Here we go! This is the first of, I hope, a long series of Aperitifs with Entrepreneurs... My objective is to learn more about their path as creators, their past, current and future projects, but also their habits, success recipes and tastes in food, music, and more.
For this first interview, I knew I needed someone who would definitely have some cool content and stories to share, so I picked Mr Dinesh Bhatia, whom I met 3 years ago at a start-up event in Singapore. Dinesh is the founder and CEO of TradeHero, a mobile application that teaches its users how to trade on the markets without the financial risks.
We had this first, long interview (i will probably have to adjust for the next episodes) at My Little Tapas Bar, in Singapore's always lively club street. Excellent food, with a very good wine selection, in a simple and relaxed setting. Recommended!
Tests&Tastes: Hi Dinesh! Before we start, you have to tell me what device is around your neck? It's a bit crazy.
Dinesh Bhatia: It's a Bluetooth headset. It's just for me to make calls, because i'm traveling or in the car so often and everything, and i don't like to put something in my ear, it looks really bad, so I like to just lift it up, and it also look kind of cute :) but it's a stereo headset.
Cool, can you also listen to it under water?
Hahaha, no, not this one...
I saw a co-branded SGX (Singapore Exchange) / TradeHero advertisement in the subway. It's quite a jump from when I first met you at Startup Asia a few years back, and a sign that a lot has been going on for TradeHero... But first, can you give our readers a quick elevator pitch about your company?
Sure! TradeHero is a platform that teaches you financial basics in retail financial products. Right now, for trading, you learn through videos, what the basics of investing are, and you learn through real information. We have a gamified environment, which means, we give you virtual dollars, and since we have live access to real stock market information, you can buy and sell stocks, assemble a portfolio and watch your portfolio go up or down over time. More importantly, TradeHero is at the advent of what we call social investing: you can follow other people on the platform who have better results than you and follow their trade tips, to hopefully make wiser financial decisions. So even though it's a game, since information is real, you could actually transfer game skills to the real life into real trading decisions: that's the goal of TradeHero.
What incentive do people have to follow or to be followed, or share what they would do on the markets?
Definitely for the learners, the incentive is that you are learning, right? :) It's a safe environment where you don't spend real money but when you make mistakes, you still think "oh, I shouldn't have done that" and you lose virtual dollars... For the better traders, well, there does not necessarily have to be a financial incentive to share, the incentive can be passion, empathy, and reputation. Let's take your blog for example, you have 20,000 people, 100,000 people (nb: i wish ;-), what is the financial incentive for you to write? You know you have a large following and you can potentially teach and educate people about your experiences in Asia.
Similarly, on TradeHero, one incentive is reputation, when you have more people following your trading advice. But indeed another driver is that people actually can make money. Our simple line is "Make money without trading". To follow you, someone has to pay 2$ a month, and we split the revenue with the TradeHero. If you have a 1000 followers, minus the cut, you can make 700$ a month! So: monetary and reputation incentive, and there is also the community giving as well... Another advantage of TradeHero is that we team up with financial institution: we have done a promotion with SGX, the Stock Exchange of Singapore; one with the global broker eToro, Macquarie bank,...
We even hold our own contests: for instance, if you are the top trader on a certain market, for a week, or a month, or in a certain part of the world, you can win cash prizes. Also, if you achieve certain quests: first trade in a specific vertical, like real estate on the French stock exchange... So we have multiple things going on: the learning experience, the reputation building, making money from your own tips and through prizes up for win through the sponsorship of financial institutions.
This is quite a number of features and objectives... In the beginning, did you think of all these? Or what was the original idea behind TradeHero?
The original idea was still very true to what it is now. What has happened is that: now, financial institutions find us very attractive because we are an engagement platform for people who are aspiring to know more about finance. But the original idea was to build a community of people who can share tips with other people, with an incentive to do so.
Alright...
I really felt that, all of us, we are good at what we do, but, we're always struggling, 3rd class or 4th class when it comes to finance. The people in first class are Wall Street, basically. And they always get the tips first, they do everything first, and they hand us the crumbs. Then, like in a casino scenario, some of us will win, but most of us will loose. The idea behind TradeHero was to create a platform where we would fight all together as well.
"It's Main street versus Wall Street"
More minds together are better than one, so we can share the tips from a few good people, but effect that in a greater way.
How many users do you have now, and how big is the company?
We are forty people, with about 20 in Singapore, 20 in Shanghai, which we decided was going to be our first international step. We have decided that engaging the population from China was a priority. We have a global user base though, of about 1.2 - 1.3 million users, and our top 5 countries now are, in no particular order, Singapore, China, India, Thailand and the US.
1 million users is quite a milestone...
1 million is not enough, I'm looking for 2 million ;-)
Right... So, for now your focus is user acquisition?
Yes, and retention, as well as engagement. These are the two things you need to look after. If you spend effort on, say, a viral campaign, but you don't keep your users, you have basically wasted your money. You need to have a dual strategy, to bring people to the front door, and keep them engaged. Some people might come to the front door and say "hey, this is not for me", but you wanna try to interest as many people as possible, in a continued fashion.
In order to keep people engaged, you have to bring new features over time, but how do you prioritize which to develop first? What do you rely on?
Good question. The first most important thing to do after you've add the app up for a while is to make sure you have an analytics platform plugged in. We all have intuition of what is good to go by, but data driven plus intuition is the best way to go. If you just have a data driven approach with no intuition, you can never foresee new features. With data you have an historical context and a future context intuition. It's important to see what people are using in the app, what they are doing. You can try new features, and see if a percentage of the people are using it.
Also, it is very important to listen to customer feedback. In our company, the emails sent to support@tradehero.mobi go to everybody in the company. Everybody.
We get to see the praise, we get to see the curses (laugh), we get to see the wishlist, ... Some people come up with great ideas! For instance, learning content, how to make trading simpler, the screen simpler.
Its a combination of looking at the user inputs, the data, and of course, the pipeline of ideas the team generated, help us prioritise. So, for instance if our user engagement is falling, we might prioritise ideas that make the entry much more welcoming. In the end, it's never one thing only. Like everything else, it's a multi-variated problem, and you have to treat it as such.
What analytics platform are you using?
We use Localytics. We grew up with Localytics for a long time, so we continue using them. Basically, it's the tracking of not just user data, engagement, acquisition but also events: what people are using, when they are using it and you can plan much better.
(At that point, the first tapa of dry cured ham, cheeses and breads from Spain landed on our table...)
We paused the interview and started talking about the recent National Infocomm Awards, until a smell of burnt plastic interrupted us: a candle was slowly consuming the round neck cable of Dinesh's bluetooth headset... The first collateral damage for this post serie, the second would be, but i didn't know yet, the sacrifice of my sleep to transcribe this interview on digital paper...
Any new exciting features coming up?
Yes, FX trading. We are going to teach people how to trade FX and demystify that.
Beyond that, we begin to see TradeHero develop into a lobby for users who are not used to financial retail products and I wanna bring on the full circle: insurance products, trading products, ... Teaching, learning, a fun way of understanding all this, you know? Then users can deal confidently in the real life.
The other super exciting product we are building is FootballHero. That has done amazingly well: in less than a month, we have more than 90,000 users, so we are looking at more than 100,000 in the first month...
Which is a much faster acquisition than TradeHero?
Yes, but also a larger potential user base. Right now, we are running a contest on the occasion of the AFF Suzuki cup: the best predictors can win prizes.
I actually went watching Singapore Vs Thailand yesterday night... (Thailand won 2-1)
Were you impressed by the quality of soccer?
How to say... Yes and no... In a way, you can see really technical moves, but the consistency just was not there, compared to, say, a game between two european teams.
Thailand is the best team in our group, but you see, Thailand gets crushed by other teams in their group, who in turn get crushed by other group of teams... That's the kind of order of magnitude ASEAN football is inferior to the rest of the world...
At the same time, it's like in a cup: in one game, very strange things can happen. One team that plays two or tree levels below can still win a game thanks to team spirit, luck...
Right... The Koreans are good at that.
With the current system, there are so many qualifiers, that it might make things tougher for these teams to go through.
I agree with you, but I also think that some countries are better skilled at gelling the players together, by balancing well the club play and country play. The germans for instance, are good at that...
Talking about balance, thanks for the transition... You have an impressive LinkedIn profile, having founded many companies, and you still seem to be running multiple ventures at the same time: how do you manage that? how do you manage to squeeze some in for a rookie interviewer?
I'll be honest with you: managing multiple things at multiple times is a big mistake. I've done that a lot in my life, trying to balance two or three things. Certain people can do it, some people acquire. I guess at a certain level, it all depends on the teams you have. If you have great teams, like Carlos Ghosn who is running 3 car companies at the same time, then maybe you can do it. But in a start-up phase, it's very very difficult. Because you are empowered to make things change. I have really changed my modus operandi. I'm now focusing on this and nothing else.
Honestly, meeting people recharges you. They give me a fresh perspective. You and I could end up talking about something where one will say "OMG...!" People contact recharges me. I'm built like that. It recharges me for the next day. It's giving but also taking... Of course sometimes it is giving more taking, but I like meeting new people, new situations and see where that leads.
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| Dinesh Bhatia |
Great, do you actually remember your first entrepreneur experience?
Yes I do. I got a post-graduate degree in bio-medical engineering in England, where I met a group of people, and we wanted to provide, very early on, in the nineties, a heart rate monitoring service for patients who had gone through heart attack, and had been operated on. This was possible in countries where we could transmit the heart rate over to the mobile phone, with patients wearing a sensor.
I remember us setting up a company, buying some equipment, building the solution, and selling it to a very prestigious hospital in India - but they screwed us over, basically. They were very unscrupulous. So I realised how important it is to keep control in such a situation, when you are building a relationship. The relationship had been built by one of my partners, but he was never in India, and of course they took advantage of us. That was my first entrepreneurial venture! (laughs)
I remember us setting up a company, buying some equipment, building the solution, and selling it to a very prestigious hospital in India - but they screwed us over, basically. They were very unscrupulous. So I realised how important it is to keep control in such a situation, when you are building a relationship. The relationship had been built by one of my partners, but he was never in India, and of course they took advantage of us. That was my first entrepreneurial venture! (laughs)
It was a bold attempt, especially to sell in India straight away... You started a few times, and I'm sure that, like other entrepreneurs, you failed a few times too... If you could go back in time to give young Dinesh a few pieces of advice what would them be?
Very good question. I think I had all the hard qualities for being an entrepreneur: social, hard-working, creative, but there are some of the things I missed out. When you are a start-up, you have 2 jobs: it's not just running your company, it's always also, looking for funding. It's very important. And sometimes I looked at the product too much and look at the funding too late, or did not create the right environment for investors to come in.
Another big mistake I did, as I told you earlier, that I don't do anymore, is multitasking. On top of running my first company, I was a director in another company, and another one... I started up two or three other companies where I wasn't the CEO but I was spending time there, where I should have been spending time in one place.
"In a start-up, you cannot multi-task, not one bit."
Not for the first 3 or 4 years, not at all. If it's simple, then great! Spend more time recharging, spend more time thinking. In a start-up, there is no such thing as working 100%: you are always fighting and trying to build a bigger thing, starting from 0 and trying to reach to 100, so never multitask!
The second advice would be to always to focus on your next round of funding, be it A, B or C round.
And finally: learn, learn, learn from people, always. The best way to maximize learning is to be around people that are more experienced than you and to listen to them.
Nowadays, it has become very prevalent to multi-task, our devices are designed for it, so it is frequent for people to think that they should plant seeds in different pots and see what's germinating first, before pouring some real water in...
How did you decide of where to focus your energy? Is it intuition?
Intuition, and learning from horrible mistakes in the past. There is no harm in planting a few seeds, but realize when they are about to germinate and try to keep one alive. If you try to balance three germination, the three saplings might die. So, yes, at a very early stage, you might explore a few ideas, but then focus. For instance, at the time you get funding, you should already have, or be ready to leave your company and focus. If not, no VC will believe you! At a certain point, when you have funding, you have to commit 100%. Otherwise, your mind will always spend time to switch gears from one venture to another, and you will loose efficiency. You may even be good at all three, but why being a start-up, for only progressing slowly?
"The whole advantage of being a start-up is speed, and to make full use of that agility."
What drives you to be an entrepreneur?
I believe I have a high degree of tolerance to risk. Risk management or the ability to take risk is a very important trait. I'm not talking about casino-throw-a-dice kind of risk, but you need to be a calculating machine managing risk. You need to think, "if this then that, if that then this, and this then that, then I would do that". It's multi-level, compounded risk.
(Side note: talking about "if this then that", I recommend you check the software service of the same name, that I included in my Ultimate Digital Toolbox)
So, you need to be a risk-taker and a mathematical mind?
Yes, precisely, a compounded mathematical risk-taker. You should go through your scenarii, and then you have to be intuitive and data-driven. If you are a intuition-driven entrepreneur, then you are a kind of artist: you might do very well, but might also catastrophically wrong. If you are too data-driven, you will probably be right, but you will be so safe that you will not be expanding the true benefits of a start-up.
It's like stocks: if you only follow what people have said in the past, there is always gonna be a black swan, and you are going to die. But if you read the markets and you see where it's going, with the right background, you can make the right decisions.
Some entrepreneurs nowadays seem so concerned with metrics that they loose out in boldness...
If this was only a data-driven world, we would only have an aggregate sum of new knowledge based on existing knowledge, but we would not have disruptive breakthroughs. Like Einstein for example.
"My greatest pride comes from hiring top talents into my company when it's still a risky stage"
It seems to be quite a bipolar job to be an entrepreneur, you have to be both intuitive and data-driven, organised and free, ...
Yup, and also: you need to know how to work with people. You, do not make a company. It's always a team. If you don't know how to make people work, how to motivate them, you are going to struggle. My greatest pride today, still does not come from taking 10 million $ from a VC, for example. My greatest pride comes from hiring top talents into my company when it's still a risky stage. Because they believe in me. These guys have been in top school, have had top jobs, yet they are ready to get on-board, take a pay-cut, be in a small company, because they believe it is going somewhere. This is my greatest pride. And in the end, they are not depending on me, I'm depending on them as much. We become like brothers to get to the next level.
How do you go about finding these talents, especially in the risky stage...?
Well, there is a discovery stage, and a convincing stage. For some, it is network, mostly. Like for instance, I lately met the MD of a large European company, and he told me: "if you go to your next stage, I want to be your CEO". I love that sort of feeling!
Large companies pay well, but they can also treat you like dump... So I stay open to the profiles I see on LinkedIn, friends recommendations, and it's important to meet people in person. Being in FinTech, we need people with some financial background, and as you know, they are also the top payers in the industry, so it doesn't make the job simple... People will think "who are you to ask me this kind of favour?" When you reached the summit, like a Google or a Facebook, you don't need convincing people...
We are enjoying delicious garlic prawns and patatas bravas, so it's a good time to talk a little bit about your tastes: what's your go-to Singaporean comfort food?
Gosh, I have too many...
You can only name one.
You are being very very cruel with me, I'm not happy! (laugh). Seriously, that's very very difficult. ... Singaporean? ... If I could only choose one dish after I came back, and there would all be available to me, and I would be looking for the nuance of tastes, and everything together...It would probably be Laksa...
Ah, we have a winner. The good old Laksa!
100%, it has the whole combination of noodles, vegetables, the fish cakes, and the SOUP, and the SPICES... It's so complex, and it's fantastic...
But you put me in a difficult space, I could have said chicken rice, mee goreng, hokkien mee... Do your readers know what a Laksa is?
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| a bowl of Singapore Laksa |
Well, probably not all of them, but I try to post regularly about the Singaporean food classics, but this one is not in yet... The unconditional love for Food is one thing that French and Singaporean share in common...
Yes, and Singaporeans really have their own food too. I think Singapore is very blessed to have its own food culture. Of course, we pick from other countries in the region, there are always external inputs in every food culture. But there are things in Singapore you cannot find anywhere else, even in China, like Popiah, Chicken rice...
... Street food is excellent here. I envy the variety of street food you have here. In France, street food is basically a sandwich.
Yeah, actually, what is French street food about?
Good question... I guess it would depend on where you are in France, what time of the year... There is some street food, but it's not always available year-round. For specific local or cultural celebrations, you might see specialties pop out in the street. At this time of the year, I look forward to drinking "vin chaud" (nb: hot wine, litterally)
Oh yeah, like "Gluckwein" in Germany?
Precisely, we have this in Alsace & Lorraine, along with Sauerkraut or tarte flambees, aka "Flammekueche"
Oh yes, I know that one, my friend Stephane Istel who is the chef from Bar-Roque Grill does one that is to die for. We should go there once.
With him and Michael Ma from Indochine, you seem to be well versed in the local F&B scene...
Yes, they are friends and successful at that, but I cannot say I am a participant in this industry. Most importantly, they love what they do. I hate being around people who are successful and don't like what they do... I want to see passion on display.
Do you know many people who are successful and hate their jobs?
OMG yes! Who are successful and hate their jobs, or become successful and then look like they're happy, but I see the distractions. They are also other people who neither love or hate their job, but they have a methodical madness where they are trying to get to a certain level of capital and then do something that they are going to be happy with...
I meet all sorts of people. Some people are unhappy with their job, but they're nice people, socially, and they counter their professional unhappiness with a good social environment. Some people are social dickheads, maybe because they were brought up that way. I'm sure you have had the same experiences.
Yes, and I could almost recognize me in one of the definition you gave, but I'm not gonna tell you which one.
Haha, OK.
Being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, and there are discussions around work-life balance: what's your take on this? Do you believe in work-life balance? Does this concept mean something to you?
Whenever you run a company or a start-up, you are competing, it's war, so you need to work in such a way that you succeed where others fail, whilst remaining a nice person. A work-life balance is very difficult to maintain. I envy those doing it in a start-up. For example, my kids live in Sweden, and whilst I'm lucky professionally, I wish I could have my kids next to me. Thankfully I have a great relationship with my ex-wife so i can fly see them when I want, or they can fly to see me. If they were here though, I'd probably be living very differently. This interview would not happen at 7PM...
So, in a way, I'm very glad to be able to run my company without the encumbrances of family life, but also very unhappy to not see my kids more often.
Also, even when you are not working for your company, well, you think of your company, always... But when it's your company, the work does not matter because it's fueled by passion.
You remind of that quote (from Confucius, nb...) that says "choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a single day in your life"
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| Confucius |
Let me put it this way, I have never worked for another person, and I am enjoying myself so much, meeting people, my team, playing tennis, ... Not saying that it's always easy, because of course, one of your most important could be leaving, you're running out of money, your product is not doing so well and you don't know why... There are always problems to solve! hahaha
You have some freedom with your time, and you mention tennis, for instance. Do you draw parallels between your work and your hobbies?
Yes, recharging.
Mentally or physically?
Both. And you really need this because it's so hard to achieve maximum results with minimum resources. You have x, you try to achieve 10x. If you have 10x, you try to achieve 1000x.
You are in an equation in which you always try to maximize the output and results. Social environment is also a less tight, median equation, and you have more latitude to go up, down, left, right, and it's already a big pressure relief. Sport like tennis will give you a seratonin drip to recharge.
Excuse me, did you say "a seratonin drip"?
Yes, hahaha.
OK... I know what you mean but I might have to explain that a little bit in the post...
(Seratonin is a neuro-transmitter that is thought to contribute to well being. Sport is also thought to help the body synthesize this molecule..)
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| Seratonin |
So, you are obviously a risk-taker, and my blog is about Tests: what is the riskier think you have tested lately, or maybe an out-of-box experiment you have done lately and really enjoyed?
Lately, not much. But I sky dove, and I bungee jumped more than once. I also raced cars before, and I drove really, really fast...
On circuit or on roads?
Both.
Ahhh? Tell me more
Yes... Once I drove 300 km/h between Singapore and Malaysia...
What???
Yeah, I tried to break a personal record. But I had taken some Ferrari driving courses, so in a way, it was also a calculated risk ;-)
(Mention of driving fast now always remind me of the song 'Burning Desire" by Lana Del Rey, which obviously had to be used for the nice Jaguar car commercial...listen/watch below)
Any other exciting plan for the future when it comes to a new experiment?
Something as commonplace as having kids with a new person is a huge possible next step for me...
I did not expect this answer at all! But you're right, most people usually don't see relationship as a risk, but really, when you look at how much time you are going to stay with them, how much they are going to impact your life... it's quite a heavy experiment...
It's true. If you spent 3 years with a person you thought was right, and broke up, you basically took 3 years off your life. But I guess what is important is that whatever experience happens, to treat it positively. Even failures, this is so important. Learning from failures is what will help you solve your next problems.
Do you actually sit down to pause and reflect on past actions, or do you think it's more of a gradual, slow-moving process and that lessons learned kind of brew internally in the unconscious over time?
Let's put it this way: let me tell you what it's not... It's not shutting out those memories. Not shutting out memories of terrible failures. The understanding can be either coming slowly, or as a very clear insight that draws on similar context and decision - either way, it's fine. But the first goal is to not shut down those memories. So many people cheat themselves. For some of course, memories are highly traumatic like if you have been a soldier at war, a raped woman, etc, but say, if you have been bankrupt, have cheated on a partner you loved and shouldn't have or made the wrong decision in business... Those things can be traumatic and have large consequences, but if you made the wrong decision, with no one else is to blame, you have to learn from that.
Like a toddler who learns to walk: stand, fall and try again...
Precisely, it's not about not falling, but rather to fall and know how to quickly pick yourself up and try to stand again. This is the mark of a real human being.
Think of how hard it is for a baby to learn to walk, the hundreds of times you try... It is kind of funny that such a hard learning comes at an age when people are not conscious about it. Maybe if people were internalizing the learn-to-walk process, maybe many would give up!
We are all born with a degree of tenaciousness. As we grow, we become less and less tenacious. I see many adults who have lost that, and also their sense of curiosity... That's also why it's great to be around kids, they show you that so well. Great entrepreneurs have that child-like curiosity. Think about Elon Musk, Richard Branson, you know.
"In a way, Elon Musk is like a smart autistic child."
They want to explore, they want to engage. Many adults want to become safe, are not open to new experiences, ...
So, do you encourage child-like curiosity and play in your company? Do you have games?
Yeah! We have a table tennis table, a mini-golf, a Playstation... You learn and practice good skills playing these, from experimentation to decision-making. We are trying to be socially bounded group of people, because it is what matters most. Being social allow you to experiment so much, and change too.
I tend to see some people deciding that their characters is set in stone "that's the way I am, deal with it" kind of personality...
You might learn many things in youth, but then, you have the chance to change jobs, industry, where you live, so you need to adapt and change the way you are! You basically can decide who you want to be. As long as you are conscious of what you are doing.
Right, you could basically choose to even have different personas and play with them whenever you want... Have you heard of Christophe Rocancourt?
No, who is that?
He is a french impostor, who went pretty far up, pretending to be a member of the Rockefeller family, becoming friends and scamming Hollywood stars, etc... He would be the extreme end of having different personas, but basically we play different roles in our life: a son, a friend, a lover, ...
You're right! That's actually worth a whole separate conversation...
It's already one hour ten minutes of recording, it's gonna take me a week to transcript this interview! Man, you also burned your Bluetooth headset. This interview is heavy!
Hahaha
How about software? What are those that you use every day and find super useful in helping you as a CEO and in your busy lifestyle?
Calendar, obviously, To do lists...
Which To Do List software service?
Well, I use the one embedded in iPhone. I tried other ones with fancy features before but returned to the iPhone's own, it's simpler.
OK, what else?
To run the company, I'm finding Basecamp very good: company based to-dos, events, projects and all that. But I'm trying to keep things flexible, with not too many systems. I like the fact that now you can share your to Apple to do lists. It was not possible in the past...
On a personal level, are there things you do religiously on an everyday basis: software-based or not, habits or routines, things you eat, anything...
Yes, everyday, religiously, I play Backgammon. I love the structure, the spirit of the game,... and I know based on my skill level, that basically it's a test of my brain. If I'm not feeling too good, in the morning and I play, and my result aren't too good either, then I know it's not a day for making important decisions... Seriously!
So you play that everyday in the morning, first thing?
No, after breakfast, but everyday.
Interesting. I have never played backgammon, can you play on your phone?
Yes, I'm using Backgammon NJ HD, and there is a beginner mode. It's a very structured game and it's now my own process to evaluate my own mental sharpness, haha.
I used Lumosity too, I even subscribed, but do not play as regularly as before, I stick to backgammon...
(we show each other our Lumosity LPI chart that grades your brain in certain cognitive skills, based on your results in the games)
Wow, you really rock in the problem-solving area!... But hey, sorry for the cliche but Indians are great mathematicians... hahaha
Let's continue with your Tastes. Last time, you gave me name of an artist you like, a pianist...
Yeah, right, who was he? ... Yiruma! Did you like it?
OK... but not too much my thing... What else do you listen to?
Many things really, but I like songs with a twist. Like for instance, pop music usually doesn't have that twist for me. In music, I like the same sort of turn as you would find in good novels. I'm a very electronic person, so I listen to a lot of electronica.
Any song in particular that you listen to at the moment?
Humm yes, for instance, I listen to a german composer called Oliver Koletski, a very technical musician...
And another song I really like is Sonnentanz by Klangkarussel. If you listen to these two songs, you will know what music I like right now. Super technical, but still unpredictable, it's fantastic, you have to listen to this...
Now, to wrap up with this interview, I'm going to fire at you quick questions that call for quick answers... Are you ready?
Yes
In one word, define your life as an entrepreneur
A string of successes and failures.
This is more than one word!
Ohhh, right...Hmm... Experimentation
Accepted... Coffee or Tea?
Tea
The company you admire the most.
I have to say, Apple
One of your favorite quotes?
"Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions" (from Albert Einstein)
Beer or Wine?
Wine
The person, living or dead, that you would love to drink wine with?
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| Alexander The Great |
Laksa or Briyani?
Laksa!
Rolling Stones or Beatles?
Beatles
Your favorite OS?
Windows! I'm most experienced with it. But OK, Mac OS is my favorite right now.
Your favorite legal drug?
Viagra? Hahahah...
You sure you want me to put down Viagra in the interview?
Hahaha, No! Just kidding.
I don't know... Ventolin. Eye drops. Or Sleeping pills, yes.
Bar or Club?
Bar
Blondes or Brunettes?
Blondes! Hahaha
Thanks a lot Dinesh! It was a really interesting conversation, as usual :)
Thanks man! Really appreciate it too.
Hey reader, thanks for reading the whole interview! How did you like it? Please let me know what would you like to find out from successful entrepreneurs? Please share your thoughts with me at thibhumbert@gmail.com
