Ramji Srinivasan On Selling His Last Company For $375 Million And Raising Millions To Make Immune Measurements Routine

Ramji Srinivasan is now on his second big startup and is working to help people extend their lives. His latest venture, Teiko, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Altitude Lab, Tau Ventures, Founders Fund, and Pathfinder.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Honing in on the right metrics
• What Teiko is doing
• His hiring process

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About Ramji Srinivasan:

Ramji Srinivasan is the Co-Founder & CEO of Teiko Bio — Using blood samples, Teiko analyzes the immune systems of cancer patients in clinical trials and can predict a patient’s response to therapy. These predictions can help get these drugs to market faster.

Prior to Teiko, Ramji Co-Founded & served as CEO of Counsyl, a women’s health genetic screening company (Acquired by Myriad Genetics in 2018).

Ramji went from a napkin idea to ~1M patients served, an S-1 filing, and ~$150M in annualized revenue before an eventual acquisition. Upon exit, he had nearly 500 talented employees, many of whom have gone on to be leaders in their respective fields.

Connect with Ramji Srinivasan:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today we have a successfully repeated founder I mean he’s Bill exited you know everything that we like to hear so let’s welcome our guests today. Sir let’s see if I say it right? It ramji say re ni basan.

Ramji Srinivasan: Did pretty good. Yeah Ajandro Good Great to meet you thanks for having me on.

Alejandro Cremades: Welcome to the show.

Alejandro Cremades: Hey good to have you here good to have you here so give us a little of a walkth through memory lane. So how was life growing up be in New York city

Ramji Srinivasan: Oh a long island it was awesome. You know if you’ve ever watched jersey shore then you probably understand long island girls with orange tans guys who drive Camaros it was a ah, really fun culture and then.

Ramji Srinivasan: Ah, you know, loved it. Ah out there and then went back to New York after I graduated college. Also so.

Alejandro Cremades: And hey you know you got the best of both worlds because in long island you know you got the peacefulness you got the craziness in the summer tool but then you also had the city not far away. So definitely you know like the best of both worlds now in your case you know you early on you got into into problem solving. You know what? how did that come about and then also what what was that thing that you did with when it came to light and.

Ramji Srinivasan: Oh yeah, so a good friend and I um were really into cars hidden in high school and 1 thing that he liked to do and taught me how to do is how to tailgate which is drive quickly and then drive behind somebody which is a huge pain and I strongly recommend nobody does it. But at the time it was fun. Um, and you know he thought of this idea which is to put a brake light into the car that you’re following and if you press on a brake then the the the further the harder you depress on the break. The brighter, the brake light intensity would be and and if it tripped and if it. You know tripped automatic breaking system. Maybe yes then would flash and so we decided to create a prototype of this and we entered into Intel’s science and engineering fit fair which is now called regeneron and it won third place in the team’s competition so that was like my first entree into engineering was really fun.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about to getting into actual you know business here so you go into Stanford and basically you went there to do your you know, pretty much mathematics so it was like a. So no you so you tell us you tell us what what? what were you doing in Stanford because you did computer science there. But why computer science in Stanford where you had such great schools in the East Coast so

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah I mean um to be honest with you the weather. Obviously you know the first I heard about Stanford was in 99 that they had ah or Lyn at 87 something like that. There was like ah a team that was good at basketball in the final four that was also good at engineering. So I thought that was amazing. So I was you know set on going to someplace warm after enduring so many cold New York winters I was thinking about like Caltech or something like that or Harvey Mudd but ended up at Stanford. So yeah to answer your question. Yeah I was I did computer science and did a master’s in financial math. Also.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, so you did your masters and we’ll talk about we’ll talk about that in just a little bit because you also had to drop out when the good stuff you know started to happen in your life. But I will talk about that in just a little bit because 1 thing that that I wanted to ask you here. Is you go to Stanford here. You are you know in the.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, yeah.

Ramji Srinivasan: Ah, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: In the in the area you know of innovation of opportunity. You got all these classmates too probably starting their own stuff and instead of of going in that direction I mean you decide to going to wall street you know, come here back to to the East Coast and and and pushing paper pushing numbers I mean why.

Ramji Srinivasan: It was a very different time so that was 6003 and then the internet was over there was it was done. You know dotcom boom bust had happened etc. Everybody was laying off people so e-commerce was a fad you name it. Um, so I definitely bought into that whole whole thing and but the the real pivotal event that happened was nine Eleven happened and I was like oh my god I need to like listen the marines or save capitalism and ah and so that’s the 2 things that. You know, stuck in my head and so I was decided okay I’m going to save capitalism and go work on wall street which I conflated with capitalism and then later I realized that not exactly the same. So so that was really my part of my thinking on. Also you know huge backdrop of you know that that tech was over so to speak and so like the stable. Wall street kind of stuff which was you know highly prestigious. Didn’t exactly know what I was going to do there but it was very prestigious so that sounded good.

Alejandro Cremades: And I guess that day when you were there you know working in wall street there in Morgan Stanley there’s one event that they really got you thinking you know really got you to wake up and that was the ipo of Google why.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, so that was August Two thousand and four and you know it was amazing. Hot summer everybody was out drinking partying having fun and I was working hundreds of hours ah or like one hundred plus hours that week sleeping under a desk and I felt like you know. Founders of Google or computer science tas and I was like these guys are changing the world and I’m moving around pieces of paper I just I just knew that I wasn’t doing something that useful and so I was like you know what I got to do something with my life and like I got to get out of here otherwise I’ll be on the treadmill and so I decided to to. To move on and apply to beschool and you know that was that was that back to yeah exactly back to Stanford Gsp and in between Stanford and like and Morgan Stanley had read Paul Graham’s book hackers and painters before he started Yc and there was a ah chapter there about startups that just.

Alejandro Cremades: So back to Stamford and they good stuff stuff.

Ramji Srinivasan: Absolutely struck me about like compressing your working life into a short period of time and then like like why to do it etc why not to do it and there was ah a thing about like why nerds are unpopular which like oh that doesn’t apply to be but anyway the rest of the the rest of the book was really interesting. So I like that. And um, that can be hooked and it’s like I’m I’m gonna do something in startups I thought it was mobile internet at the time but and’t being something else. So I got to I got to Stanford and um, one of Paul Grames Stings was he was very like anti Mba in the book. So I thought oh did I make a mistake.

Alejandro Cremades: So then what happened next.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, am I a dumb Mba it’s kind of like the like like an anti-vc sentiment sometimes it’s like oh they’re just like paper pushers which I I don’t agree with the they of them now with the benefit of time but at the time I was just an impressionable kid. So I decided I was like okay I’m going to drop out but it’s like oh then I need to do something afterwards. So ah, my brother and another ah guy contacted me about this idea in genomics and it was like okay we’ll make genomics the next internet which is kind of like I don’t know if you know movie the graduate with Dustin Hoffman but he’s like plastics like yes sir. s gonna be big. You know I know today today w today today ch about solar power as I knew today today then about genomics which is like the sun powers stuff and that’s how you get solar energy but I thought hey this is great idea. Um, let me drop out of stanford and leave a extremely highpinging you know path in wall street and be broke on a futon and and and do that the other thing I had been thinking about was the prestieds trap which is like I got into stanford undergrad I did masters there I then got into morgage stanley and then I got into nba it’s like I was like. Chasing prestige after a while and like at some point I got to think for myself and that was also an important realization which is like if I didn’t drop out I thought I’d let’s get stuck on the interview treadmill and then end up back in like banking consulting and something like that and.

Ramji Srinivasan: That also worried me and enough to say that anything’s wrong with that. But just like for me that that wasn’t the the path.

Alejandro Cremades: So then at what point that say you know the the idea of counsel Really you know so crystal clear that you are like I gotta go after this.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, I guess when I dropped out so I didn’t think it was like ah at that point. Yeah, no choice I was like I finished the first year and then I’m like I don’t I um, so yeah, and then ah our original idea was complete like.

Alejandro Cremades: There was no choice. There was no choice.

Ramji Srinivasan: Nonsense who was like go you know analyze a bunch of genomes and then predict who’s likely to to respond to some certain like or get like Allz Herm’s or parkedin sinces or cognitive traits and it was just like totally off face and we like banged our heads against multiple different avenues but finally hit upon an idea that worked which was. Um, what’s called carrier screening for prospective parents that we would screen prospective parents for genetic mutations that they could unnowingly pass on to their child and we found these preconception before they even conceive. They can do an in vitro fertilization treatment and have healthy kids. And this is something that resonated with us you know because we would all you know, go on to have children and so this this all made sense. Um as something that is not only knowable, but. Actionable because a lot of genetics was stuck in the inactionable like oh you find out this thing and it’s like destiny or fate and this was much more like okay, you can do something positive about.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then in this case, you know for the people that are listening you know with council what ended up being the business model of the company.

Ramji Srinivasan: We turned into a clinical lab so we were a clinical lab that served a little over a million patients. So moms ah parents plan to have children mom’s in their first trimester pregnancy and then hereditary cancer for women. Um, we scaled to about 150000000 plus and you know annualized revenue several quarters of profitability. We filed a Ipo. We’re about to be on file with the with the scc to do and Ipo. But then ultimately got acquired by marriage genetics and then those at the end of 20 or um.

Alejandro Cremades: And we’ll talk about that because you know one thing that is a rio here is that you were at it for about 10 years and you experienced like different faces with the company I mean obviously when you guys got started. You know it was about you know for the world. You know to to.

Ramji Srinivasan: Midpoint of 2018

Alejandro Cremades: To almost you know to come to a screeching halt with the financial crisis now so you were probably able to experience that Also the issues around perhaps raising money around that time how it really is the difference of going through Cycles. So What did you experience especially during those early days where all of a sudden you get started with a company and and oh my God you know money is is perhaps drying up a little bit.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah I would say financial stress is very different than physical stress and you’re responsible for many more people you make a lot of promises it just it’s ah it’s a very very different kind of stress and I think it’s it can be strengthening. It can be a crucible moment for for entrepreneurs and their teams. Or you know it can it can cruble them and you can see people. Do you know, really good and bad decisions that come out of that. Um, for us it forced us really to to figure out a business model that worked quickly and. Um, in wall street I’d read Bezos’s stuff about free cash flow and it was a totally misunderstood stock and company. They’re like oh you know Amazon is unprofitable, but they’re looking at gap income as oppos to free cash flow and Bezos got it from buffet who got it from you know. Um, ah, Benjamin grammet and and so on so free cash flow in being cashflow positive was like really important for us which is like how many tests we sell each month to break even and so we we focused a lot on that and tried to our best to um, get the company to place would be self-suseeing um, interesting as soon as we started, we ran into all these crazy perverse incentives with obgns and in retro fertilization practices. Um that we later surmounted but.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, yeah to answer your question. It was difficult. There was no easy answer. There’s just a lot of persistence. A lot of rejections. Um at the outset and you know that hopefully gave us a little bit of a thicker skin.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then for the company in total. How much capital did you guys raise plier to prior to the acquisition and also what was that journey like.

Ramji Srinivasan: Oh about a 100000000 and you know it was ah definitely highs and lows so we had some amazing investors like founders fund felicis and and so on who were really great backwards for us and and I think that was ah that was a ah really.

Ramji Srinivasan: Ah, good journey in general that we did have challenges with others who I won’t necessarily name here, but it’s as many probably if the founders on your podcast as noted is like pick your investors very very carefully and.

Ramji Srinivasan: It can It can you know it can create a lot of positives for your company with the right team and right alignment or it can create an enormous amount of mental stress. Um, so you know it just said it just goes down to the specific person.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then in this case, you know I know that I mean you alluded to It. You guys were on this path. You know, incredible revenue you had raised money from really amazing investors and then you filed for the ipo you know at this point you were about to get on. Private Jets you know with the investment bankers eating shrimp on the private Jets you know as as some of our other guests. You know have a have alluded to which I find hilarious. You know, shrimp and and private Jets but but in this case, you know you guys took a different turn you know in the end. So. So Why did you go after the acquisition instead of the ipo and then how did the acquisition come about.

Ramji Srinivasan: excellent excellent question um we we didn’t get look at the private jets and shrimp we were like waking up at am on the East Coast and then going back to back road show meetings in New York so um which was fun also like but um, ah ultimately I felt that. It was quite exhausting to carry around this like shareholder dynamic for so long. Um, and like that was the the real reason to be honest I mean like I think the company was great. We had an amazing 500 person team all a lot of those you know lieutenants have have done incredibly well and and built their own companies. Um, but the shareholder dynamics would be very tricky to fix and would probably take another several years to do and that was was probably the real reason like I I um I never built the company to sell. Um I never like to started the company with the intention to sell selling and. This day else I don’t believe that’s a good philosophy. You have to build a company that serves a useful need and in a profitable way and then if you get that right? then many ah options open up including potentially acquisition. But that was never the goal if that makes sense. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: I Hear you So what was that thing What was that process then of ah of the acquisition. You know what? But what was it going through that.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah I mean we ran a dual dual track so we were we we were like filing our paperwork that scc in in parallel. We’re also meeting with potential acquires. Ah, we had amazing cfo, amazing commercial team Amazing engineering marketing Team. So um. What we tried to do is keep our numbers low in in projections during that process so that we could beat and raise that you know like we’re coming in below excuse me ahead of our projections. Um, so that could inspire confidence on the part of acquires or potential you know investors in the public markets which is okay, these guys said something they not only overde delivered on that. But then you know, kind of outecuted their promise so that is ah in general ah technique you. Regardless of whether going public or doing a seed financing is is a useful technique.

Alejandro Cremades: So when the um when the acquisition I mean that that acquisition I mean incredible outcome. You know 375000000 I believe right? you know when that when when that happened I mean that that’s incredible I mean what was it like when you all of a sudden inked the deal because here you were for 10 years

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Pushing with counsel and then all of a sudden then you know it’s like Wow you know like we took this to the finish line.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, ah I remember the day after um and I was like after all the yelling fighting and like all the you know stuff. It’s like man I miss that group so I never would have expected that because I was like okay. Relief. It is initially I was thinking relief but then I was like yeah we had with such a good crew and it was I really like love the team and all the alumni I just feel like it was mentally stressful fighting these like internal or you know shareholder dynamics. Um. So think that was that was more the challenge as opposed to like if that makes sense. But yeah, it was. It was a mix of emotions relief. Also okay I know there’s got to be a next challenge also because Olympic athletes when they win a medal you know be a bronze silver gold or whatever they get depressed. They’re like okay I need to. And because they they’ve finished their challenge so to speak so they don’t the adreline of competition is over so I knew I had to think about the next thing.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about the next thing because the next thing for you was you know packing bags and going on a plate to China why China.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, my dad was really big into you know learning chinese when I was a kid. So um, a lot of you know and covid has changed a lot of my thinking because a lot of indians growing up are like look at China China’s going doing well and we need a benevolent dictator like. Like China has covid completely shifted. My think we do definitely do not need that at all. Um, but in going to so I was interested in China and and a lot of the things we’re doing so I went to cuenming in the South East part of China which is like near Vietnam and and all that and it’s like six thousand feet is absolutely beautiful city it’s ah it’s a it’s a small city in China which means like you know, 14 Starbucks and 2 Apple stores and you know 6000000 people or whatever. Um, ah. Lived in a dorm there study chinese and then also practice mma and and and learn some martial arts as well. Which is really fun. So that was that was an awesome time.

Alejandro Cremades: And then how long were you there in China in total.

Ramji Srinivasan: Ah, not not super long just like on and all for like probably about three months but enough that I got the bug a little bit I got what I needed out of my system did a lot of life stuff like learn how to snowboard learn how to ski and all that stuff and then decided to get back in the game and so. I came back to us and traveled a little bit and then looked at 3 ideas so one was like an uber for blood draw second was in men’s nutrition and the third was in minimal residual disease. Um, but I end up doing something completely different.

Alejandro Cremades: And that’s called takeoff. So why walk us through well walk walk us through how it happened you know and and and why you thought that this company was meaningful enough. The solution that was bringing to really execute.

Ramji Srinivasan: You know that’s exactly that’s right, It’s physical.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, good question. So um, long story short. Ah I had been looking at this uber uber for blood draw and I was either going to like buy a phlebotomy practice or do one you know or build one and I’ve been coming close on a potential acquisition right before covid. And it became very difficult to price any kind of deal because foot traffic to you know phlebotomy things just kept falling and and so on so I didn’t know how to price a deal and um I started to get very frustrated with the covid restrictions. So I thought of like you know 3 things which is you know. Bitcoin or crypto testing and immunity and you know crypto to like reduce ability politicians to introduce restrictions to testing so people can feel like hey this infection fatality rate is low maybe in the point 3 let’s test and let’s get back to work. And 3 immunity which I knew very little about and um so I knew in the sense of like it at council we tried to do like Amazon Web Services style business where we like salespae sequencing capacity to companies. So I’d talked to a company in immunology. But you know didn’t know as as much about it.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, but then I contacted Matt Spitzer he had won an award on fast grants for characterization of ah cancer vaccines or basically immune responses that could predict cancer vaccines. Basically that means like what are the what is different about somebody’s blood who can respond to a cancer vaccine and that could be potentially applied to covid. So Matt and I got to chatting and I’m like Matt is an incredibly humble scientist with amazing track record of cells science nature papers et cetera to to his name and I’m like what he is doing in immune profiling could be the next version of liquid biopsy which i. You know had a front row seat to at at council and in in the prenatal field and in in talk with them I’m like oh man. Well we could actually build ah a way more like ah, a bloodbased to. Detection of your immune system that could be applied for cancer trials that could be applied to autoimmune that could be applied to infectious disease. Um, and that’s that was way more positive vision than whatever I was thinking about so we got to we got to chatting work together informally for about six months and then incorporated in September Twenty twenty

Alejandro Cremades: And what ended up the business model of the company. What are you guys doing at takeoff.

Ramji Srinivasan: Twofold first with drug companies we charge per sample so it’s 2500 to 404000 per sample for a blood analysis and we look at the you know immune response of different drugs or immune characteristic or immune features ah of different drugs. So a drug company will send us like 10 patients 10 responders 10 non-res respondnders we’ll run them through our lab. We’ll do machine learning on them and say this is the difference this why Alejandro responds and so and so it doesn’t the second thing is our clinical tests so we’re building our own clinical tests and we’ve run. Ah, ah you know several hundred and got a few thousand samples left. To to do to predict response and non-response to approved therapies that are already on the market and then we’ build our own clinical tests similar to like what we did on council except this time it’d be in cancer.

Alejandro Cremades: So then what? what? how did you go about building the team here because obviously you know like you had learned quite a bit you know over the course of 10 years with your last company around team building. So how did you go about surrounding yourself by the right individuals.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah I mean very good question I mean the starting small is is important and then also another thing that we do at council and also at Takeo is written assessments so we have. You know in in Zoom or in person people with very strong charisma can sound good in interview but a written assessment can tell you a ton and so doing written assessments can really help in terms of you know, understanding the person’s writing style their ability to problem, solve, etc etc. So we use. Ah a lot of those. Um, having a very defined need and this is a very common mistake in startups and which is like if you can’t see that this person can solve an immediate need like first week first thirty days for sixty days then it’s probably not the right hire people like oh well maybe in 100 like you know in a year we might need this person so we need to hire them now or so on and so forth, but that ends up not working out on and so seeing ah a path to a very immediate need is is quite important and along my old account. But.

Alejandro Cremades: And what about and and and what about Also they they you know as we are continuing here on the people side of things. What about the the surrounding yourself with the right investors because you know with the last company you you were able to really understand well the fundraising journey and. And and and getting the right people for the right reasons you know right? there behind you you know behind the trenches. So How did you go about raising money for takeo.

Ramji Srinivasan: Well first we you know we sat down with a financial plan which is like ah I also put my own money in first which is to back the back the company initially um and then once we felt like we’ve gotten our first initial customers. We’ve got validation and we feel like this can be. You know, potential success and potential to grow. Um, we went back to some of our other investors from council in other days and asked them to come on board. Um, that all started with you know, understanding exactly what the money is for how to get to profitability. Um, how to build a business that that meets a customer need. So I think that that needs to be at the outset as opposed to. You know what ends up happening is is raising money becomes a goal unto itself.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, that’s saying That’s what you’re alluding to you know earlier now. It’s It’s much better to have like people think too much about success when it comes to raising money. But at the end of the day you know I find that the best companies are the ones that are able to really show us a metric The the.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: The revenue per employee you know I think that that’s really cool like for example, when you see companies like whatsapp they’re like acquire for billions and billions and they only have like 50 or 60 employees right? like that’s pretty cool now I guess you know when you’re thinking about the authentic signals. Walk us a little bit more through authentic signals. So.

Ramji Srinivasan: Yeah, very good question. So I don’t know if there’s probably a term for it but like in 2015 s there was a lot of talk about vanity metrics which are metrics that sound good but don’t actually mean something so i. I don’t know if there’s an actual term for it. But I just like say authentic signals so you know renewal rates from customers are an authentic signal. Um are they actually buying from you, etc, etc. Um, you know we talked about raising money as a potentially misleading metric sometimes as as opposed to an authentic signal might be. Or customers placing successively larger orders with you is the time to close new customers from lead to ah like first call to you know sign to order is that shortening or or is it getting longer, etc etc. So those are the kind of things that are potentially authentic signals as opposed to just headline measures. Um, if that makes sense. Um at council one of the things we did also was in carrier screening. There was a lot of competition on number of genes screened and we thought that was didn’t make any sense because if you’re like a prospective parent. You don’t really care about the number of genes you care about does this gene. Have a like impact like does this improve my chance as a couple of having a kid with disease. So 1 gene can have a disproportionate can be like a point three percent impact and 500 genes could be point zero zero zero one so not all genes are created equal in terms of at-risk couple detection rate.

Ramji Srinivasan: So we created measures like adrisk couple detection rate that we better thought better reflected how parents and obese thought about risk and in genetics similarly for takeo. Um, you know there’s a measure of number of immune markers on a panel. Um, and you know we’re looking at things like number of immune cell subsets that you can see so we can see 600 plus immune subsets versus which is basically a 14 fold increase over you know, classic conventional technologies.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess hey in this regard As as as we’re talking about this too I mean if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of takeway is fully realized what does that world look like.

Ramji Srinivasan: That means that every um, every trial that’s in immunotherapy there are about 5000 trials is using the takeo test. So hopefully for not only retrospecting looking backwards to see why the drug worked or didn’t but then also potentially to enroll patients so you know Alejandro’s immune profile is x. You should get on this drug or get on that drug separately. It means in clinical medicine. We’ve got tests. Um that have like a big lift in survival 30 to 40% lift in survival. So people who are getting these tests for living longer healthier lives and getting on the right drug. Um, and third if we do. 1 and 2 correctly we’re putting 100 years back on the clock and you know we we got 1 year because a customer told us that we saved her a year of development time had she not used takeo. Um, but hopefully that’s not just drug companies but also patients who were spending more time with families and.

Ramji Srinivasan: Whatever it is that their purpose is.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then let me ask you this you know as you’re thinking about testing as you’re thinking about product development. Why do you associate stages of grief with product development. Okay.

Ramji Srinivasan: Oh yeah, so um, this goes back to our first pitches at council when we were talking to ob practices and we had a test that we marketed as oh hundred genes for the price of 1 and ob bees told us if we test for more genes we’re gonna find more positive moms and we said so like if we find more positive moms. We’re gonna have to talk to more positive moms. We said. So so and then they said well you know our business model. Is or compensation is 10 visits and a birth $1900 if you generate another visit for us. That’s an eleventh visit and we still get $1900 so then we went through like anger denial bargaining like oh they should do this. They shouldn’t do that blah blah blah blah blah so we went through all the 7 stages ah of grief to zen technological acceptance which is like okay we accept. This is the way things are let’s instead build couple testing so that the father or husband etc can get tested either simultaneously or asynchronously and then that. That the result can be merged and the couple’s chance of testing positive is way smaller than the mom’s sense of testing positive but that’s what I mean about like rather than fight their incentive and argue or like denied that existed like except that this is their incentive and then think okay this this.

Ramji Srinivasan: These individuals are trying to do the best they can with this incentives they have work within that incentive um to make the more successful.

Alejandro Cremades: And and also why you know just just going back to something that they that I think is gonna be interesting as people because obviously now you know with with with 2 companies and I’m gonna ask you now you know something around you know lessons learn I Want to ask you about. Prenabs in business. Why are they so important. Okay.

Ramji Srinivasan: They’re so important because um, a lot of the startup advices like oh don’t ignore your gut etct etc but mistakes happen because we ignore our guts all the time so in in some way some ways ignore it like pay attention to your gut is. Important but like not that actionable advice. So I was trying to think of like non-obvious things like if you get a prenup in business then you actually know what the cost of termination is and both parties understand that upfront. And knowing that you can be a little bit like it’s it’s not as um, it’s not as like pessimistic or nihilistic as it sounds. It’s like actually you can be more optimistic because you’re like okay we understand what what the costs are if we want to terminate this deal and from that shared foundation. We can build you know. A partnership or or what have you together. So that’s the reason is is because people say oh well, you know don’t get into business with so and so um and don’t ignore your gut but like ignoring your gut just Happenss so it’s like rather than beat yourself up about ignoring your gut. Think about like just do a prenum. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s it. You know it saves so many headaches down the line. So so let’s talk about you know stuff that they that perhaps you know like you would tell yourself if you were younger. So if you could you know? perhaps go back in time and have a chat with that younger self you know that younger. RamG you know out of Stanford you know if you could give that younger ramg 1 piece of advice before launching a business what will be and why given what you know now.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, so.

Ramji Srinivasan: Oh my gosh one piece of advice. Um I think really stand up for yourself. Um, which you know ironically is kind of related to the gut point. But it’s like stand up for yourself if you think that something you know the New York city subway if you see something say something. Um. That kind of lynch pin habit is very hard and you know it’s a muscle to cultivate like anything else the more you exercise it the stronger it gets so I think that would be the the number one piece of vice and from that keystone habit I think a lot of good things would flourish. That’s.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it. So go ahead.

Ramji Srinivasan: That’s philosophical on the more practical note it’s charge higher prices. Um higher prices. Give you a lot more margin. Ah for not only you know sales and marketing and so on, but it’s ah actually related to stand up for yourself because if you know if your product is useful Then. You should be able to stand by it and be able to to charge a premium for that service depending on the nature of the business.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it. So so let me ask you this ramji for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, yeah, just shoot me an email first name ramjiia takeo dapo.

Alejandro Cremades: You say enough? Ramji thank you so much for being on the dealmakerr show today. It has been an on earth to have you with us.

Ramji Srinivasan: Um, yes, great to see you all right? Thanks alandro.

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