About GrowthX
GrowthX is a community for the top 1% of Growth Leaders. It helps professionals scale their companies and careers.
The community comes with a yearly membership giving you access to growth frameworks taught by leaders, networking, mentor-led learning, job opportunities in breakout roles, Quora for growth, personal branding and access to hire top talent.
Let’s talk about the super intriguing introduction on your LinkedIn profile. You cycled 2700 km on the highest motorable road in the world - (Khardung La, Ladakh) at 18,350ft. Can you share a little bit about what motivated you to do it?
I was motivated to do something that was never done before.
During the journey, we had to cycle through 7 Indian states, covering around 200 km each day. From the crazy summer heat of Rajasthan at 45 degrees to the negative freezing temperatures in Ladakh, it was exciting without a doubt.
Here's some quick background though:
Just 2 years before this ride I was obese. Like 20 kgs overweight! A mere 15 km of cycling would knock me out for the rest of the day. But the 2 years before my ride was a journey of becoming fit and breaking my mental barrier to do things, one step at a time. The 2700 km cycling ride that happened was an outcome of 2 years of consistency and a LOT of sacrifices.
Somewhere in my heart, I knew that if I completed the 2700km challenge, I could do anything. And that mindset has been my best prize from the expedition.
How did you pick up the knack for taking up tough challenges?
It is easy to say that you are going to take tough challenges to improve yourself. In reality, it's much harder.
Here are the only two things you need to work on:
- Ability: Cultivate your ability to perform better.
You can build your ability to do something by taking very small but consistent challenges. Even if it’s a small challenge, there’s always growth on the other side. This is the core mindset change that I learnt. You should also strive to come out with a structure to solve that challenge again. - Motivation: Fuel your motivation with the right incentives.
It’s all about the people around you. I surrounded myself with people who inspired me. The people who made me believe there's so much potential in humans that we only need to adjust our mindset.
From a sales representative to a marketing and product lead to a founder - you have worn many hats in your professional journey. Which is one core value that you have upheld across all these roles?
Two core values- High agency & hard work.
Work hard, folks.
It’s not sexy nowadays but work hard. You also have the ability to work hard in your 20s.
I had a personal mission that I strongly believed in-create an unparalleled impact. This fueled my ability to work hard as well.
Whether it’s growing the number of users, retention, monetisation, building, whatever it is you do, create a massive impact with your craft. Work like it's your company. And work to make a difference.
But it’s not just hard work, it’s about having high agency. I was never served anything on a platter. My transitions did not happen because I played politics or I was favoured, it was because I had high agency.
What is high agency for me?
- Taking initiative and making decisions without being prompted or directed by others.
- Proposing and implementing new ideas and solutions to problems. (Don’t complain! Everyone is complaining, find solutions instead)
- Volunteering for challenging tasks or projects and seeing them through to completion.
- Standing up for one's beliefs and values, even in the face of opposition. Doesn’t matter even if it’s standing up to the founders themselves.
In general, it is about being an active participant in the success of the organisation, rather than just following orders or waiting for others to take the lead.
You were quite lucky to meet Abhishek early on in your career. Can you share a framework for someone searching for a cofounder for their company? (Won’t be surprised if we get dating analogies that you are so well known for!)
There’s an element of luck in finding good friends, managers or even co-founders. But there’s something that you can control. You can control who you attract. If you like to party every weekend, you’re not going to attract people who like to wake up early for that morning run for example.
Become the co-founder you want to be. Build things, talk about them publicly, and you will automatically start attracting folks who think like you and want to build things together.
What makes you bet big on the community?
Here’s a quick stat that will show you the power of communities. GrowthX raised the largest-ever seed round with 212 investors, 65% of the funds came from our own community.
Now let’s come to why I’m betting big — communities enable social learning.
Human beings are highly social creatures, meaning that we have a strong desire and need to interact with others and form social connections.
Community gives you that place of belongingness, that safe space where you can share your goals and problems, it gives you a tribe.
Communities also allow people to learn from a wide range of sources and perspectives. Unlike traditional forms of learning, which are often limited to a single teacher or authority figure, social learning enables individuals to learn from a diverse range of peers, experts, and mentors.
What we are doing with GrowthX is not reinventing the wheel but understanding the nuances of building communities to drive outcomes for professionals in their careers.
Careers are especially lonely, and they get lonelier as you grow through the ranks.
People who are on similar missions always help each other out. They push each other to never give up, and they inspire each other to push harder, and these benefits cannot be put down on paper as individual metrics.
More Founder Stories: Rejah Rahim (Beagle Security)