In this episode, we have Prasanna Sankar the CTO and Co-founder of Rippling.com, which is currently valued at $10B. Prasanna had also co-founded companies like LikeaLittle, a campus social network that grew from 0 to 20M page views in 6 weeks.  

He is a two-time world finalist at Google Code Jam and ACM ICPC and held the rank one position at TopCoder while in college. After moving to the US he worked with companies like Microsoft and Zenefits but was always curious about real-world problem-solving and building startups.   

Listen to this Podcast where he shares his encounters with 6 sigma events, startup experiences, raising funding from major VC firms like Ycombinator and a16z, stories with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and his belief in blockchain technology for a better-decentralized future. 

Timeline: 

00:00 Introduction

00:43 Understanding 6 sigma events

02:21 How he started with TopCoder

06:50 Microsoft, Interactions with Paul Graham(Y Combinator) and his first Startup

19:30 About Like a Little and hyper-growth

23:47 On turning down offers from Google and Facebook, investment with a16z

29:04 Failures and Downfalls while building startups

34:46 Zenefits story

42:35 How rippling started and engineering culture

47:42 Managing large tech teams and his learnings

59:40 His first principles

1:03:25 6 sigma events in current times and Blockchain Technology(Crypto)

1:12:35 On Decentralization, cryptocurrencies, and Uniswap

1:17:53 His Optimism, beliefs, and life experiences

1:22:19 OpenAI and the Elon Musk story

1:27:47 Outro

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