Q&A with Alumni: Gautam Rao
Oct 22, 2018
Meet Gautam Rao, MS&E alum and founder and CTO of Pursuit Inc.
Prior to that, he co-founded the company Finvoice. Gautam graduated with a master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford. His area of concentration was technology and engineering management.
"For me, being an MS&E alum means being very flexible and being very interdisciplinary. The degree has given me a very strong foundation in engineering, design and data science. All of these are things that I wouldn't normally have had a chance to explore in a different program."
Why did you choose MS&E?
When I originally applied for the program, I was working on my first startup. I really did not want to apply for school and I was entirely focused on my startup, but my father told me “you don’t know if this company is going to fail or succeed” and encouraged me to apply to business schools. I started looking into that and I thought two things: A) business school was too expensive and B) I thought the world was kind of moving away from just being business oriented to being tech centric.
I think you need technical skills to actually succeed, especially since I’m more of an engineering-focused type of person. I started doing research on other programs and came across the Stanford MS&E program and thought it was the perfect program for me. When I got selected for the program, it was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I left my company to join the program full-time.
What does being an MS&E alum mean to you?
For me being an MS&E alum means being very flexible and being very interdisciplinary. I think the degree has not only given me a very strong foundation in engineering, design and data science, but also taught me the fundamentals of managing one’s own business. I wouldn't normally have gotten a chance to explore all of these topics in a different program. In most other concentrations you are studying only one specific discipline. It was very useful to have that type of flexibility - simultaneously taking on a variety of roles and having a foundation in a multitude of areas.
How has your time at Stanford impacted your life?
While I was studying at Stanford, I was certain that I did not want to go any further into programming or engineering, going forward. I did not have a great experience with it during my first job at Barclays. However, coming to Silicon Valley and Stanford and seeing everyone focusing on CS, starting companies and building cool products inspired me to pursue it once again. During the first summer, I was just looking for business-oriented jobs, but the program ended up influencing me so much that I've now been CTO in my last two roles.
The program has made me really love being technical, and along with the solid foundation in management the program provides, has been really helpful while starting my last two companies.
The other thing that I acquired was a really good circle of friends from the program that I am still in touch with. Everyone is doing different things--some are in consulting, some are in venture capital, some are at Google--and they all give you different perspectives as you move forward.
Was there a particular class or professor that really stood out to you?
There were two classes that really stood out for me. The first was the strategy in technology-based companies course with Kathy Eisenhardt. When I was running my first startup, most decisions were short-term, such as, “Do we have enough money for the next month?" But taking that course really helped me see things in the long term. You can’t just plan for the next three months, but you should also be planning for the next five to ten years, and that sort of mindset is extremely valuable.
The other course that was really helpful was entrepreneurial management and finance with Professor Tom Byers, which allowed me to assess the mistakes that I made with my previous company in terms of fundraising and managing the company. It helped kind of smooth over the edges from my previous startup experience.
There was one particular guest lecture in the class that I thought was really cool. It was with venture capitalist Peter Fenton, who has been a Benchmark Capital lead investor in Twitter and a bunch of other big companies. He said, “There were three core attributes: vision, execution skills, and relationship skills. Generally most people are good at one or two of those things. It's important to know what those things are and then you hone in on them.” I always keep coming back to that quote, because when you're in a startup you must have a vision and you're always making a decision--whether you should execute now, work on this relationship, or delegate that task--and understanding your strengths is very important when making those decisions.
What inspires you about the work you currently do?
My company’s biggest vision is to make skilled immigration more transparent and simpler than it is today. The reason that's important to me is both personal and broader in scope. The personal reason is I grew up in India and the UK, then moved to Singapore and Chile before coming here. So including the US, I've faced immigration issues in four different countries. It's always been very, very complicated and time-consuming everywhere. And I've always felt like that time could have been better spent doing other things. You always have so many documents and have to keep track of everything, and it's a big mental burden.
The other thing is I feel people really want to accomplish their full potential and I don't think that's possible if they don't have access to the right opportunities. No matter how hard you work or how smart you might be, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, you're probably going to be pretty frustrated, and I think allowing really skilled people to move where they want and work on big opportunities has a huge collective benefit.
What are key things that have contributed to the success of your career?
I'd say the most important thing is relationships. I wouldn't be working on my current company if I hadn't kept in touch with a friend of a friend. You never know who would be helpful to you in the future. It’s really important to stay in touch and always be helpful. I think that helped many opportunities come my way. It also helps when you're looking for a job. If you are friendly and collaborative, you get references very easily and you've got a friend to call. If you really want to maximize the opportunities available to you, I think having a strong network and being good to people is the most important thing.
The other thing though is, even if you have all these opportunities in front of you, you won’t be able to take advantage of them unless you're open and curious. It's very tempting to say this is what I'm going to do and this is all I am going to do, but then you shut yourself off to doing things that might be even more interesting to you. I feel like trying different things is crucial to being happy and successful.
So what advice would you give to a new Stanford student in MS&E?
Be curious and open. You might come into the program with a set plan for your studies and what you’ll do post-graduation. I would advise you to take the first quarter or two to try a variety of classes. From there you can figure out what you would like to focus on and really work towards during your remaining quarters at Stanford. It’s not simply about exploring new areas--studying various and varied disciplines also gives you a new perspective on different issues and makes you a more creative professional.
Can you offer some words of wisdom to MS&E alumni and students?
These are the two things you want to do:
One is to minimize your regrets. Professionally what that means is trying to work on the problems that are interesting to you. You could be working for Facebook or Google, but if you're working on something you don't intrinsically care about, you're not going to be happy.
The second thing is to maximize your opportunities. The way that happens is simply by talking to more people and being open-minded. In Silicon Valley, it's very tempting to sort of automate away human interaction and do everything on an app or computer all day and think you can influence change that way. The reality is that you are going to be half as impactful if you don't maintain good relationships.