Marketer's guide to owning revenue, playing the long game, and career advice you won't find anywhere | Rohit Srivastav (Head of Marketing, FleetPanda, CMO in Residence, Arali Ventures)

This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity. 

Mita Mandawker (00:02):

Hello and welcome back to Ctrl + Alt + Marketing. I am your host Mita Mandawker. And if you missed our last episode with Rohit Srivastav, Head of Marketing at FleetPanda and founder of s11s community, hit pause and go check it out. It's packed with career gems you don't want to miss. My personal favorites from the last episode were the mental models that Rohit uses when evaluating new roles and how putting himself online changed the trajectory of his career and helped him get into a marketing role coming from a sales background. This episode, he's dropping more gems around working with founders who get marketing, how does owning revenue look like, some amazing tips on networking and so much more. So let's dive into the final part of Rohit's story. 

Mita Mandawker
(00:52):

There were two very interesting thoughts that occurred to me when I was hearing this. One was, a lot of marketers have this perception, especially when they're in the junior or earlier stages of their career, that, I would want to work on strategy. Execution is so unfashionable, it's so out of style. I don't want to work on that. But one thing that has always come across from your conversation as well as from other folks that I've heard is execution is the key to making your strategy work out and to getting like results. And you've proven that especially with all the campaigns that you talked about, idea-wise, they were wonderful, but if they were not executed in the right fashion, the impact would not have been there. 

Mita Mandawker (01:35):


You have that benefit of being like the leader and also having worked on these campaigns in a very hands-on fashion, I want to dig into that first and second aspect of it that I would want to pick up is you've worked across different sorts of startups and you've had that advantage of working with founders. Now, one thing that every startup marketer wants to do is work with founders who are supportive, want to identify the right kind of people that you work with who will be supportive of the function in general. So what have been your ways of, you know, identifying those sorts of winning leadership combinations? Because you also attributed your success to them in the beginning.

Rohit Srivastav
(02:22):

I'll go for answer number one. First is the strategy versus tactics and I am a huge movie buff and specifically Bollywood. So I would give you an example of the best possible scene that displays it. Have you watched Lakshya movie that where Hrithik Roshan goes to become an army man? The scene where Hrithik Roshan, Om Puri and Amitabh Bachchan are sitting and they are discussing how to take over LoC and everything. And Om Puri says, and these guys have a plan in their mind and their strategy is like will take over from this side and that side and so on. And Om Puri says that there are not one but two bomb canyons. And Amitabh Bachchan says, how do you know? 

Rohit Srivastav (03:18):



I have used these guns and it takes 10 seconds for one gun to recoil. And because the difference in those two bombs on the other two cannonballs is just 5 seconds, there's no way it is being fired by one cannon gun. So we have to prepare for two. Now it doesn't mean that Hrithik Roshan wasn't great, at IMA it means that you need to operate those guns to really understand how to prepare for war. Because you had the best education, you had the best training and you prepared to take over Tiger Hill. But you went there and you saw there were two guns instead of one. What will you do? That is why without being tactical and having the tactical experience, if you go directly into strategy, of course, you'll have some successful campaigns. But the time you fail, you’ll fail miserably.

Rohit Srivastav (04:19):

So that is why I suggest people actually get their hands dirty. Because there is no shortcut. There cannot be a shortcut. Just getting strategy work without being tactical is just gyan dena (big talk). There's this concept called carry the water. You can carry the water is actually like some old African or South American proverb. But what it means is during the training process you need to hold that water, do that work to get where you can, and then only you will be crowned the head of the kabila (clan). So you cannot just go and sit on the throne. That's not how it goes. That is my thinking. I mean if you are a prodigy that gets everything, go ahead, win the world. I will be a supporter, I'll be a cheerleader. 

Rohit Srivastav (05:12):



But according to me, that's not how it works. That was the answer. The other part is how do you figure out which founders to work for. Do I have a sure-shot method? No. But one of the ways that it has worked out is I usually consult for a month or two with someone before I join them full time to evaluate just how both of us want to work together. Second is. And I tell this to people junior than me as well. Whenever you are being hired, figure out if your manager, they can be a founder of marketing or whatever. Gauge this are they telling you the how or the what? They don't have to tell you both. If they're telling you both, then you're not being hired by your brains. 

Rohit Srivastav (06:12):

So that is a red flag. The third thing is, I usually work at least like the jobs that I've always taken. I've always been around 20,25,30% versus lesser than the highest offer that I have had in my hand then. And the reason has always been that I work with people I really like. So I tell this jokingly to my friends that is a premium that I pay to not work with a-holes. So that is how I go about this. Obviously, there are times that you would fail at this as well. This is not a sure short process, but that is how you go ahead and figure it out. And also prioritize working with people you like and people those match your vibes. 

Mita Mandawker (07:12):

Some fantastic takeaways from this. I'm still laughing on the premium part of it, but jokes apart, I think this is a very solid way of evaluating the fitment on both ends. Even for the founders, even for you. And I think even as I grow older, I've come to realize it's very important to work with the right kind of people, the kind of people who also energize you. And it's a two-way street. Apart from the work that you do, people are so important part of your everyday life when it comes to, like, your professional journey. So, yeah, I think so far I'm liking and I'm loving all the, you know, career bombs that you're dropping over here. I'm so sure that people are going to dig this, lap it up. 

Rohit Srivastav
(08:08):

I just hope my current and future bosses don't hear this out. Otherwise, other than that, I'm pretty safe. 

Mita Mandawker (08:15):

I hope not, considering the audience for this podcast is going to be marketers themselves. 

Rohit Srivastav (08:21):

Do you think I care? 

Mita Mandawker (08:22):


I don't think so. 

Rohit Srivastav
(08:25):

So, okay. Another thing is, the one thing that liberated me was I've been very opinionated online, which is a risky part today, but the reward, it's you, is you only attract people who are okay with your opinions, so they let you be. And that's why I have stopped caring.

Mita Mandawker
(08:54):

That's actually very true. You attract the right kind of people. That's so it's a magnet, so to speak, repels the people who are not going to, you know, match the vibe, so to speak. 

Rohit Srivastav
(09:06):

Exactly. 

Mita Mandawker
(09:08):

I'm going to shift gears a little bit. And now this was my take. Even when I first sent the note out to you, I said that, you know, its been my opinion or my perception that youre very good at networking because I see you so much online. I had not met you, but I'd heard of you, I had seen people, you know, refer to you in posts and all. So I think one thing that I would want to understand a little more right now is networking is very crucial right now in any industry, especially more so for us and especially in a remote setup, like all of us are working remotely. It's not possible to meet. We have never met. We have only met online. 

Mita Mandawker (09:47):

So, what advice would you give marketers regarding developing strong networking skills in this kind of remote setup? 

Rohit Srivastav
(10:03):

There are multiple tactics floating around and I think a lot of them are good. Basically like catching up on random things or just to brainstorm or one of the ways is to do a podcast. I think this works absolutely fine. But I will tell you what has worked for me. One, I am just being myself and I said that this is the person that you get on a podcast, on a Zoom call, on a WhatsApp call. Everywhere it has been me. 

Rohit Srivastav
(10:37):

So whenever people, there have been people who have not met me for the last decade before I shifted to Bangalore, like I came here and then I started going to meetups and all and they meet me and this, they repeat this one phrase “Yaar aise lagta hi nahi hai ki I met you for the first time (it does not feel like I met you for the first time). So the core point that I want to drive home is be really authentic. Don't do networking for networking sake. If you don't like a person, don't make friends with them. It's okay. Talk to people you generally want to talk with. Approach people that you really admire. In India networking happened to me because I was very early into this ecosystem and we just became friends naturally with each other. But I have done active networking outside of India. 

Rohit Srivastav
(11:29):

So there are a few marketers that I talked to before now, I keep on talking to them some way or the other. So I talk with the CEO of Drift, which is David Cancel. I talked to him over Instagram because that is one place where he's not the CEO of Drift. He's an art collector. So I talked to him about art and we jam about that and because I was generally interested in knowing how the art collection thing goes. I could not fake it. I just told him that I don't know shit about art. But you seem to be very interested. What does a SaaS guy do with art? And then that conversation started. Similarly, I once read Dave Gerhardt's newsletter and it really struck a chord. 

Rohit Srivastav (12:17):


And I wrote to him, I like, dude, your newsletter really hit home with me. And these are the points - this anecdote. And there was nothing made up. I didn't expect a reply, but I wrote to him. He replied. We became email friends. I think Tim Soulo was the CMO of Ahrefs. I admire him. I really respect the things that he does. And there was once a job role that he opened and I wrote an application to him in a Twitter DM, and he really liked that application. And then he opened up calendar slots for me. We jammed over what I can do. Like it was sort of a conversation to evaluate if I can work with him. And then he figured out and he basically said that, dude, you are overqualified for the job. 

Rohit Srivastav
(13:07):

I am just basically looking at a content writer. And then we became friends. And once during Kula, I got a chance to go to Singapore and we met for coffee. And now he is one of those acquaintances that I could fall back. So again, being genuine, being who you really are, I could not really fake myself into being acquainted with these people and I only wrote to them. Again, I think the Adam Goyette is another connection that I have. I seldom, rarely get on calls with him to understand what to do and so on and so forth. But that also happened like that. He wrote a newsletter that I really liked. One of his LinkedIn statuses really hit home with me. So I gave him a compliment that sort of became into a conversation. 

Rohit Srivastav
(14:00):

And then when you are generally out there, people know that you are not trying to just play games. Handshake networking, which I call nobody cares. So I don't do that. But these genuine conversations, even if they are short, you can always go back and ask if you need something, just ask, don't pretend to do something else. And then sort of push your ask in that envelope and then position it. So that has worked for me. I'll give you an example if somebody has to reach to me, I am super active on LinkedIn, but that also means my LinkedIn is super popular. My LinkedIn DMs are filled with requests or just random headers and all of that. 

Rohit Srivastav (14:54):


I have around 19,000 followers on LinkedIn, but I have only 39 followers on Twitter. I spend an equal amount of time on Twitter now. You can basically see things together. 

Mita Mandawker
(15:10):

This has been my takeaway from other conversations I've had on this pod that nothing beats the actual genuine curiosity about the other person. I think that's the 101 or the basics of networking, just having that curiosity. Everything goes from there. And it's not about you, it's about them. It's just about understanding them, what they like, what they don't like, and just having a conversation. And it can go ahead from there, should it go ahead from there. But I took away a lot of good things from this and love it. 

Rohit Srivastav
(15:50):

Thank you. 

Mita Mandawker (15:52):

I have question around owning revenue as you climb up the ladder. So you have a very strong background in content and branding. You work across multiple sub-functions, demand and product marketing, everything. But at the core, you have been a content and a brand marketer, so to speak. And you've transitioned now into like a revenue focused leadership role. You have definitely owned the pipeline. How do you navigate this shift, like from content to like revenue ownership, the onus changes? It's a completely different ballgame altogether. So how does that shift happen? Because I think it's also the key to growing in your career to own a number. 

Rohit Srivastav
(16:38):

The first question is, should you? So I will quote another great person that I have been fortunate to work with is Kuldeep Dhankar. He was the VP Sales at CleverTap. And he used to say, or he still says, that there are only two parts in a startup, make and sell, and you have to be on either side of it to be relevant. So what is marketing? Marketing is basically selling at scale. You cannot be a creative genius sitting in a corner and writing a story around some exquisite thing that happened with your product. No, that does not work. You have to. Obviously, you cannot be super salesy, but there is an angle of sales that you need to bring in.

Rohit Srivastav
(17:31):

So that translates into another corollary that I believe is the closer you are to revenue, the more money you make, and the bigger seat at the table. So that was the reason why I came close to revenue. That is the reason why I started owning the pipeline. And essentially, if you want to become a Head of Marketing, there is no Head of Marketing role that does not post revenue. That can be revenue minus one, which is basically opportunities or SQLs or whatever they call. But it has to want to fall into revenue and as close as possible. That is part 1. Second, how did I transition? 

Rohit Srivastav (18:13):



I figured that I could be that mad genius guy sitting in a corner writing stories and have a glass ceiling on my head for my salary and compensation and benefits and respect, or I could swallow this red pill and actually learn how to do this. And I literally learned how to do this by being honest with the people that I worked, that I don't know how to do this right. So Arjun Pillai, the founder of Incent, he was the guy who for the first time taught me how to report on these things, how to make a board deck, how to be aligned to revenue, how to track all of this, how to have meeting based targets. And that is where it started. Sort of. The training of it was really long throughout CleverTap and Netcore and WebEngage, it was all there. 

Rohit Srivastav
(19:10):

But I came to the forefront with a bat in my hand, the proverbial bat, to basically hit the ball, add Incent, and Arjun was there to guide me to that. And after that, obviously there has been again the next level of learning curve, but it has been a different kind of journey since. 

Mita Mandawker
(19:30):

So the takeaways are - be a perpetual learner, and figure people out who are good at this and eat their brains up.

Mita Mandawker
(19:39):

Yeah, makes sense. I think you should never hesitate to ask for help should you need it. It's always good to ask questions than to sit in one corner and just be mum. 

Rohit Srivastav
(19:50):

So there are two things. This goes with general life as well as being a marketer. The one baseline that you should never forget, maybe paste it right in front of your workstation, is that people don't care. People don't care about anything. Yet people die, and folks just write RIP and move on with their day. So they are not going to care about your stupid questions. 

Mita Mandawker
(20:24):

That has to be one of the best ways to let go of that hesitation and that awkwardness. I think that's the best way to think of it. Great. I'm going to move to the final section of this conversation right now. And one thing I noticed when I was going through your LinkedIn. And also when were, you know, initially doing, when I was doing my initial research on you was you have like a clear passion for sharing your knowledge. Okay. And you do like quite a bit of mentoring and teaching. You've been doing it right now at Stoa and with IIM Raipur. So I wanted to understand what is it that motivates you so much to, you know, give back to the marketing community when you already have so much going? 

Rohit Srivastav
(21:17):

Honestly, it’s not just the marketing community. I just want to give back to people who are looking to learn. And by chance, I only know marketing, so I only can give back, teach marketing back to people. If I was a dentist, I will be teaching dentistry. So that is the real answer. And why I want to do this because there have been great teachers and there have been bad teachers in my life. The teachers who have been great at their job shaped my passion, hobby, literary interests, academia, and everything about them. The reason why my English got better was because my English teacher was the best in the school, in fact, one of the best in my life that I have had. She genuinely made me interested in why Brutus betrayed Julius Caesar. 

Rohit Srivastav (22:12):

Why it had to be done on the heights of March. Nobody cares. But I did because she taught really well. I want to do that for people who are genuinely, passionately interested in this line, because I know how to do this and I want to unlock that further. That is the only motivation that I have. 

Mita Mandawker
(22:33):

You have been the recipient of great teachers, mentors, and it makes sense that if you are able to extend that courtesy to others. It's nice to be able to give back. 

Rohit Srivastav
(22:46):

And the other part is like, about the mentoring part, why I do that is because I did not get that. Obviously, I'm not saying that I'm not a completely self-made marketer and all of that, but there was a great peer group for me, which I can fall back on. But everything apart from that, we, like the entire peer group, had to figure out what would happen the next year and the next year. Now, since we have a certain visibility to the future or at least the present, we owe this to the ecosystem to give back. That's our thing. Because honestly, if we do not, then nobody else will. And this will always be like, people who are coming after us will always have to reinvent the wheel and then sort of build the car and then move forward. So why not do that? 

Mita Mandawker (23:36):

That's great. I think that's a great way of looking at it, and I wish more people thought of it that way. 

Rohit Srivastav (23:44):

I try to encourage along, but, there are other challenges. 

Mita Mandawker (23:49):

I want to move next into talking about the s11s community that you run. I think it's a very successful one. I've seen that you have around 3000 members. You do road shows. I think you did one this year, moving around the entire India. I think you did Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and all those places. 

Rohit Srivastav (24:14):

We did eight. 

Mita Mandawker
(24:15):

Eight cities, which is a great. I think what I was interested in understanding is for someone who has a full time job, who's also started, like, this community in partnership with other folks, what was the idea behind it? And I would love for the audience to hear a little more about the community, how it started, and what are your plans for it. 

Rohit Srivastav
(24:40):

The genesis was really interesting, and this started from an insight where four of us had a WhatsApp group where we would just ask the stupidest of questions and it would be as simple as, how do you get reviews on G2 crowd? Because one of us has not done this before and there are three people who have done it. So I basically asked for that playbook and how to execute it. So it started from there. And then every week some or the other would call. It was COVID. So we are all working alone and all that. So we would call each other. We can just do that group call. And we would rant about our lives, jobs, and marketing. And because SaaS marketing is such a niche that you cannot talk to anyone apart from people working here, working at this niche. 

Rohit Srivastav (25:31):

And when we found that group, and naturally we found each other, it became such an outlet that we thought, okay, this is an amazing thing that we have discovered. And we felt sorry for people who don't have it. So during that same period, Clubhouse launched on Android. And we're like, let us test this new app out, and we'll do the same random conversations that we do because Clubhouse does not let you record. So it's a safe space and let this put out. Let us put this out on LinkedIn, whoever wants to join, how many people will come? And 10-15 people will have, like, a good evening chat. And first day we did it, 85 people showed up. 

Rohit Srivastav
(26:21):

And the highest we had was, 125 SaaS marketers hanging out in a Clubhouse room and just talking random shit about their job, their company, and everything. Obviously, Clubhouse fizzled out and we ran out of conversation topics. But it went out for a few months and then we moved on to just getting it on Slack. We felt that after the Clubhouse session, there was not a regular place where people could go and hang out and ask questions until that Clubhouse session or that Zoom session would happen. So we moved to Slack so that there's 24-hour connectivity with each other and people can just randomly connect with each other and so on. And we literally thought if 200 people would join. 

Rohit Srivastav
(27:11):

So 185 people were on the group call, and I think the 125 are these, and then we'll distribute it through LinkedIn. So if 200 people will join, that will be a good community. And we had like a target of 400 for the first six months, that we'll get 400 good people inside the community. Within six months, we had around 1200 people in the community. And it's for free. There's no money to be made, there's no money to be spent, no marketing, nothing. That is how it sort of started to grow, obviously, how we were able to do it, because we have four people doing it. And then we had great support from our peer group, which are like senior marketers just going into the community and answering lengthy answers to the most basic of questions. 

Rohit Srivastav
(27:57):

I would call out, Abhas was there, Abhas would answer a lot of questions. Abbas from Springworks, Anirudh, who is like a veteran in this, in the paid search department, he still helps out a lot of people in the community. Niranjan was there, Tejashri, he was there like these. So a solid group of, I would call them lighthouse members that would just come out and show path to people younger and without any interest at all. So that is how the community flourished. There's no way we could have done it on our own and just us running the show and so on. It started from there. And obviously, now it is a self-sustaining beast that we also see and wonder how are we able to build this up. 

Mita Mandawker
(28:44):

That's such an organic way of beginning with just people getting together, having a chat, and then it snowballing into something completely different altogether. It goes to show that there are folks who want to get together with their colleagues or with people working in a similar field and exchange those experiences. And I think knowledge… that human connection at the end of the day. 

Rohit Srivastav
(29:12):

And we have made sure that it's a safe place. So like the anonymous channel, for that matter, nobody, including us knows who posts on anonymous that is by design. Nobody can lhowever deep you go, you can never find out who posted on that channel. So that is how we have been and we have been very open to criticism. So I think it has been, it has come out very naturally and I think people love it. So I think that's the NPS that we need. 

Mita Mandawker
(29:44):

Perfect. Do you have any exciting plans for the community this year apart from the road shows that you've already done? 

Rohit Srivastav
(29:51):

We'll keep on doing the meetups for sure because that has always been like that physical interaction, people in a room and just ranting out loud. That has been a great place to be, but we only want to do it the organic way. We have tried multiple things in the past. There are multiple sponsors who want to do certain things with it, but we have put sponsors at bay because we don't want to make it spammy or promotional because marketers, the one thing marketers hate is marketing. So honestly, there will never be a grand plan of things, but there will always be some or other activities that will bring people together because that is the driving act of the company. So that is how we think about it right now. Never say never, but that is the current status quo. 

Mita Mandawker
(30:44):

I think that's the best. I think I'm putting this as an anecdote later. Marketers hate being marketed to. I noticed when I first visited your LinkedIn profile two years ago or so that you are into screenwriting. And I was like, what a combination, of screenwriting and marketing. In a lot of ways it's kind of related, to the storytelling aspect involved in both professions. But what I would want to understand is what sparked your interest in screenwriting and what were some parallels you found between marketing and screenwriting, and has it helped you become a better marketer - having a very different passion altogether. 

Rohit Srivastav
(31:37):

I'll maybe answer that question in reverse. It has absolutely made me better at my job, or at least made me easier because the frameworks that I have learned, wireless speed writing, come in very handy. Designing company narratives and story that you want to tell in all your marketing assets majorly all brand narratives for sure. So that is the short answer. The longer answer is why and how I got into screenwriting is I always wanted to become a writer. So I used to write short stories. I have started multiple blogs that now that I don't know where they are because either the blog service provider went down or something happened with the website and so on. But I've always been a story writer. 

Rohit Srivastav (32:22):

I would write short stories and so on, and I felt that it came naturally to that I could just begin writing and it would turn into a story. But after a while, they stopped turning into stories because I think I hit a roadblock somewhere in my process or something. But those intuitive stories stopped coming to me. So I figured out, okay, but how can it happen? Because I thought, intuitively, somebody is a storyteller or not. And then I came across this masterclass by Aaron Sorkin, which was on screenwriting. And the first thing that occurred to me while I was watching the trailer and doing some basic free YouTube research was screenwriting, which is essentially, the craft of storytelling. There is a method to every story, and there's this book called Seven Basic Plots. 

Rohit Srivastav (33:18)

Coincidentally, the same time I got in, I became friends with someone who was an actor, a struggling actor, and he used to do theater and all. And he suggested this book that, if you're really interested, because we got into this lengthy discussion on films and everything, and he’s like, so there's this book called Seven Basic Plots that tell you that all stories in this world can only have these seven structures. So essentially, there are only seven stories to be told in this world. Only the characters change and the setting changes. So that blew my mind away. I'm like, how can this happen? Because there are millions and billions of stories going around. And then I read that book, and I figured, okay, this is the structure. And then that got me interested in screenwriting. 

Rohit Srivastav (34:10):

Then I took the masterclass by Aaron Sorkin. Then I took a couple of other workshops from Indian screenwriters, and I became friends with a very famous writer. We used to jam the stories, on how a certain story can turn into a script and how to write a particular screen, particular scene. Why Alfred Hitchcock is maybe the best thriller director ever, why the Shining is so terrifying, without it being really horror, so things like that. And then we started writing. I started assisting him and so on. And that gave me an understanding of how you can build stories from the ground up. What makes stories interesting, what makes one story more interesting than the other, why you are hooked one particular character than the other, and so on. 

Rohit Srivastav
(35:03):

So that helped me build the founder brand playbook that I use, the company narrative playbook that I use. I borrow a lot from what I learned in the parallel world. And then at the same time, it satisfies my craving for writing. I'm still not making any money from there, because I'm not maybe as good as that. I'm an unpaid intern in a big-ass writer's room. But I love that. I do that on Sunday mornings. Every Sunday morning I write with them, and I jam with them, and that keeps my creativity going. And it makes me believe that I can still be a writer. So I'm chasing that dream. Maybe in this decade or the next, God knows what will happen. 

Mita Mandawker (35:49):

Throughout this entire conversation, we have been sharing anecdotes. We have been sharing a lot of conversations and thoughts around building a career in marketing. Now, you have had the benefit and the hindsight of 10+ years of experience working in this field, and you have started and experienced so many different things. What is the enduring advice or principles you would share with marketers that would help them navigate, grow, and thrive, which are three different things in their careers? I would want to conclude the podcast with that. 

Rohit Srivastav
(36:26):

Navigate is by actually generally making connections. And that means that there are multiple people that I have been friends with from the SaaS industry that have not given me any advantage in the past five years. And then one fine day they'll get me the next job. So this one quote is sort of that baseline for that. Networking is when you want to go fast, go alone, but when you want to go long, go together. So make the game bigger for people. Help wherever you can. They can be junior than you, senior than you, may be a peer, but if you can give them some advantage and doesn't cost you much, go ahead and do that because that will give you returns in the long run. That is how you build your network. 

Rohit Srivastav
(37:22):

That is how you get back channel feedback, that is how you get referrals that you, that is how you get better results. That is navigate. Second is grow. Grow is essentially not one is accepting yourself. When you say accepting yourself is understanding what I am really good at and what I am really bad at and be comfortable with that because that is the first step from where you will be. Start asking for genuine help rather than masking it. Ask like how curiously you would ask something for the first time. Like when you are in your classroom and you are not afraid of anybody's judgment. I think all of us who are in the startup ecosystem have a good amount of face time for the founder. Learn from them.

Rohit Srivastav
(38:16):

Founders are the most shameless creatures around. They ask for all kinds of help, all kinds of advice from all kinds of people, that is how they grow. And if you are working for him or her, that shows that they are higher in that rank and they are asking for things from you and from more junior people. So if they can, so can you. That is the only way to grow is by genuinely asking for things that you don't know anyone. And third, is thrive. Thrive is actually to not play games when you are playing the longer game. So just be yourself and actually be a good human for people around. Don't rub people the wrong way because this is a small world that people remember. So just like that Maya Angelou quote is people never forget how you make them feel. 

Rohit Srivastav
(39:14):

So be, I mean, be firm, be opinionated, but don't be an a-hole. So you can, you can be a decent human being doing all of that. 

Mita Mandawker
(39:27):

I think this is one of the best ways to wrap up the conversation. I can't wait for this episode to be out because I think people are just going to enjoy it, lap it up. There's so much value that even I took away from this conversation that I can't wait for others to listen to. Thank you so much Rohit, for taking time and doing this episode super duper excited. Love the conversation. Can't wait for this to be out and for the world to hear. 

Rohit Srivastav
(40:02):

Thank you so much for having me and bearing with me for the past hour. 

Mita Mandawker
(40:06):

There was no bearing required. Enjoyed every single minute of the conversation. I made copious notes to show. 

Rohit Srivastav
(40:13):

Thank you so much.