#07 What If You're the Problem You Need to Solve First? with Satish Shenoy
Hello, unconventional founders and welcome to The Founders Truth, a conversation with Carlo Maffuz and guests. Episode seven welcomes Satish Shenoy, business transformation expert with AI and automation, partner ecosystems builder, and author of Runaway Growth. As we explore the founders' inner reality, why most teams' culture is performance theater and what AI actually threatens in us.
Satish Shenoy:All right, Carlo, really excited to hear about the trilogy and the three books coming. I think it's an amazing experience for anybody, you know, really leveraging your books and making this happen. So if a founder executes your framework of all three books Yes. Perfectly, right? Finds and builds the right team culture, integrates AI just like they should,
Carlo Mahfouz:and they still fail. What's outside the scope of your trilogy? Excellent question. What's outside the scope of my trilogy? So the trilogy in some ways is not promising success or failure, interestingly.
Carlo Mahfouz:Instead, it's promising how to navigate success and failure regardless of the outcomes. And a lot of the times, we look at founding a company or creating a new idea from scratch or sharing that as if you know, that's kind of the end goal, the outcome, we're looking for it. If anything, especially in reality check where we focus on the founder's outlook and how they are seeing these challenges or what questions they're asking to realize whether it's a failure or a success, the key is allowing them to recognize what the moment itself in that circumstances is both negative or positive. And as a result of that, what opportunities come along. So it is almost out of scope in it's successful or failed, yet at the same time, it's a matter of definition.
Carlo Mahfouz:Like, so how do you define a venture as successful? Is it the first time you fail to capture a client or your facial, fail to enter a new market? Or is it after a few tries, how much time do you give it? Like, so all of these things. But what I think is really powerful in the trilogy, it's actually not trying to work within those because I think the outcomes could vary significantly.
Carlo Mahfouz:Yet how can you leverage any of those outcomes to continue the journey without burnout or feeling alone or feeling, you know, drained to a certain extent.
Satish Shenoy:Got it. Oh, that's interesting. Because sometimes what I find is founders are squarely focused on, you know, their startup growing or, you know, something very, you know, almost short term, you know, it's revenue or else kind of, that kind of approach, right? So maybe stating that upfront or somehow making that clear might be helpful. Now, know, the trilogy, you spoke about the founders, starting with the founder with reality check.
Satish Shenoy:So the trilogy moves from the founder to the team, to the technology or society. But many founders argue, or may argue, that you need to start with the problemmarket, right? It's all about product market fit and not yourself. Yes. Why is your sequence the right one?
Carlo Mahfouz:Another great questions. So how do you recognize what is the problem to solve in the first place? If you're not able to, you know, do the inner work of how you see the world and how you see what is shaping the problems or what is key to the different areas you want to tackle, how do you actually So go about it's interesting that always people look outside, look at the market, look at what's problem to solve, etcetera. But what ends up happening is a lot of trial and error because a lot of the inner work and you recognizing what is, first off, what is possible for you to do based on the current circumstances that you are in to a certain extent. That means like, what are the channels that you can leverage?
Carlo Mahfouz:What are the existing connections that you have? All of these things, which require a lot of actually or more awareness on what is true to you today, which allows you to enter and what needs to be true tomorrow to help you get there. So I would argue in most cases, you cannot even recognize the right problem to solve almost or ask the questions that allow you to surface that problem if you are still stuck to a certain extent with your own filters and biases or preconceptions of what that may look like.
Satish Shenoy:Let's bring it down to a specific example. Used to work for a startup the founder was afraid to travel in planes. Yeah. He felt it was very claustrophobic. He didn't want to travel at all as a result.
Satish Shenoy:So he created a tool that allowed for distance collaboration. It became the market standard. I mean, he became hugely successful. He became a billionaire. I used to work for him.
Satish Shenoy:Right? So all that. So I think of that situation where he didn't necessarily need to know about himself. Mhmm. He needed he knew that this was a problem that he wanted to solve.
Satish Shenoy:How do I rationalize that? You know, with taking your response, as you were responding, I was thinking about that startup founder. And I was thinking about how this would apply, how he would react to something like this. It's a perfect example. I'm going
Carlo Mahfouz:to map it on how reality check, you know, like mirrors that. He did is he was able to recognize a problem that he had. It was his problem that he had. He was struggling to fly. He was able to understand the limitations and what that created for him.
Carlo Mahfouz:And he was able to accept it, to move forward through it. And if anything, that required an extreme clarity on his behalf and understanding the problem that he's facing and the way he has to go about it. Could have, anyone else could have that same problem of fear of flight to a certain extent, and yet doesn't have the clarity around it, which requires a lot of, I would say, personal it's very easy to know. A lot of people cannot fly. Why a lot of them basically did not create a solution for it?
Satish Shenoy:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. Actually, helps.
Satish Shenoy:You know, bringing it down to an example, I think, really helps. So I am much more clear now as to why that starts with you first and then right. I was I got you know, your one of your statements you made, I think either in a post or so on, I remember you saying most of what we have been taught about startups is performance theater. And I see it, by the way. I see it in a lot of startups.
Satish Shenoy:But some of that theater has actually built successful companies. How do you distinguish between useful conventions and harmful BS like like you've called it?
Carlo Mahfouz:So I don't believe there is ever one way to approach something, to be fair. Right? And I find always is interesting is retrospectively, we look at something, we analyze it and judge it very different than when it's happening in the moment. So a lot of these companies, to a certain extent, it's very hard to really make these separations and the connections and like kind of, did they follow this path and was that path successful? I actually find that most of the time misleading.
Carlo Mahfouz:So especially when you talk to founders who actually succeeded, when they are retrospectively looking at their journey, they kind of pick and choose what they feel defined it to a certain extent. And by that choice, there is a bias inherent in it to a certain extent. When others try to mirror it, they are almost mirroring the choices that founder decided is the inflection point, not necessarily what really happened.
Satish Shenoy:Without also looking at personalized, right? It's everybody's.
Carlo Mahfouz:Yeah. So of course, it's personalized because the context is going to keep changing. For everyone, it's very different. So it's very hard. That's why I don't look at success and failure in that because it's always a story or a narrative that you're telling based on what kind of things you feel were the defining moments.
Carlo Mahfouz:A lot of the times we ignore the true defining moments because they are quite vulnerable and there is a certain level of insecurity that comes with them while we sugarcoat or polish the journey in a way. Because first off, it makes a better story to make others feel part of it. At the same time, because inherently and unconsciously to a certain extent, we are reflecting what we want out of the journey, what the journey was exactly. And I think that has created probably one of the biggest problems in founder's journey is where they of, they try to mirror others, but they're trying to mirror the narrative of others, not necessarily as the journey it is because very, very few people, I would say, can speak to how they came to be to the level, especially when you're in it. And I feel like that's always the different things.
Carlo Mahfouz:It's one thing that you are in that moment, in that struggle, in the lack of finances and all of that and dealing with these things on the fly. It's another when you are in a much better position and reflecting back on that position. You're not the same person anymore. True. We tell that story always from the vantage point of the person who's in the future, not from the vantage point of the person who's in it right now.
Satish Shenoy:You're a different person because you've gone through that experience and Yeah. Other Yeah, that makes sense. So let's deal with the books, the trilogy itself now. Okay? So I've read book one, right, Reality Check.
Satish Shenoy:I know it's changing. You described this beautifully, sitting with ambiguity to find clarity, which is very paradoxical as we know. What's the and I was thinking about this in my context when I was part of a young seed stage startup. I was not the founder, but I was one in the founding team so I could relate to the founder. What's the biggest mistake that founders make when they are trying to force clarity a little too early?
Satish Shenoy:Can you, interestingly, can you give me an example of a founder who got it just right?
Carlo Mahfouz:Okay. Interesting. I think there's I'm going to answer this question in two ways I see it. First off, I think there is the thing is, everyone is asking usually, especially early stage, clarity, clarity, like what is your target audience? How you're solving that problem?
Carlo Mahfouz:Etcetera. Like all of this clarity conversation is always kind of almost takes the whole stage. Yet a lot of the times what people end up being evaluated on, especially whether they're getting funding or customer trusting them to a certain extent, is not actually the level of clarity that they're highlighting, but to a certain extent, the vulnerability and authenticity and how they showcased it. Because a lot of the times, even when you were talking about a founder coming in any pipeline, you're looking at the person, not necessarily only the problem and the clarity. And I think what's interesting about being extremely focused and extremely clear on what you are doing, it means in some ways that problem has already been solved or that market has already been captured if the level of clarity is extremely high initially, which means that the level of competition that you're going into is relatively very high.
Carlo Mahfouz:So I think a lot of people kind of conflate these things. So that does not mean though, and this is where the interesting thing is, you can have clarity on your ambitions and intentions and understanding how much of ambiguity still exists in them. That's a clarity too. Right? And that's why I always say ambiguity will always be there.
Carlo Mahfouz:It's the fact that sometimes we dismiss its existence or we try to remove it completely. And when we remove it completely, we're ignoring a lot of things that are kind of happening or relevant. Like, probably a good example of that is, you know, we talk about innovation a lot of the times. And as if innovation the of as if innovation is the really most important part of any founders. But if you see the businesses usually, which actually do the best early on, are the ones who are solving very basic problems.
Carlo Mahfouz:In most cases, it's like digitization, moving from paper to make it much more easy. So if you look at it, a lot of the times it's nothing like revolutionary and yet at the same time is revolutionary. It's like seeing in between where are these gaps and making sure those gaps kind of become smoother and like much easier to access. And in that regard, I think that requires a lot of understanding, but at the same time, a lot of kind of recognizing where you are today. Because if you jump too far ahead as well and something being revolution, like the market is not ready for.
Carlo Mahfouz:And I think that's
Satish Shenoy:a lot
Carlo Mahfouz:of the times what ended up happening. And to me, now going through the book authorship and all of this, I've as realized like it's how easy it is to just jump ahead. Like, right? You have like amazing ideas or etcetera and jump way after the market is ready to actually even understand where Can you
Satish Shenoy:I ask you, though, in that sense? Yes. See, most founders want to solve difficult problems. Yes. If the problem that they I think there's this tension between having been part of start you know, early stage startups, I see this tension.
Satish Shenoy:You know, I want to solve a problem that is not easy to solve. Mhmm. I want to innovate because if I pick an easier problem to solve, everybody else will solve it. Then, you know, I'm living in a red ocean, but I want to be in a blue ocean, etcetera. Right?
Satish Shenoy:So But then I want to solve something that could be leaping forward. Like when Steve Jobs brought the iPhone, he was thinking ahead of what even the customers needed. So how do you rationalize that? Something like that, where, you know, it was an innovation that was far ahead of its time in some ways because nobody else had done anything close to it.
Carlo Mahfouz:You know, I think that's very interesting. I think two things in that regard. One is if it's something is very difficult, recognizing is that very difficult should come with understanding what are the foundations to make that very difficult come to bear, right? So let's say it's not a problem that you have an idea, which is really difficult to execute on and you want to solve it. Problem usually is like how fast you want to solve it, how much money you want to throw at it, how much education you want to educate the audience or like your customers before they actually can buy into it.
Carlo Mahfouz:And a lot of the time we jump on these basic steps, assuming that everyone is going to recognize this overnight. And it takes a very long period of time before that happens. And the example of, I think the iPhone specifically and Steve Jobs, a lot of those foundational pieces existed before he came up with the iPhone, right? The technology was almost there. There was already a lot of tablets that have been in the market.
Carlo Mahfouz:Like, right? His innovation was that the interface is the full screen. That was the shift, but a lot of the foundation pieces were already there and the market was in a much better state to get there. As well, the company had enough clout to basically present something like that and already has the audience to kind of, or like the customer to capture it. And the problem is a lot of the times, founders miss that all of these pieces need to be there, like, right?
Carlo Mahfouz:A product or an idea is not enough. The right channels that you have, how many of those channels, how much trust you already have with the customers, can you reach them easily, how you're going to educate them, like all of those things are actually key foundational pillars for that. That's why in the second book, we talk about the ecosystem of the founder, which is the team that you're working with, but the team around you, which is basically behind the scenes, whether advisors or supporters or early like there is a team which is much bigger that creates the founder ecosystem, which a lot of the times, I think, when a founder reaches success, dismisses that whole ecosystem. It's like, that didn't exist. I did it on my own, which I think is one of the biggest BS ever.
Carlo Mahfouz:You know? And I think that's the disconnect. Again, to the story we were talking about earlier, the disconnect is a little bit is one that, you know, founder arrives, they usually says, like, I did it almost alone. And the thing is they never really did it alone. You know, they've leveraged so many things in their current circumstances, whether people or circumstances or positioning or technology, they leverage all of those things to get there.
Carlo Mahfouz:And that cannot be undermined. And I think those are key pillars, which are usually almost always like kind of cut out of the story.
Satish Shenoy:That's true. I've seen it. I can think of an example too. So talking about book two. Yeah.
Satish Shenoy:So you talk about optimizing the wrong things. Mean, I think there's a couple of examples we might have already covered, but, you know, what's the most common example of teams optimizing the wrong tenants that you've seen? And then what should they optimize for instead? Is there a practical example you can give us?
Carlo Mahfouz:Yeah. So, I mean, typically now these days we talk about like OKRs and KPIs and objective and performance metric for teams, like, right, and how they're operating and what's their velocity and all of this stuff, which, in hindsight is not necessarily bad on its own. The problem is what ends up happening is when we start optimizing for that, we forget what the true value of that meeting was supposed to be. You meet with others to collaborate. And based on that collaboration, come to some solutioning or understanding.
Carlo Mahfouz:The collaboration is the key. It's not actually coming in and setting an agenda and making sure I already have where I need to go and all of those things. So it's fascinating a lot. And then this is where we're talking about the team that you're managing or you are within. In a lot of ways, the value of a team is actually when they come together, they're able to communicate and listen to each other.
Carlo Mahfouz:They are able to be vulnerable enough in exposing the issues that needs to be discussed and that there is room for that space. And we talk about psychological safety and then like all of those things, right? But what is fascinating is we talk about these things, but these things are we observe them when they're happening. We don't build for them. The worst thing I see happening is, okay, now we have psychological safety as if it's like a flip of a switch, like, right, you know, turn it on, turn it off kind of deal, which I think is the biggest BS ever.
Carlo Mahfouz:It just doesn't happen. Right? And this is where actually probably part of ambiguity comes into play because if everyone, like, let's say, everyone on that table is coming already with their mind made or to a certain extent know what they want, so they have clarity on that, then there is no conversation to be had. There is nothing because you've already come and whether consciously or unconsciously, you're going to either just manipulate the conversation to get what you want, or you stop listening to others as audio just trying to make the case for the ideas that you bring rather than actually having, you know, I think conversations are one of the most fragile things when they're done right. Like a meaningful dialogue is a very fragile thing.
Carlo Mahfouz:It requires a lot of, like, I would say fuzzy edges and openings for it actually to kind of slide through different people. And if that doesn't happen, then it's actually no longer a conversation. Then it's a webinar. Like you're just coming and preaching. And usually what ends up happening is like you have five people come to the meeting and they're all preaching.
Carlo Mahfouz:So it's useless.
Satish Shenoy:Yeah. Yeah, no, well said. That's actually a very good example. We see it often, you know, happen quite a bit. So, one of the things that caught my attention in book two that you had mentioned is this whole idea of absurdity.
Satish Shenoy:Yeah. You know, the absurd in team dynamics. What's an example where the conventional wisdom about teams is completely black backwards or absurd, you'd say?
Carlo Mahfouz:I think probably one of, I think, the worst that I see is, you know, everyone wants like a certain level of transparency in the conversation. Like they want everyone to be open and etcetera. Yet at the same time, everyone, every single incentive is optimized against that. Meaning like, right, we do individual metrics. So we're measuring your performance, you, not the collective outcome performance, right?
Carlo Mahfouz:We're measuring how fast you go as an efficiency metric, but we don't measure like, so if you spend more time on this, how many meetings? Like it ends up all the incentives that are shaping to a certain extent, the conversation to go well and for you to have the opening to be transparent actually don't exist. Actually, they're all working against you. And in some way, I feel like absurdity here plays a bigger part even. If you go into every conversation extremely serious in the sense that everything is like the holy grail, there is no conversation to be had as well.
Carlo Mahfouz:Like if there is not an air of lightness in how the dialogue end up happening, which honestly, we don't measure these things. If anything, if anyone like drew that, but like always remember that if you had someone who's like almost very, almost said it cheerful and positive, but like kind of lighthearted, like they bring, you know, things, you know, they bring them and they're discussing them, but with a certain level of even absurdity to them, like, they know this might be ridiculous and how I'm shaping it. But like, let's, you know, play with it a little bit. Automatically, the dynamic of the conversation changes. It's no longer about, you know, I'm trying to tell you this is my how I want to do it.
Carlo Mahfouz:This is more of like kind of let's play with it and see where we go. And suddenly, you know, but we don't optimize for that, like, right? Because that goes against the efficiency.
Satish Shenoy:No, there's a freedom in that,
Carlo Mahfouz:you Yeah, exactly.
Satish Shenoy:Yeah. Yeah. No, it's beautiful. Beautifully described, actually. Now, the other thing that caught my attention, Carlo, is you talk about destroying the barriers, right?
Satish Shenoy:Yeah. Moving on to, actually, now I'm moving quickly on to book three, which is about AI. That would probably be my favorite book given where I come from. But you talk about destroying the barriers, right, between human and digital or synthetic. What I've seen in my experience is, you know, in speaking to all these people that are running AI initiatives at a lot of companies, etcetera, and are responsible for the outcomes, they're concerned about losing our humanity to AI, at least some of them are.
Satish Shenoy:So there's a tension between human and AI, right? Yeah, of course. And so how do you respond to that tension? What are they missing that could help them? Thank you
Carlo Mahfouz:so much for listening to The Founder's Truth, a space for opening your mind to new possibilities and thinking. One question to reflect on is, if you stripped away your polished founder story, what truth about your real circumstances would you have to face? Our conversation with Satish will continue in the next episode as we dive further into the applications of how the founders' tools work and bring more tangible examples to you.
Creators and Guests
