Why Starting Over Still Pulls

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Jealousness, you know, like you have built something once, then you have crossed the finish line, felt the validation of an exit. The weight of proving a concept to the world, right? I mean, it is huge, right? And then you start again. Not because you have to, but because something still pulls you at. Most people think that entrepreneurship is a young person's game that risks appetite, shrinks with age, that by your 50s, the smart move is to the coast. I mean, but what if that's exactly when you have the clarity, the patience, the honesty with yourselves to build something that exactly matters? Good to think about, right? So, dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avik, and this is the podcast where we sit with the choices that actually shapes us. The systems that we create and the courage it takes to begin again, but the world expects you to be done. And today, dear listeners, I am joined by a very lovely guest. Please welcome Vikram Jalana. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Hey yeah, Vic. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, Vikram, for joining us today. And dear listeners, like it's needless to mention, but still, I'll just quickly introduce with Vikram. So Vikram is the CEO and co-founder of Victory AI, who started his company in his 50s, raised over $2 million, and is working with to, I mean, working to uh democratize video creation to artificial intelligence. That's really awesome, right? So I do not want to take much of your time. Let's have started. Welcome to the show again, Vikram.

The Myth About Older Founders

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So Vikram Dak, uh, there's this narrative that entrepreneurship belongs to the young people, the hungry ones, the hustlers, the ones with nothing to lose, right? And you started, Victory, in your 50s after already leading to company to exit. So, what is the most persistent misconception that people have about starting over later in life? And where does that belief fall apart when you actually live it? What do you say?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, yeah. So I think there is there's a lot of value in experience. So sometimes that gets disregarded. But I I mean I can I can argue that either way. Sometimes too much experience is also a barrier. But but but I think there is value in having done something once, having created a network, having created a buffer, if you will, in terms of you know life. I don't, I don't, if I if I get to my 50s, there's a little bit of savings that I've kind of created along the way, and and I have a little more comfort zone. So so there's a lot of there's a lot of advantages coming in. You're coming in, you have people that you know that you can hire, if you will. You have uh you've seen problems that that you might you might know, hey, I can solve this. And then uh and then you've you've had the experience. Now, what happens though is the experience doesn't always translate right as is, because unless it's the exact same business in an exact same industry, you're gonna completely start from scratch. So, in some ways, any new business, any new market, any new product, it's like you're you're at level zero. And then you're kind of kind of build building that up. So you have to know like very importantly, like why you're doing it. So for me, I'll give you my kind of story and why I started this again. Uh but that that that's kind of very important. And then and then the what will change. The how, the how you've learned along the way. So the how kind of remains that how how we did my previous one and how I'm gonna do it again. The the what will change, you might have some ideas that you begin with, but then over time you iterate through and changes it. But the why is the key thing. So to me, the why was, hey, I'm still young. I still feel like I have it, I have a lot of energy that I I have to give. The why was I really want to work with really smart people that I've I've interacted with in the past that I've worked with in the past, or or others who are really smart and and uh and I want to continue to learn from them. And the the second, the third third why for me was some unfinished business I had in my previous journey. So in my previous journey, I started from it, wasn't a zero to one journey. It was, I want to say, one to ten journey. I bought a product that already existed and and then I scaled that company up, scaled that product, scaled that company to a pretty big organization, about 300 people globally. And and but I didn't I didn't experience the zero-to-one piece. So I felt like there was a little bit of a unfinished business there that I needed to come back and and do it again. So that was part of the why. Part of the why was again working with with amazing people, and part of the why was keeping my my brain engaged with with new things. And you you talk about healthy mind, and I think a big part of healthy mind is is keeping your body and brain engaged.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, true, very true. And yes, I mean healthy mind, healthy mind is something which is very easy to say, but it's again uh you need to maintain, you need to follow, you need to focus on. So and I believe it's not it's not it's it's never too late to think and start as a kind of healthy mind for ourselves. I mean it is it is very important in our day-to-day life.

Investor Doubts And Unlearning Success

SPEAKER_00 5:37

And that's so I mean, so when you were raising that seed around, right, did investors ever voice that hesitation, like even I mean, certainly also, like how did you address it without becoming defensive?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

I So because I had a successful exit, that that that that was uh a thing that a lot of people wanted to ride on. But but also like people people were skeptical. Not necessarily because of the age, but because because I had a successful exit as like, okay, we don't think you're gonna be hungry enough to kind of build that, which is kind of what you said as well. The the ex one example, by the way, that I really got motivated by, I watched the story of the founding of McDonald's.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Uh Ray Kroc, who is the founder of McDonald's, he started the first McDonald's at 56. He was 56 years old when he first set up the thing. And uh, and then it's become a sensation globally everywhere. You see hundreds, thousands of branches. So so there are there are lots of great examples of of entrepreneurs having having started later in life. And investors, yeah, they they will never express things directly. You just uh what what what's interesting is you still will hear a lot of noise even even after having a successful exit. And so people have their own theses, people have their own ways of looking and investing.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Exactly. No, I I totally agree, yeah. And I think what strikes me here is like how much we confuse energy with the wisdom. Like there's a there's a kind of efficiency that comes from having failed before from knowing which uh kind of battles matter. So age doesn't dull that at which time it refines it. So yeah. And so like you mentioned that this experience sharpened your focus on the sustainable growth also, like career metrics, discipline, execution. So those actually sounds like lessons learned the hard way. So uh I mean if you can share like what pattern or habit from your first venture did you have to unlearn to build Victoria differently? Like, I mean, if you can share something.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah, I think one thing that uh I use the phrase cleaning the toilets. So as an entrepreneur, as a zero to one entrepreneur, yeah, you have to be ready for that again. Exactly. You have to be ready to do everything. So including answering support tickets at uh two in the morning to, you know, doing cold calls to sell uh to customers or investors. So you have to do everything. And uh and that's the habit that over the years of doing my first startup, I kind of had built a team for everything. So so it was like, you know, okay, I could focus on product or strategy and and and I didn't have to do these other things. But but when you start all over again from zero, you have to do everything. So I I don't I I I don't know if I clearly answered your question there, but I think there's also like there is always a new market, new way of doing things. AI has changed everything now. Like there's so much that we are having to relearn on how to do things that, you know, things have things have become amazing and and things have become so hard at the same time because so much there's so much more competition. There is so much more, you know, both from com competition from new companies coming into the mix and also from customers saying, Hey, I can do it myself. I don't need your product to do this.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Exactly. No, definitely. I mean, it's really interesting like how success can calculate certain instincts because we double down on what actually worked once. And I mean, even when the context has completely shifted or changed. So I mean unlearning might be harder uh than learning, but because it's asks you to disrupt your own proof, so might be uh it is harder, but yeah, it is true. So

AI Video Creation Without Big Teams

SPEAKER_00 9:49

if if we talk about our from our daily life, like uh democra uh democratizing video creation, right? Because as a content creator and because I was also into product so product designing. So I mean earlier video creation is something which is very uh kind of uh I'd say creative, it's more human, and and now I mean it is sounds very kind of aspirational, but in practice it means people who have never thought of themselves as creators suddenly they have access to the tools and used to kind of require entire teams and all. So, what does that shift actually look like in someone's day-to-day life? Like what do you think? I mean, what changes uh when a person realizes that they can make something that they couldn't have thought of before as well?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah. See the examples I keep I keep seeing this among our customers and and in the market in general. The human creative element doesn't go away. That always remains the same. Somebody storytelling, coming up with the creative story idea, coming up with what to talk about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

And the reason why you should talk about it, like those are still very human, very important to have. So, but the execution of it has gotten easier now. You know, you may not need to film, you know, may not need studio space, you can use uh AI to generate uh pieces, you can stitch them together really easily with tools like Pictory. And so the execution of it has become easier. The distribution is still the challenge. So so it's not like the the whole thing, out of that whole thing, you still have to come up with your idea and your story. Uh AI can help you in the in the creation part of it and it can speed up that process, but you're still responsible for okay, how are you gonna get it in front of the audience? What channels you're gonna use, you know, how are you gonna advertise? So so there are still lots of human elements in the mix. It's just speeding up certain parts.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Right, exactly. So have you seen uh cases where that access becomes overwhelming, like where the barrier was not just technical but psychological, like anything?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

All the time. All the time. Like people people are afraid to get started, right? Like I'm sure you you've as you talk to folks, you know, people like, okay, what what what if nobody comes? What if you you know there's a fear of of rejection before even you get started on something. And and you have to get rid of get get out of that zone. But I mean that's that's true in anything in life, not not just video creation.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Definitely, definitely true with this one. I mean that that that fear is something uh I mean which one has to challenge and move forward.

Fear Of Rejection And Momentum Slumps

SPEAKER_00 12:46

So I mean uh talking about the moving forward, like building anything long term, it means obviously hitting the walls, like kind of losing the momentum, watching kind of metrics flatten, or people leave or competitors move faster. I mean, when that happens, when the initial energy fades and you are in the middle of it, then what is the conversation you have with yourself? Keep going, like how has that conversation changed from your first company to now?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

I do a lot more meditation now as I've gotten older. And uh so so I've I've gotten a lot more calmer in the in the process and the attitude that I've adopted now, and it actually works really well. And I'm sure it worked before too. I wasn't just not very aware of it, but now that you're more mindful, you're you're aware of it. It's the it's thinking of every day as the first day, right? Day I call it the day one attitude, right? And Jeff Bezos writes about it a lot and and uh and and fake in fact I think one of Amazon's building is named Day One Building. So, but I I really like that because the struggles of the past year or two years or how the whatever the you can't change the past. You can only change what's what you can look forward to. And uh and if you say, hey, today is the day one, I'm I'm building this for the future, that always helps you reset, right? Okay, you can like you can be forward-looking, you can be something that you can there can be something you can look forward to. And uh, and so I I have done a lot of reading and research about uh theories of happiness and and and that the there is one important thing that comes up over and over again. It's like that always have something that that you're excited about in the in the future. And uh and so that attitude always helps when when the going gets tough. I also maintain a gratitude uh journal. So every day you keep writing things that you're gratiful for, and then that you can bring that up during the the really low periods. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, and and do you find that the stakes feel kind of different this time? Like, or it is more than your relationship to uncertainty has shifted, like I mean absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

And again, it's part of uh meditation, it's part of just growing older, you realize everything keeps changing, the impermanence of things, uh impermanence of life in general, impermanence of your health, impermanence of your age, impermanence of your relationships, everything's changing all the time. And and this the same thing in business too. Like it is the same impermanence exists in platforms and products and competitors and yeah, everything.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

That's amazing. I mean, I I I think that there's there's a maturity in accepting that motivation is motivation is not a kind of consent that some days you show up because you said you would, but not because you feel inspired. And maybe that's the real uh edge, like not the fire, but that steadiness when the fire's gone. So and I mean it's really great.

Day One Mindset Meditation Gratitude

SPEAKER_00 16:00

And uh if you have to give one advice to the listeners or the young stars or who are actually thinking of starting their own, what would you guide them?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Yeah, I think the thing I keep telling people, young people I meet is the the three words that form the Nike slogan, I really like. Just do it, right? Because because we always always create barriers around ourselves. I don't have enough experience. I have too much experience, I don't have this, I have too much of this. I nobody will show up. Or you know, there's like every every reason that people can find about not doing something. There's hundred thousands of reasons why you can say no, but you only need one reason to just go ahead and and do it. And and that's so if you're thinking about it, you've contemplated it. Of course, entrepreneurship is risky. Like it's not you if you're gonna quit your job and and and start do a startup or or if there is gonna be risks around it about your income and so on. But I think there's like lots of readings you can do about mitigating risks, you can start as consulting as a consultant, you can start as a creator. Like there's a whole bunch of ways you can kind of you know start with that. But the important thing is starting.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Exactly. Yeah, amazing.

Just Do It And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 17:17

And uh so if listeners wants to connect with you, how they can connect.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, so I am on LinkedIn a lot, uh Vikram Chalana. And you can find me, you can find our company Pictory, you can find our company's website, pictory.ai, and uh yeah, so LinkedIn and uh and my website.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, uh Vikram for joining us. And uh the listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes so that I can easily reach out to Vikram. And I'd say, I mean, starting over is not just about erasing what came before, but it is all about trusting that everything you have learned actually comes. That beginning again is its own kind of continuation, I'd say. So thank you, Vikram, for joining us and thank you everyone for being here. And I'd say like not every beginning has to be loud, like some some of the most important ones starts very quickly, like in a moment when you stop waiting for the permission and kind of just just begin, right? This is very simple. So uh I do not want to get more into it. I believe you have really enjoyed this conversation with Vikram and have have learned also, and I also being a being a creator, being a podcaster and a product designer, I I really encourage all of you also just do it, right? It is it is very important. And with this, this is your host awake, and this has been mind meets machine. So take care of your mind and let it meet the world with a little more courage than it did yesterday, right? So thank you so much.