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Muddu Sudhakar On Selling His Companies For Over $800 Million And Coming To The US From A Small Town In India

Muddu Sudhakar has already enjoyed several of his companies being acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars in value. His latest startup, Aisera, has already raised well over $100M and is on its way to disrupting yet another industry. Which may also be one of the few companies out there that are currently hiring, and in every department. The venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Webb Investment Network, World Innovation Lab (WiL), True Ventures, and Thoma Bravo.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • AI and automating workflows
  • Disrupting the customer service space
  • Products versus platforms, and product roadmaps
  • 2023 as the ground zero for AI
Alejandro Cremades · EP 623 Muddu Sudhakar On Selling His Companies For Over $800M And Coming From A Small Town In India

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About Muddu Sudhakar:

Muddu Sudhakar is a successful Entrepreneur, Executive, and Investor. Muddu has deep Product, technology, and GTM experience and knowledge of enterprise markets such as Cloud, SaaS, AI/Machine learning, IoT, Cyber Security, Big Data, Storage, and chip/Semiconductors.

Muddu has strong operating experience with startups as CEO (Caspida, Cetas, Kazeon, Sanera, Rio Design) and in public companies as SVP & GM role at likes of ServiceNow, Splunk, VMware, and EMC.

Muddu has founded 5 startups, and all of them are successfully acquired and provided 10x returns for shareholders & investors. He loves to mentor, coach, interact and collaborate with both early-stage or late-stage startups and entrepreneurs as an advisor, board member, and investor.

Sudhakar holds a Ph.D. and MS in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BS in Electronics & Communications Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

He is widely published in industry journals and conference proceedings and has more than 40 patents.

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Connect with Muddu Sudhakar:

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show my god you know the guest that we have today is a legend I mean he has so many companies so ;’l;many exits I mean I completely lost track I mean unbelievable. But I think that we’re gonna be learning quite a bit you know through all these different companies that he did build. Gad Finance exited and then also he is up to something super exciting nowadays with his latest company so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guests today mudu suakar welcome to the show. Thanks.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Thank you Ajandro Very excited to be with you and I enjoy your podcast show. So you’re doing a great service to the community. So thank you.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you so much mudo so give us a little of a walkthrough memory lane. How was life growing up in India. Thanks.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Oh great man I mean I that’s my hometown my home country when I grew up so I love india and I love everything about India.

Alejandro Cremades: So so so how was life growing up there because I’m sure it was a little bit different than being here in the us I mean eventually you came here for studies but but you know it took a little bit. You know you went through there you know getting the you know the studies. The. You went to a I you know there I mean what’s the what? what were what were you doing all the way up until you know coming to the Us.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, no look India is like I come from a small town in India called Kainara so you have to look um, growing up in India. It’s also it’s a humbling experience right? It’s ah I’m a middle class family person. My dad is a professor we grow up there and my. And it’s it’s like it’s it’s a good working in a India is um and studying and growing up inda is a great experience for me I went to schooling till Twelfth grade and then I went to I to do my undergrad. Um I is a very great place right? It’s one of those places where. It’s one of the smartest of every city every um, ah so city and every state will come and and you have to compete and do well in the schools and colleges. So I yeah learned a lot I mean it’s probably my for 2 years as a human being going to college like for all of us and also learn and staying in a dom and interact with people and. Social aspects as well as the aspects of how to ah evolve in the for in the calm in your life. Oh um lot I mean like going to it like it was brain drain in India back then rights like in late eighty s so all the all of us are train. 1 thing is like.

Alejandro Cremades: So what block push you to come to the Us. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Study well in India and and then apply for higher education us was the place to go do masters and ph d so it’s the number 1 dream right? American dream was for us is to come to America to learn and learn in terms of doing masters and Phd and start a startup and we live the la american dream. So that’s what drove me to come here.

Alejandro Cremades: The american and dream you got ah you got to respect that I love that and obviously in your case you came to to yale to do the studies and then after that you went to ucla and then you know like you went into different companies like Ibm Bell Labs Silicon Graphics but this was the most immediate step to getting started with your first company. So how was that process like of all of a sudden you know like things start coming together and and and you make that decision of of giving your your notice that leap of faith and. You came to the us already so you had made it. You know you like you were making a good salary I’m sure it was nerveracking all of a sudden you know to to give the notice and and going into the unknown. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: It is it is as well like two things so I can give you the going back to like it was ninety nine I was at cellconographics remember it was a pickup the dot com era things were booming like hell right? ah stocks were a thousand dollar stocks of every company. So I think look. Leaving silicon graphics to start a company. You’re right I mean once you leave something you’re resigning from your job and you have no pay. But and then that’s what I tell people is look. You cannot do double duty. 1 thing I tell people is if you want to start a company you got to go all in. You can’t say I’ll stay in the company and then I’ll do this. That’s a disservice to yourself and the company and you’ll never do full so you have to be like a like a poker you got to all go all in if you’re not to do all in. Don’t start a startup so you’re right by throwing that it creates a necessity so your time starts now. So it’s not like you have all the time in the world right? so. Then at that point you have 2 three months to create your project plan. You have your ideas then you go pitch that to investors meantime you’re trying to create write the software hardware. My first company itself has both software and hardware so you got to pull together your resources put your own personal capital build a hardware software. See the value first understand what’s the problem you’re trying to solve talk to the customers right? What’s the business case. Where’s the value prep. What is a burning need how much people will pay. So I think you’ve got with like I never run to Mba school but starting a startup if you do that you don’t need to go Mba school. That’s what I to entrepreneurs if you do a startup and is successful.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: You don’t need an Mba after that you’re the Mba you can teach other people.

Alejandro Cremades: And and and why do you think you know have skipped you going from one company to the next I mean where is that drive coming from.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Drive for me personally look everybody has differently for me. The drivers were solving a problem I’m very much driven to solve industry problems. So once we see a problem I feel like solving it and that’s what happened so when I was at so um, so Silicon graphics the problem back then was you want to go solve a.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Networking problem but it’s so networking right? at the big. You have the biggest server companies that you have sun Microsysm oracle your silicconic Graphics Ibm Hitchpe. They all have servers and storage. But there was no networking connecting servers and storage I mean that was is it a problem to be solved or is it. It Nice to have. Servers and store need to talk to each other was there any what is a type of new application that you going to evolve right? Remember That’s when internet is happening ecommerce was happening. You’re able to provide Nondi Disruptive compute environment and storage that drove that whole networking Era right? So I Really enjoy that. So every time I look at a problem and say look. If that problem can be solved.. Can we go win that market. Can we solve it can we make a change and that’s the crime.

Alejandro Cremades: I love that and you know before we go into the companies that you’ve done in the lessons learn I got to ask you here because I mean you’ve you’ve you’ve you’ve done through it. You’ve gone through it all I mean through the.comboom.com busst. So prime you know? ah. Financial crisis you know wait you know now obviously with the venture boom venture bust you know silione valley bank you know other banks you know behind you know the macro environment. You know, not the same as as we had you know a year or two ago so what have you learned about going through those cycles to us an entrepreneur.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: I think persistence determination don’t give up that every company will have challenges every year there’ll be challenges every comm will be different right? You’ll have so I think like even covid I thought I’ve seen everything but 2 years by covid happened right? So every time the challenges are different. I always tell that to even investors. Don’t think that like innovations think that okay just because you have done it once or twice the people will know it I even I’ve done it five six times I still don’t know what right? every time you’re learning right? that something is your with that and it has be datad driven see particularly now that we are talking Ai and data. My approach is look. And the end of the day you have to have a cutfield you’re the product. You’re the owner you’re the founder of the company you use your intuion but your intuitionion should be grounded with some data right? and not all bets are med equal but you got to make a bet stay with that bad be persistent. Don’t give up.

Alejandro Cremades: I love that now. Let’s go 1 by 1 and what I want you to tell me is what were you guys doing in each one of those different companies and what was the lesson learned. So let’s start with sonara systems.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Um, sure.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, so so as a center is a storage networking company storage networkancy that one side of servers and one stage you have storage and you connect them like you think of like Cisco like and and we were acquired by Emc back then right? So so we build a. Sandswitches for them. So this will be for every bank like today. Also if you’re drawing any money from any financial institution. Any large company you’ are going to a sandwich that we built bank there in frontiers bank so itll be deployed coming like Goldman Jp morgan bank of familka whereas on large telco travel networking. That’s the problem we are solving it. What is a lesson we learned look that is the time I learned through Nine Eleven happened that was the shock right? till then nobody knew what? like um I was I was like that was a shock completely. We don’t know how to operate everything was shut down wallshit was shut down the barrier was shut down people could not go to the office for a couple of months right we are to recover from the whole right and lot of companies died because of that and sometimes the luck right for me during that time luck happened. We stayed with the company we tried to push the company as much as we can and we came out really winning on that market right? But there are a lot of people who shut down companies right? after 119 shut down either. They didn’t have the lack of funds or they are good companies with fund but look There’s could be a lot of reasons why companies may not succeed a lot of good companies. Don’t succeed to but sometimes you just have to understand and change your dynamics you got to deal with the what I call life is like a box of chocolates.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: You don’t know what you’re going to get once you open the box. You may get milk chocolate dark chocolate. You can eat a brown chocolate. You got to take that you have your limitations and within those limitations you got to do your job.

Alejandro Cremades: So so 1 thing that happened here is obviously the first thing you know company first fix it so not bad at all and I guess why do you do all of a sudden I mean there you guys you know, got acquired for like 2 5300000000 I mean you’re coming from a very you know, humble background come on. Did you buy a car a house. What did you do.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Ah, look once you have a wife and kids. Um, my wife now is sunila and she and me and we are our first baby back then so look life has to still continue right? Um, why did I do it look. It’s very interesting. Yeah, we sold our company are we got acquired actually I but I never sell companies that’s number 1 once you put a sale on your thing. You’re like a loser if somebody want to buy me, let them come to me but I never sell. So once we got acquired like I got this like 2003 I think maybe late two thousand two two and 3 um I was talking to Goldman Sachs Goldman was on my. Board at soera I was talking to Goldman Sachs guys and I was talking to red point ventures guys and menlo guys your understand back because of the nine eleven and after that a whole bunch of scandals have happened right? So people wanted to create a security risk compliance they wanted to go into your backup tapes. They want to go to your documents. Want to go through your emails to search. There was no search back then like there used to be Google searches an appliance there used to be a company called verity right? But there was no companies will go through your emails backup and search and if you have to get a lawyer you have to call your lawyer and lawyer will go through manually right? All the micro participants. So that’s when we created what we call an enterprise search company called caion right? It was a problem. So as soon I saw it I saw all this storage Goldman comes to me and iu can you search all my documents and emails can you do some problem here immediately. We started a company backing by Goldman Red point and Menlo called Kasian there we are.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: By 2003 late and um, again back running another company um with my cofound of christstos and that’s it. So again, you’re back to normal 2 people in a room write the first lines of javascriptva code first lines of your ah ah your your um javascript code. Right? That’s other thing that I enjoys building from day one and that’s also scary right? So when you start something you really don’t have anything else. You’re writing a first prd amadi your user interfaces. Youre to think through it and most people don’t think that studying company is about powerpoints. It’s not about your business plans and word document. You have to have a vision as to what’s a product look like what is the lines of code looks like what you are building. It. So it’s scary and also it’s yeah also creates lot of innovation during that time.

Alejandro Cremades: So now cast on us again. You know also acquired by Emc now now here you know one thing that is interesting is that you decided to stay for a few years. What? What? What do you What? what? What drove that because I’m sure that now after having built scale sold to companies. I’m sure that vesting and resting period you know was not that fun. But.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Not necessarily look it all depends on what you look I usually I live to the choir since this is ah your deal podcasting. It’s you always as an entrepreneur Ceo. It’s up to the ecquirer if if they want you to stay. You should stay if they don’t want to stay. You should not when it comes to the Ceo or C4 usually the those 2 roles. It’s up to the acquire what they want to do right? Um, definitely the so at cash on time emc Joe which she was a Ceo then Joe said with you, you got to stay and become a general manager to run this business right? And what are they want to do you got to do that that point right? at that point. You that’s still your baby. You’re stillating and integrating through their organization. But you’re also running it to make it part of the picker sales in and go to market so you got to do that I really enjoy that for me I learned a lot under 2 2 days like who’s who was there everybody right? you had ah Paul Murji was the Ceo of vmere back then. Your Dinah Greenen still there your art coviola was there from ah Rsa Pat Galsinger just came from Intel to join us as a c to you are Frank S Lutman came from data domain acquisition right? I mean it’s everybody so with like Dave Dewald was there from documentum so I was like a small time. Ah. No name company c was sitting in front of like it’s like have you seen the godfather movie it was like god for the movie right? like Joe took you be behind on the table and everybody got to smoge his hand right? right? Yeah, the guys are the small guys. Ah, but I learned a lot how to run the qbrs how to do this.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Go to market. So I learned a lot under Emc. That’s a second time they’re buying it so I’m pretty loyal to them and have they’ve been nice to make very nice in secret.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, no kidding I mean second second purchase not bad now now in this case, you know, like again, you know once an entrepreneur entrepreneur always on entrepreneur entrepreneur. So see us is the next opportunity that comes knocking what were you guys doing there and and what was the lesson earnarned. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, so look I think that one was a very interesting one because remember back to like how cha gp is just happening now right with the whole world of Ai and automation back then the issue was ah people cloud was just happening. It was just in god release cloud s 3 and ectwo so the question was how can we dump the data into the ah cloud and how to do analytics on the cloud as a Sas play right? So the requirement from the customers was I did not want to run analytictics on in my own data warehouse cloud became the data warehouse red ship started happening. People were putting data out there hadoop started happening their big data if you remember whole big data and so people wanted analytics to be run on the compute in the cloud analyze it provide a what I call visual. Yeah interact to visualizations right? You wanted to do dashboards analytics drill down. Um, everything. Um, from an automation from a data variable to olap to everything in the cloud that is the problem as soon as we heard we thought look this got to be done in the cloud and we did it pretty quickly that and by them we are done and started doing the go-to market and selling it I think it was like maybe less than 2 years. We may came in aqui us.

Alejandro Cremades: Unmoli now obviously third acquisition. What the what have you learned ah about acquisitions I know like you know before you were saying I never sell a company. They always get acquired. So. At this point you know with a 30 transaction. What kind of patterns. You know, did you did you see I mean as a founder What did you learn through going through all these different processes so that you can come out. You know of a transaction like this you know on on a high note. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, so I think the key for all these look at is persistence lot of people think see it takes very long time to build companies long time to build products first version of the product will be barely good enough then once you go to the second version. It’ll be good enough to do product market fit. By the time you’re done with the third version of the product we are doing early go to market by the time you do fourth and fifth will be the growth engine and kicking in so there’ll be lot of phases of the product evolution I always tell people by the time you are done. It’ll take 9 to 8 versions of your product before you start eating the scale of the product. So whether you do it as a standalone whether you do it as a part of the acquired company. You got to stay and build a product and consistency in personson that something is like you should be the last person trying to turn the lights off on any product or a company as a founder. So I think that something is. I definitely learned that you got to stay with the companies make the companies build and got to build it for scale. A lot of people build it for 1 1 single feature and say I can add other features. You cannot once you are born as a dog you’re going to die as a dog very really, you are going to become a cat. So. It’s very hard and this is something a lot of investors. Also don’t think that they think oh let’s start off a company in one area. 1 feature. Let’s go deep into in that focus areas if you do that you cannot change it to the next one. It’s not that easy to build on right? So as a startup. So unless you are a good product. It has a good platform.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: You cannot scale to what it is but at the same time when you build a platform You can’t go to market with a platform. Nobody’s going to buy a platform people buy problem solutions to a problem right? Ajandro you have a problem I Want to solve the problem right? You cannot say I need a hammer but you go go by a screwdriver So understand the problem and the solution. But underneath if you have a good platform then you get to grow that’s other lesson that I’ve learned is make sure you design a good platform good product so that it has legs to last generations like my first Companyana switch products are still used after 25 years every bank transaction. But it’s used it as a part of a standalone company as a part of a acquirer the priority is in production and being used that gives you a lot of satisfaction.

Alejandro Cremades: No kidding. So obviously you know in this case after the transaction with Vmware you stayed there a little bit and you worked for people to do in conjunction. But then you know again like always another idea comes knocking so that was caspy that so why. Another a great exit you know for about 300000000 you know acquiredwise splunk so what were you doing at caspida what was the lessonsa learned. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, so I think caspi I was a cyber secret now. 1 thing you can see in my team like I don’t go after in the same space every time I do something I want to solve some fundamental problem in a new space right? So this is 2014 I think um, the problem was cyber securityity the advantage we ran into is the issues that are. The at that time the problem is how do you detect external attacks and insider attacks. It’s right. It’s called the user behavior. How can it study the behavior of the attacker and see if if somebody’s lurking in our environment in your networks in your applications in your in your data center. Right in your cloud environment. So our goal is to detect bad actors. Bad behaviors Proactly. You’re never going to be perfect. You’re going to miss some There’ll be false positives true positives false negatives. But if you can do any prediction that is even 10% better than it’s better than having no no prediction at all. So the you ubi was created called user behavior analytics as a category. We tro the and as said splunk came knocking on the door to acquire us right? and I like splunk a lot back then because workslunk was a leader in what we call the it services market. They just don’t have. They’re just launching what we call sim now. It’s called secret security information management I think ah and that and that helped me and I became the first general manager for spluk.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s fantastic and obviously you know like there you did splunk you did service now as well and then what happened then what happeneyou were encoud another opportunity comes knocking and that is the opportunity that you’re pushing today is Sarah so why did you think that the problem. You know that ntering or that you were envisioning was meaningful enough for you to start isra. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah I mean I’ll tell you era is a very interesting way how it happened right? Um, for me is look as as one I was at service now just now talking about 2016 your understanding is look if you are meeting and if you’ve been to alehando you are your listeners or have been to. I advise them to go revisit call centers right? and the world has so many call centers everywhere which our country are in it could be us India China Costa Rica philippines once you go to this call centers contacts and you can see it. There are manned by humans right? there. These people are taking all our calls whether it is for your re review not working what says your Tv issues your your comcast issues to your bloomberg gridbook issues now these people are solving day and day out the problems and this is one highly lot of human people are involved to solve it. It takes time. You have a problem you make a call somebody talks to you. It’s a multibody involved with lot of friction. My goal is can we streamline the whole thing right? So in two Thousand seventeen eighteen when I started seeing this and when I visited those those customers and the problems it was obvious that. There was no chat gp back then there was no ai back then it is still latest. All we had is what we still call natural language processing Nlp Pipelines there was to be iron never understanding andll you was getting involved. There was no language model set there were models called birth just as happening. So our goal is can we understand human requests.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: When a human makes a phone call or an email or he or she chat remember there was no Microsoft teams back there. There was no slack was just early days to those so question is how can we provide a digital experience. Voice experience right through? Whatever channel you may come into text maybe sms text right is understand the request. Like understanding the meaning and intent of user request and trying to solve their problem if I can do that even for thirty forty percent that thirty forty percent request will not go to agents. It doesn’t go to humans by doing that you improve the user experienced red user improve the productivity cut down the cost. Agent is happy because agent can do higher order items. So a lot of people don’t understand people in call center they don’t want to wake up and take a call from you on a huntro how much you want to talk to them. They don’t want to talk to you. They want to solve complex problems right? and they also want to move up in life. They want to be forecasting through yours they want to be go to Disneyland right. So the world has not given the chance for people in call centers to go up in life to me that was a great calling for me. This is not going to be easy. There. Everybody in the world. All the big guys will want us not to succeed because that is a status quo you still want to open up ticket manually. You want to give it to. Your saas providers and you want to buy their software and you to humans I want to ship the whole model your total shift left where give the problem and solution to the users empower them provide a self-service like think of the uber model until uber came in. We only had the taxi medallion business they came and change the revolutionize. So these.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Industry shift will take years to make it. But I think right now when we started we thought it’s going to have happening very well and it’s happening and with cha gpty there’s tail wind and us right everybody in the world wants use gender to Ai models charge gp models andll las that became like a common language like. If. You don’t know that in elementary school people look down upon you right.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, so so so then in this case I mean up on isra you know as as you’re saying you know like this program that you guys are solving now I mean up until this point I mean you had sold now for companies I mean we can. We can safely say that. Over $600,000,000 you know, easy right in in in acquisitions. You know, just on the tool that where at least disc closed ah then probably much more on the other ones that you’re not spilling the beans here with us. But then. But at this point you didn’t need really investors a model. You know you had done pretty well for yourself and I’m sure that you could even finance this thing but you decided to bring on board people like costla ventures first round capital and and menlo ventures. I mean we’re talking about you guys have raised what about 164,000,000 is that it. Yeah why I mean why? Why did you get these investors. Why did you bring investor those investors you know to begin with and specifically the ones that you brought in why first.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Something either depth right.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Yeah, no, very good question. Actually 1 of the best questions you asking me is the reason that it look first is as an entrepreneur. Everybody has a multiple ways to build my way of building companies is with venture capitalist I go to the el leave venture capitalist what you call the early funds. These are like fast drawn capital. These are true ventures Manlo ventures northwest. You mentioned we know, coastla coastla ventures these guys out the did who did my series a series b right? then I went to icon ventures then I went to Goldman Sachs for my last one along with Tomma Brower growthfriend that reason’t to go to vs to me is. It actually creates a very discipline very what I call the very good audit very makes it transparent company. You have a transparent financials. You have you have auditors coming in. You’re make you’re running the company for with the people checks and balances right? There are a lot of people want there are a lot of other ways to build in. My approach is to go build it with races because these things takes not only capital large capital. It also takes long time. It doesn’t take with one person to solve the problem right? So I knew back then if you really want to solve this this is going to take a 5 to 10 year horizon takes many years and more important text many investors large capplan you won need a right right? investors to to your point I went back to always I go back to the people who know me well because if I know you well on andro I will always work with you. There’s no reason not to go back similarly if I made money for you. You’ll also come back to me so that’s a menlo is a repeat investor.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: True ventures a repeat investors right? that if you see in my thing most people are repeat investors on how we are good. Goldman Sachs is a repeat investor these a fourth time I’m doing with Goldman sites right? So that’s a commonmarality that I look for is you also want to bring in a crossbo list of new investors who know the market plus you want to have some existing people that you know you know you? well.

Alejandro Cremades: And you’re like you you be mentioning the word you know people a lot so you know whether it’s people on the investment side whether it’s people on the team side advisor side. What do you look for in people when you’re surrounding yourself. You know with with these folks.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Knows the company. Well.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Um, fight.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: I think I think strong italy look people. Ah most people that I like to see is that I want people that we hire our good leaders. Good experts people who have determination who want to win and this is going to be and you have the stomach to go Append. Um. I think I tell people the startup is not for everybody startup is not for everybody at at any point in time right? So you ought to figure out is this a startup I want to join today at my point of career and is it something that me and my family want to support you got to make the decision for your son but it’s an all in game. It’s working at a startup and. Is so different than working in a large company because it exposes you. There is no fat in the system. So whatever work you do can make the company good or bad. So if you are not aware of that you can’t hide behind the facts. So I think people who are were good at doing. Drill down able to run their things can scale up scale down, you got to be good at everything you can’t say I’m only good at scaling down but not scale up similar. You can’t say I’m good at scaler but I can’t scale down. You can’t say I’m only good at managing people but I won’t be able to write code or I won’t be able to write my own marketing plans or I want them to do my own product management right. You got to be a journalist right? You ought to be an athlete and you also have a determination and persistency to stay in the game for long.

Alejandro Cremades: So model you go to sleep tonight and day you wake up in a world where the vision of isra is fully realized what does that world look like.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: I think the role of icera is copilot world man I think what Microsoft and open Ai and Chad gpd have done is well this ai should start happening. It. Everybody needs a copilot I only what for the next port caho you should use I as a po coiler to tell you who you should interview you may still reject. It. Should be a handra copilot for you right? Everybody should have a copilot use Ai to it to better our every department right? Well I t customer service a human there will be co-ilot aar for you which will go talk and take your own meetings right? So that’s a future world that I’m seeing is but we won’t know where ai will take. But next ten years will be 1 of the cool ages that I can think of right? It’s going to happen people will come with new Application New Services we are just starting I think I think 2023 is like I call it Ai ai inception. It’s like the ground 0 of this year so The next ten years will be like 1 of the best golden ages that I can think of in Ai.

Alejandro Cremades: I I love it I Love it I mean without a doubt you know he’s ramping up very very quickly Now we’ve been talking about the future here Mulu We’re gonna talk about the past but we’re gonna talk about the past with a lens of reflection. So imagine I’m able to bring you into a time machine back in time.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Okay.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, bringing you back in time perhaps to that moment that you were in yele and you were perhaps you know living in Hartford and let’s say you are able to have a chat have a sitdown with that younger self that younger mulu and you’re able to give that younger mulu 1 piece of advice before launching a company. What would that be and why given what you know now. So.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: I didn’t just do what I just did I think that same thing look I was at yale in 1990 or what are at new heaven just be hungry I was hungry to learn I think just keep doing the same thing. What I did man, there’s nothing different. So if I were to do it all over again i’ do exactly the same way the playbook right. I Punta asked it again sometimes I got lucky along the way at yale I met one of the best professors I met great producer is youcla one of my professor got turing awards and then I met people like professor David Patterson and Professor John Andy like these are industry legends. So for me. You can’t make a pluck the so that says that if you have to do it all over again. I’ll pick luck anytime.

Alejandro Cremades: And you create luck because lucky is preparation meets opportunity and in this case model as they say once you’re lucky twice you’re good and not only you’ve done it but you’ve done it now 5 times 4 times already successfully model. What is the best way for people that are listening to reach out to you and say hi.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Oh please? Yeah, please reach out to me, go to wwisra.com go to my Linkedin page please reach out I’m ah we are always always hiring. We’re hiring in every department. So if you are out there looking to join isra please reach out to us if you’re a customer you want to try the product please reach out. More importantly, listen to alejara’s podcast hopefully give us a feedback and give him and me so that we can do next time. Better.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well mood. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an on earth to have you with us.

Dr. Muddu Sudhakar: Ah, it was my pleasure and my honor to thank you.

* * *
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Muddu Sudhakar On Selling His Companies For Over $800 Million And Coming To The US From A Small Town In India

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