[Music] I believe empathy is a superpower that I'm constantly practicing. I wish I had more of it, which is feel it at the same level somebody is going through a situation at the same level of intensity. I feel it now, but not at the same level. I believe that's a superpower that could be significantly helpful at home, at work in community. I would say empathy. [Music] Welcome to Talent is Everywhere, where we spotlight leaders using talent development and social impact to drive both corporate social responsibility and business success. [Music] Welcome to the podcast today. Our guest is Shaylu Tipperadju. Welcome. Hey, Sunmi. So, this is an interesting episode. It will be a little bit different. Shaylu and I actually just met up in person in Chicago last month, which after I feel like many years of being connected on WhatsApp and doing so many calls and so many workshops, Shaylu is a Edtech entrepreneur veteran. We'll say and is now building a company called Magna, which you'll be able to tell us about. And here I am, last of my intro, holding a stuffed unicorn that we named Stella, Magna, being the unicorn creator, real and imaginary. So, welcome, Shaylu. And I want you to tell us a bit about Magna. Absolutely. Pleasure, Sylvie. I'm very happy that Stella, the Unicorn, is as real as you are, an authentic personality that is changing the world. This is an opportunity for us to exchange a dialogue on the entrepreneur, their purpose and mission and the enterprise, where does that reflect in terms of results, products, services, solutions that are very focused on value creation, that is not in its traditional sense unique, but long-lasting. It is what we call built to outlast, so that it can take a journey that's long. So, Magna is engaged in many such ideas across geographies, across industries, across different personalities of entrepreneurs, but there is an underlying theme of, let me make a difference in the world through value creation in my space. So, my identity converts to my significance, but creates that value in the industry they operate in. You being one such cohorts for Magna, it's always been a pleasure because you're in our space, education and enterprise learning. It's an absolute pleasure to be part of this conversation. Talent is everywhere. I hope it's also in this podcast with you and I. Yeah, we hope so. Certainly, you're a wise teacher, Shaylu, with much experience in many ways to frame things. Yeah, I have lots of questions. Maybe one, you know, thinking of Magna, like, what was your story of starting that? Obviously, you have your own entrepreneurship story and, okay, many entrepreneurs want to support new ones and things, but how are you differentiating it? What was Magna in your mind different to other solutions? And how are you thinking of your own experience to build this? I think there's a lot of emotional quotient to the concept, to the execution, to the scaling of Magna. The previous companies were massive scaling the number of transactions that result in scaling. This one is going deeper into the journeys that result in scaling. Journey specifically of the entrepreneur on one end and the enterprises they create, bringing the academia and the research and the folks who go deep and figure out what should we do to the industry to evolve. So evolution of academia and research on one end and evolution of the entrepreneur enterprise and the ecosystem on the third angle, how do they play with each other in a way that is not transactional but relational so that when we create an idea, what is the research behind the idea, behind the concept so that it can last long. So when we engage with Magna cohort CEOs, either in one to one, one to a group of the same company or multiple companies, the underlying theme is to identify how does the value translate from the entrepreneur to their internal company and the voice reflect in the outside industry, that way they become special. So the purpose of Magna is not to stay special but make our cohort of CEOs a leader special, that way they are magnets to that industry. The products they create, the solutions they create are given frameworks from the academic side. They are given the strategic insights in how to scale and then find the venture capital, the private equity, the family offices, the partnerships we have, how to bring those partners to speak the language of any enterprise, the language of money but with the heart and soul of that entrepreneur enterprise. We have done that consciously, thoughtfully and I believe we can also say humbly at successfully because it has resonated with really big partners, it has resonated with the academic institutions, it has resonated certainly I hope with the entrepreneurs who are alumni now in the sense that what we are creating is meaning and money in balance. Yeah, which is so aligned with the values of the links. And so how do you think about, I have a lot of questions with what you just said but just starting with like, who is, what is the profile of a good Magna entrepreneur? What is the, how would you identify somebody who's like open for or likely to be successful with your model versus like the thousands and thousands of people who are launching all kind of thing all the time? I think we find entrepreneurs who begin with identity at the core of the self who have an internal clarity of who they are and why, what they're creating matters that identity is something we look for beyond the, we'll get to that revenue in a minute in terms of our five pillars in the Magna model. The identity of the entrepreneur is essential for us in terms of a best candidate would be somebody who is crafting it but comes from a experience from that space ideally so that they can speak the taxonomy of that industry has done some work in that in the sense they have an ecosystem of connections where they can actually add value or change the landscape of that industry. First I would say would be the identity. Second is the narrative in how they're approaching that idea, approaching that identity for the marketplace. It will be sounding like a cliche but we look for folks who have done work but have humility that goes with it. So less objectives, more verbs, we look at the narrative. The third one is seeing what may be an existing system. Is it an engine that is in place? Do they have clarity on how that operation should work or are they looking to fine tune that system or looking for a completely brand new one? In terms of reach where Magna does differentiate is in our depth, scale, scope and breadth of who we have across different geographies or communities definitely something that we are proud of in terms of our reach and how we can enable that reach to the entrepreneur and their enterprise. You are one terrific example of how do we connect you across geographies across scale systems then comes the revenue. So it is the identity, the narrative, the system, the reach and the revenue that comes after. That's the model we operate in. We provide the academic frameworks, we provide the strategic guidance and then we go to capital allocation and guidance one step at a time. So people who begin with the curriculum, they spend about 10 hours with us to get a full grasp of what is the ideal framework. They spend the next 10 hours on the strategic adjustment, the fine tuning, then we launch into the capital markets because that will make you the entrepreneur and your idea more appealing for the capital allocation because the world is a little confused on capital seeking ideas and ideas seeking capital. We are trying to provide the lens adjustment for both sides so they see each other more efficiently, more clearly. We don't try furiously to say we are completely different than others because coming from the academic side, it is actually bringing back the tried and tested models but give them an advanced lens of where things are changing in the industry and give that guidance. We teach velocity but very slowly, we call it the quantum growth. It makes sense too because I am just thinking of my own journey and I have of course worked in other companies. It is actually like it is always a very similar but it is so easy to get distracted yet to stay away from you. Get away from your mission and get away from like building something and I like one thing that is good about your model or interesting about your model. I will say starting from identity and the mission and then the goal is revenue. We all know that the goal is revenue but it is easy to start to quickly to try to go to market without just spending the time of thinking and then you end up sort of flailing around without focus. Focus is a great point. In fact, I'll take a bonnet which is, I am asked if you have any questions.
had a superpower that you could gift to the magnus who are entering the system, in the system, or graduating from the system. I would say the strategy is what we choose not to do, then what we choose to do. And focus is ridiculously important as a superpower. We do our best to tell them when you present your story, people will distract you with other things that could not be central. So we always want to make sure an entrepreneur in our world should know what their core is and then what their explorer is. When you have that clarity of the core versus explore, you tend to do very well. You said about the capital, capital allocators always make you an idea, make you a suggestion, make you an insight, but it's up to the entrepreneur to know this is my core. And if they have that level of focus. And to know that when I like thinking of like core and explore, because it's also okay to veer a bit and especially when you're small, I mean, you know, we need to prioritize revenue and experiment and test new things that sometimes a new thread is in fact what the core can evolve. And also, I mean, it's so cliche, I just hate this phrase of like the world is moving so quickly. Gosh, you look at, you know, business books from 1985 in the world was also moving so quickly, though I will say that with the advance of large, you know, AI models in 2026 are actually moving quickly, even though this is a cliche. And so I do think this is a moment when one has to think like, am I losing focus? Or am I taking advantage of like, you know, new opportunities that are important? This comes up in pretty much every workshop, whether it is many CEOs across many industries, the one to many workshop, whether it is all employees of a single company in a group workshop within the company or it's one to one conversations. The one thing is the fear of becoming irrelevant, the fear of missing out. So when they hear something snazzy, and this happens by the way to customers too, they hear about things, they have an established ongoing process. How do we stay grounded on? We still know clarity of what is our core. And I'll define that little more in the sense, being open to Wales, can our business add value? Being aware of it, but having clarity of should I be doing that work or should I be doing it with a partner, who does it so well, they're integral to my system. I deal with a lot of economic institutions. I cannot completely pivot and become only a school because there's other work I have in hand, which is taking that framework and converting into a strategy, taking that strategy and converting it into capital, taking that capital and putting it back into research. It's a full loop cycle. When we hit vendors, for example, LMS providers, the AI tools to curate content, the community aspects of events that bring entrepreneurs together, the aspect of promoting the stories through branding and storytelling. There are so many ancillary works that come around, Magna. We make sure that we are clear on what we do and we are also cleared what our partners can do and grow together. And that I think takes a little bit of a discipline in not trying to go too far from it. I'll give you the example of the industry and the source of energy, the sun, versus you, the earth and who are the moons. While it is fascinating to think you're all three, you need know which of you are, which of you, what is your role in this three? Are you the energy provider, creator? Are you the life sustenance? Are you the preferred symbol of beauty and satellite that defines who we are and runs the oceans? We just need to know, in a given conversation, are you the sun, moon or earth? That's actually a nice way to frame it. How do you think differently? I mean, adding value is such a good north star. Clearly, that's what we all need to be doing and why do people pay us. We've seen that with links. We've really been able to get a whole series of big clients around this FOMO around AI positioning, which I think is real, that a lot of companies are getting left behind and that they have this huge opportunity through sponsored education to be able to get their brands and get new users and all that. Obviously, we're adding value to these clients. How do you see that as the same or different to solving a problem? Often, especially building pitches that I'm doing right now, with fundraising, what's the problem? How is your solution? How do you see defining the problem as same or different to adding value? I'll tell you something completely that may sound contraproductive to every logo, every banner, every addout there to think big, leap big, leap forward, go to the stars. It is to solve small and see the result. I'll tell you what I mean in terms of when we did the journey and edicist. We did that in strategy, with that in examity, we did that in magna. It is easy to craft a cohort of magna with 100 deleters, because of our sheer reach of network and community. What we began with cohort one was a really small cohort in double digits. That actually began with the first set of cohorts were even smaller to see value creation. Does it change their enterprise in a meaningful way and the voice resonates and reflects back? We do think big, but we literally act small. We do have a vision of what is a possibility but what is the probability and what is the reality? I think entrepreneurs get confused between what is possible, what is probable and what is real. You literally have to have these three lines pretty clear and know that I need to do what is real so that I have a scale up into what is probable because that's some variations to external factors. What is possible should be out there but we should not make that our central story. Here's a couple of reasons why it fails. Attends to fail. It confuses the ecosystem that this may not be our provider. Even if your value is perfect, they might feel this may be for the large enterprise. This may be for really small companies. This may be for someone else. So if your story is too broad brush, you may miss out on creating your fine craft. I know in terms of paintings, I do that when I don't do my magma stuff. You can actually do a painting on a rice grain. You can do a painting on a mural. You need to know what is your specialty. If you pretend a rice grain, preinter, pretend to be a mural printer, both being a brush of different size, you tend to be unauthentic and the customers might be confused. What is your specialty? So value creation has to be again, back to the focus on what kind of a painter am I? What kind of a canvas do I suit best? What is my brush depends on these two decisions first, which canvas and what type of specialty? Doesn't mean you don't need to understand the others. There's a different thought process in each one. One walks on massive scale and they literally paint with a hand. The other is the brush stroke on a rice grain. And I'm giving you natural examples. This is how we let the entrepreneurs think. If we take links, educate. And we had many conversations of your lovely idea that is taking deep roots. I think you have done the right approach of make deep impact in few enterprises and let them bring the others who will bring the others. It feels frustratingly slow in the beginning, but your roots have gone deeper. Like a bamboo tree would be five years and you haven't seen even four feet. The sixth theory is 30 feet. So the tree always grows both ways up that you can see and down that you cannot, but take more time on the down because the up is the result of it. Otherwise the foundation is a little harder to manage when the promise is big. I hope that kind of philosophically gives you how I think about enterprises. Yeah, no, and that definitely resonates. Yeah, and we're starting to see like the speed of signing these contracts and we're getting, yeah, we're getting in with some new ones that we can't announce yet, but where I see like, okay, this can be not one project, but two, but three, but many and even getting in with very large companies were right away. It's like a two year project, a three year project. And so it, yeah, it takes time to establish the foundation, but then it grows. And how do you feel? So one thing, it's just thinking about entrepreneurs and CEOs, I've definitely had to grow into my role as CEO. And now I do feel, I mean, obviously it is like an ongoing journey. But certainly when I started this, I was not in that mode at all. I was a CFO for a long time, even though I managed a lot of people and did a lot of hard things and raised a lot of money and sold companies. It's diverse, like a different job. It's definitely a different job. But one of the things I'm getting to back to the idea of identity, up until pretty recently, it was hard for me to talk about the company, like the companies at this stage, the company is doing well, the company is growing. I would tend to say we or I, or not separating myself and also.
And I feel like it's a good practice to be like, I'm the CEO of a company and the company is a separate thing that is not me. It's interesting that your model starts with like, identity, which is I guess also gets to your whole thing of like entrepreneur stories versus enterprise stories. Like, you know, not even like it's a psychological thing, but like what is your thought about that? Because I'm really working to be like, my identity is different to the company identity. - You know, old school, we come from that world of talent where they used to call about work, life, balance, as if they're two different things. You do the work and then you get back to your life to get to work and you to leave your life at home. And then we eventually evolved into, it is really work life harmony because work is an integral part of value creation and meaning in the society and home is where you bring the same meaning at home. Similar to that, I would apply that, don't put the entrepreneurs and the enterprises on two different things and say, balance these two. It's really integral without the entrepreneur, there is no enterprise. Without an enterprise, the entrepreneur is just on a stroll, vaguely looking for some validation. So the identity comes from, how do you harmonize these two? In a way, you don't feel you have to give away something to get something. For example, if I'm defining identity who we are and the V is a powerful word, when they see the word I in the past, traditional way, hundreds and thousands of employees meant an enterprise, a few meant a small startup. That definition has now changed with technologies at our hand. I have seen very large enterprises who call about their physical workforce and their digital workforce. And entrepreneurs have the unique luxury right now where it's not purely the headcount that defines their scale, it's the impact. So entrepreneurs who are a V of five people can make a significant impact and actually sleep better. I mean, I know that in an examiner we have thousands of employees in Magna, we have tens, but does not change the impact of what we do. So that identity has to be self-secure where your company doesn't need to really have a hundred thousand square feet building with glasses and a logo that's larger than your life size image. But is it resonating in the industry where when you are not in the room, is the conversation continuing about you and the enterprise? That is identity. If you're not in the room, is the conversation continuing? What happens with entrepreneurs is when they feel they need to be in every room to repeat the story, the brand hasn't taken firm shape in the customer size. How do you do that? Is making sure that the value conversation is ahead of the personal conversation. And I've been told some of the entrepreneurs fiercely debate in Magna. They obviously don't take all the frameworks for what it's worth, but they come from the research of neuroscience and social science and quantum science, which is humans are very, very sharp. We have evolved over millions of years to hundreds of thousands of years to now digitally. We haven't used technology for 50 years, if that. But as human instinct, we are far more smarter. We never sell to logos, you have to realize that. We don't sign up a bank of America. We sign up with Kelly who runs a division at Bank of America. We don't sign Amazon. We sign with Kevin, who is the head of procurement at Bank of Arizona. So always humanize the conversation, but digitize the solution. If you don't, scaling becomes a limiting factor. There were times when we used to see 10 exams, a day in exam, and it was a blogbuster day because, oh my god, somebody's using our solution. We do millions of exams, literally millions. But if you don't separate I from the V upfront and have a safety of, when we began, there were really big brands, when actually Magna came into force. Did we not have incubators, accelerators, investment firms, communities. The world is fairly large. Education industry is a $6 trillion industry. The ability to make impact is substantial. As long as you know that your canvas is practically infinite, the possibility, your impact of what we can do is probability. But what is my reality? So we began with our existing networks, the Harvard networks, the Chicago networks, the Asian networks, the European networks, and we begin small. It automatically scales up. I suggest highly porantroponors to spend at least 20% of the time, a me time, only learning and unlearning and eliminating these back stories that make them think I was a CFO, I was a CTO, I was a worldwide number one guy and something they recognize me. You need to slowly unlearn. But we take pieces of that story that help you forward, Jenny. If I keep talking about only my past products, then there's a gap in my future solutions. So my story is generally or not about-- and I personally, I'll admit, I get a little shy and awkward when people introduce me as the guy who built this and that, and then again, and this exit. I'm like, could we have the story about the Magna entrepreneur like Silby and Stella, the Unicorn? You see that in the office when you visit it, it's focused on every logo except Magna. Because you want to stay in the background and put spotlight on the entrepreneurs. And that's been always the thrill that I've seen in your journey. Your thrill is in taking your company customers and make them look like superheroes. I'm sure that's what keeps you bright and shiny in the morning. [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] This is what I call now the afterglow. How long should I stay in this spotlight? So people actually pay attention. And the story is heard. Silby's story, Shiloh's story, Steve Jobs story. And when will that enterprise really take off when you're nodding the room, but the solution is ongoing? The team is delivering it in a digital or physical form that value is happening. That is when an enterprise really takes form. When it is lasting beyond your infresence in the room, then maybe not even in enterprise. I'll give a quick insight into the conversation I had with two different transactions in the Magna capital. They had graduated from Academy. They had gone to strategy. And now they're in the capital. Both questions come from the investors to the CEO saying, what would be your journey after? And that is a significantly important question. People say that, let me get this figured out. Then I will decide that. You cannot wing it at that point. I always want entrepreneurs in our world to wake up with if somebody made that offer. Do you know what is the value of your company? Do you know what is the price of the company? Because they're not the same. And what is the cost of handing it over? What is the cost of handing it over? What's the value you're creating? And what is the value of the company? What is the price you're willing to take? All of it. This clarity will reverse engineer and keep you continuously going without these mythical stories written in Excel. The greatest fiction is always in Microsoft Excel, as a CFO, you know, in better than others. We all get rich. We get rich in Excel every day. Those those stories happen. I think we need to be grounded on the cost of handing off when a control or cash or company, the price at which I will be able to do it and the value of the organization. Why that is important is it will decide your pricing strategy. It will define your margins. it will define your operational discipline.
and it will define the talent that will come in. If you are hiring someone into your organization, don't interview just a few people, filter them and find somebody that does it. How do they value the company? How do they price the company? And what is the cost for them to enter the company and potentially exit at the right time? This is a conversation you'd feel is only for entrepreneurs, but in our world of entrepreneurship, this is what pushes them to creatively think. One of the one, which is I always ask questions to the entrepreneurs, you asked about how I filter, how I select, how we evaluate someone, is asked something, the question that they cannot find in these chat agents. And I literally say, here's a question, go to any chat agent, get me the answer, they will not be able to find it. And it really pushes the thinking and we will obviously, in further conversation, share those secrets. On one of those questions where they can go to some digital agent and get an answer, it pushes them to creatively think, in the end, we buy where we like to spend more time as an enterprise. I'm sure that you can resonate it probably 110%, I'm doing it probable and more than 100 is, when they enjoy spending time with a company and its enterprise entrepreneur, they tend to buy the products because it makes them feel happy at work. Its corporate work can be very mundane, very bureaucratic, very boring. It's unlike our world, which is amazing. We can wake up and do what we want. But we are at the mercy of markets. We are at the mercy of trends, we are the mercy of patterns, we are mercy at so many variables. So our life is entrepreneurs, is far more unpredictable than an enterprise employee. So they're looking for the thrill of, I wish I was an entrepreneur. I wish I could be a silvery. So your story is actually worth great for them signing the contracts. You need the stability that they have. I wish I got this funding round and I wish I got this customer, I wish I got this contract. So let me be very well connected to. So both are eager to build the bridge of trust. It is, are you pushing it beyond a comfort level because you have deadlines and they have deadlines? Which means one metric that is success factor for companies is understand the cycle of transaction. Everything will take three times more than it should. And that's the nature of the beast. We understand that. When people put the optimist hat and say, it'll be done. The CEO at Opti yesterday said, oh, by Thursday will be like wrapped up. I said, you'll be wrapped up in a storm on Thursday. Not the contract. Now I can say it as it is, but I said, let's be optimistic, but let's also realize that you are not the only person on their radar. And this is a sad fact. And having dealt with the capital side, you are a portfolio for them. You're one of the many meetings. And they are the only meeting you've been waiting for three weeks. So the emotional disconnect is going to be there. - It's so true. Yeah, and that's a good arc 'cause it's like start with identity. And then yeah, we get to the revenue and we get to the transaction. Maybe a nice way to end, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by someone on your team recently for your founder profiles. And so she asked me a bunch of quick fire questions. Maybe I can ask you the same ones back. And you probably didn't have as much time to repair with me. So let's see how you go. So if you could instantly have one superpower, what would it be? - I believe I have it. And that would feel so unhumbled. I believe empathy is a superpower that I'm constantly practicing. I believe that's a superpower that could be significantly helpful at home at work in community. I would say empathy. - Yeah, that's a really good one. What's your favorite holiday destination? - Oh, my city of birth. I don't know, I've even wanted to go someplace fancy, but Hyderabad, the city of my birth is my favorite place. It is the reason is it makes me a child again. And I'm curiously trying to be the grown-ups. So Hyderabad in India, South India. That's my favorite city. And interestingly because I'm a Chicago girl for 30 years, Hyderabad brings vacations last childhood back. I don't think any city would change it for me. I have some bucket list of places I want to go to, but Hyderabad will be the number one. - Yeah, that's nice. You know, it's funny. I have a country house outside of Paris in the countryside. And yeah, lately that is just my favorite holiday destination. It's just easy. It's quiet, the roses, the petunias, the pool. I love it. - All right. - I will add a bonus for you on this one because this will make you extra happy. Seriously, my best friend, my wife, for many lifetimes, her favorite vacation spot is Paris. - So you'll have to. - We haven't been there. - Yeah, I have to come visit. Okay, the last quick fire round. So this or that, I think I know the answers for you, but let's see how we go. Boardroom or classroom? - That's for many day. - Classroom, of course, Shayla. Work forever or retire early? - Oh, I've been there for a long time. - Well, I know you. Let's see. (laughs) Oh boy, don't cut this off from the video. - No, work forever, Shayla. What about solo founder or co-founder? - I always had a co-founder at home and can't do anything without her. So co-founder. - I agree, I'm the same as you. Investor meeting or client dinner. - Oh my, can I have an investor at the dinner? - Yeah, I wonder what I found out a hard question too because I appreciate both. I think I ended up going for client dinner. It depends the investors, but they're certainly, yeah, between the two. I had to lean client, but it was a close one. It was a close one. - Hey, you, you me vanilla chocolate, I will do the swirl and take both. So this is one of those. I'll bring the investor to the dinner to appreciate the ecosystem of both. I'll rig this one. I'll leave both. I'm hungry. - Yeah, okay. And then just to finish up, why don't you just share, like if you could just narrow down to like one thing. What is your like entrepreneur advice when you, you know, meet an entrepreneur going through a hard time, like you know, struggling and trying to see what is like with all your experience of all your magnets, what's the wisdom that you leave people with? - It's easiest one. I thought this would be the toughest, but this is actually the one that hits home. And literally in the sense, when you face tough situations as an entrepreneur and all hope is lost and an investor says, no, our customer says, no, you feel like you lost it. Remember that there is children at home for the parent entrepreneurs who look at you like a superhero, regardless of wearings and losses. You are the superhero. For folks whose parents are looking to them, in my case, my mom, my late father, there's always somebody who's looking at you as a superhero. Don't ever forget that. As long as you remember those grounding things, you can battle through anything and I literally manage, you can battle through anything. My own reflections on things that really go tough on certain days, I look at something's never changed. For them, you're always a superhero and the superhero can do anything. So why would we worry at all? We have chosen this path. It wasn't imposed on us. So no superhero was ever gifted a cape. They stitched it and they put it on. Anything the world needs more entrepreneurs than less. So in difficult days, know that every superhero goes through this mightier and you have chosen the cape. Put it off for some time, but you belong in it. Amazing. I'm going to go get my cape and keep flying. This was very fun. Shailu, thank you for joining us. Yeah, really good. Let's bring you more success and you will bring more magnets who can bring more magnets. So you can all become unicorns and say that they are real. Sylvie, I wish all the best for links, educate, and I hope to see it ring the bell if that is your plan or ring in the hearts of every customer. She will bring you the cash as a gratitude for the value of creating all the best. Amazing. Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard and give us a follow on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things with career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you'd love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you'd recommend? Drop us an email at
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