Announcer: 0:00

Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:35

Good morning America. How are you? It's a sunny day in Philadelphia. I say that a lot. You'd think it's always sunny in Philadelphia, but it's not. So anyway, it happens to be a sunny in Philadelphia day. Ang, how are you this morning?

Ang Onorato: 0:50

I am well and, yeah, I'll take the sun and the warm weather here in early November that's not usually typical for us, so I'll take it.

Marc Bernstein: 1:00

We are on Zoom today, which we aren't usually, and I'm looking out my office window in my house and I'm seeing the beautiful autumn leaves. There's parts that are already gone, but it's today. The colors are great too. It's really beautiful. So, Ang, I know you have a topic to start out our day, yeah.

Ang Onorato: 1:17

And it's interesting because you're talking about the leaves changing and falling and we were talking offline and I said this word kept popping up for me this last week and the word pivot.

Ang Onorato: 1:29

And sadly it came up amongst my group of friends initially because with the untimely and for me very sad passing of Matthew Perry, we kept talking about some of the famous friends episodes and the famous episode with the couch and they're yelling pivot and all of that and it's just a silly take on the term. But it's also come up a lot in my work all week and I've heard it from a lot of clients and candidates and leaders and the topic about unexpectedly feeling like they've had to pivot a lot very recently, so whether it's in their lives or businesses or service offerings, and there's so much going on in the world that it was interesting that people were talking about changing and pivoting and refocusing and all of that. So yeah, it was a big topic for me and I was wondering if you had anything this week, mark, and I know I'm excited to introduce our guest. It's someone I know and have worked with, so I'm excited to introduce him and this is a big piece for him. But what are your thoughts on pivoting right now?

Marc Bernstein: 2:29

Well, one, as you're talking about. One thing I was thinking about is that you know, when we started the show it was only like seven or eight months ago, but it was still post pandemic. I don't know that we say that anymore, but during the pandemic I know in my business I pivoted greatly. I know you did, I know a lot of our guests did. We've talked about that. But it's interesting you say that because I think there might be just as much pivoting, if not more so, even going on now, like the rate of change has accelerated. It doesn't seem like it's slowed down since the pandemic. Things are changing. Ai we've had had a couple shows on AI and how quickly that's moving things forward. Vik might have some thoughts on that too, but that's my thought is that the pivoting hasn't stopped and it's going on, and I think it's happening even more quickly and more extremely perhaps than it did before. Vik, we'll introduce you formally, but do you have any thoughts on it?

Vikram Ashok: 3:25

Yeah, I do. I mean, look, I think I agree with everything you're saying. I feel like the market is just changing so rapidly and all of us, as business owners, need to react to rapidly changing market conditions. Right, and I think, if you go back to 2019 and fast forward to today, obviously it's been super volatile and the market has constantly been changing for the last four years, and so I think it's a really important topic how do business owners pivot their focus and change direction as needed to continue to thrive in an increasingly complex market environment?

Ang Onorato: 4:07

Yeah, absolutely Well, Vik, this is a great time. Let me introduce you formally to our listeners, but first I want to say I get so much enjoyment out of having guests like yourself on that. I mean, we love meeting new guests, but when I get to bring people on the show that I've had some interactions or I've known from previous work, it's really exciting. Because I asked you to join us today because I think the company that you founded, graphite, and you're going to talk us through that journey is really, really exciting. But let me tell our listeners a little bit about you, right? Because, like all of our guests on here, you all have really interesting backgrounds.

Ang Onorato: 4:46

So you know Vik is, and should say, your full name Vik Ashok, entrepreneur and tech executive who has currently built an on-demand platform called Graphite for on-demand talent. Prior to that, he was a private equity investor with Quillvest Capital Partners, which I understand is about a $36 billion multifamily office. You're recognized as an expert on all things related to gig economy, future of work, freelancing, on-demand labor, and that's really near and dear to my heart. That's how we connected, how we connected and basically he has built a company that provides seamless access to the world's best and top independent talent. So he's going to talk us through that and really what the importance is in the marketplace today. And we worked together at a previous company and Vik why don't you take us through your journey of where you started, how you've pivoted and how Graphite has come to life?

Vikram Ashok: 5:48

Sure and first of all thank you so much.

Vikram Ashok: 5:51

I'm super excited to be here. So thank you all for having me on the show today. So a little bit about me.

Vikram Ashok: 5:58

I grew up in New Jersey, so born and raised in New Jersey immigrant parents, born and raised in New Jersey, immigrant parents and you know, as a kid I was always actually pretty fascinated with entrepreneurship. It was just something that I love the idea of building something from scratch and so I've always had this kind of bent towards being an entrepreneur and I've always been fascinated by business. And, more specifically, actually eBay was a company that I was really interested in when it first came into the market, and I was kind of a kid at the time and I just thought it was so cool that, you know, all of a sudden you could buy and sell things online to people all over the country and actually all over the world. And so I've had this fascination with marketplaces since I was a kid and I was actually an early user of eBay. And so you know, I went to college in New York and you know I studied math and economics.

Vikram Ashok: 6:52

I was always a, you know, kind of a science bent and fascinated by science as well, and then I started my career at a private equity firm, as Ange mentioned, called Killvest, and so we did traditional private equity deals across industries, and so it was a great, great way to start my career and I learned a ton really fast paced environment.

Vikram Ashok: 7:15

And one of the things that led me to being where I am today was a problem that I identified as a private equity investor in the market, and so I was a consultant to the portfolio companies of my private equity firm, and they started reaching out to me to help them, and they just didn't have a way to get work done efficiently and cost effectively, and so they were turning to me to come in as a consultant and help them, and so I started out doing independent consulting work in the finance function for my private equity portfolio companies, and that was when the light bulb went off in my head that there was a much bigger problem in the market that I'd actually sort of stumbled into, and I got really excited about creating a platform where companies can hire on-demand talent quickly to get really important work done, and that's really what we're building today in GraphLite.

Marc Bernstein: 8:11

And just as a frame of reference, Vik, I think almost 10 years ago you started your company at this point, correct?

Vikram Ashok: 8:17

That's right. Yeah, we launched in 2014.

Marc Bernstein: 8:21

what kind of challenges did you face in building the company, because I know it's never easy to start a business. What kind of challenges did you face and how did you handle those challenges?

Vikram Ashok: 8:34

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, there were a ton of challenges in the early days, and you know, I think you know one of the things that was in our favor was that we had a lot of conviction about this problem in the market that we were solving, and so that was. The good side of it was that we had some specific knowledge about how private equity firms work and how their portfolio companies work and what the talent needs of those organizations look like, and so I think we were close to that problem, which was a good thing. But the biggest challenge was that we had no idea how to start a company.

Vikram Ashok: 9:07

We did not have any prior experience with startups, and so everything was brand new, and I think figuring all of those things out on the fly was pretty difficult, and so I think we felt really confident about certain aspects, like the finance function right, because that's where I had spent the prior several years. But all the other functions were brand new marketing, sales, operations. We had never operated a business before, and so there was a ton of challenges in just figuring out how to get a business up and running and all part of the learning process, for sure. But I think it was definitely a big challenge in terms of just not having any prior startup experience at all when we came in. So I think you see this a lot with first-time entrepreneurs, but we were definitely the sort of classic first-time entrepreneurs you know very young, very green, you know figuring things out on the fly.

Marc Bernstein: 10:05

And, on the other hand, your company's been successful. So what would you attribute the level of your success to? You've sort of answered it, but I'd like to hear a little more about that.

Vikram Ashok: 10:15

Yeah, absolutely so, I think. You know. I think we've one of the things that has worked well is that I think we have, over time, you know, figured out that there's a real problem in the market that we're able to solve, you know, for a few customer segments. And I think I'll start by saying, you know, one of the challenges again that we did we talked about a little bit one of the one of the other challenges in the early days was that we really didn't have enough focus. I think we were, we were trying to be everything to everybody and you know, I think one of the things we learned was that the more you can focus your energy on fewer types of customers and really understanding our problems deeply, I think, the more successful you can be.

Vikram Ashok: 10:54

So that, I think, was a key moment for us in terms of narrowing down our focus area to a few customer segments that we felt we could, we could, we felt very passionate that we could solve a problem for and those three segments are corporate, so Fortune 2000 companies, professional services firms, and then the investment community, so private equity and venture capital firms, which is, of course, where I started my career. So that was the original use case and I think narrowing our focus and really understanding those customers deeply and building our solution around them was a key learning for us and a key moment in terms of being able to build Graphite into what it is today.

Ang Onorato: 11:42

You start by describing the fact that when you were doing the work that you do, you also saw a problem in the industry and a gap and something that really needed to be filled. So just take a moment, if you don't mind, for our listeners, because when we talk about things like the gig economy, on demand and future of work, those are some really common, I would say, in our industry, yours and mine. We live in this sort of human capital space. But give your own definition, if you don't mind, just briefly, in terms of what do those things mean for the everyday person? Right? So I think to a lot of folks out there that are in a corporate role right now, for example, that are thinking I don't know what I want to do as a next step. I don't know if my job's going to last much longer, I'm thinking of pivoting into something else. So just give us your definition of those things to kind of normalize that for people.

Vikram Ashok: 12:35

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll talk a little bit about the market trends that we're seeing, and so it comes back to kind of the original thesis that we had for the company, which is that the workforce is really in flux, and so I think that this is a trend that's been happening over the last decade or more, but more and more of the workforce is sort of moving into a freelance type capacity. And so there's some really compelling stats out there in the market about this Over 50% of the workforce is expected to be freelance by 2027. Google, one of the largest companies in the world, actually has more freelancers in its workforce than permanent employees, and almost half of US companies are employing freelancers today. And this is a trend that has been kind of accelerating over the last 10 years and we expect to accelerate more over the next 10 years.

Vikram Ashok: 13:23

And so you know, we think of the labor force and the workforce, both domestically and globally, as moving more towards flexibility, and so we think of that as people not necessarily working in a traditional corporate capacity where they're a, you know, full-time W2 employee of a company and instead they are independent, right? So they have, they are performing freelance work independently, um, and they're providing their services to multiple clients and um, and that I think that's sort of the the big trend that we're seeing in the market. So when we think about the gig economy, when we think about the future of work, that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about more people working as independent uh workers and not as sort of full-time employees of traditional corporations.

Marc Bernstein: 14:10

Vik, that's a perfect lead-in. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back we're going to talk a little bit about the future, so that's a perfect lead-in to that.

Announcer: 14:20

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Marc Bernstein: 15:32

Okay, we're back on founders forum and were you, were you complete on your?

Ang Onorato: 15:33

question. Or should I get right into the three-year vision? Yeah, no, please, please, jump in, because that's a whole other. We could probably talk about that topic for another hour and a half of thick, so we'll we want to get to the rest of his story, yeah, so, Vik, if this were november of 20, what year are we in?

Marc Bernstein: 15:46

2026, three years from today, and we're all sitting here talking and we're looking back on the last three years? What would have to happen during that period of time for you to come back to us and say hey, you know, that was a very successful year for me professionally, business-wise, personally, maybe financially. What does that future look like for you?

Vikram Ashok: 16:10

Yeah, it's a great question and something we think about a lot, and so I think, based on everything we've talked about so far on the show, we really believe that independent talent and freelancers can power some of the most significant portion of the largest companies in the world, to be leveraging independent talent across their businesses, powering various different work streams, and so that's something that we feel really passionate about, and our goal is to sort of bring that vision to reality, and we're starting to see the signs of that already, which is really exciting. But there's so much more work to do, and so we believe that if we can continue to educate the market about the value of a flexible workforce, we think we can execute against that vision, and so that's kind of our vision as a company. And then personally, look, I think it's been a great journey right being a founder and transitioning from founder to CEO, and I think that for me personally is a big area of focus is continuing to develop as a manager. I think one of the things that nobody tells you about starting a company is that you start out as a founder, but then you quickly become an executive and a CEO, and those are two actually very different jobs, and so one of my personal goals is to just continue developing as a manager, becoming a better manager, so I can continue to lead the company more effectively over the next three years, and so that's a personal goal of mine in terms of professional development.

Vikram Ashok: 17:50

And, on the personal side, love to travel, and so we look at we, you know, we travel to, to national parks extensively and so, uh, we've been to 37, actually believe it or not. And so, um, you know, if we can get to 40 by by 2027, 2026 ever, yeah, I think 2026, um, that would be, uh, that would be a big win for us I'm on that journey, but behind you, which is your favorite so far.

Vikram Ashok: 18:16

Big Bend National Park in the southern part of Texas. So far.

Marc Bernstein: 18:20

Oh nice, that's not even one that's come on my list yet. That's great, I'm writing it down. That's great. So what in terms of your vision? So basically, what you've talked about is the expansion of the business, so that big business really understands that you're out there. So I have a two-part question to that how do they find you? Because I know you have a website. I went on your website and I think that's one way, but I would imagine there's other ways that your name is getting around, that they're finding you. And my other question is what are the obstacles in your way or the dangers that you see in terms of accomplishing that vision over the next three years, and what strengths and or opportunities do you have to overcome those dangers?

Vikram Ashok: 19:07

Yeah, absolutely so. The way we get clients is, again, we focus on sort of enterprise type companies. So, like a lot of enterprise focused companies, we do a lot of education of the market. So we do a lot of demand generation and marketing and sort of educate them on the value of freelancing and how freelancing can kind of transform their business. And so we nurture companies through a process of educating them if they're new to it.

Vikram Ashok: 19:51

Obviously not all, obviously at this point many Fortune 2000 companies are using but um, but it tends to be pretty fragmented right. So it's across the business. There may be some that are some parts of the business that aren't, some parts of the business that aren't, and so our job as the platform is to really educate the market and um and help people understand how they can, how they can get value out of a flexible workforce, and so that's kind of how we go about doing that, and so we spend a lot of energy across that life cycle of educating the market and getting people up to speed, I think in terms of some of the challenges.

Marc Bernstein: 20:29

One quick question I just want to ask you Freelancers the word freelancers, I would imagine that that's you've called them. You know in independence how does the word freelancer sound to people in big business? I could imagine that that could have a little bit of a negative connotation. Am I right about that? Do you need a new word?

Vikram Ashok: 20:47

Yeah, it's actually an interesting question. It's been changing, right. So I think freelancer is the, was the is the historical term, right, that describes somebody who's working independently. You know, we actually call our talent pool experts because they are experts in their fields. And so you know, our, our talent has anywhere from 10 years of experience all the way up through 50 years of experience. Typically they've worked, you know, at a large corporation or a large consulting firm, um, and they've built really strong skills and domain expertise and so um, so. So we actually refer to our talent as experts. And so you know, look, I think I think freelancing maybe the term historically has had a little bit of a negative connotation, but actually I think that's really changing dramatically, right. So so many.

Marc Bernstein: 21:41

I mean just my little bit of input, because I saw experts on your website and I said oh, that's exciting, I have access to these experts. If you said access to freelancers, I don't think I'd have the same reaction, right.

Vikram Ashok: 21:51

So yeah, no, I think that's true and I think part of the education of the market that we need to do is to help companies understand that these people are experts and if you look at their backgrounds and you see the kind of work that they've done in their history, it really speaks for itself, right? If someone has spent 15 or 20 years at a Bain or a McKinsey or a BCG a top consulting firm and McKinsey or BCG a top consulting firm and has then also gone on and had operational roles and has set up a consulting business.

Vikram Ashok: 22:21

you know they are extremely experienced. You know expert level, talent, that you know that can deliver a ton of value to a Fortune 2000 company and so yeah, so we think the right term is actually experts and that's why we use it, you know, sort of extensively throughout our business.

Ang Onorato: 22:38

Yeah and Vik, I could be wrong as well, but I think what you're talking about is what Graphite does. I think so well is you educate not only the clients and sort of helping the market kind of shift the language and the way that we think about this on demand and really that it is a future and people are going into this field as a career? They're not doing it the way that it used to be thought of as well. I'm in between roles or I got laid off. I'll just you know. This is a purposeful choice that people are making. Yes, it's a very intentional shift.

Vikram Ashok: 23:07

Yeah, and so so you know, that's a great point, because we we actually focus on people who have chosen to do independent consulting work for a living. And there's a ton of people out there that have amazing skills and expertise that have voluntarily chosen to do that, and oftentimes they're super successful and in many cases they're actually doing better than they were doing when they were working for a company. And so you know, it's not one of these notions of like, oh, people just don't want to work hard and they want to kind of work part time. Actually, not the case at all. In fact, most of our you know, our top experts are actually incredibly busy, right, and but the common thread is that they really like the ability to sort of control the types of projects that they work on, to have varied work and to offer their services, you know, as independents, and so lifestyle would be, a factor too, I think, even though they're not looking to loaf, like you said, but they're looking to work hard, but they can probably choose their hours.

Marc Bernstein: 24:08

they can probably work from home or on the road, a lot that kind of thing. So I would think that whole culture change that we're going through in terms of remote working has a lot to do with that as well.

Vikram Ashok: 24:19

Absolutely right. Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic has accelerated remote work, right. It's taught the entire world that work can actually happen remotely, right, and I think, even if the largest companies in the world, who have traditionally had most of their workforce in person, have had to shift and and actually operate entirely remotely for, for you know, a really long time, and so I think we've all learned that that remote work can be really effective, and the tools that are available to all of us today, uh, to work remotely, have continued to improve and get better and so, uh. So, yes, absolutely right, the ability to work remotely, the ability to kind of eliminate the commute, has been a very compelling factor for people moving into the independent workforce.

Ang Onorato: 25:01

And I think, Vik, for people that are deciding to come in and choose this as a career path but they themselves may not be adept at sort of how do they go and set up their lives and their work and their own kind of branding. I know you guys also do a lot to I think you had something called the Graphite Academy, if I'm not mistaken, right which kind of helps more skills or helps, and you bring in experts all the time to help that community also get comfortable with doing this type of format, right?

Vikram Ashok: 25:31

Absolutely so. Just like we educate the client side of the market in terms of the value that they can get from a flexible workforce, we also spend a lot of energy helping people launch their freelance career right. And so you know that's a big thing that we do and some people just don't know, right, they have the skills to be independent and to offer their services independently, but they don't know, you know, the first thing about getting their business set up and how to invoice and what insurance they need and all of that. And so you know we we help, we help people do that and we help kind of lower the friction and lower the bar for them to kind of enter the independent workforce by the way.

Marc Bernstein: 26:11

we only have a minute or two left, so let's do our closing round questions. Anne, you have one and I have one.

Ang Onorato: 26:16

Yeah. So, based on everything that we've talked about so far today, Vik, if you were to talk about how you got started as a kid, if you were to talk to your younger self today from the perspective you are today, what advice or what thoughts would you have for younger Vik?

Vikram Ashok: 26:31

Yeah. So I think there's two things that immediately come to mind. One is just focusing on finding product market fit as quickly as possible and really listening to the market and building your business around the customer instead of building the business that you want to build. I think that was one really key learning that I think I would certainly apply if I could. And then the second is just building less in the early days. I think using customer interaction to drive what you build as a startup is incredibly important. And then the third actually if I would add one more is start bringing in proven executives as quickly, as soon as you find product market fit. That's the time for you to start building the team and getting really talented people to come in and help you, because we've seen that as be a major factor and I think we waited a little bit too long to do that in the early days.

Marc Bernstein: 27:24

Last quick, fun question because we are out of time. Like me, you have a passion for music. You play guitar, like I do. You enjoy the same similar music to I do, but they don't know who that is. So what? Who? Who is your? Who are your favorite musical artists and or your favorite song?

Vikram Ashok: 27:46

yeah, um, favorite song is a really hard one, there's too many out there to choose but. But, um, you know, over the years I've kept coming back to Pink Floyd. For some reason it's just been. I was exposed to their music as a kid and I've always loved it and continue to love it.

Marc Bernstein: 28:02

I do know that you like the Beatles also, and this week happens to be the week that the new Beatles song came out. Have you heard it?

Vikram Ashok: 28:09

I have not actually, but on the topic of Pink Floyd, actually I was fortunate enough to see Roger Waters play in San Francisco about a year ago, which was really great.

Marc Bernstein: 28:17

Nice. The one I want to see is Gilmore. I'm a big Gilmore fan myself.

Ang Onorato: 28:21

Absolutely.

Marc Bernstein: 28:24

Gilmore or Red Rocks is where I want to be. Anyway, thanks for being here today. Vik, Great show and thank all of you for being here on Founders Forum today and we'll see you next week.

Vikram Ashok: 28:35

Thank you so much.