YouSaid · the spoken record

Sunil Rajaraman

lines on the record: 57
first: 2016-11-21
most recent: 2016-11-21
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

“27 year old quote unquote partner comes out to greet you 15 minutes later, you realize everyone at the firm has the same title, just like at CAA, just like that book you read. He seems to shovelled and smart at the same time. He's wearing a five hundred dollars hoodie. The fact that he can't make eye contact with you means he must be really intelligent. He guides you to a perfectly sanitized conference room. It smells like eucalyptus. The partner went to Stanford and started a Y combinator company a few years back. He was the technical co-founder. That must mean he knows his shit. He must know a ton about business and scaling. His company failed three months post-launch. You do brief intros. His takes fifteen minutes.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're late for your first meeting. You drive as fast as you can. You park in a sea of Teslas and X5s at the VC's office. Your first meeting is with a partner at a quote-unquote tier one firm. You walk into the building lobby and introduce yourself. The receptionist offers you water. He offers your choices of water. You take hint fizz, pomegranate flavored, you immediately regret it. Carbonation before VC meetings is a terrible idea.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So if, yeah, I mean, I think San Francisco remains largely unaffected and unchanged. I think San Francisco in particular is healthy. I think the second tier places are not going to do as well as people think. And you're going to see real estate prices come down in San Jose, Oakland Milpitas, Fremont. And there's going to be a serious financial check. And that's going to happen soon.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starting to feel like that. It's starting to feel like, you know, so I think like any of these industries, the best people will always succeed, and I wish them the best. And the best firms are going to thrive, the best companies are going to thrive, period. But there are a lot of people who should not have started companies who started companies. And oh my gosh, those people are going to go away. And those ankle biters who are like the producers in the LA Hollywood business, they always go away. And they”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The scariest thing to me is actually the money isn't as ample as people think. I see a lot of people a little younger than me living like two or three steps ahead. Based on the options that they have at their company. But I mean, you've lived through the last cycle I did too. You know what happens. You're out all of a sudden $50,000 exercising options and you paid the delta and ordinary income tax and you're totally screwed. And guess what? That's going to happen to a lot of people. Very a lot more very soon.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saffin was irreverent. He was showed flashes of brilliance. He was totally erratic. He had a famous match where he beat Federer at the 2005 Australian Open, but you never knew what you were going to get out of him because he might have been doing Coke the night before or whatever.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tennis was my sport growing up. My dad played. I played in college, and my whole family's into it. And there's two players, obviously you know Roger Federer. Another guy, Murat Saffin, who's like sort of lesser known to the tennis fans. And Federer is like perfectly manicured. Yes, I do know. Oh my gosh. Everything he says is gold.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it is this just beneath the surface type thing, and the overmanufactured PR of the Silicon Valley and the lack of willingness to say what's necessary. You know, are you a sports fan at all?”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I'll probably write a book based on my experience at scripted actually. So it'll be first person. This is unusual. This is second person. All this stuff. But I'll write something sort of more like a first person memoir.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So either run it as a lifestyle business like I do, keeping it alive, keep costs low. Run it as a subscription business where people sort of value The content so much that they want to pay for it, or do something in between, which is something I'm starting to see more of, which is selling subscription ad packages. So, okay, you can get local advertisers, but just sell them on longer deals. Three or six month deals. And we've had some success doing that, and that's why we're able to stay alive.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, wow. So it's just difficult. No one's cracked the revenue model, right? And so it's, at least from what I've seen, the cost that you invest in great content is very expensive and very time consuming. There's no way to make it on the other side, on the revenue side. Right. Or, like, it's very, very difficult now. Vox others have figured it out through economies of scale. But for local publishers, it's almost literally impossible. You cannot attract national advertisers. And that's where the money is.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got an editor in chief, Keith Spencer, who's awesome, and work with another three people who are also sort of doing it as a labor of love.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That one hit hard, and my goal is to, I think it's an important part of the San Francisco journalism community. It gives people a place to write about things where it's not safe to write about it on the examiner or whatever. And my goal right now is to keep it alive and keep it as a platform for writers that they can rely on forever.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so worked it as a passion project most of last year. And my goal out of it is to, it's just a labor of love. It gives me an outlet for my writing for other people who are writers who want to get their voices out there. And actually, you know, I have a day job. I run marketing at a late stage startup right now. One of Chamath's startups and Jason Green from Emergence called Replicon. That's my day job. Then at night I run the Bulldalic and I also write a column for Inc.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A library of 20,000 articles, and really what the old staff had done very skillfully is built a very solid brand. The visual assets of the boulder. Beautiful.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the traumatic experiences there. So I saw that they were shutting down. I thought, okay, well, hey, maybe this is a project I could take on. And yeah, managed to get in touch with somebody, and they said, okay, well, we're going to just pull the plug on this in six weeks, something like that. But if you wanted to put a bit on it, we would consider selling you the CMS and the content assets. And this is where I worked with Chris Michael and Sonia Senkit, and we decided, okay, there's some value here.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they worked with IDO and they worked with Pivotal Labs to build a new age CMS. And all sorts of stuff. And over the years, they put a lot of money into it and abruptly decided to shut it down in 2015. They shut it down, they fired all the staff, and like everybody who saw the news, it was just a thing through my Facebook stream. Oh, the bull italic is shutting down goodbye.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No one knew what they were doing but you. You. You. You. You. You had to do everything. How will they succeed without me? you wondered. They backfilled the position in a week. You're taking a huge risk. You're going to have to make ends meet somehow. What if I fail, you think to yourself? You're not going to fail. You're a winner. You've got great educational credentials. If other people far stupider than you can do this, then you can do it yourself. You're going to make it even if you have to cut costs. Your spouse makes $250,000 a year at Google. You spent your evenings wisely. You learn how to write some code using Udemy, Coursera, and an in-person class at General Assembly. You're ready. You're an entrepreneur. You've put in the work. You found a technical co-founder on Founder dating. He works at Yahoo full-time, but works for quote-unquote sweat equity on the side, hashtag side hustle. He's Indian. Indian people get technology.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quit your day job last week. The time was right to drop everything and pursue your passion. You aren't meant to work for someone else. You're too smart. The time is right for you to start a company. Floundered at a 500 person company for two years. They promoted you twice. You were a senior manager of product management when you left. You were critical to the company's success.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, in those early days, our second kid was born in March, so it was January of 2015. But in March of 2015, our second daughter was born. And so I kept myself distracted with a lot of kid stuff. But also the Bulld Italic came along And so that was really my passion project. And I felt like I found it again Gave me the opportunity to work with Chris, Sonia Senkit, who is awesome, and a lot of other people that I liked and respected from scripted Rick Marini, who I think.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I really was excited by the early stages of the company and the early team. We were so close and everything like that. And that was when it felt fun and exciting.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It felt like waking up every morning, I would feel some moderate level of anxiety. Oh no, I've got to figure out go to market. We've got to keep our customers happy. We have this customer paying us for a six-figure contract. And you become a slave to your large customers in many ways.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were providing, and then so what did I do? I immediately felt pressure to grow top line, grow top line, grow, grow, grow as fast as possible. When by the time we got to late 2013, 2014, the business, the culture wasn't supporting the growth.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's great, and he's been like a personal mentor of mine through the years. I think the world of that guy. But he actually was so excited about the pivot himself. He helped us think through that process. But it felt exhilarating that people were willing to pay for a service.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one person in Hollywood who really, really supported me throughout was actually the producer of House of Cards, a close personal friend of mine, Dana Brunetti.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I did. And when the pivot came, I was actually excited because I felt like I'd finally found the business. And I felt like, you know what? I'm going to show these Hollywood types. This is a real.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like to pay down there. They don't like to pay, so eventually we uh. Figured out that content marketing was the thing. And businesses started reaching out to us saying, hey, we heard you have that large writer community. Can we hire your writers? Content marketing job”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I was in LA at the time and. I had a friend who was working on a collaborative writing platform, and another friend who was a struggling screenwriter, and it didn't seem fair that the struggling screenwriter couldn't make it because he had all the talent in the world, so I wanted to democratize Hollywood. Was the original idea We built at the time one of the largest writer communities on the planet, it was 80,000 writers back in 2008, 2009. But we couldn't figure out how to make a dollar from the Hollywood types.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, well, it still exists. I'm proud of the team. They're still going strong. It's a marketplace for businesses to hire writers for content marketing jobs.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to be everything to everyone all the time. You're on Facebook, you're on Twitter, you're conscious of who is thinking what at all times and you're trying to control the conversation. And, you know, you want to be positively everywhere you go.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My voice again. We'll talk about what happens, what actually happens, because you depicted in this center, but again, it's so close to reality. What is the reality from your perspective, from your experience?”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I haven't read anything that's sort of hard hitting and talks about the harsh reality, but the genesis of these pieces, I intend on writing one. Right. And part of the process of going from founder, CEO to no longer being CEO, I wanted to, I mean, that was a traumatizing experience. And there are a few folks that really helped me through it. I don't know if you know James Currier, Stan Chidnofsky. Chris Michael, who I work with. But these guys are really like investors that were supportive. And help me reconnect with that authentic side and help me find my voice again.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fancy life that they must be living when in reality most CEOs I know. Are actually like, you know, deeply depressed often.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was right in that wave, raised a seed round in 2011, raised a series A, raised a series B. At the end of the day, I didn't feel authentic. I didn't feel good inside.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it happened to me, first and foremost. So I grew up around these parts. My dad was a startup guy. He was part of the early team at a company called TimeNet, which was really one of the first commercial applications of the Internet. And shout out to my dad. But I got the startup bug from him. And then I pursued my own startup scripted. And I was right there in the peak of the hype cycle. I remember reading your stuff about people partying in Cyprus.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I mean, so I was right out of Stanford, right out of business school. And many of my colleagues, you know, what do you do? I would love to get into a startup, do something entrepreneurial, but unlike many of my classmates, I actually did. So many of my classmates went back to their consulting jobs or faking jobs where they could make up some money and pay off some of their past debt, you know, SoFi and their entrepreneur program really allowed me to forget about that.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is your second promotion in less than a year? You haven't received any pay increases, but that's okay. You are principled and care more about title than pay. Sure, your company is a 30,000 employee behemoth that's primarily engineering driven, but you played an important part since your startup was acquired three years ago. You're critical to the company's success and you're climbing the ranks fast just as you were critical when you were the first business hire at your previous startup. The financial outcome wasn't great, but it was awesome for your career and you got to tell your friends that you had an exit at cocktail parties. They don't have to know you lost $30,000 exercising your options and other $20,000 paying capital gains on equity that ended up being worthless. Perception is reality.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So this one is titled Today as Your Big Day. Get ready for work a bit early in anticipation of the news. You're going to be promoted ahead of marketing analytics for the IoT division. This means that you will now report to a person who reports to a person who is part of the early team at Hotmail back in the 90s.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“New York Observer. So not so much of a reaction out of that. I mean, by that point, it had been played out. And then Tech in Asia, which is a large.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, as if actually you should change things up, and you should have an agreement with your spouse that she works from home. Which is truly bizarre. My wife is a CFO of a startup company. Yeah.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was kind of like, and that was primarily LinkedIn. Like, hey, and so I had to make a comment on LinkedIn. This is satire. And There was some weird reactions around having a two income family.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I work with the folks at Medium through the Bold Italic. I love their product. I think what Medium is doing is great. I think their audience is what really separates them. It's a very, very high quality audience. Right. And that's why I put it on medium first is because. With this type of piece, you can encourage a lot of sort of troll like reactions. Sure, absolutely. And media minimizes that.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love writing, to be honest, and that's what I do. That is just my process. I actually had no design. I didn't know it would go viral, obviously. You never know with these things. You write or know that.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you know, I think the second one was a little forced, to be honest. The third one was great. I'm most proud of the third one.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So it's, yeah, I mean, and the show has done a great job of that, obviously. There were some things from the show that, you know, when I was a CEO that I actually found that therapeutic to watch. I hope that people get some therapeutic reaction out of it.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is. And, you know, I almost myself don't know how to react to it because it is, if the piece appeals to you, you feel sort of, I mean, it's sort of an Yeah, I mean, just like Silicon Valley, which I'm a huge fan of. In a strange way appealing to ego.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I was surprised. I mean, it resonated with people, many more people than I expected, you know, more than a million people. Right. And it was a combination of wow, this is a little too close to home. But this is funny at the same time. And if you see yourself in that piece Obviously, I see myself in that piece, you probably need to make some changes. But I think people felt like, okay, this is what I've been wanting to say, and I'm glad that someone said it”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. Is the first draft? Is the best draft period? You can always hire copy editors later, but what you feel unfiltered is what's best and what's in your heart.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wanted everyone to feel just that little ounce of pain. The writing process itself was 45 minutes of get it out there as fast as possible. That's my writing approach in general. I find that It's”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. It's PR people. It's run by PR people. And you've seen this happen in sports too. My sister and brother-in-law are in the sports business. And my brother-in-law is with WME. And you see this with a lot with athletes where they're so image conscious and they're afraid to say, and the tech industry has adopted exactly that. Is just okay, I have to put up this public image all the time that says everything is okay. And guess what? That was what I thought I needed to do to be a good CEO when I was CEO of Scripted. Is hey, everything's okay. You have to put up this persona when in reality the best way to approach life in these problems is just be authentic about it. Just be real. Absolutely.”
2016-11-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sunil Rajaraman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT