<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><figcaption>Shashank Murali</figcaption></figure>

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In this episode, I’m talking to Shashank Murali who’s the Co-Founder and CEO of TapChief. TapChief is an Indian Start-up which aims to build the future of work with it’s focus on Solopreneurs and the gig economy. A freelance professional can register on TapChief and can access thousands of projects to choose from and TapChief handles all the things around this and help the freelancer earn well.

Shashank is a BITS Pilani Alumni. Like many tech founders, his journey also started in the hostel room of BITS Pilani where he created the early version of what today is TapChief.

In this candid conversation, we talk about his journey and how TapChief started out from his hostel room and has now become one of the top Indian Start-ups and is having 1 Lakh plus professionals on their platform. How BITS Pilani shaped his thought process. We go deep on TapChief’s focus on people with Attention to detail and empathy. Their goal of getting 2 Million people to the platform and much more. There are a lot of nuggets in this episode for anyone who’s aspiring to start a company or a start-up which is looking to level up.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Shashank Murali.

Links and references from the episode –

Interesting references –

• Advice is the product which Shashank and the team built initially while in the college
• Blume Investments invested in Tapchief in 2019. TapChief grew from 15 people team to 50 people team in 2019 and eventually grew to 60 people team at the time of this podcast publishing (Jun 2020).
• Shashank is BITS Pilani alumni. Situated in a tiny village on the Rajasthan – Haryana states border in India. BITS taught him to embrace Diversity.
• Shashank grew an interest in Sound mixing while in college. He mixed live show for Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Dadlani as well.
• Tapchief has a very diverse team with people from 19 odd states today.
• Shashank thinks that educational institutes that provide creative freedom to students by giving them a problem or a task and asking them to do it their own way instil an entrepreneurial mindset in their students.
• Infosys – One of the biggest Indian MNCs in the software development space.
• OKRs (Tapchief is currently working to put this framework in place) – Objectives and key results (OKR) is a goal-setting framework that helps organisations define goals — or objectives — and then track the outcome.
• Flipped Learning Model – It’s a flipped model of learning when homework and brainstorming happen in class and study content is provided to be learned at home.
• Tapchief’s goal is 2 Million people on the platform in a few years.

People mentioned –

• N. R. Narayana Murthy – Infosys Co-Founder.
• Nandan Nilekani – Infosys Co-Founder.
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma – Paytm Co-Founder and investor in Tapchief
• Sachin Bansal – Flipkart Co-Founder
• Binny Bansal – Flipkart Co-Founder
• Kunal Shah – Co-Founder Freecharge and CRED

Apps and Tools mentioned –

• Slack – they use it in the company as a very important piece of communication, leads and backend integrations etc.
• Loom – Quick video messages

Books mentioned –

• Delivering Happiness – one of his best spends on a book – he loved the transformation of intention from the quest for success to quest for user experience and quest for happiness.
• Measure What Matters by John Doerr
• Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt

Shows mentioned –

• Drive to Survive – Formula 1 (on Netflix)
• The Last Dance – Michael Jordan Docu-series

Quotes mentioned –

• People grow to the extent of their responsibility.
• In the early time of building the team in a start-up, increasing the headcount slowly is a good idea. Taking on only the people who bring a unique skill to the table and the passion. You should get those people on-board who you enjoy working with and even outside the work. They become the pillars of your start-up.
• Most important factors for letting people into their company are – Attention to detail and Empathy. How someone writes an email, tells you a lot about that person. Asking about a specific tough scenario tells a lot about empathy in a person.
• When you put down the future plan and goals on paper and share with your team, people’s perspective change and they start coming up with awesome solutions as a team. So as a leader it’s very important to set the objectives and let people choose the path.
• Anything that matters needs to be measured.
• What gets measured, gets managed – Peter Drucker
• Funding is not a measure of success, it’s a toll towards success.
• For any start-up founder, they need to evaluate that do they even need funding in the first place. Are they even built for venture economics?
• VCs are usually looking to fund ideas which can grow irrationally and thereby can go ahead and have a large proportion of the market.
• Empathy is usually looked at from a standpoint of someone helping someone in a tough situation but there is also another perspective when someone helps someone so they succeed.
• Measuring yourself on the right scale is very important.
• Hope is addictive.

The ways you can connect with Shashank Murali –

• Twitter
• TapChief Website

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