Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy | Rohin Dharmakumar | First Principles by The Ken

If this is your first episode of First Principles—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast—it's a great episode, to begin with. Gaurav Munjal is the co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, one of India's most aggressive and highest-valued ed-tech startups, last valued at close to $3.5 billion. But this story started a long time back. When Gaurav was just in class IX, he got into the content game. In a few years, he had started getting monthly payments from Google for the ads he ran on his content. In college, he had a blog devoted to the actress Priyanka Chopra. That fetched him hundreds of thousands of rupees each month. On a Facebook page that he ran—this one devoted to fashion—Chinese brands paid him hundreds of dollars each month to run their ads. So when he finally started Unacademy in 2015, it was, in many ways, a logical evolution of his life thus far. Nearly eight years, and $835 million in venture capital later, Unacademy is a company that reflects much of Gaurav's personality. It has no time for niceties. It would rather disrupt than defend itself. It is supremely confident in the face of even existential crises. And it attaches zero value to classical or theoretical notions of education. I mean, who else would say that education is really a tournament that can change lives and that teachers are coaches and that the best coaches are like mercenaries, and that they already earn more than second-rung movie stars? You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-pr... ------------------- CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 03:45 Unacademy is not in the education business 10:20 Today’s teachers are more mercenaries than missionaries 15:12 Will AI disrupt education? 17:51 How is Unacademy different from Byju’s, Physics Wallah, and Allen? 22:16 Unacademy, the Yash Raj productions for education 24:45 Journey from Youtube to Ed-Tech 28:38 Childhood, family and dreams 31:47 How to choose a career? 36:08 Disruption, paranoia and stress 44:24 Strategic inflection point 52:36 Goal-driven systems at Unacademy 54:22 How to find the right talent? 1:03:10 What first principles does Gaurav Munjal turn to? 1:09:24 Is Unacademy diversifying? 1:10:42 Unacademy’s core principles 1:18:13 Change in personal management style 1:21:08 Daily deep work routine that changed everything ------------------- This is Episode 19, hosted by Rohin Dharmakumar. The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=websi...