YouSaid · the spoken record

Kunal Shah

lines on the record: 160
first: 2022-06-28
most recent: 2022-06-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think a lot of people who have been bullied and shamed and mocked early in life develop an unusual superpower to not give a damn about being mocked anymore, right? It's not surprising if one would say that, hey, Elon, the way you are you mocked a lot when you were younger because you were not a normal guy and one would even say that you looked like a guy on the spectrum. And the guy would probably say, yeah. probably true but he doesn't feel that anymore, right? So what I noticed is the training of kids. In India, it's very common that people will say, oh, if you do not score well, all your friends will make fun of you. All the relatives will make fun of you. Everybody is going to look down upon you and they will say shame, shame, right? And when kids are trained through shaming, it's an effective tool to make them better.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there is this guy who comes from nowhere, starts his business below a tree, becomes the wealthiest person Gets wiped out and literally Like 100% of Indians and Indian businessmen have no clue about this guy. I just researched because there's a huge tower in Bombay which is made like Big Ben. And I was like, who the hell made this because it doesn't have a British name? It is Rajabaya Tower. So I researched and found out that Rajabaya was Preemchan Roichen's mom. And he made this clock for her because she could not see for her to hear time. Like look at the flex of the guy that he builds a massive clock in British India with a huge amount of spends by hiring British architects. Just to flex to the community that I have built a clock because my mom can't see time.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That the family went through. And I have seen within the communities people going all in, getting wiped out, becoming big in one lifetime again and again. And there is less shame attached to failure because, oh, it's business. And it's fascinating. Like I have seen so many stories. I'll tell you about one particular individual. His name is Prenchan Roichan. He's the founder of Bombay Stock Exchange and very few people in India know about this guy. The reason people don't know about this guy because he once upon a time was the richest guy in India. He still probably holds the Guinness Book of World Record for doing the largest ever trade, single trade adjusted to influence. It's in his Wikipedia. But he lost all his wealth in trying to do a real estate project that bombed.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give them loans to say it's okay, try to make something out of it and try to return the capital when you can, but at a very low interest rate, just nominal because they love to see more people be successful. And the last lesson was constantly having the need to make their community successful by giving them a soft landing if their business fails. Oh, it's okay. Come start doing a job, stabilize and start again. My dad had a startup that failed, so I had to start working since I was 14 or 15. My first job was a data entry operator, which made like $30 a month kind of a salary when I started. There is always this thing that, okay, you can start do the job right now, stabilize the family. And then you can start some business. Like there is no shame that, oh, you are just helping the family settle down from a financial setback.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Having set up a business because they will keep finding ways to not compete. So you will find them in a remotest African country. There will be a Gujarati family running a business multiple generations. You will see them across the planet because they will look for ways to not compete and have a zero-sum mindset. Last thing is the community benefits. One of the things I have noticed in Gujarati community is that just like Jewish communities, that they offer significantly lower interest rate to people in their community because banks are less likely to underwrite and obviously this is pre-venture capital.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lesson is natural need for spotting trends. So one of the things that is there, I'm part of the Gujarati community, which is the business community of India, and they have this greeting when the two business people meet. Normally people say, hey, hello, how are you? What's up? They have one more thing, which is called Shu Nawajuni, which means, hey, what's trending? What's new? What are the new trends? And they share that on a more regular basis, which makes them spot new trends and be in businesses that other people would take a long time to enter into because they love the new trends, because they believe that the value is going to be where they are less likely to have competition. And they are constantly finding themselves to be at different places. Are also the people who have, you will find them in every single country.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is almost intuitively taught from childhood. You just know what are people really paying for, right? And a natural understanding of which products would have higher gross margins or lower gross margins, right? It's a very interesting thing that when you grew up in a business family, they just naturally arrive at summarizing what's the value in everything. And it's sometimes very uncomfortable because I remember going to an MBA school early days to speak and they invited me and I was only interested in knowing the unit economics of the MBA school and understanding how beautiful that business is. They find that disturbing, but for a business community, they love to break things down to unit economics almost as if it's like a first, like the small talk is unit economics, which is quite interesting.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Self doubt when it comes to being shameless. I mean, they're very hard to offend. They are okay that even if you mock them as long as you are giving them business, they're okay with that. Not many people would be okay with that treatment, right? And makes many business communities not respectable because they are okay to be mocked or have lower dignity or lower status as long as they get the financial upside of it. So I think that's where the status in wealth-driven societies mindset comes in that they are absolutely okay to reduce their status as long as they win the commercial side of the deal. That's one big lesson. The second piece is just natural understanding of where is the value in everything. Why would somebody pay for it?”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in India, we have a deep-rooted caste system where we had forecasts and one of the castes of the forecast is the business caste for multiple generations, everybody in that has only done business, right? It's called the Vaishya or the Banya cast. For this group of people Jobs is an unusual thing. I think first lesson was... They have much lower shame than the other communities. They have very little”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You'll rarely meet successful people who are not insightful. I believe that insight is the smallest unit of truth that is actionable and therefore people who operate in the currency of insights tend to be generally more successful, at least in business.”
2022-06-28 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT