The Founder's Foyer with Aishwarya: Startup teams—vision, culture & values

Ft. Padmini Janaki, Founder & CEO of Mind and Mom. Padmini talks about representing her startup at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the importance of vision, culture, co-founders, and more...

Aishwarya Ashok

Hey everyone,

Here’s this week’s update from the The Founder’s Foyer project!

If building a startup is an arduous journey, finding the right people to grow with you is another mountain to climb. Ideas can meet product, but both of these need to meet the right team to live the vision. But how to find the folks who are as passionate as you in helping build great ideas? What should the benchmark be like?

That’s exactly what we’ll navigate in this video about building teams and culture. Padmini Janaki, Founder & CEO of Mind and Mom talks to us about her journey from thinking about a pregnancy welfare app idea to actually executing it as a product and brand over the pandemic. Padmini has formerly led product teams at PayPal and she recently represented TN at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with her Mind and Mom team. :)

Check out The Founder’s Foyer:

LinkedIn | YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Instagram

Watch on YouTube

Here’s the full episode wherein Padmini and I chat about a bunch of topics:

  • Representing Tamil Nadu (India) at World Economic Forum, Davos

  • The tech scene at Davos and Padmini's observations

  • The inception for Mind and Mom: How did it start

  • The importance of co-founder and how to find one

  • Mapping the skills of your co-founder with yours 

  • Finding the first set of employees to join you and setting the culture

  • Why team culture and values are important

  • What should new founders need to know about legal processes

  • Navigating the remote–hybrid team structure 

What asked what’s something that founders often tend to miss in their journey, Padmini quotes,

"So when you start up, you’re usually into it, like, you know, it's your baby. You wanna take care of it. 24 x 7, you keep thinking about it. Keep improvising on the features, product, what not.

But, you lose yourself over time and you would start feeling you are becoming completely a different person when it comes to food habits. You, you just meet people. Um, like it could be clients, investors, you have random coffees, you have random junk food and all that. And you know, at one point in time, you never prioritized your mental health and that's gonna hit you hard.

Probably not today, but in a week, month or year’s time. So I strongly think entrepreneurs, irrespective of men, women—I think they should focus a lot on their mental, right from the beginning.”

Listen to our conversation as a podcast on:

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Thank you, and keep your suggestions coming! :)

Happy weekend,

Aishwarya