Here. “He was an early dotcom millionaire — and he repeated his success. He wants to reinvent email, and has radical insights on politics. Rajesh Jain joins Vasant Dhar in episode 70 of Brave New World to share his insights on what he has learnt from success — and failure.”
Addendum (from Vasant’s newsletter):
My recent podcast guest on Brave New World was with Rajesh Jain, one of India’s original Internet entrepreneurs. Rajesh made out like a bandit in the 90s after selling his Internet platform company for over a hundred million bucks, and started thinking bigger. He used his platform to help India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, in his successful election campaign in 2014. Since then, he’s tried to use his digital outreach capability in creative ways, like trying to improve India’s democratic process by helping promote dialog and surfacing candidates who mightn’t otherwise become visible. That hasn’t quite worked out as intended, but perhaps it’s a question of timing and perseverance, and not entirely a quixotic endeavor. He’s also exploring the use of his digital targeting platform to get data-based snapshots of things like public mood on important issues. Andrew Yang drew attention to the need for such types of indicators in my conversation with him last year.
What I find interesting about people who’ve enjoyed huge success is the many failures they’ve endured and learned from along the way. It helps to have a Pepe La Pew attitude: if you fail, try again, and again, and again. But unlike Pepe, learn.
