In this episode, we are in discussion with Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Ventures. Also bringing to you an entirely new format, in this episode, we discuss what goes behind building a successful podcast.

Some of the key points which Amit & Siddhartha discussed and their experiences during the podcast are –

01:07 – Idea to start a podcast and how has the journey been so far?

05:19 – What have been their learnings being the host at a podcast?

06:25 – How to go about and solve core problem statements like content creation & distribution while running a podcast?

13:25 – What were the memorable moments while recording the podcast?

15:43 – How did they improvise themselves and became a better podcast host overtime?

18:04 – How to differentiate between open-ended & close-ended questions during a podcast and make the conversation more open & free-flowing?

19:35 – How has being a podcast host helped them in their personal & professional life?

23:21 – How to be an interesting guest?

29:29 – What are some of their recommendations to someone who wants to start podcasting?

Read the full transcript here:

Siddhartha 0:05

Hi, this is Siddhartha Ahluwalia. Welcome to the 100x Entrepreneur podcast. Today I have with me Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners. Amit has been a friend, a mentor, and an ex-boss also. I had a brief stint working at Prime. But what I learned in a brief stint was that one would learn in more than one year of entrepreneurship. Today we are going to discuss what goes behind in the making of a podcast. Prime Venture Partners’ Podcast and 100x Entrepreneur, both are now well-known brands in the Indian podcasting space. And we are going to explore the nitty gritty in the art and science of what goes behind in creating a successful podcast. Amit, welcome to the podcast.

Amit 0:50

Thanks a lot, Siddhartha, great to be here. And congratulations for all the success with 100x, I think this is going to be close to your 100 episodes for 100x, so quite a significant milestone. So, let me, Siddhartha, by asking you a question on your own podcast. You know, why did you get started with 100x? And what are some of the early lessons you’ve learned in the journey?

Siddhartha 1:13

So, 100x entrepreneur didn’t start, you know, out of the intention of creating a podcast, I have been in entrepreneur almost all my life of, you know, nine to 10 years of working life. And during that journey, you know, I couldn’t build a very successful company, I built a mildly successful company, which has raised a seed and a seed plus round. And I had myself been rejected by hundreds of VCs, including Prime Venture Partners, when I was pitching to you. So, I had this, you know, nudge within me that, you know, I need to know, a mind of a VC, you know, in order to build a large venture whenever I’m starting out next time, and how do I go start about it. So, you know, the first few episodes what I went with is a phone of mine, a normal Xiaomi phone. And I went to office of my investors, you know, to know their mind saying, sir, I want to record an audio with you. And you know, help me understand your mind how you make investments, how you judge entrepreneurs, how you make no-decisions, yes-decisions. And I’ll record it and share it on Google Drive on LinkedIn. So, the first four or five episodes were like that, and people started telling me, you know, after four or five, when I started receiving comments, and good likes on LinkedIn, and Twitter, saying that hey, you have a nice podcast. So, I said, this is not a podcast, I’m sharing audio recording, but then it occurred to me, let’s make it a podcast, you know, what people call it and this is back in 2017-18, when podcasting was not as arrived in India, as it is today, where people didn’t knew IVM or any other podcast, it is just getting started. And I believe one philosophy or one thing, which has remained with me, till now, why continue to build 100 x’s, I let my curiosity lead to meaningful conversations. And these conversations should add significant delta to my learnings and learning of fellow entrepreneurs like me.

Amit 3:31

Absolutely, very, very interesting.

Siddhartha 3:37

So, I would love to know from you, you know, this episode is a special one, because we are both co host and co guests in this conversation, I would love to know from you, you know, why did you start prime venture podcast and what is required to make a successful podcast?

Amit 3:54

Yes, Siddhartha. So, we started it with the very simple kind of intent of saying, this is our way to sort of, you know, give back to the community. And we have access to a lot of great people, entrepreneurs, VCs, you know, influencers, people that have been there, done that. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find and share their learnings with the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India and beyond? That was kind of the singular motivation. You, of course, helped us along the journey. This is our second attempt at the podcast. We also started early in 2015-2016. And we had very, very interesting guests back then, as well, you know, Nandan Nilekani, Naveen Tiwari, but you helped us kind of restart the podcast when you worked with us for your brief stint. And what we learned is that It is almost like doing a product like in product management. There’s a lot that goes into the podcast. It’s not just like you said audio recording shared on a G drive or LinkedIn. It’s about the cadence of the podcast right, the consistency of the podcast. It’s about the construction of the episode in terms of, you know, do you have a fall start? Do you have an audiogram that talks about the highlights of the podcast? Right? It’s about distribution. So, it’s a lot of work, and you got us started. And then, of course, our colleague, you know, Shikhar Prateek has sort of taken it to another level.

Siddhartha 5:16

Amit, key insights, you know, is host important, is the guest most important? What’s the chemistry in making a podcast?

Amit 5:26

Yes, Siddhartha, I think one of the big learnings we have and Shikhar points this out quite regularly to us for our podcast is, you know, the host is as important as the guest, obviously, a lot of the learnings and the lessons and those stories come from the guest. But the host sets the tonality of the podcast, right? What does your podcast stand for? So we are looking for entrepreneurial insights, we are looking for, you know, how something’s got made, we’re looking for sort of, you know, what are the 10x insights. And so those things are very, very important, right, in terms of the making of the podcast, because I think entrepreneurs and in general sort of content is being consumed. You know, there’s just so much content out there, there’s so many podcasts, there’s so many blogs, so what your podcast stands for is very, very critical. And, and the hosts kind of help bring that out with the guests. So you consistently get that same kind of content. In our case, we publish every Thursday, right now. So people now to expect, you know, that consistency as well. Siddhartha, you’ve been running this for a while as well, like the 100x podcast, you know, and you also talk a lot about the fact much like in product management, or entrepreneurship that is no longer about just the podcast, right? Or the author content, it’s also about distribution. And you seem to have cracked that meaningfully. Can you share some insights and thoughts on content and distribution.

Siddhartha 6:51

So, when I started 100x, you know, I had already been an entrepreneur two times, and as much as how we entrepreneurs, you know, love building products, the first time or I would say name entrepreneurs, like me forget about distribution. So I had a clear, you know, burned my hands on, you know, not focusing on distribution from day one. And I learned it slowly over a period of entrepreneurship journey. But while starting podcast, I knew that, you know, if I have to put, let’s say, 20% of my time in building content, then 80% of the time has to go on investing in distribution. So what I did is, you know, right from the fourth or fifth episode, I started a emailing list today, the emailing list is more than 20,000 people who have subscribed to 100x entrepreneur on email, but this all took two years of time. Once, I had built myself 20 episodes, you know, I did everything for the first 20 episodes in sourcing a guest, scheduling time with a guest which is very difficult, you know, that the recording goes before you know, pandemic happened, I used to go out in person, because it just helped build a more meaningful relationship and the eye contact is special when you are recording in person. And after 20 episodes, when I had done all the grunt work myself of publishing it, sending out emails every Monday 2pm, I got my team member Amit Kumar, who then religiously shares the email every Monday for the last 70 episodes and he has done it without even a delay of one minute. Twitter and LinkedIn are again very important distribution mediums for us. So every episode, we share a pre of a podcast with our minute snippet right. I also use the hack to get initial good guests because in a podcast what happens is when you bring a guest, the guest also shares because it’s his brand, which is also getting built. I asked you know, through a one minute video which I used to do after a podcast, tell me three VCs who you would like to nominate on 100x entrepreneur podcast and that got me started to a chain of you know, guest nominating other guests. So, that was another very important hack. The third is very early you know, I got introduced to the right team in YourStory by a few guests to say hey, can YourStory help us with, you know, promoting our episode well because the other reason is also because VCs are not as highly celebrated in the entrepreneur ecosystem as the people who they invest in it, they also want it to be like that way. But whenever they are getting covered, VCs like to make sure that they are getting the proper, you know, distribution also. So that helped me also. So they connected me to YourStory. And I put in all the efforts to make that relationship meaningful, even for YourStory, that after that, they covered each and every episode of 100x. So that has, again, been a great source of distribution for me, so So to summarize it again, you know, building an email list from day one for your content, you know, getting the best possible guests and what worked for me was guests nominating other guests. And third is partnership with a content giant like YourStory helped me 100x entrepreneur what it is today.

Amit 10:47

Absolutely. I remember being one of the guests on your show, maybe like a year ago, on the three nominations, I also nominated three other people. Normally. I think that’s a probably an all time great hack for podcasts. And the other thing I would add to the distribution is there’s a lot of content people are consuming on the podcast side on various platforms, right. So somebody’s doing it on SoundCloud. Somebody is doing it on Google podcasts, somebody is doing it on iTunes. So, actually, making it accessible and available everywhere, where people consume it. And another thing that really helps, which is much beyond what you see on the actual podcast, it’s how do we make it accessible to everyone.

Siddhartha 11:29

Right, Amit. Both Prime Ventures’ podcast and 100x Entrepreneur are available today on more than 20 such apps and platforms. So, I think, we haven’t missed anything. And whenever a new platform emerges, we try to get onto it as soon as possible. So, Amit, you know, you listen to a lot of podcasts. How do you select which podcast do you listen to? And what’s your learning, you know, from listening to so many podcasts?

Amit 11:57

Yes, I’ve been a very, kind of, voracious listener of podcasts and, a reader of books. And in fact, probably I used to do a lot more of this even before I started the podcast with Prime and the rest of the team at Prime. And it has helped me in many different ways, right. So, first to your question about what do I listen to? So, there are some great podcasts, right? So I like Invest like the best, I like the knowledge podcast, right? I like the Andreessen Horowitz podcast, so there’s a whole bunch of podcasts. And now what I find is that it has helped me not only learn and be curious about the world and see what people are talking about, but also how to be a better podcaster how to be a better host, you know, to kind of learn from the different kind of styles of how people ask questions of how people, you know, dig deeper into conversations and, and so forth. So, so yeah, I look for a ton of intellectual curiosity to drive it. I mean, I subscribed to many, like I said, I named a few here, but I subscribe to a lot of podcasts. And I really look for kind of the, you know, social recommendations I look for, in some cases, when they have sound bites or audio grams, I kind of listen to that, or teasers. And in the rare case, I do also look at transcripts. Right, you know, and we can talk about that later. So, Siddhartha, we talked a lot about the technicalities of a podcast, right. I know, this has been also very fun journey for you and, you know, you related stories about the various recordings of podcasts. So, can you talk about some, some fun stuff around recording podcasts?

Siddhartha 13:29

Sure. So, back in the days, you know, when I was based in Delhi and starting 100x Entrepreneur. So, whenever I got an opportunity to travel to Mumbai or Bangalore, because of some work, I used to make sure that, you know, I try to make most of my day when I’m recording. So, for example, while in Mumbai, I used to record four podcasts in a day in different locations. So, I used to travel by Mumbai local because in a trafficed city like Mumbai, you know, going by a cab and reaching for destination on time in a single day, which are four different corners of Mumbai would not be possible. So, carrying my two mics and podcasting equipment, you know, to four different locations, that was very interesting and that I did multiple number of times, for example, when I was recording with you, last year, I traveled to Whitefield, I did two podcasts in Whitefield and then, did one in koramangala, one in indiranagar. So, that’s been very fun for me, you know, I would say tiring, but really fun to make most of my day. Another interesting fact is, you know, so VCs when they invest in personal branding and they were like, you know apart coming on as a guest on the podcast, they are very particular. And one of my friends, who I will not name, is a very popular VC. Once we had recorded he asked me to share the file, and he said, I have missed something. He said, I’ll not trouble you, you know, to ask you to come again to my office, let me come to your home. And, you know, add the missed part. So, I learned the the humbleness and art of detail, which is particularly amazing from a VC at that instance. So, Amit how has being a podcast host, helped you in the art of asking questions, and where do you use this art besides the podcast?

Amit 15:46

Yeah, to be honest, this has been the biggest sort of professional learning, right? Obviously, you can listen to a lot of the guests in other places, they talked about it, you know, they may have blogs, videos, whatever. But how do you get the most out of a guest? How do you get the most insights, the most information perhaps, in some cases, the most entertainment, like in the case of Mr. Sanjeev Bikchandani and, and the only way is to make the guest really comfortable and ask a lot of open ended questions, right. So, different guests respond in different ways. Many guests like Mr. Bikchandani or like, Kunal Shah, you know, they want to kind of play the first ball as a Yorker in coming 145 kilometers an hour, right? They don’t want to prepare for it and want to be on that edge, then, but there are many other guests who are a lot more deliberate and thoughtful and are equally insightful and equally entertaining and so forth. So how do you comfort the guest? How do you ask open ended questions? How do you kind of be curious? How do you listen fully intently, actually went and listened to some, you know, podcasts on how Oprah Winfrey and Mary Kay interviews? And you know, Oprah does it like nobody else I think in the world, and of course, she does way more than podcasts. But she’s fully present and in the moment, right, and, and not really looking elsewhere. So that is, of course, had a huge impact on the rest of my professional life, even there I say, personal life. So in many cases, I kind of go into this mindset of, Okay, Amit, be a podcast host. Right? Don’t try to opine here, don’t try to lead the witness, really try to see where is this person coming from. And so I literally have a scribbled note for myself, that when you get in trouble, or you get into an intense conversation, or into a conflict, I immediately put that trigger and say, be a podcast host and actually defreeze the thing and actually, I listened to the person better. And actually, the thing gets even much more collaborative. So it is actually been quite a interesting journey. This notion of being able to be fully present asking questions openly.

Siddhartha 17:48

I certainly believe that podcast hosts have less fight with their wives.

Amit 17:55

Big, big side benefits of it.

Siddhartha 18:00

Also on the art of asking open ended questions, can you share more details on it? Like the difference between an open ended and a closed ended question and how do you leave that?

Amit 18:14

Absolutely. So, a closed ended question for 100x entrepreneur podcast, which we are recording this about would be a How did you get to, you know, 20,000 subscribers on email, a closed ended question could be, you know, how do you get so well rated? or whatever? Right? even that’s not fully a closed ended question. But, you know, open ended question is, you know, what was your motivation to start this right? How did you even come up with this idea, right? How did you have the consistency or the persistence to carry on right? things we don’t have a yes no answer thing that don’t have a Boolean zero or one answer, things that go into the motivation that drive the intent of the person and, and once you connect to that, then amazing insights flow, right, because then it’s not scripted. Right, then it’s not even for guests who want to be prepared. There are some guests who will force you to send 10 questions in advance. But even for those guests when you go a little off-script, when you go a little to the underlying kind of motivations drive. What made you do that in almost like the question, you’re just asking me now this is not in any script or anything that we’ve ever talked about before. It suddenly will get you to be much more natural and much more insightful and much more authentic. So I think that is the way just the simplest way is don’t ask yes no zero or one factual questions ask more why questions more, perhaps even how questions not too many what questions.

Siddhartha 19:35

and has it helped you being an investor?

Amit 19:40

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, not just an investor, right? being a professional being a board member, being a husband, you know, wherever. So, like I said, this is become probably my one biggest learning from this whole thing. You know, when in doubt, go into a inquisitive open ended Socratic questioning method and immediately the other person feels connected to you, right. And immediately the conversation, like I said earlier becomes more collaborative. I think it’s been a big, big revelation. And very helpful. Of course, one needs to do it more consistently all the time, when you’re in the role of a podcast, you know, host, then you’re doing it naturally, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But, I think the flip is true as well, right? So, do that. Let me flip this question back to you. How has this changed you as a person, right, though, because you’ve been doing it for much longer? You know, what has this meant to you as a person? What is this meant to you as a professional?

Siddhartha 20:36

So being a podcaster has taught me, you know, the art of building meaningful relationships. So it’s not transactional for me when I bring on any guest. After, you know, our episode is over, and it’s published, you know, even guests have reached out to me for intros to other guests, or I have reached out to them for intros or any, you know, life advice, which they seem to be area to be proficient at. And podcasting has now become, like a spiritual pursuit for me. When people ask me, what do you get out of building a podcast? You know? Or will it be like, mainstream as a video or YouTube, I say Idon’t care, you know, it’s because I’m not now worried about the outcome, where, at least to me, so it’s almost like, you know, running a spiritual marathon for me, and we are recording this today, on a weekend, we could have been both relaxing, like, and this, this made me a more consistent person in my life, you know, in my all other endeavors, too, because I realized nothing will be built in one day, neither career nor my personal relationships, I have to invest in them every day. So, one of the quotes, you know, which Kunal Shah shared, I relate to it very much that success is not only owned, success is rented out every day, and you have to pay the rent each day.

Amit 22:09

Absolutely. No, I completely agree with you. Oftentimes, even you know, I would get called in the early days of our podcast, you know, both the iterations about, hey, so what is this doing? Why are you guys podcasting? Is this leading to Deal flow? Is it leading to some, you know, whatever, and you’re like, I didn’t even think about that, right. That is not why we are doing this. Obviously, it does have an impact on your long term brand. Of course, it does have an impact on, you know, people seeing you add value to the ecosystem. But I can tell you for a fact that this has led to zero deals or transactions but it has led to a lot of interesting conversations, lots of learnings. And lots of people being grateful, I mean, entrepreneurs or even influencers, or even fellow VCs come back and say, Oh, I didn’t know that about this person, or I didn’t know that about this way of thinking or problem solving, and so forth. So I agree with you that it’s a, you have to think of it as a much more spiritual pursuit than either making money or doing transactions or whatever.

Siddhartha 23:06

Yeah. Amit, we talked a lot about, you know, being a host and being in the shoes of a host and learning of a host. What traits, do you find in an interesting guest and how to be an interesting guest?

Amit 23:20

This is a very interesting question, right? It’s like they say, great engineers may not be great managers, great managers may not be great leaders, great leaders may not be very insp,irational. So not necessarily everybody makes a great podcast guest right. I think I can give you a few characteristics are ones that do. I think the number one that comes to mind is to be authentic, and to be genuine. It sounds like a cliche, but it’s very, very true. Right? So one person that comes to mind, at least from our podcasts guests, is Anshuman Bapna. And when we talked about his podcast, it was a very short one, maybe 25-20 minutes about the exit journey of MyGola and, you know, it was a pretty tough time for Anshuman and his team and his family. And he really just laid it out there, right in terms of what was happening in his life relationship, with his wife, what was happening to, you know, so many other things. Literally, I was asking him to strike that off the record, we can edit it out. And he was like, No, no, I want it like it is. So I think authenticity is definitely one that comes to mind. The second is really to focus on insights, and focus on what is new, What is surprising what is different. So that is another thing that I think the best kind of guests do. We just recently recorded one with Ashish Gupta who’s joined as a partner emeritus. So, the uniqueness of the insights is very, very interesting. And the last one I will add is, you know, the experiential learning, right. So there’s a lot of Gyaan out there, right. So we don’t need Gyaan, we don’t need the regurgitation of books and so on. There are other forums to do that. But what is it that you have felt and seen, and, you know, learned and observed. So I think that is really, really key right? So if I had to summarize, I would say, Authenticity, you know, novelty, as well as experientially. Right? Those are the ones that I have found to be very, very interesting. Siddhartha, you also got a lot of different guests. Right and a lot more of them. What have you found that makes a very interesting guest?

Siddhartha 25:23

My most successful episodes on 100 x have been where the guests have, you know, literally laid bare bones their secrets out on? People wouldn’t think, you know, why would a guest open so much, for example, Gaurav Munjal, you know, he came almost a year back on 100x. He shared, you know, Siddhartha, this is my entire learning, you know, and I’m sharing it on 100x entrepreneur podcast, I have 8000 notes in my iPad. And for each thing I read, and each video I listened to, you know, I record notes. And he has a ritual that daily five to 6pm or 7pm, he has to be in a reading mode. So, when people let out what really made them, may not afraid that somebody might copy? Or what will other person think of them, those episodes are I really cherish even today, listening back to them?

Amit 26:33

Absolutely. I’ll add one more thing that occurred to me. I think you need to get into the mode of the podcast, you know, guests in the sense that listen to a couple of episodes in advance, at least get some thematic idea from the host of what is being because a lot of these folks, right, like whether it’s Gaurav Munjal or Sanjiv Bikchandani, or Ashish Gupta, they can talk about like 100 things. Yeah. So what is the theme of the podcast that you want to go after? You know, I think that’s something that is worth if you’re a guest, or you’re invited to be a guest on the podcast, to really find out and collaborate on. I think my point being deeper about some theme is far more interesting than being very kind of broad and shallow about like, 100 different themes, right?

Siddhartha 27:17

So, Amit, podcasting today, has many elements. So, one is the actual audio, which can be long, you know, 30 to 45 minutes. And one is the transcript? So how does, you know, a transcript play a role in a podcast?

Amit 27:31

Yeah, so actually, this is something we did much later in the journey, right? Because a lot of people don’t necessarily have the time to listen to a podcast earlier, when we were in the pre COVID era. And we were commuting a lot. There’s a lot of dead times and all that right. So you would probably squeeze in your favorite podcasts, etc. So I think transcripts are really important. I think segmenting the podcast is really important. I think the timestamps are really important. That said, you know, humans do read much faster than they listen to audio, right. So they probably, you know, even a typical average reader will be 250, maybe 300 words a minute where it is on audio, certainly at 1x speed, you will probably listen 250 words a minute, right? It’s literally like a factor of 2x, even for an average use case, radio speed reader is much, much more different. And I personally like listening to podcasts, but I like reading books, I don’t do so much on Audible and audiobooks, then relatively compared to say reading, right, because, and the reason I like listening to podcasts, not because I’m a podcast, you know, host or guests, is because I think there’s a lot of nuance in the voice that gets lost in the transcript. So I think if you’re just seeking for, you know, some specific soundbite or some, okay, what did they say about you know, you know, innovation or about go to market or something, then maybe the transcript is a good supplement. A good hack, perhaps, would be to listen to it while having the transcript in front of you, right? I don’t have stats as to how many people do that. But I think that combo can make it very effective because I think listening will make it much more engaging, and therefore the retention will be much higher, but the transcript will make you seek much faster and the segmentation. So that’s, that’s been our learning for our podcast. Great thoughts. So as we kind of get to the wrap up here, you know, you started this as a labor of love, and it continues to be a labor of love for you, right? I’m sure a lot of people listening to this, who are probably going to be inspired to start a podcast, not knowing what the heck they’re gonna get into. But nonetheless, if there are such people and listeners to this episode, what would you say, you know, should be the secret sauce, what should be the kind of roadmap to becoming a successful podcast or to starting a podcast? So

Siddhartha 29:47

Rather than putting it, you know, how to be successful as a podcaster, I would say, how to get started in podcasting, that’s the first aim and to do that, you know, anybody who has that aim has to start today rather than procrastinating, let me get the best set of tools and assemble them to start it, right, as I shared earlier, you know, I started recording audio on my mobile and sharing it on G drive, before I even launched the subdomain on Soundcloud for the podcast. And second thing is I was very curious about how VCs work. Right, and that curiosity is still as high as it was, when I started, right, I get to learn so much from every new VCs is just that, you know, everybody has their own life journey, and everybody has worked with so many entrepreneurs throughout. So my curiosity remains, the fire remains the same, too. So that’s why for me, the niche has been VC, and you know, entrepreneurs who have scaled 100x, that’s why the name even came hundred x entrepreneur, because my aspiration was to become 100x entrepreneur of what, who, when I was, you know, after that acquisition, and when I started the podcast, so that has been. So somebody who’s starting a podcast has to choose a niche, rather than you know, doing it in a very generic way. And another important part is, you know, you have to learn editing, hosting, operating email client like MailChimp yourself posting it on social media yourself, you know, before you think that you can get a team, or it’s almost like building a startup, you have to dirty your hands in everything, be it a product, be it sales, be distribution. And if you’re consistent, because podcasting is still you know, an overall a niche space of content among blogging among videos, which have taken the world by storm, the results you might want to achieve will not be achieved in a single month, or a single year or maybe even three, four years. But your pursuit of love and curiosity would keep going you forward. And for me, personally, podcasting has given me a rocket ship of growth, a network of venture capitalists, you know, I landed a job in prime because of podcasting, and later in Amazon Web Services because of that, because the network and the meaningful relationships that I had built and my learnings in it.

Amit 32:32

wonderful, wonderful, so that and I know you do this with passion, and with love and selflessly, even though you also benefited from it, that’s the ideal situation. So congratulations, once again, on nearing hundred episodes 400 X, and, you know, look forward to listening to more and wish you the best for your podcast.

Siddhartha 32:53

Thank you so much. I mean, I would just before closing the podcast, you know, I would love to learn from you know, your team’s personal learning from this endeavor, it’s been more than a year, I believe of relaunching the prime ventures partners podcast, what it has brought to the entire prime team.

Amit 33:14

Yes. So it’s like I said, it’s been very, very rewarding in terms of bringing, you know, amazing insights, right, and access to people, to entrepreneurs, to other fellow VCs, to influencers in the ecosystem. So, you know, much like you in our case, we were not chasing VCs, right? As the curiosity, we’re chasing people that are moving and shaking the world of entrepreneurship, right, people that are moving and shaking the world of, you know, building companies of leadership, etc. So I think that has been probably the most rewarding thing, right? to kind of get those insights to renew those relationships, in some cases, to make the relationships, you know, with, with people, and, and so forth. So I think it has been really kind of with all humility, more of, you know, paid forward kind of effort. And, and I would say that the rewards have been more than that right to say, when when when somebody stops you and says, Oh, I listened to that episode, and really changed, you know, the way I was thinking about my product or my go-to-market or fundraising or whatever, those are the rewards for now, right? That has really moved the team every time we hear something like that, you know, from people could be friends, neighbors, you know, people on Twitter, social media, that is the gratification, right?

Siddhartha 34:31

And has it also helped someone from your portfolio of companies and who said hey, you know, can you connect me to Anshuman Bapana, I heard his episode. This is a learning which I would like to know from him.

Amit 34:42

Yes, it has actually. So as I said, it hasn’t led to any transactional activity in terms of D flow. We also occasionally carry both our entrepreneurs that have been funded by Prime on the podcast, as well as others like Anshuman right and we recently had, you know, Kabira dunzo and You know, from time to time we will have other you know, non-Prime portfolio company. And most definitely people reach out for connections people reach out for, you know, just sharing the learning that that that had an impact on them. So, it is definitely had a, you know, a first-order kind of benefit, but like I said, I would just say, you know, we don’t think about it as a transactional benefit and nor, nor is like the that the objective function of what we’re going after, right. But yes, there’s definitely within those where even other VCs have gone and looked at some company to find even though that was not the intent of the podcast, right, so those things have happened.

Siddhartha 35:39

Thank you so much. Um, it has been wonderful recording the second edition of v2 of the hundred x entrepreneur podcast with you.

Amit 35:47

Thanks for having me. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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