11 – There Was No Limit to My Dreams – Meghna Krishna – Group Chief Revenue Officer at VideoVerse

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:14
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to India GameChanger. Today we are joined by Meghna Krishna Group CRO, Chief Revenue Officer at VideoVerse. It is super to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

Meghna Krishna 0:29
I’m very well, Michael. And thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure being here. I will just specify here I might be the group CRO at VideoVerse, But I think the focus or our key offering is magnifi. So I also have the responsibility of managing as a CRO magnifi as a brand as well,

Michael Waitze 0:47
what’s the difference? How many brands doesVideoVerse have?

Meghna Krishna 0:51
So we currently have three brands that well magnify focus is our enterprise solution. And then we have a couple of other brands that we’re focusing on building for the the creator community out there, which is increasingly includes increasing in terms of their value and influence. And those two brands have yet to be completely launched. So I don’t want to talk about it under way that that’s okay.

Michael Waitze 1:15
It’s okay. I’m super curious, we’ll have to have you back again, then. Because the creator community, like I think the media landscape is just changing so rapidly. And I think at some point, the creator community I’m putting in quotes is going to change from just being the media. That’s just that’s my opinion, I just have a super long conversation with somebody about this last night. But let’s focus on magnify for now. And before we do that, let’s get a little bit of your background for some context, because I think it’s kind of interesting.

Meghna Krishna 1:43
Oh, yeah. As a person, I am extremely curious and entrepreneurial in nature, right. So. And I think if I go back to how I started, I started my career back in the US a long time ago. And I started on the marketing side of things. And I grew up in a very business oriented family, where I never had any aspirations of launching a business or becoming an entrepreneur. But but in my mind, I always wanted to do something big. And that got, I started working with Walmart to start my career with in the marketing and business strategy@walmart.com. And that was, it was a great learning experience for me and, you know, give me growth. But my view of things changed when I joined home shopping, which is India’s first omni channel platform, because that’s where I got my first trust with launching a business or building a business. And I knew I was addicted, like from day one. I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Michael Waitze 2:52
I want to go back to the Walmart experience, because this is super interesting for me, right? I’m much older than you are, which means that I’ve been following Walmart as a company, right before there was walmart.com. But back when there was Kmart back when there was Sears in the United States, and Walmart was kind of this up and coming thing, right where they were starting to open up these mega centers. And we wondered like, When were they going to go online? What was it like back then? And if we say back then but it wasn’t actually that long ago. You said a long time ago. But to be fair, wasn’t that long ago? What was it like starting that thing? What was the because, you know, Walmart was uniquely this thing that was super offline. Started in Arkansas, you know what I mean? And then to go online was a big thing for them. What was it like for you and for them back then?

Meghna Krishna 3:35
So the interesting about Walmart is they have very strong culture, right? The based in Bentonville, Bentonville, Arkansas, and they move at a certain pace, they do things a certain way. And they launched their walmart.com office in San Francisco. And that was in itself a big deal for them. Because that’s, that’s completely different from what they used to

Michael Waitze 3:58
do for them in a way, right.

Meghna Krishna 4:01
They didn’t know what to they didn’t know how to manage this team, because this team was kind of, you know, going off and doing things on their own. We didn’t want to do anything that Walmart was doing at that time. It was almost like we don’t want to be WalMart. We want to be a hip and happening. Online company, right? No, but but the fact is that we weren’t who we were because we were Walmart, everyone, we got so many visitors on our website, because we were Walmart and people were expecting to see Walmart offerings on walmart.com.

Michael Waitze 4:34
Right. And you know, Walmart had this reputation of just like everyday low prices, right. I think that actually at some point, that was their slogan you they just said and they were so good. That the Walmart differentiated whether they wanted it to be this way or not. And what do they started out thinking this or not? Doesn’t matter to me, but their logistics and their ability to be super efficient in getting products to their stores, and then working with their suppliers to get their prices as low as possible meant They should have been able to go online and dominate as well. Like this was the big fear. Even Amazon back then was like, oh, but it’s right. But it’s hard, right? It’s super hard to do. And I don’t know if you remember. And I’m struggling to remember as we’re talking this, but Walmart bought a company, I believe, and I could be wrong called jet.com. Do I have this right?

Meghna Krishna 5:22
Jet jet? Yes, yes, they did buy jet.

Michael Waitze 5:25
A billion dollars and something just to kind of say, maybe we don’t know. Yeah. Can you help? Sorry? Go ahead.

Meghna Krishna 5:31
No, no. So it was difficult. I mean, because we were struggling so much with our identity we did we want to be Walmart. At that time, Netflix had this model of emailing DVDs, right? I don’t know if you remember that. Initially, they started with emailing DVDs. So is that is that wanted to be? Do we want to carry the same merchandise that Walmart is carrying? Walmart at that time, out of the 400 million, they sold their 100 million households in the US, right? They cater to 99 million households. That was their reach.

Michael Waitze 6:05
Just so huge. But here’s the other thing. Can I ask you this? Like, why were you even in the States back then? Because you’re not from the United States? Yeah.

Meghna Krishna 6:13
I’m from India. I’m born and brought up here. I got married and I moved to the United States. That’s so that’s I say, like, my background is very conservative business family in India, who’s who’s like I was brought up to believe that I’m gonna get married and go live happily ever after, like, my fairy tale. That was that was ambition.

Michael Waitze 6:34
But how did you get inside marketing into what like, this is so different than that? No,

Meghna Krishna 6:40
I think it happened luck. By chance, like I was doing. I was doing a couple of small assignments with startups back, I was in the valley, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I saw an opening and I applied for it, and I got the job.

Michael Waitze 6:57
So here’s the flip side of the question. All right, you’re talking about Bentonville, Arkansas, like for people that are familiar with the United States, that means something to them. And what it probably means is, like you said, kind of this slow movement, very conservative, not in a bad way, but in a way of just like, we’ll take our time to signing and Walmart is uniquely like a family owned business, even though it’s a public company, I believe. So it has this very, like specific culture. But what was it like for you as an Indian woman in Silicon Valley to kind of you’re laughing? And I’m kind of laughing Do I feel bad laughing but you know what I mean? It’s like, you didn’t even intend to be there. And then there you are. But with Walmart, which is this quintessential Bentonville Arkansas company, what was it like for you trying to assimilate into that?

Meghna Krishna 7:46
So my introduction to Walmart as a company was in front of San Francisco, and there the base was really fast paced internet. And this is the, at the peak of the Internet era where we were growing multi fold. So it was it was very, it was very fast paced, and we were doing things and then the first time I got to go to Bentonville, my boss called me and she said make now the first thing I’ll tell you is when you go to Bentonville slow down. Go ahead. No, so yeah, so So and then it helped because I’m from a small, I’m in a really small town, like a very, very small town in India. So I understand I understood and that’s that was the whole thing that I understood the fast pace, and I understood the slow, small town culture, and I was comfortable and both that was equally comfortable environment,

Michael Waitze 8:38
which is a huge skill to have, like Silicon Valley as a thing. And 20 years ago, it was even smaller than it is today. I still think it’s a very small kind of close knit community. But back then it was even smaller. Did you find yourself back then chatting after work on the weekends with other people that were building startup companies? And did you get that whole Silicon Valley vibe, if you know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 9:02
All the time. I mean, everyone was talking about building businesses then Right? And I had the privilege of meeting people who were in walmart.com forward looking to build their businesses, or even my ex husband had graduated from Harvard. So you know, mingling with that community. My boss was from Stanford, so I was amongst the best of the best. And that just inspired me to be better.

Michael Waitze 9:27
Do you feel like it changed your mindset? Right. In other words, you said you can’t You said you came from a small town. I don’t know what a small town is in India that has 1,000,000,001.21 point 3 billion people and a small town in America has like 7000 people in it. I grew up in a small town. But anyway, the point is that like when you experienced this when you live overseas, well, I know because I’ve done it for 30 years, like I don’t think I could go home because I don’t feel like I’m the same person. Yeah. When you when you came back for whatever reason, did you feel like you were just some In a completely different, as you said, traditional business family, the ideal for you, even from your family perspective was like, just get married live this dream kind of thing. But that you didn’t do that you build stuff. You marketed stuff. You did it in another country. Like that’s awesome. And then you come home to and then you do the shop at what was it called home shop at home? Yeah, some shocking thing. And now you’re like deeply in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Meghna Krishna 10:25
Right? Go ahead. So, so yes, San Francisco changed me right. It taught me to dream big. It just removed that limit of for your dreams, right? There was no limit to my dreams, because I’d seen it be big. Probably if I’d stayed in India, in my small town, I would not even have imagined, like, you don’t know what you don’t know. But I got the opportunity to see how big things can be. I mean, I saw Amazon go from nothing to where it reached. So for me, it just made my dreams bigger. And it gave me that reason to fly higher. Did you find

Michael Waitze 11:03
and I found this myself? Right? That I think when you go abroad, your mind is open, you know, you’re going into a completely different situation. And you’re thinking everyone talks about culture shock, and I’m thinking, Oh, God, San Francisco, wherever they go is just so different. How am I going to deal with it. But if you’re an open minded person, you realize when you land like, everything’s going to be different. So whatever’s happening must be normal. But when you come home, because you’re different now, I think reverse culture shock is so much harder. Do you know what I mean? Like,

Meghna Krishna 11:35
you literally like, it’s absolutely what I felt. And I was gonna say that I didn’t feel culture shock. But that reverse culture shock was so high. When I moved back from San Francisco to India, it took me almost two years to come to terms with what, how it has changed. And why me having changed for, for for the better or worse, or whatever is better for me. And I want to stay that way. So I I chose to remain or chose to still keep my dreams, and what I wanted to do, even being back in India,

Michael Waitze 12:10
so I’m telling you right now that the title of this episode is there was no limit to my dreams. And but the thing that I really want to learn more about, right, is that because you’ve changed, and because you knew you did, did you feel a little tension maybe from your friends that were still at home? Even your friends are in the big cities back at home where they were like, she doesn’t seem like the same person anymore? Do you know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 12:36
You know, I’ve been lucky, I still all my school calls, I’m back in touch with them. And I’ve been, they’ve been great they’ve been they’ve accepted me with open arms, and they’ve never come back and said you’ve changed as a person. So and if they if they’re saying it behind my back then I don’t know.

Michael Waitze 12:56
That is beautiful, highly unlikely if they’re still your friends. Tell me about how you got into magnify. And what is it like being such like on the C suite team, as this woman with this incredible experience from overseas as well? Yeah.

Meghna Krishna 13:17
That’s very difficult to define. I’ll tell you first how I got into magnify. So when when magnify was initially earlier known as touch, right. And when when I started talking to the co founders, I was working with another SAS company, and I just, they showed me what they had. And I fell in love with the product. And I knew that was going to be the future and not because not because of anything else. But because for four years, I’ve actually been trying to I’ve working with people who were developing a product like this, and they had not been successful. So when I saw this, I knew that this was something that’s that’s going to be the future. And I’d worked in media worked in the video industry, home shopping was a television channel as well. So I’d worked in media to understand enough that this is something that could be tight, like it could change the way people do things on video and on broadcast and with oddities coming into the picture. So that’s that’s what got me excited and got me to magnify. What made me stay in the C suite is because I’ve seen how we’ve been able to grow the company in the last one year. I have seen and for me, that’s what’s exciting. So you asked me who I am as a person and the person who wants to take on challenges that no one wants to take. I love I love doing things that people haven’t done before. Even at home shopping, we were the first 24 hour television shopping channel. We were the first one. We were one of the largest e commerce we were the first to launch a mobile app. We were the first to do so many things. We literally created the supplier community in India, which which is now supporting the E commerce revolution that’s happening in India. So for me doing things that haven’t been done before. I take it on as a challenge. And when when I get over that hump, it’s it’s like it’s so exciting. And I’ve seen that happen in so many different ways.

Michael Waitze 15:12
Are you a sports fan?

Meghna Krishna 15:16
I like sports that I like like cricket is a religion in India. So right everyone watches cricket. I used to play basketball in school as part of the school team. So I play basketball. And my son is a national level badminton player. So I’m, I’ve watched badminton. So yeah, it’s a sports that I watch. But I don’t know if I’d call myself an ardent fan who wants to watch every game and I not like that. But how

Michael Waitze 15:40
do you get that because magnify, at least initially, in my understanding, right, that it’s so well set up for sports, because it happens in real time, like to me. And I always said this when I was sitting on a trading desk sports to me, particularly live sports, obviously, right seems to me like the same thing like a market. It’s just happening in real time, you kind of don’t know what’s going to happen, you have some historical view on what’s happened in whatever game you’re watching, whether it’s a football game, a baseball game, an American football game, a tennis match, you kind of know what the flow is going to be like. But again, there are wildcards and all these crazy things that happen. But if you can go back and analyze all those games, like we did in the stock market, you can create some understanding of what may happen next. And we used to write, you know, we send you something called back testing. So if you go back and back test the video, you can use machine learning artificial intelligence to then understand what might happen next. Does that make sense?

Meghna Krishna 16:31
Yeah, predicted a lot of predictive software has come to play

Michael Waitze 16:35
us. Yeah. So but it’s so uniquely well set up for sports, which is awesome, because that’s what you’re doing. And it’s got to be super cool. I’m curious, in your in your job when you go and show this demo to people that haven’t seen it before? Like, what’s their reaction?

Meghna Krishna 16:52
You know, that’s exactly what happened when we went to Monaco last year at Bortel. And we started showing our demo that this is what we could do. There will people whose Jaws literally dropped in like, we didn’t know this was possible. And, and that was amazing for us. Because that gave us that, you know, surety that what we were doing was right, we were in the right space, we were in the right field, we will have we had the right product, because all broadcasters everyone who met us was super excited by this product.

Michael Waitze 17:23
Because they have to do it right. In other words, the way it works that I understand is, there’s this live video going on. And you can then take the snippets from live video create content around it almost instantaneously in a way that no human could do. Like if you think about three 510 interns in a truck somewhere off site. And someone going, Hey, we need to clip that thing right now right now. And just like the insanity around, no, because I know this from the market side. But I need more data. I need more information so I can make a better trade. It’s no different to me that I need to say something about that thing that just happened. And I have to say it now.

Meghna Krishna 17:54
Yeah, there’s a race right now earlier, it was only between the broadcaster’s the race. But now the UGC, there’s someone watching that game, who will make a video out of it and publish it. And the the broadcast is always a race to be the first to get that information out. And with AI because we almost can do it as fast as it goes on TV, because there’s a lag between when the event happens in real time, and then goes on TV. And now with our software, you can publish that same highlight as fast as it goes on TV. So even before the event seen on TV, you know that a highlight won’t be out. And that’s what’s driving customer customers back to the platform to watch that content.

Michael Waitze 18:34
So there are three things at scale, maybe more, but three things, at least at scale that I want introduce one is compute, right? The computer that you have like on your desk right now is 1000 times a million times pick a number more powerful than it was 10 years ago, right? So and it just keeps getting faster and faster. But also your connectivity is faster. And so your bandwidth is higher. And before television stations, literally, they would have to drive up in a truck with a satellite, they would have to beam something up to a satellite somewhere else you can see me but nobody else can. And they would beam it down in some city, like into Madrid or something. So you get the broadcast there. But now the connectivity is different, and it’s so much faster. And also you have the cloud, the clouds, you can store all this stuff and where you could never store before give me another like I used to change tapes, literally. Yes, I remember. Morgan Stanley’s do have to go in like on a Friday night and change 1520 tapes for backups. That doesn’t happen anymore, either, right? Because it all happens in the cloud. But with all that stuff happening. And you brought this up UGC, right, so user generated content, I can be watching the f1 race, just when the broadcaster is watching it. And they’re racing with me to create something interesting or pithy around it. I’m really curious because you see this every day and you work with this every day. Like what does the future of media look like to you? Because you’re really in it and and you know, you said you started with home shop eight tene which was much slower, right, and that’s not an insult. That’s just a fact. It was just much slower moving because television shoppings just a slower thing. But now you’re like, in the vortex, you know what I mean? What does it look like going forward,

Meghna Krishna 20:13
though? You know, I think this space is just stopped, like the space is just starting to grow. There are so many things that are happening. I don’t know if you familiar, the Nike town, the AR VR reality that they created a town which was very big. It’s a Metaverse, right. People can come in and walk around the Nike town and see what’s happening. do the shopping. There’s so much happening out there. I mean, tomorrow. Michael, you if you’re a sports fan, and you’re sitting in Thailand and not in your favorite college team playing in Arkansas, for example, I think you’re from Wyoming. Right? Okay, no, sorry, Wisconsin, Cal. It’s okay. Okay, so you want to watch your California team, then you can actually put yourself teleport yourself there and watch the game in reality, and that’s where what we’re moving towards. You can also buy your favorite t shirt, at least in the metaverse, you can buy your favorite dish, favorite player t shirt right there. So there are so much still to happen. And things are changing literally every day.

Michael Waitze 21:15
So while you’re building for today, right? I almost feel like companies like magnify are kind of built not now. But like maybe a year ago or 18 months ago, we’re building to just kind of catch up to use all the technology that’s available today. Right? And to get to a place where you can do this kind of stuff instantaneously. But if the team’s smart, and it is it’s also trying to build past what’s possible today. Does that make sense? Right, exactly. And

Meghna Krishna 21:41
sorry, no, go ahead. So you have to keep thinking of what customers don’t even know what they want. Because we want to develop that product and be the first to give that out as an offering to the customers.

Michael Waitze 21:55
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, was it Henry Ford, who said if I asked my customers what they want, they just told me they would have told me a faster horse, right. So but I don’t think it’s any different cuz I don’t think humans are any better off to today in that respect with knowing what they want. And they were who knows when Henry Ford was building these cars, the 1910s 1920s? I don’t remember anymore. But you brought up the metaverse. And if you think that the metaverse is going to be this immersive, very interactive experience, just imagine this with me, right? And this is just a thought I’m having right now. Imagine I’m sitting in a room. So right now like I sit in my in my den at home and I have a television set. Maybe it’s a big TV, let’s say it’s like 85 inches, I’ve got a gigantic television set. I’ve got surround sound in there. And I can like hear the crowd cheering and I can hear somebody thump the ball into the goal. Yeah. But what if I could sit in a room where the walls are just constant with continuous speakers, there are haptics on the floor. And like it’s dark, but I feel like I’m actually sitting in a seat at a stadium in for Manchester United. I’m not there. But I feel like I’m there. That whole experience that is completely different. Yeah.

Meghna Krishna 23:05
Yes, absolutely. And that’s what that’s what we’re moving towards. And it’s kind of exciting, but scary. At the same time. I don’t want to be in a place where I never go to a game anymore. Right? A ballgame because it’s fun. Yeah, I want to eat the fries there. I want to I want to, you know, do everything that you did when you went to a game. But But and be with people. But now that experience is moving in your house? And is that going to change the way people take out time to spend with family? Yes, sure. It worked?

Michael Waitze 23:37
I think so. But I think that there’s this there is this sort of what’s the right word, philosophical change around the way we interact. And at some point, we won’t talk about the metaverse, we’ll just talk about reality. We won’t talk about augmented reality, we’ll just talk about reality, right? We won’t talk about virtual reality, we’ll just talk about reality. And to be fair, I was on a call with somebody a few days ago. And I said to him, you know, my vision for this is that nobody will be wearing goggles because nobody wants to do that. Because I can’t interact with you. And I have that. But I do want to have that immersive experience. And I think about this idea about contact lenses that are really just screens that have little things and also other stuff in them. And he said to me, and this kind of blew me away. He said to me, Oh, I tested those

Meghna Krishna 24:25
Yeah, it’s it’s a fun world. We live in Michael, it’s every time I go to a conference and I meet people who are inventing it. It’s super exciting, because there’s so much happening out there. And

Michael Waitze 24:38
these conversations happen internally and magnified. You know what I mean? Do you have these discussions about what we’re building today is great. But if we can, what’s the step change like into the next things that are coming? I mean, you must know this right? It must be super cool. Like I can feel it in your voice. You’re excited, right?

Meghna Krishna 24:54
Yeah, absolutely. See, the excitement comes from being in a camp. Either it’s building a future or building for the future. And if you are in that area already, then you have no choice but to constantly discuss what’s next? And how do we how do we stay ahead of the game. And that becomes very important, because we all are very have strong opinion that I think every three years you have to change the business, your rent grid, because it is going to become redundant very fast.

Michael Waitze 25:23
So what does it look like to you? Is it this immersive Do you think?

Meghna Krishna 25:29
I think it is, I actually believe that the immersive gaming or the immersive experiences are going to be a reality. But I also feel that people will realize the value of human interaction far more, and they will be they will be both will coexist. It’s not one will die for the other.

Michael Waitze 25:48
Yeah, I agree with you. Look, I think one of the things that the pandemic taught all of us, was this inherent need for human interaction. That makes sense, right. So I went to Singapore. Yeah, I mean, I hadn’t traveled for two and a half years. And I went to Singapore for a month in June. And just that whole concept of being in a room with 1000. People was almost like invigorating, you’re laughing, but it was invigorating in a way, right.

Meghna Krishna 26:13
People are out there with a vengeance. Everybody’s out.

Michael Waitze 26:18
Yeah, so I just, I’m just really curious about how that’s going to change the way like I think the more immersive experiences get, the more it will enhance the way we feel about the existing immersive experiences that we already have. Right? Like if you go back to when you were a little kid, right? You said you grew up in a small town. I’m betting. And I know this is true for me, but I’m betting there are certain sounds or certain smells that you feel. And you’re just like, oh, wait, that was that thing?

Meghna Krishna 26:49
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right. So the, what happened during COVID is also going to happen in the future, because the the less you experience the outside the red, the more you miss that interaction, the more you realize the value of it. And that’s what’s gonna happen when experiences become more immersive, then you want to step out of that and experience the world. And in you, I think you will cherish it a lot more when you get to experience the world in a real way.

Michael Waitze 27:18
I think so we spend some time talking about the way that magnify works with sports and real time sports. Where do you branch out to on top of that? Do you know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 27:28
Yeah, it’s true. So so we are doing a lot of work with one. There’s so many sports more to cover, right? There’s there’s so many sports world that we’ve never even heard of. So obviously, that’s one thing that we’ll keep growing into. The other is we are expanding into entertainment, the AI is becoming smart enough to to identify emotions, your smile, your tears, your sadness, your anger, everything they can now identify and identify those moments. So we are continuing to grow in that field. And then news as well, right? Right now, no one wants to watch an eight hour news cycle, they want to watch what’s happened at the end of the day, the AI can build those highlights, they can transform the horizontal into what so different aspect ratios, different digital mediums, they can do it in real time. AI, and then then there’s digital ads, right? So for example, you’re sitting in Thailand, I can offer behind you I can put an ad that’s more up for you versus behind me if it was a video, I could put an Indian ad that made more sense to Indian audience. And I could do it in a way that the audience won’t even realize it’s an advertisement. I think there is so much out there in video tech that still that we’re working on, and is still developing that I don’t think there is a limit right now.

Michael Waitze 28:47
I don’t think so either. I want to ask you this, too. So if I do a video podcast? Yes, I do do a bunch of them. But if I run AI through it, right. So if I run one of your products through it, and I’d say just like, pick out this little snippet. I mean, it’s not even moving that fast. But it should be able to do that too. Right? Do you know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 29:10
So if you identify what snippet to pick out that you can do yourself, right, but and that you can do because the AI can then transcribe your podcast. And then you can just highlight that moment, and then cut that moment out for you. So that’s already there.

Michael Waitze 29:26
What about what about sorry, you know what I mean, search. In other words, let’s say I know that I had a conversation with somebody, or I know that there was something that happened like in the middle of this video where you and I were talking about like Walmart or something? Is there a way to search that too, and then create, let’s say, like, 45 seconds around it, because I want to do this so badly. I want to figure out a way to use this, right? Because there’s so much more stuff that I want to do. And I’m trying to figure out how to use the most modern tools to be able to do that. Does that make sense?

Meghna Krishna 29:53
Yeah, absolutely. So what you like I said, you can take your video podcast, you can transcribe it. We’ll put it all out. On paper, and then you say search for the word Walmart, highlight all the word Walmart and say edit a video out of everywhere the word Walmart was mentioned.

Michael Waitze 30:08
You don’t think that’s super cool? Like, I do this every day, that’s so boring to me.

Meghna Krishna 30:16
It’s exciting. It’s it’s great, because now we made editing, something that anyone can do. You’re not dependent on your editor anymore.

Michael Waitze 30:25
Yeah, I am the editor. So I’m not dependent on me anymore. That would be a great thing. And making you to Dundon to please, I was already made redundant years ago. Nobody really needs me. When you did you say you have a son? Did you say that to me?

Meghna Krishna 30:40
I do have a son. Yes. Yeah. But so

Michael Waitze 30:43
when he looks at the stuff that you do, right, you see blown away as well. You know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 30:52
No, I think Gen Z takes it for granted. They think this is this is something they should expect from this. We’re really Yes.

Michael Waitze 31:03
So what do you need to surprise them? Do you know what I mean? Because to me, it’s, to me, it’s unbelievable. And I work in this every single day, right? So to me, it’s not like something that’s happening over there. And something happens to me every single day, right? So like, when I learned about the product, I can figure out like how it gets used. But I wouldn’t take it for granted. And maybe it’s because like we talked about, I’ve seen compute change. I’ve seen connectivity change. And I’ve seen the cloud come in so that you can do all this stuff you couldn’t even do five years ago. But are you saying Are you suggesting that to Gen Z, at least based on your experience that they’re just like, Yeah, feels normal to me kind of thing?

Meghna Krishna 31:36
I think so I think they’re expecting and they want better, they are constantly at ease striving for so what next? What are you doing next? So maybe that’s now that he’s seen me do it for a couple of years. He just expects it to happen. And he wants more out of it? I don’t know if all of them are like that. But my son? Definitely. I think he takes it for granted.

Michael Waitze 31:56
Do you think that I have this theory about me that like I’m completely on? hireable? Because once No, because once you? And I mean in a specific sense, right? Because once you work, like starting@walmart.com, right? You’re starting from scratch, you do shop 18. Right? So you’re working in the startup world. Now you’re in this company that’s moving so fast. It’s like almost impossible to go back and like get a job kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?

Meghna Krishna 32:22
No. So I decided after home job 18 That I could not work in a large enterprise. Like I could not work in a large company. I’ve always since then I’ve had entrepreneur or intrapreneur jobs where I come in and build something because that’s what that’s what excites me if I had to just sit at my desk every day and do the same thing over again. I wouldn’t be able to do it. But that goes back to my childhood. Right? When I was a kid, I danced, I painted. I sang, I did martial arts. I wanted to do everything that was possible to do

Michael Waitze 32:56
at the time. Where is your family? Surprised? Right? Cuz you said traditional business family, right? Conservative business family? Are they surprised by just the level of entrepreneurial energy that you have? Are they sitting on the sidelines going? Yeah, we kind of figured this was gonna happen.

Meghna Krishna 33:14
You know, I think they realized it because they saw that I had an entrepreneurial spirit and they were all entrepreneurs, right? Because they’re always in business. And they they they created businesses so I think I’ve learned it from them I get it from them. I just didn’t know it existed in me and they didn’t realize it existed but I do think it comes as a surprise to anybody because I feel to be what you are brought up as are it really influences your future what your childhood influences your future.

Michael Waitze 33:48
Yeah, I mean, I would say like you can’t run away from who you are like it just is a thing. Right? And yeah, at some level it always comes out do you feel like a role model for younger ladies and do you want to be or is it just something where you just want to kind of get on with it, you know what I mean? And hopefully people will notice what you’ve been able to do and think I can do that too.

Meghna Krishna 34:17
I don’t consider myself a role model. If anything I want to you know when I meet women I want to tell them this is what I did wrong please don’t do this

Michael Waitze 34:28
okay, go ahead.

Meghna Krishna 34:30
And I’d really believe it just putting my head down and doing my thing I don’t want to I don’t want to be the butt because I’m not you know, everybody has has issues I have my own challenges. I I don’t want people to learn those bad things from me because from my every, every person I’ve ever worked with, or ever spend my time with things that I take away or this is not how I want to be, you know, so I pick up I understand what is the good about them and what is the things that I don’t want to learn turned down. And and if I could teach anybody, I would rather tell them don’t. These are the things about me you should not be like,

Michael Waitze 35:07
Yeah, it’s really interesting though this idea of mentoring and role modeling is really like that. Right? So there’s this idea in the market, I’ll say that being a role model is exposing your perfection to other people and hoping that they’ll copy it. But this is just a mathema, right? Because it doesn’t work that way. The real idea is, I am here, in spite of all of these things. And maybe one of the things that I tell my daughter is no individual day is fatal. Right, so, but you know what I mean, because particularly when they’re younger, they just feel like, Oh, God, I messed that thing up. It’s over whatever it is. But the reality is that, like, life is just this cycle, I think. And if you’re lucky, the cycle goes up into the right. Most people just goes to the side, really, but it never is a straight line up into the road. And everybody’s cycle looks slightly different. But the idea is that in the bumps in the road, you’ve kind of made this decision of I’m just going to keep going forward anyway. Is that fair?

Meghna Krishna 36:06
Yeah, absolutely. And every bump in the road, I make it a point of what I’ve learned. And I don’t want to make that mistake again. For sure. And that’s that’s the important thing for me that not to make. I mean, of course, if you’re not taking a risk, and I tell this to my team also keep making mistakes, keep learning from them and keep growing from them. Because if you’re not making mistakes, that means you’re not taking enough risk and I’m the kind that if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to take a risk and of course a calculated risk, but you must absolutely take a risk.

Michael Waitze 36:37
I agree. And that’s the perfect way to end this conversation Meghna Krishna, Group Chief Revenue Officer, I’m gonna say at magnifi. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate your time.

Meghna Krishna 36:45
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being here. You take care

 

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