Sameer Maggon is the Founder & CEO of SearchStax. In this podcast episode, Sameer discusses growing up in India, catching the technology bug, entrepreneurship, search, and building his life and business in Southern California.
Intro
Welcome to Konaverse, a conversation experience platform hosted and curated by Konabos Consulting. Konabos, is a global technology leader and while this podcast will be connected by technology, the glue is human stories and narrative. Technology can bring us together. It can make our lives better and more efficient in myriad ways. But it cannot replace human discourse and
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Akshay Sura
Welcome to the Konaverse podcast. This is Akshay Sura
Matthew McQueeny
And this is Matt McQueeny.
Akshay Sura
And today we have Samir magan, who is the founder and CEO of Searchstak. How're you doing, Sameer?
Sameer Maggon
Hey, good. Thank you so much.
Matthew McQueeny
So, Sameer, welcome. We're so happy to have you. Why don't we take it from the jump? Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
Sameer Maggon
I grew up in Delhi, India. So, you know, I was I was born there. It's been a while now. Probably not the, you know, not good to remember the years but yeah, that's that's kind of where, where I'm originally from
Akshay Sura
So how was the upbringing? Like, I know, Delhi is a very, I don't know back then, but right now, it's very congested, polluted a lot. It's a major Metro, right. How was it growing up in Delhi?
Sameer Maggon
You know, as far as I can remember, it was always that way. You know, I don't think I've ever I can associate Delhi with the, you know, with a very kind of, you know, what do you call suburban kind of a, kind of a field, right. It's always been, you know, kind of hustle and, you know, there's, there's a lot of people of course, around, you know, tight neighborhoods and, and things like that. It definitely has seen, you know, a tremendous amount of growth in traffic, right, especially as, you know, the transportation aspect of things and, and a lot of similarities, actually. You know, for me, there's a lot of similarities, you know, with Los Angeles and New Delhi, right, in some sense where I am today. So, there's there's a lot of overlap.
Matthew McQueeny
Sameer, did you have siblings?
Sameer Maggon
I do. I do have siblings. I have a sister who lives in Calgary. She's six and a half years elder to me. So yeah, you know, so the the association level is a little bit fuzzy there.
Matthew McQueeny
It's funny though you're both in the same timezone right.
Sameer Maggon
She's yeah, one hour, one hour ahead of, you know, us. Calgary is one hour ahead of us. We're Pacific there, yep, you know, I believe mountain time.
Matthew McQueeny
One thing I found interesting, when we were coming on to this show, we were asking about the pronunciation of your last name. And it's actually you almost have to Americanize it a little bit. Right. And you're used to saying it that way. I'm kind of interested in, in what is that? Like, you know, what is it like to have a pronounced probably a certain way the whole time you're growing up? And then it kind of changes is it almost like having a different name?
Sameer Maggon
You know, it's, it's kind of funny, you know, our last name, or my last name has been pretty unique, even in India, right. And I don't know how much you guys know about, I mean, of course, Akshay might be very familiar with, but, but you know. Indian names, right, there's a lot of commonalities in first name, and last name across, you know, across kind of across everyone. And then, you know, when, one of the things I noticed, when I when I was growing up is, you know, our, my last name, or our family's last name is very kind of unique, right? Even in, you know, even in one point, you know, three or 6 billion people, you know, it was kind of like, very unique that we didn't, you know, apart from my immediate family, I did not, like, I don't think I've ever met anyone with the same last name ever in India, which is, which is not a common thing, if, you know, you know, kind of people in India, right. So that, you know, so so it's always been, in some sense, kind of a unique last name, right. And in India, also, I've heard different people pronounce, you know, my last name differently. So, in some sense, you know, when, when I came to U.S, I kind of chose chose how I'm going to pronounce it and it kind of stuck to it right. So, but you know, so So, to answer your question, I think it was less of a kind of an adjustment primarily because even in India, you know, I saw you know, I kind of saw the same trend.
Akshay Sura
So Sameer, where did you do your like undergrad? What was your undergrad specializing in?
Sameer Maggon
Yeah. So I grew up in Delhi. I did my high school. You know, all like kindergarten to 12th grade, all in one school actually went to an Air Force. Cool, you know, so, you know, my parents, and, you know, almost none of our kind of family tree is in kind of military services around forces but but you know very well, you know, the, the Armed Forces school, they're very well renowned and and you know, they're they're definitely you know, parents try to figure out a way to kind of get their kids right into those schools. So So I did my, I did my high school in a, you know, in an armed forces school in Delhi. And then I did my undergrad in computer science, Bachelors of engineering, in Pune. So I spent four years in, in Pune and again, Matt, just kind of, from your, I don't know, how familiar you are, but like Pune, in India, Pune is very near to Bombay or Mumbai and, you know, it's about I would say, I hope I'm right, right, it's like, 1500 kilometers or so kind of difference. So, you know, so, so I did, my, I did my undergrad there for years, had a lot of fun, you know, kind of doing engineering, and then, and then I came back to Delhi work a couple of years, in Delhi, I go to campus recruitment, a software company, and then and search kind of, you know, work a lot of them search at that point, and then decided that I got to come and do masters, you know, here in the US, and I decided to go to USC, here in Los Angeles. And since 2003, you know, I'm here in LA.
Matthew McQueeny
So Sameer, going to a military school in as high school. I mean, that's probably a shock to the system a bit, right, for most people. What was that experience, like, and I'm sure it actually, in some ways, like, was a platform that gave you a level of discipline, maybe that others don't, is that correct?
Sameer Maggon
You know, I can't compare and contrast, right? Because, right, because, you know, I've, I've been in the same school for, you know, for my entire, you know, entire kind of schooling, schooling life. So it's hard for me to compare one school with other you know, there was, I think, more than I think the discipline and I would imagine, in all the private schools, right, which we call it India, you know, these these schools are kind of called private school. So, the discipline in private schools, I would like, my, my take on it is that it's quite common, and same across most of the private schools, I think, you know, I don't think there was anything very different from, you know, in you know, in the school that I went to that was, you know, for some of my friends that were in other schools, right, from a discipline perspective, because most of them follow a fairly similar kind of discipline, kind of a structure. However, you know, later, you know, and I didn't appreciate it, then when I was in high school, like, but more now. What I really realized when talking to a lot of people that have gone to different kind of schools, is, I think, the extra curricular activities that, that I think the Armed Forces schools bring to the table. And, you know, some things that I just took it for granted, because I was, you know, in that school, when I spoke to other, you know, other friends, you know, in college or, or in, you know, in U.S when they went to different schools in India is how much the focus is just not there on the extracurricular activities, right. You know, it was surprising to me, like, I again, I took it for granted that our school was so huge, and, you know, we had like, two football fields, and we have a, we had like, eight basketball courts, and, you know, six volleyball courts and all that kind of stuff, right. And, like, when I spoke to other other friends, you know, about their schooling in India, they were just surprised that the school was such a large kind of, in such a large space, right, with all those facilities, which you don't, you know, which you don't typically find, right, and other other schools. So, so, in some sense, it's less about the discipline, but I think it's more about the exposure and kind of the facilities that that beyond, you know, kind of school provided that I, I think was a, you know, was was kind of different, right. And, and, you know, and sports was just kind of something that that, you know, we were exposed to early on in high school, which, I mean, now, I think things are changing, but I didn't think at that time, a lot of school focused on that.
Akshay Sura
Sameer what age were you interested in technology, which ultimately led to going into engineering?
Sameer Maggon
Yeah. I remember 1990 when I was 10 years old, my my dad brought an XT computer at home. You know, I don't know if you remember PC XT. You know, that was my first computer at home. And my dad's always been, you know, very kind of, you know, very he kind of, he's, he's an entrepreneurial kind of himself. And he's always been, you know, hey, if if you know, we can get something that's kind of new and different, you know, he always like to kind of try those things, right. So, so we got this computer home, which was PC XT, which had like, 20 megabytes of hard disk. And I think it had 64 KB of RAM, and five, five and a quarter inch of floppy drive. Right. So So that was my first foray and exposure into really kind of the world of computers. And I think I was I really found that I, I was a geek. And you know, I really kind of dug in this whole computers, when I was 10 years old, and got exposure to that I remember driving a really like, I think there was a software called PC tools that at some point, I made my dad buy, and I went to this really kind of far place where they sold software, because, you know, a lot of places used to sell software. And there was this place where I bought this, you know, in my mind, like a cool tool to diagnose my computer, which was called PC tools. And, you know, that came in like 25, quarter inch floppies. Right. And, and I took them and I think the word floppy is probably my kids, if I told tell them, they wouldn't even know what floppies are. But you know, I took them home. And I kind of, you know, the way you install the software is, you know, whenever you have to run the software, it asks you to say insert this number four, and then you know that disk you have to insert and it kind of then pauses and then say now insert this number eight, so So I had a lot of fun kind of an exposure. I think at that time, you know, with computers,
Matthew McQueeny
Makes me think of the old AOL days with the discs, right, where that was how you got it. Sameer, you said that your your dad was kind of entrepreneurial. What did your parents do?
Sameer Maggon
My, my dad ran a business. At least, you know, in as far as I know, he did a couple of jobs probably prior to you know, prior to me getting born. But I think my my life since I've known him, he's been in business, he runs a, you know, he has a he used to have a dealership, in, in Delhi that used to he used to be a reseller for kind of industrial, electronic, electronic parts, you know, more so like, I don't know if you know, industrial panel buildings, and you know, all the kind of initiators and MCCBs and stuff that goes into big industrial panels when you set up factories and industries, so used to be an authorized dealer for that. And that's how, you know, we've we've known him, at least I've known him for forever, you know, and on my mom's side, you know, we my mom was a homemaker and, you know, she, you know, she didn't she didn't she didn't work, but you know, it's pretty common, common kind of, you know, if someone, someone got to go to hold the fort.
Akshay Sura
So, how long, like, I'm assuming that, so you came to USC finished your Master's again, in computers? I'm assuming
Sameer Maggon
Yes. Yeah, it was all computers. I did computer science undergrad, my master's was in computer science major. And, you know, I did a lot of AI. Actually, most of my specialization was robotics in USC. And, yeah, I took a lot of robotics classes, but then, you know, found no practical use at that time. And now I, you know, I think now, I think the time is coming back, back with all the all the kind of advancements and practical commercialization of a lot of robotics, right. I think in at that time, I mean, I think even still, today, if you are into robotics, or that kind of stuff, most of the time, you have to kind of focus on either, you know, kind of researching stuff, or you kind of go into the defense, you know, side of the equation, right. So, so, you know, my specialization was robotics, but then I changed my specialization in mid mid masters to kind of make it just general software engineering.
Matthew McQueeny
Samir, the area around USC is probably some of the most beautiful parts of the country and the palm trees in the oceans close by. Had you been to America? much before that, and what was it like, landing there?
Sameer Maggon
I was, I think the first reaction as I got out of the plane, I had not come to America before to answer your question. And my first reaction getting out of the plane was air quality. There was a significant difference in air quality like it was a difference. enough that you even you know, when you were kind of young coming to America, like, you know, completely excited about the college, that's what you noticed. Right? So that was to me, that was the first thing I noticed about America, but its a cultural shock, right. I mean, I think when you talk about the discipline shock, I think, to me coming to America was a shock. You know, that was a, that was a shock that went through the system. You know, nothing that I had kind of imagined, you know, I think completely, very different culture, like too much information kind of soaking and getting adjusting to, you know, that, yeah, I mean, those two years that I did at, at USC, and I was fortunate enough to have have some great kind of mentors along the way. You know, I think those were those were really fun.
Matthew McQueeny
Do you remember what you felt before coming? Like, were you really anxious? Nervous? I mean, it was probably a few few months, at least, since you were you were accepted? Right, you had to think about the move?
Sameer Maggon
Yeah, I mean, you know, we had a pretty good, I would say, social structure, right. In India, we had a good group of, you know, I don't know how much you know, about USC, but there's a lot of international students that actually come to USC, I believe USC has a, probably more than 50% or, you know, pretty significant number that are actually international students. So, you know, that gives you an advantage, right, that we're where I'm from, like, when I was coming from Delhi, I actually found a lot of people that were going to USC at the same time, I was going and, you know, we met actually, in India, we met at a couple of coffee places together to kind of talk about exchange notes, figure out housing and everything. And, and I also had a couple of friends who were at USC, you know, before, before I actually was planning to go there. So, you know, they, they also kind of provided some some kind of guidance and, and kind of insights into, you know, into kind of how to make the transition, right, easier. Like, uh, you know, I think the biggest concerns as a, as a person kind of going from India to USC, for me, we're all around, you know, especially when you're going is like, what are you going to do for housing? You know, are you going to do this, right, because studies and stuff, you know, I think Indian people and parents, I think we have to applaud them is like, it's ingrained in us to kind of make sure that we, we, if not excel that, you know, we will be above average, from a, from an education perspective. But, but I think, what, what you don't get a lot of, you know, kind of, I would say practical experience, right, staying in India, is how to be independent, right, when you're out of out of your kind of cocoon, and how to kind of make sure that you can kind of thrive in that situation. So, so most of the anxiety and most of the conversations were all around, you know, how to independently live right in a country that you've not been to, and, and you know, how to do you know, how to be, you know, how to be adjusted. So, you know, I found some great friends in India, and some of them, you know, I even know, they're, like, we they say, half a mile away from where I live. And, you know, we've been friends since 2002, and 2003. And, you know, that's, that's, that's been, I think, the best part about the experience.
Matthew McQueeny
Sameer, the interesting part is, when you were bringing up those years, that's when like, USC football was God. Right? They were like, unbelievable, what was what was that like? Because you probably didn't have much exposure with football, and you're basically dropped into like, maybe the most important Pro, like college scenario ever. Did you get involved at all, like, pumped about it?
Sameer Maggon
Energy I think high energy was kind of what I mean that I think we were, we were fortunate enough to be at USC when we witnessed kind of the best of, you know, the top kind of USC game, right? We we saw Pete Carroll who was just kind of a star, you know, from a coaching perspective, there was lightning and thunder, you know, there was Matt -
Matthew McQueeny
Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and
Sameer Maggon
Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, you know, they were all playing and, and, and, you know, we, I mean, look, we didn't know about football, right? I mean, in India, there's no concept of you know, football, right? The Football is actually soccer in India, right. So you come here and you hear about this game. And I think I would have not even noticed that game if it was not because of you know, the one of the kind of my mentors or one of the guys who I worked for Jeremy Query, who actually exposed us to football. So he, you know, so I worked, you know, I was working in a coffee shop as kind of like, not even a barista, just cleaning, cleaning kind of the coffee, you know, coffee shop floors, at USC, as a campus job, right. And then, but, you know, I, since I loved computers, I also kind of knocked a lot of doors, you know, in college to kind of see if I could use my skill to to, you know, earn more, earn more money, right? Because, you know, I think at that point, the coffee shop used to pay six and a half dollars or something per hour, right. And then, and then, you know, if you got into kind of like a computer job, you know, you could get even 15 or $20 an hour, right. So that's like a significant difference. And, and I had an edge because I did two years of work, before coming to USC, as opposed to, you know, a lot of my peers who actually were just coming to USC directly, you know, doing their undergrad. And I think that gave me an advantage where I kind of went into some of the some of the job applicants and I actually knew how to code. So, you know, so so that. So, you know, very few, I think, a few weeks, I worked at a cafe, and then I got a job at USC bookstore, and USC bookstore had a small IT division, where they manage the entire websites for USC bookstore.com. And I happen to be, I believe, you know, one of the early kind of developers who was hired as a student developer to kind of work on the USC bookstores website, and, and it used to do like, a million dollars in business because USC, you know, people with a lot of money come definitely come there. And the USC bookstore definitely gets a lot of a lot of that discretionary income, so to speak, right. So. So, you know, I work there at the website. And, you know, that was my foray into getting a much higher paying higher paying job. But then I think the manager there who was Jeremy Query, he was a great manager, and he just like, exposed, he only hired Indian folks, because, you know, for some reason, he's his, he's like, Hey, you know, these Indian guys are really good at coding, so I'm just gonna hire them. And, you know, we built a great relationship with him. And he used to take us to tailgate parties. And, you know, he used to buy, you know, bookstore from bookstore he used to buy, like, these season tickets and stuff, and we used to go and watch games, so, so a lot of the football, I think, for me, and getting kind of ramped up about it is, is really kind of thanks to thanks to him. You know, he's, he's really kind of exposed us to the whole culture, right. And he would give, like, his own kind of commentary on top right is like, you know, like, mixing football and American culture together, and kind of exposing us to that. So that was, that was great and invaluable.
Akshay Sura
What kind of languages did you guys use, like, in the early part of your career and in USC?
Sameer Maggon
um, my first language was assembly. Second was COBOL, I believe. Then I learned Pascal, Pascal in school, high school, yeah, high school, I took computers as my specialization. So we had a great computers lab. So I learned Pascal, Pascal there, then in college, I learned c++ and C, and a little bit of Java. And, and in, in my work, I learned Java a lot, but I actually got exposed to search, Lucean, you know, in, in my work, in 2001, and then in at USC, we I got exposed to PHP. And, and, and, you know, and then in later part of my ears, I got exposed to Python. So, a lot of different languages, you know, to me, like language is just a tool, right? It's a means to an end, right? It's, you know, it's something that I think a good engineer doesn't focus, I mean, I think that's probably going to go to annoy a lot of idealist. But, you know, from my perspective, I think language is really a means to an end. You know, what you want, what you create out of it is more interesting, as opposed to the language itself.
Matthew McQueeny
Such an interesting little context thing. When Akshay said languages, I'm like, wasn't it English? But it was like, you just do the the tech angle. So yeah,
Sameer Maggon
I mean, you know, yeah, that's that like, to me, the languages mean programming languages an automatic association to that.
Matthew McQueeny
So, Sameer, when you finish school, you were there for two years. Did you just know you were gonna stay in Southern California. Did you come back to India at all? What was that transition like?
Sameer Maggon
No, I was here, I didn't want to go back. This is home, I there was by hook or by crook, I gotta I gotta be here.
Matthew McQueeny
What was what was the hook?
Sameer Maggon
I think, to me, the, you know, the environment, people's desire to be to kind of excel at, you know, whatever they wanted to excel at, and freedom of ability to do whatever he wanted to do, as opposed to you know, what someone else wanted you to do. I think to me, that was kind of just, you know, again, I think being entrepreneurial, I think, to me, that was like, just something I just can't, you know, can't ignore, right? You know, what else does an entrepreneur want, the ability to do whatever they want to do
Akshay Sura
So, you mentioned after undergrad, you got exposed to Lucene a little bit. So when did you try to focus more on the searches via the jobs you were exposed to more more and more search and that grabbed your interest? Or what pulled you towards search?
Sameer Maggon
Yeah, I think it was my first job. It was a document management company, new Gen software technologies. I remember the first time like I was, you know, it's like, you know, in India, it's like, cattle, right? It's like, you know, when you're recruited, you're like, hey, let's pick all of these people that are here, and let's put it into the company. And that's kind of how you get recruited in, in, in India, right. And, you know, I was, I was in this company, New Gen software technology. And I remember my boss, Anun Druman, he's now in us. You know, he, he came, he came to me and said, Hey, you know, what, my boss, and at that time, because the managing director of the company Daywalker Nigam was his name, right. So he said, Hey, Sameer, you know, I have a project for you, I was like, Okay. And he's like, you know, my, my boss wants to do something, like the newer version of the document management system, and, you know, it needs to be all like search oriented, right? And I have no idea what searches and no idea what else anything is. And he's like, Can you go and cook up a POC for it? And I'm like, and I think, you know, he knew at that time that I was kind of in that, you know, kind of, like, I had the ability to like, go and do any kind of POCs and stuff. And that's, you know, that was kind of, I was really interested, right, and kind of taking a problem and then chewing on that problem and kind of going and finding a solution. Right? So and, you know, that's all context he gave me and I was like, okay, and I was like, What do you know, what do you want me to do? He's like, I don't know, there's going to be a presentation after like, 10 days, you know, it's going to be with the managing director. And I'm like, this guy who's a software engineer, and like this 250-500 people company, and I've never even like, I was like, Well, why would I give a presentation to them? Right? So it's like, so anyway, so he, he just threw that over over to me. And I'm like, researching, right? I'm like, spending hours and hours trying to research. How do you do that? And that's when I got exposed to Lucene. I was like, oh, there is this thing called Lucene jars that you can actually use to index a bunch of data, and then to do search, and all that kind of stuff. So I, I did a big POC in in that kind of framework. And stupidly enough, like trying to impress the boss, I created this presentation of what the new document management system should look like. And I created like this 50 page documentation, a 50 page presentation, right. Of course, with an engineer, you're asking him to do presentation, what else is he going to do?
You know, it was funny, and I that was kind of my exposure to search and Lucene. And, you know, we went into this presentation, it was just it was a conference room. And it was this Managing Director of the company. He's sitting in this conference room smoking cigarettes, you know, continuously as a chain smoker, and, you know, my boss Anun is there and I'm there. And you know, we're kind of presenting this. And later he says, You know what, that project is approved. We got to go build this thing out now. So, so that was my exposure to search. And it was very fascinating. But then, you know, I came to USC. And I, I took you know, I took a bunch of classes and I think one of the classes I really excelled in was information integration. There's a professor Craig Knobloch, who's now actually the head of Information Sciences Institute's here in him in, in Menin and, you know, there used to be the same in our school where if you excel in his class, you know, he gives the top two or three people like research assistantships, right if you become, which means paying for your college and giving you a stipend and everything, which is like, I think the best thing ever right for a student to have, especially an international student coming. And, and, and, you know, I worked really hard and, you know, sure enough, he actually, you know, offered and then you know, kind of coming and doing a RA. And I had to like say no to him, because, you know, through my through my outbound efforts, at that point, sending email to every professor in the college and spamming them. I actually hit a professor who said, Hey, I can give you a research assistantship in semantic search. And, and he actually gave me an RA, in a field, a semantic search field and I, you know, I think at that point, that was my second kind of an accidental foray into search. So, you know, those two, kind of, to me, were the foundations of how I got into search was an accidental kind of an opportunity to actually work in search. And, you know, I think I think about it as an accident, I'm sure the professor when he looked at my resume that I've worked on search, he's like, Hey, I could use someone like that in in semantic search concept. Right. So that's probably, that's, that's good. And then after that, I don't think I've ever left the search space, I've always been recruited, or, you know, I follow the same Professor into a startup search startup. And then, you know, my, my experience has always been in search. And I think I can spend another 50 years and I don't think I were, I would master that field.
Matthew McQueeny
Sameer, a big part of, you know, entrepreneurship, as you know, is the whole opportunity identification, right, and figuring out where the market is, and all this. How did you know inside, and I know, it's always ongoing, right. But how did you know inside that search was something that you could actually focus on? Because I've talked to the you know, I've talked internally with our search guy, Hugo, and I'm fascinated by the the entrepreneurial thought process, right to go into something that I think many people on the outside don't realize there's that much happening in it. And there is there's like, so much, I didn't get it, but what was it about it, that you kind of saw the opportunity to become an entrepreneur in that?
Sameer Maggon
I think I became an entrepreneur in search, I think I, I just spend a lot of my career in search, because it's just fascinating, right? Like, I think one of the things I value a lot is continuous learning, right? And to me, like if, like I say, like, Look, the day I stopped learning is the day you know, you die, right. To me, I think the learning aspect is very, very important. And, and I think search is such a deep field, such a vast applicability that you can learn forever, right? You can always be a student of search, and you you know, you can you can spend generations and generations on search and not get bored, right. With this with the space and that's, you know, and that's I think, what attracts me towards search, you know, from, from a space perspective, is that even after spending, I don't know, 1520 years now in search, I just feel like Oh, man, like, life is short, like, I, I can spend another 100 years and still don't know everything about the field. So so you know, I think to me, that's, that's what's exciting about search. I think the entrepreneur aspect to me is just a, I think, to me, that's an ingrained personality, right. And DNA and how I'm wired is probably kind of an you know, and I think for me naturally in like, 2008, or something, or 2000, you know, 12 or something, and kind of like, Hey, you know, that's kind of what I know. And if I were to do something, you know, I mean, there was an opportunity identification at some point I did. And, you know, it kind of was very natural for me to kind of go and start start a search company. This isn't the first Right. I mean, prior to this. I did also another company called produksi, which was actually a mobile search kind of a solution was a failed startup, but but, you know, again, lessons learned.
Matthew McQueeny
No, absolutely. And kind of on that in that mold. From everything, you know, I've read in tech, right. Los Angeles has become more of a tech cluster right over time, but I'm interested in you know, you're in Southern California, you're coming out around 2005, I think, you loved where you love the environment there and everything. But it probably wasn't as fully integrated as a tech cluster is maybe Northern California? And was there ever a thought to go up there? Or did you have faith that the kind of scene would grow in LA?
Sameer Maggon
Yeah, you know, I like LA for a variety of reasons. And I, you know, I think tech, definitely the you know, there is there's compared to Silicon Valley, right, there is a little bit of a disadvantage. But like, for me staying in LA, is less to do with, you know, kind of the tech space more to do with just the diversification and the variety of kind of stuff you can do in Southern California. You know, I talked to some of my friends in San Francisco, and they're miserable, the city and all they do is talk about computers day in day long. Even if they're going and doing a cricket match on Saturday, they have to carry their laptops with them. So I don't I don't think I'll enjoy. Enjoy being in that situation. But that being said, I think I've always been, you know, and in LA, right, LA is a very big ad tech, kind of a hub. Right? And my experience, always have been outside of the ad tech community. I've always been, you know, when whether I was working for someone else, or working for myself, or working for my customers? I have 250 bosses, right. So, you know, so basically, my focus has always been in high tech kind of an environment and information space. You know, I did kind of search platform for at&t, I did search platform for IP, I did a couple of search startups, where VC funded startups where I was an engineer, and a product guy. So you know, that's, that's been my kind of word in LA community. I think LA community is very unique. It's definitely improving. I think the biggest challenge I see in the LA community is I think we need more product and tech people in LA, I think when you try to scale, I mean, I feel like hiring sometimes becomes harder in LA. But you know, with SearchStax, how we've built is we built kind of globally distributed organization from the get go, and it doesn't really matter where people are, right. So so from from that perspective, I personally, on a personal note, love the Southern California region. I definitely think if you know, someone's very serious about going and raising money, I think if you want to create a business where you need large amount of funding to be successful, you know, your odds are better if you're in San Francisco, I think that's kind of how I look at it, right. And, and when I when I started SearchStak, I don't think that was my intention. My intention was not to start a company that, you know, from the get go kind of attracted funding, I really wanted to create a bootstrap business and focus on a problem that the customer is trying to solve, and then solve that problem. And then, you know, I mean, funding to me, again, is a means to an end where you need to know why you're raising the money, and what will give you as opposed to just Hey, I Congratulations, I raised $5 million. Do you know what we need to do about it? What are we going to do with it? Like, no? So you know, that's, that's kind of long winded answer to your question.
Akshay Sura
No, no. It's all in line. Sameer, based on your experience, and you've mentioned that you've worked for people you've worked in startups, funded startups, right. And then you did something with the mobile one before and then now we have a very successful company Searchstak. What kind of advice would you give, like budding entrepreneurs? Like if they want to start or they have an idea they want to build upon, like, can you give them any advice on how to proceed?
Sameer Maggon
Ah, you know, few things. I would say, I think everyone should go and start a company, and they should not quit before 24 months. I think to me, that, you know, and I tell that actually, you know, we have conversations with our friends. And you know, one of my friends was asking question, hey, you know, I want to do a start up and serve as like, you know, work, go to a startup or go to a company. But make sure you don't quit before 24 months, because I think that 24 month period, will give you enough failures and learnings to actually, you know, build on top of right, I think there's going to be so much immense learning that's going to come out of it, whether you succeed in the startup or not, I think at the end of that, you know, kind of the period You will gain so much that you would have like, to me, I think it's kind of like 10-15 years really, really squished into those two years. Right. So again, if learning is important, I think startups, idea doesn't mean much. Personally, that's my experience, we started with a very different idea where we are today, you know, has evolved multiple times, I think, you know, to me, the advice would be persevarance, like, you know, just kind of focusing on it and not giving up. Second would be continuous to learn, continuously learn, and then evolve. And then third would be, you know, kind of get closer to really what problem your company or your idea is trying to solve, and really, really align right, to that problem space, as opposed to, you know, this is the idea and the product I have, right, I think I mean, that's, those are the three things I would say people should really focus on. You know, again, there are plenty of things that in a startup can go wrong, some some in your control some not your control. But to me, I've found those three things are kind of my, you know, compass, right, so to speak, to, to kind of move forward.
Matthew McQueeny
Sameer, I'm in an MBA program, finishing up, you know, maybe the last 20%, that'll, you know, hopefully be done by the spring. But the entrepreneurship concentration is so fascinating, because I think what I hear from a lot of students, and, you know, from the lessons, it's really that leap of faith, right? That initial leap of faith, at least where you're like, Is someone going to catch me on the other side? Whether it's customers, whether it's other people to work, you know, money has to come in. Was that when you were going into being an entrepreneur, which happened pretty, you know, quickly, it sounds out of college. Was that a big worry for you? And if so, how did you work through that?
Sameer Maggon
You know, I think maybe I was more risk. You know, I had more risk taking abilities. I think, for me, that has never bothered me, right. I kind of felt like and I you know, if you're an engineer, and you feel like you're even an average engineer, right? The job market here in America is so amazing, right. It's like, you're not gonna like, look, what's the worst that can happen? You'll go for two years, you're trying to do something, you'll fail. Yeah, you can still go and work as a, you know, and get a decent amount of money, right, in any of the companies out there. So what's there to lose? To me, the question is, there's nothing to lose. So, you know, go like, to me, I feel like, Yeah, and I feel very strongly about it. Right. I think when people talk about, oh, what's going to happen this and that, you know, we got to stop cribbing about it, and just kind of go and go get it done. Right. So like, to me, that's kind of, I think we need to overcome the fears. And, and to me, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are just used to taking that risk. Right. And, and, you know, that's just normal to them. Right? It is a calculated risk, right. I mean, yes, you know, you, you know, when I started this. I know, I had a family and kids and everything, but at the same time, I think, what a lot of people, and then, oh, you know, I'm gonna look bad if I fail. I was like, Hey, you know, I mean, you got to just go do what you want to do.
Akshay Sura
The final philosophical question then Sameer, knowing all the things, you know, all the experience you've gathered, right. Is there any advice you would give the 18 year old Sameer?
Sameer Maggon
18 year old Sameer will be in college. You know, I think the advise I would do is, if I were to, if I were to do all over again, I think, you know, what would be that advice? I, you know, I I think get yourself exposed to as many things as possible. I would say though, if you're an entrepreneur, if you really want to do a company, and you don't have to right. I mean, I don't think like I think people are sometimes very fascinated by people who start companies and stuff. They don't have to right I mean, it's really your personal preference and personal choice, right. Not everybody has to go and start a company. I think to me, what's more important is, you know, what's magical is go find a team that you really enjoy working with, and a team that you get like you learn a lot right. And to me, I think that's been the most rewarding aspect of at least my career in the first company as I came here in the US. You know, I still remember that people because I felt like, I had so much to learn from everyone in that company. And they were such a committed team that were like working towards this common goal. And to me, I feel like it's less about the individual. I think the magic happens when you start assimilating that team. And if all that team members are kind of working towards the same objective, you're gonna have, like, to me, it's the journey, right. Not the not the end goal. So, you know, to me the advice for me when I wish I had this realization early on, right, and I, someone kind of, and again, you know, maybe someone told me, but I probably ignored because I was 18 year old. But, you know, to me, I felt like, that is one thing that I don't think a lot of people talk about, I think people will miss a single person, like being a superhero, and like, you know, tearing up his shirt, and, you know, having a cape in the back and kind of really kind of flying, I think, you know, companies and entrepreneurship, I feel like it's a team sport, right? It's part of it's the team that makes it happen. And I think what you should be lucky about, and you should figure out a way to is, can I find a team, and it needs to be a small team, that I can, you know, we can accomplish something larger, right, as part of group. And to me, I think that's, that's the advice I would give as opposed to go and try to be entrepreneur and be on your own, like, try be part of that team. I think wonders happen when you're part of that team. Right. And, you know, they say it takes a village to kind of build a company. And it is actually true, right. It's like, you know, it is not an individual sport. It is a team sport. I don't think we as SearchStak would have been here. If, you know, we didn't have some great people in the company that you know, have gotten us here. And I think it's, it's kind of the some of, you know, sum of parts is larger than each individual read combined, is it's to me kind of very, very important in in entrepreneurship.
Akshay Sura
Nice. Thank you so much for taking your time to jump on the call with us.
Sameer Maggon
No, thank you so much for for having me here. It was a pleasure. Thanks, Akshay. Thanks, Matt.
Outro
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