215: Build a Trophy Business with Colin Sanburg

https://youtu.be/sJCbREzvTjo

JJ Ghatak, CEO and Co-founder of OnLoop, a habit-forming, genAI powered goals and feedback platform for high functioning teams. JJ is based in Singapore. We explore the Collaborative Team Development Framework, its functionality, application, and potential approaches to maximize its effectiveness within the team.

— Focus On Your Team’s Energy with JJ Ghatak

Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today, right from Singapore, is JJ Ghatak, the CEO and Co-founder of OnLoop, a habit-forming, Gen AI-powered goals and feedback platform for high-functioning teams. Welcome to the show, JJ.

Thank you, Steve, Thank you for having me.

Well, you’re our first guest from Singapore and I visited Singapore 30 years ago. Ooh, actually 35 almost.

Oh, wow. That’s a long time. It’s changed a lot in 35 years.

I’m sure it has, but at the time it already was very futuristic and it was really great and the food was amazing. So I had some fond memories. I bought myself a mini Sony CD player, which was like smaller than the CD itself, which was not very practical, but looked very cool. So tell me a little bit about your story. I mean, you were an executive at Uber, you were involved in founding several startups, and now you’re running OnLoop. So quite a journey you had there.

No, thank you. And to be honest, I’ve never seen myself as a startup person per se and actually being a startup founder is probably one of the worst career choices someone can make. And so when someone says they want to be a startup founder, I try to convince them not to, and then if they convince me that they care enough about what they’re doing, and that I eventually give in and say, maybe it’s a good idea. But I think that as a person throughout my career, it’s always been exciting to stand for something and to care about a mission that’s greater than a paycheck.

And I feel very lucky that my whole career, I’ve never felt like I’ve had a job where I’m working primarily for the salary I’m getting, and I know how big a privilege that is. And so I feel like the streak to be an entrepreneur, and I think being an entrepreneur means building a movement or sort of working towards something you believe in is something that I’ve had the privilege of work on my whole career.

Yeah, no, that’s a lot of fun. I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day and he said that he just read a study whether it was a Harvard Business, I can’t remember, but it was a credible source and he said that basically are three things required for happiness. It’s health, relationships and a purpose. It’s really resonant. So yes, if you got these three, then you can’t go very much wrong.

I agree.

Okay, so how did this OnLoop thing come along? You were working at Uber. Why would anyone leave Uber to be a startup founder?

Yeah. So, I joined Uber in June of 2016 and we IPO’d as a company in May and in November of 2019 was the first time I was in a position where I didn’t have to earn a paycheck to survive. And, you know, I come from a fairly middle-class Indian family, and so the notion of following your dreams or following your passion was not something that was ingrained in me. You were told to get a job and work hard. And so, you know, I had a small six-figure sort of buffer when Uber was about to IPO, and I was 33 at the time and single. I’m about to be a father in a few weeks and so I knew there was a small window opportunity where I could take risk and not feel guilty about it. And the only thing that I had complained about my whole life was clunky, ineffective HR processes that I was subject to when I was at Uber, when I was at Accenture.

And so life as a manager felt very hard and not supported. And so soon after leaving Uber, I wrote a two-page document that I titled sort of talent tech, sort of write about all of the pieces that were broken in my experience with regards to the talent experience in the workplace. And I have to rethink them from the lens of a talented team member or a manager and not a functional organization. And you know, when I left Uber, it was also a good time to start a company. I got encouraged by a lot of people to move in that direction. And the fact that there’d be millions of dollars of venture capital ready to back any idea that an ex-Uber person was passionate about.

And then one thing led to another and I ended up sort ...