Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder, president, and CEO of artificial intelligence firm Perplexity, feels it requires just one skill to be a company chief — “make peace with problems existing”, or the skill of embracing imperfection.
Speaking during a recent Dean’s Speaker Series talk at UC Berkeley Haas, Srinivas spoke about his thougths of the most crucial skill to become a CEO, Perplexity’s offerings, his philosophy for the business and for investors.
Launching 80% Perfect Products and Learning From the Market
For instance, in the funding rounds for the AI firm, the founder of the startup reveals he avoids presenting and goes straight for Q&A. He also revealed that Perplexity succeeds by launching products that are 80% perfect and subsequently enhancing by learning from the market demands.
Srinivas highlighted that the learning of accepting imperfection was an important learning during his experience with Perplexity. “I used to think every problem just needed to be fixed instantly. As the company has scaled, I have learned to make peace with some problems just existing. That is the number one skill you need as a CEO or a founder,” he stated.
The line of thinking also extends to his company, where Perplexity strives aims to put out products that are 80% good, which can be made better by responding quickly to the evolving AI space, he said.
Srinivas also feels that in a rapidly moving field like AI, “There’s really nothing to lose from taking risks.”
Q&A Over Pitch Decks: A Unique Approach With Investors
For Perplexity meetings, Srinivas avoids presentation and decks in favor of Q&A sessions. And the same is with investors.
“I’ve never done a pitch deck for any of the other Perplexity funding rounds. I just write a memo, and I tell them, ‘You can do a Q&A and ask whatever you want. I’ll spend two hours with you, ask me all the questions you have, and we’re just going to pull the metrics for whatever you have and show you right there. And anything else that is internal, not internal data, you can ask Perplexity. It already knows everything.’…I’m not exaggerating,” he told the audience.
On being a “boss” and driving change as an entrepreneur, Srinivas said he started his own venture as he is “unemployable”. He joked during the talk, “Some people are unemployable. They just don’t listen to what the boss tells them to do. I’m one of them.”
He further added that he nevertheless has a “boss” now — that are the customers. “Now, Perplexity’s customers are the boss. Every day I wake up, my phone has hundreds of these (messages) because I see across all these different social platforms, and that’s how I know, every day, there’s some work to do,” he added.
The founder goes by the mantra that true entreprenuership drives change. “I’ve always looked up to entrepreneurs. Driving change the way you think should be done can only be truly done as an entrepreneur,” he added.