Sai Srinivas on dealing with ambiguity, building a great product, fundraising, and honest feedback [#6]

Best in Class with Harish Narayanan

In this episode, I had the pleasure of connecting with Sai Srinivas (@saisrinivas). Sai is the co-founder & CEO of MPL (India's largest online gaming platform). He is a rockstar product leader a no-nonsense straight talker, and has built a unicorn in under 3 years in the face of intense competition and regulatory challenges. He's a treasure trove of insights on many topics such as hiring, scaling, product strategy etc. I thoroughly enjoyed this hour long conversation with him on a wide ranging set of topics. Hope you enjoy it too.

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Timestamps:

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:57 Being comfortable with ambiguity
• 8:58 Dealing with failure and learning from it
• 14:27 Finding (& keeping) great talent
• 20:56 Co-founder dynamics (mantra: "zero ego")
• 25:22 Building a great product ("copy the problem, not the solution")
• 32:42 Tradeoffs in features ("focus on most important outcomes")
• 37:00 Learning product management
• 39:34 Favourite fundraising story
• 43:17 Giving honest feedback
• 47:19 One key message - "Focus inward not outward"

Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed during the series are solely personal and do not necessarily represent those of my company / employers.