
institution is very important. Second, building a culture where people enjoy to
build value for the shareholders, value for the customers, value for the
suppliers becomes extremely important. Third, extremely high quality, committed
and kind people is very important. A really important aspect of a business.
Obviously, in today's world, we understand that your company needs to be really
customer centric. I would go one step beyond that. I would say you need to be
customer centric, but you also need to be employee centric. That's something
which is what I define as enduring.
[00:08:43] Andrew Liew Weida: Wow, this is something thatI learned from you like because it's very unusual for founders to say that it's
important to create a institution where kind people Needed to run an
organization. I have been in organization which The [00:09:00]company's sole purpose is to make ruthless profit at all costs, but I think
that's changing . One of the famous founder which is Stuart Butterfield the
founder of slack He always believed that kindness is one of the most important
traits and how he is able to again after again, from selling Flickr to Yahoo to
now building Slack, powering billions of companies and messengers to acquire by
Salesforce to be part of a bigger thing. So coming back to this Interesting
question . What is the number one software application that you need every day
and why?
[00:09:35] Sagar Khatri: It's funny, Andrew, because youalready mentioned this. Slack is something that we as a company cannot do
without. We are a fundamentally a sync organization. What that means is, we
really believes in documenting stuff. So you wouldn't see, or we don't
encourage that you jump on a call for every single thing. We believe that
people need to work in an async manner and hence writing, documenting becomes
extremely important [00:10:00] and hence, Slackbecomes an extremely important tool. Honestly, if Slack goes down, the entire
operating system of a distributed company comes to a halt. So I'm extremely
aligned with you when you say both Karl and Stuart has, have built crazy
companies. And they were visionaries. They saw at some point in time async
communication will become extremely important and they really nailed it.
[00:10:23] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah, this is also anothervery unique comment that you make Your company really believes in document
everything. I'm also a believer of Documentation but yet interestingly when I
was in a very big companies or startups Some of the leaders, some would really
be so ruthless and agile that they just don't want documentation.
[00:10:43] Andrew Liew Weida: Like a company which I usedto work with, company, they used to have they are a safety culture. And as a
safety culture, every single thing has to be locked. So that when things go
wrong, it's not a blame who culture, but what has happened and can we go back
to lock [00:11:00] and do it. Of course. Theflip side is that things get a little bit slower, but the quality of safety as
a company remains. But ever since when the company decided to say let's be
agile and get away with documentation. Things start to be a bit haywire.
[00:11:16] Andrew Liew : Hi everyone, thank you somuch for joining us on this enlightening journey. We've just wrapped up part 3
with Sagar Khatri, CEO of Multiplier, where we delved into the future of
education and how digitalization is shaking up job markets. We explored the
idea of shifting from a subject-oriented education to a skillset-oriented one,
and the importance of enduring companies that prioritize customer and employee
centricity. Sagar offered us a glimpse into the future of work, highlighting
the significance of asynchronous communication tools like Slack in daily
operations.
[00:11:45] Andrew Liew : As we gear up for part 4, wecontinue our deep dive with Sagar, who will be sharing insights on building an
effective remote and global workforce. He underscores the importance of
adaptability, cross-functional international teams, and strong communication in
a world that's more digital and [00:12:00]connected than ever. Sagar will delve into how digital tools are pivotal in
fostering an asynchronous work culture. It's a conversation rich with insights,
especially for those navigating the remote and global work revolution. Stay
tuned!
[00:12:11] Andrew Liew Weida: Hi guys. Thanks forlistening to this podcast. If this is the first time you are tuning in.
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