 the roller coaster of life and work for startups. So we have five panelists with us, and we know the startups are very progressive, and they have opened a massive job opportunity, and there's no hierarchy also. But there's one thing, you know, one point which struck is, you know, they don't have a good work-life balance. So the session is all about that. First of all, I want to know why. So, you know, why the startups have got a bad press for, you know, not a good work-life balance? So, yeah. So, as a startup eco-culture, you have like tremendous, you know, expectation from the customer because it's a battle of existence. And as a startup, you have to, you know, stand out in the market because you need to, you know, establish yourself and, you know, maintain that existence in the market. So as a startup, you have to be very proactive and, you know, fight for existence. So that way, startup itself is a high-performance culture. It's promoting high-performance culture. And that way, employee also need to be, you know, performing high. And in that pressure only, they will have to be available all the time. You can say, the rife is like, after working hours, they will have to, you know, give some output on holidays, on weekly offs. So it's all about, you know, battle of existence. And that way, with startup, their employees also has to be, you know, work hard for, you know, meeting demands. You guys agree? So, essentially what happens is the rate of complexity that goes up in a startup versus the rate of talent density that goes in a startup don't match. So what lands up happening is what large companies do is, they cover this gap with process. And in the startup, what you don't have is process, right? So a lot of it is just brute force and passion that pulls it through till you're big enough where you need a process, right? So effectively, you can't expect fast growth. And also, a work-life balance also have good compensation, also not have hierarchy. So you can't have the KKN82. I think it's more a trade-off. Smart people know what they're signing up for. And I've also seen, I was telling the panel before, backstage, where someone in a startup quit. And we asked, why did you quit? And he said that, first, if there was a problem in the company, then they would come in the sub-call at 2 p.m. And we used to solve it there and then. Now, there's a problem at 10 p.m. We'll see it tomorrow. If I had to process a big company, they would join a Unilever, right? Why would I join a startup? I joined for the hustle. So I think it's a double-edged sport. I think if it works for you, it works for you. And as such, I just think work-life balance is a problem to be solved by an individual than a company, right? So, yeah. So I think just, I think Karthik articulated it very eloquently. But just to add, I think there is, in a startup by design, there is a lot of ambiguity in chaos, right? And people sign up for it. Entrepreneurs are extremely passionate people, right? There is hustle, there is a lot of passion, right? And what unconsciously happens is this long hours that happens. And I think all of us on stage, and here are guilty of going through long 16, 18 hours for weeks on end, right? So I think that's where, and resources are finite. Funding money is finite. Like Karthik said, there are no processes. There are not enough people to do stuff. There's probably somebody who's doing the job of five people, right? So all of that adds to the complexity and the hustle, and all of it adds to the stress or the burnout that can happen. And obviously the success rates of startups, right? I think 90% of startups fail, right? 10% of startups fail in the first one year. And I read this interesting stat somewhere that 5% of the startups fail because of the burnout that founders experience, right? So all of these aspects kind of, the amalgamation of all of this kind of leads to what we see in some of the startups today. But everybody is not used to the hustle culture. So how do you try to balance that thing for the employees? Any strategies you guys employ or you think should be deployed? Well, I'd love to hear about strategies to solve that. But the point is like Karthik mentioned, I think the first part is that people sign up for a startup knowing there is hustle. People sign up because they want to work and grow faster. And there's this, whether that's true or not, startups have created this aura that you grow faster if you work closer to the business. So I worked before in cities. So people used to leave city and join a startup because they felt that they'll grow faster there. They're closer to the business. They saw business problems and do that. But the problem is if you don't embed a culture of positive pressure, right? So if you, I mean, pressure is like reality. But if you don't bring in something like positive pressure, which means that the way that you're working is gonna impact or what you're working on is gonna impact. Either the end customer, the stakeholders, the board, the company, et cetera. Once you bring in that, there's a purpose. Once you bring in purpose, I think the pressure that you're talking about literally goes off, right? At least in the mind of people. And I think that's the big point there. You bring in purpose, you talk about impact. You talk about the reason why you exist and reason why the company exists and why each employee or each team member is a part of it. And it becomes a lot more easier. That's my view. Yeah, I think it depends on the stage of the startup. But in general, startups work in a very uncertain situations. So to make the uncertainty happen, there has to be a hustle. And when you're hiring, it's important who you're hiring. So when Columbus was about to set out sale to discovering US, he put this hiring board, right? So he needed people to actually save with him. He said, I may or may not deliver any goal to you, but I'll promise an adventure, right? So only those seeking such an adventure have actually joined him and they would never complain that they've actually joined for something that they might die, right? So these guys were seeking adventure. I think early stage, it's important that you hire only those guys. If you're hiring only for the sake of giving out money, make sure these are not crucial critical roles. So this is, I think, more important. And late stage companies, the founders, they're one level down leadership and then maybe two level down. If these guys are driven, I think that is enough. The rest of them can actually have reasonable work-life balance, but if those are also passionate and working hard, they will see growth growing very fast. So I think it really boils down to the people, their aspirations aligning with the startup at various stages. Can I just add something? I think unfortunately somehow it has just become a threat, Raja Praja Culture in the sense our engagement surveys, our glint surveys are designed. Oh, are you happy? Are you recognized? Are you motivated? I think what we have done is at least we flipped it around and we said, did you do enough to stay engaged at work today? Did you do enough to talk to five new people in the company, right? I think a lot of times what lands up happening is there are certain influencers who land up creating something what I called as an illusion of majority. So if I'm an influencer and I come and say, are there work-life balance problem? Because I'm an influencer, everybody starts believing sub-class work-life balance problem. So I think fundamentally a lot of it is to be, just fundamentally, right? So ask someone why were you late for a meeting? Oh, I got stuck in the other meeting. So you're saying the chair held your leg and said don't go. No, you chose to stay in the other meeting. I think a lot of times most people just make disempowering choices. I was stuck in traffic. No, you started late. I can't get up in the morning. No, you can't sleep on time. So what has happened is work-life balance also has somehow become a problem for one side to solve which I effectively feel is such a disempowering way of solving it because you're seeing the employees helpless and now company has to do something. I just somehow feel we need to just change the narrative of the question itself and say, did you do enough to have work-life balance? Did you say no where the meeting was not important? You know what I mean? I think it's not autocracy happening. No, I think a lot of things, right? One is obviously walk the walk and talk the talk, right? If leaders are being mindful, taking breaks, they have to, right? And lead by example, right? And have very clear boundaries set up that will automatically cascade to their teams, right? And then obviously to periodic check-ins, you have conversations about how they're feeling, what they're doing, right? But to Karthik's point, I think the onus is also on the employee, right? To make sure that he or she is setting those guardrails, setting those boundaries for themselves, right? Because walk-life balance is different for different people, right? And they need to understand and that stems from purpose that Ganesh talked about, right? And kind of, we often talk about something called, we don't talk about work-life balance, we talk about something called work-life integration, right? Because the kind of jobs that appear at a lot of the organizations that we work with have our global roles, right? You've got to be available across time zones. So you've got to kind of evolve that time that works for you in a way that is not leading to stress or chronic stress or burnout or whatever that might be, right? So I think it's all of us coming together. Leaders, companies, culture, the employees themselves taking accountability and responsibility for making sure that they're not getting burnt out and they are excited about what they're doing day in and day out. We just heard that you should recruit for the start-up means people who are ready for it, you know? But if you have recruited somebody who's not ready for this culture, how do you ensure that he doesn't leave, he or she doesn't leave in the beginning itself? I can speak for that. So I think when someone joined, right? Whether they liked it or not, if you were to retain them, there are two things that motivate people. One is money. The other one is being connected and feeling belonged. And that onus lies on the founders. The initial HR people, like startups do not have any HR, right? It's the founders who actually play the role of a HR and that's a good thing because they get to work closely with the person and their personality, their aspiration and their purpose, if they're able to impart to this particular team, you would have absolutely fantastic retention even with those people who have not subscribed to a typical start-up culture. I've had that success reasonably well and I believe the onus lies on founders, their storytelling ability and making them connected with the environment. No, it's very heartening to see your founder talk about it, and it's very nice because when a person joins an early-state start-up, the responsibility of making him, her or them actually successful lies with the person who actually recruited them. That goes for other companies as well, but more so for a early-state start-up. Sometimes we call them early believers, right? So you literally are risking your life. You don't know if your next one salary is gonna come and the person's actually joined you. So when you start at the top and then you create that culture of being, I mean, showing the person the way how the day-in, day-out work needs to operate, and that comes from a founder, then that's very inspiring. So I think that's great that Vijay has actually brought that up. And that's where the responsibility of the founder actually comes in. Okay, let me be the devil's advocate. One, I think if it doesn't work for someone, they should leave. It's okay, right? I'm like, has anyone seen Tesla's employee handbook? Tesla's employee handbook says anti-employee handbook. It says this culture is not for everyone. It's okay. I'm like, nobody's wrong. This culture doesn't work. And one, I think people should do enough research. It's not just employers who need to do ref checks. I think it's also important employees do ref checks. Kiar, why did the earlier person leave? What's the history of this position? How many people have left this job in the last five years? What has the company done? Maybe speaking to some ex-employees, maybe speaking to some current employees. So I think it's just about a rigor. One, do your research before you take something up. If you join, of course, founder plays a great... Storytelling is very important for people to stay. If you're smart, you'll quit. You love it as why you go through the pain. So effectively, I think one, of course, if you believe this story is gonna compel this person to go through this, otherwise, just the most kindest thing you can tell someone is this is not working out. I think the definition of kindness is not just being nice. At times, just saying the most important thing that the person maybe needs to hear and is not nice to hear, right? So I think what we really need is more authenticity rather than mollycoddling. I just feel we'll solve things faster. I was just kind of adding to Karthik's point, which is essentially that I think the owners is also on organizations to very clearly and explicitly lay out their culture. I think there's an organization called HubSpot that has published a culture playbook which is available publicly. So any candidate, prospective candidate, is expected to go through it before they come for an interview. So there is, if an organization, whatever it might be, says, hey, there is gonna be a lot of puzzle, the candidates need to know it. And then they make a very conscious choice of whether they wanna join the organization and be a part of it, right? So I think that's the way it works. And I think specifically on the point of, we spoke about founders playing a very critical role. At FreshWorks, we talk about what we call a tripod, right? Which is three aspects. One is the learning and the growth that comes in the role. Second is the growth, right? Your promotions and all of that. And third is the monetary aspects of it, right? And even if one leg is longer or imbalanced, the tripod falls, right? So it has to, we have to make sure that all of it, in a very balanced way, grows so that the employee is happy and it's a very sustainable way of building an organization. All right, and you also touched upon, the panelists also touched upon the topic of processes not in place in the startup, in the beginning. But can we think about putting the processes in place like, you know, I understand the culture is such and you're still building a startup, but some sort of processes that are already there in the corporates, can we? Yeah, that's the aspiration for sure. You don't intend to work in a chaotic environment anyway. But I think the problem is, it's a fine line to tread between being a process-driven bureaucratic company versus being a company where there's a lot of empowerment, there's appetite to fail, right? And innovate, therefore. So it's a very fine line to tread. So I mean, more processes you have, people become aware of those processes, therefore they tend to be more compliant. I'm not saying they shouldn't be, but they tend to be more compliant to the processes that you put, which makes you become less innovative. But of course, the reason why, when we move to later stage, we try and bring professionals from say larger companies or people who run these processes is because of that itself, the intent or the aspiration is to become a good process-driven company because you obviously need to get better audited, you need to move towards becoming a listed company. So there's a lot of work towards that, which the processes actually take care of. That's again my point. Okay, lastly, I want to ask, can outsourcing? No, I think your first part, it's not the big which is eating the small. It's the fast which is eating the slow. You don't want a big car, you want a fast car, you want a big phone, you want a smartphone. So essentially, every time you want Zepto in 10 minutes, Uber in three minutes, Pizza in 30 minutes, and then these startups are the ones who are delivering it. So if you want instant gratification, it doesn't just come with process. There's a lot of chaos at the back end. And I'm sure outsourcing is possible, but would you want to put a one month old baby with a crutch, right? So timing of when you outsource something is also important, right? So I think, is the baby big enough to understand the cons that come without sourcing are important? I think it's far more, I think what he said, what stage it is, right? Kartik at 18 wanted something very different from the company with Kartik at 22, and Kartik at 30 today wanted something else from the company. So at her stage, what is important to me keeps changing, right? And hence, outsourcing is a product of what is important. Now process is more important, speed is okay. So that's when you outsource. Yes, I think a lot of organizations are trying to outsource the mundane repetitive tasks. That's where bots, automation, all of that comes into play, right? So the idea is to make sure employees are spending, I mean, you can't completely wipe it out, but to a large extent, spend time on things that are meaningful to them. And if you can kind of bring down the repetitive mundane administrative tasks for employees through technology, whatever it might be, I think that is gonna play a long, that's gonna go a long way in helping employees stay more motivated, engaged, et cetera. Anybody wants to add? So yeah, I think outsourcing always help because there are two types of outsourcing. When there is internal incapability, you can always have some kind of experts people advising you or coming for some time and helping you to fill the gap. So this is one kind of outsourcing, which build confidence in your existing people that can be of short term. And also there are many work which is sort of non-important. For that, we can always outsource and keep down the burden of existing people. So that way, outsourcing always help according to me. I think early stages, it should be zero outsourcing because every function, you would want to explore what is actually gives you the competitive advantage over a large company that actually probably already been outsourcing. I would say that seed, zero outsourcing, series A, zero outsourcing, maybe when you crossed 400 employees' trend, that's where you could actually think about outsourcing, like he said, Karthik said, non-core functions. But otherwise, for startups to stay competitive, it is actually important that they specialize and figure out their competitive advantage on any function, whether it is sales, customer success, or development, or any of these core functions. It's important they figure out what is best for them.