#141 Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations

Insights are usually connected from random dots getting connected. But the process of collecting dots has to be efficient for the process of connecting dots to be more efficient. And collecting dots is easier if your friends are also collecting dots to connect dots.

If you cannot distill your idea to a transmissible conversation at dinner, it's not going to spread.

By design, gross margins exist when you allow human beings to jump their social status, and gross margins disappear when you do not help them increase their social status.

What I learned from that experience was that you need to focus on the right market, because you can be the greatest founder, if you meet the bad market, you will die. But if you find a market and use tailwinds to it, even a mediocre founder will do really, really well.

I refer to the analogy that I see a lot of dam builders but no idea where rivers exist. So, I see them building dams in hope that a river will show up, but the river never shows up ... Every time they discover that 'Hey, the river is not coming to my dam,' instead of moving the dam to the river, they make the dams even more funkier and cooler and with AI and all of that stuff, but the water never comes.

Using emotions to detect symptoms is great; using emotions to solve or make decisions is terrible.

All bad behavior is rooted in short-term thinking. Every bad behavior in human beings comes from being short-term about everything.

I think being shameless is the most important ingredient in the ability to connect dots ... Shameless people make more conjectures without any fear of judgment.

The fastest way to make somebody feel okay about what they're ashamed of is to make them feel proud about it.

People who— I think well-traveled is nothing but acquiring more lenses in life to see things. The word unusual starts dying as you travel more, as you read more. You are less shocked. You're less surprised, because nothing seems unusual.

India has now nearly $2000 per capita income annually, but if you remove the top 30 million families or 30 million individuals, the per capita income would drop to maybe $600.

Everything that we are proud of are the handles that we give to other humans to manipulate us.

All the people who are seemingly very good at decisions, they tend to have multiple personalities in thinking about situations. They can almost think like five different people at the same time.

I think a lot of people who have been bullied and shamed and mocked early in life develop an unusual superpower to not give a damn about being mocked anymore.

Less than 6% of urban Indian women have financial income of their own. 94% of them are currently taking care of kids or taking care of the family and not contributing to the labor force.

95% of all financial products in India are bought my men—credit cards, car loans, home loans, all investments.

People love to go to the Indian weddings. I'll give you an interesting data point; I checked in my office: Most people spent close to 6 times their annual salary for their wedding.

You cannot develop substance, networks, wealth, experience unless you're constantly willing to risk your reputation.

It is impossible to imagine scaling in life without standardizing, and standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness.

People pay, or people give you time or money, where their core motivations are mostly met or there is a hope for their motivations to be met.

Trust is natural in societies that have very low diversity of ethnicity ... It unfortunately seems to be true that trust is biological.

YouTube, my bet would be that it would be probably making less than $2 ARPU annually in India with probably more than 500, 600 million active users in India alone.

Because in India, we are saving every penny all the time, but we'll splurge on weddings; we'll splurge on medical events; we'll splurge on education of our kids. Every Indian family right now who have just got new kids are going to spend probably 100-200 times more than what their parents spend for their education.

I believe that all the people who demonstrate the need to be fans are the people who are easiest to offend in life.

If you really spend time with entrepreneurs who are successful... you'll almost feel that they are philosophers.

You will rarely meet a wealthy person who cannot keep secrets.

We often say that wealth is not zero-sum, but it actually is, because wealth is nothing but energy stored.

I think most Western companies do not understand Asian society. The Maslow's hierarchy of Asian society is completely different than the Western society. But unfortunately, all the marketing textbooks are made in the West, and then they come to the Indian market, and they get shocked on what people really pay for in these markets.