Shalini Chander: 0:08

after I left the consulting firm, I went to a place for two weeks just hanging out, tried it out, went from there to, a tiny startup, 10 people, in North Bay. I was actually taking the ferry from San Francisco. it was in the cervical cancer space. I learned a ton about, the cervical cancer industry, about, the cancer industry in general from a medical device perspective. and for better or for worse, or I guess the pros I learned from it, worked for someone who basically was just fraudulently running the finances of the company. and so there was a lot of weirdness around do we actually have funding to stay in business. my paychecks were sometimes personal checks because there was not, enough money to actually fund the company. So this guy was kinda like having his wife sometimes just write out personal checks and stuff, which is very strange. I left that place very quickly'cause I found out what, when I interviewed my question was, how much runway do you have? Which was the smart thing to ask. What I didn't know was someone could just lie to you and say, we've got, we got 12 to 18 months What I didn't realize, this guy was sitting on maybe three weeks of funding at that point. He was trying to get funding by saying he had existing funding. He was trying to actually, he was just pulling a Theranos saying I got funding. So other people, he was like, mini Theranos dude. like from a funding perspective. so based on that, I won't do any name dropping there.

Varun Rajan: 1:28

that's actually really helpful. And I'm sure, I'm sure things are a little bit different now, were there any red flags during the interview process? you asked a question and they clearly lied to you. what are the things you might suggest from like a, verification perspective for someone that is maybe in, the same shoes that you were in at that time, which is okay, I've, I'm making a bunch of choices. You had choices based on your personal life, obviously, and it made a lot of sense, but you also saw this opportunity. with being at smaller companies to be riding maybe like an early rocket ship, and also being able to take on a ton of responsibility at the time. you targeting startups makes a lot of sense given the kind of goals that you had in mind. and so when you get to that point where you're like, I still want to have some level of stability for the next 12 to 18 months,

Shalini Chander: 2:14

Right.

Varun Rajan: 2:15

how, yeah. how would were you in that place or were you advising someone in a similar position? Tell them about verifying whether they'll actually be able to pay you,

Shalini Chander: 2:25

This is tough.

Varun Rajan: 2:25

company checkbook.

Shalini Chander: 2:26

It's actually a tough question because the obvious automatic answer is ask for proof, right? but this guy showed me proof, and it still turned out to be true. So now it's just more a question of like, how mature can you be in analyzing the evidence? so at the time, the guy showed me a letter of intent for funding from a some third party venture capital company. and then what I didn't know was a letter of intent is to me, I read it as We will fund you. I didn't know that letter of intent means we will fund you based off of contingencies. And so that's just not knowing enough, right? I'm so immature in my career, I don't know anything about how. funding works. And so he showed me a document that's like with a number on it. It's look at this money that we have. What? And so what I would advise people is you have to figure out is that money in the bank? and so I would advise people of, run this past your parents, your peers, and now I think we're in a better place where you can just look this stuff up. I think at the time it was still relatively new. You could get away with a lot of stuff that, of just like pulling stuff over people. my experience there, this was really interesting from a learning perspective because again, I learned a ton about the space I wanted to be in, which was cancer. I learned a ton about what I was supposed to do with a cancer device and how you would sell it, how you'd make it. I inadvertently learned a lot about what goes on in the funding journey based off of seeing how much this guy was kind, trying to pull me in sometimes to help him cover up certain things, right? And so this letter of intent that I saw, I eventually met the guy who was like, The VC rep. I didn't blow the cover on this company. I think I helped a little bit because I'm, I remember talking to this guy. I. And then validating. He asked me like, has X, y and Z been done? And I was like, no. that's never been done. It's not here. And I think that helped him to withdraw his letter of intent to fund. I think I actually, this was so long ago that I don't remember the exact sequence. And but I think there were some components really.

Varun Rajan: 4:27

so there was the founder basically did, this is very Theranos, like the things that you are putting your funding in for that we told you that we had in

Shalini Chander: 4:34

Yeah,

Varun Rajan: 4:35

not in place. And like this person who was attached is essentially like coming in and just like asking around about this thing? was, it got verification that

Shalini Chander: 4:44

yeah.

Varun Rajan: 4:45

the employees, which wow, that's

Shalini Chander: 4:47

ultimately just found out that when you're a company that small, small 10 person company. You got no rights as an employee. You had nothing. I remember like this guy was mean. He would yell at people. it was really demeaning. I pushed back when he treated me like that. and so when I ultimately quit, I just left him a letter. I'm like, I will, I do not accept this behavior. And I, from here is where I went to the place that was the diabetes startup. so I was so excited that I got a more legitimate offer,

Varun Rajan: 5:14

Yeah.

Shalini Chander: 5:15

that I just, I didn't even tell him in person. I just left him a note. I'm like, don't like the treatment. peace out. got my last paycheck and left. And he was actually very apologetic to me. And he, he made a few overtures over the next 18 months to have people call me to be like, would you like to come back? now we're more stable. And so I just never responded to that. but yeah, definitely a learning of it was really unfortunate, which is, if you are, we, I think we tell ourselves a lot of things like, you don't like your job, just go get a new one. It's really hard if you are being treated badly and you have no other options, it's hard to leave. it's hard to leave stable employment if you depend on the income. Or in this case, unstable employment, for those people who got, left behind. And but yeah, this had to be like a every man for themselves kind of thing.

Varun Rajan: 5:56

Gotcha. so then, you have a pretty short stint at this, cervical cancer, med devices place. You transitioned to, a company focused on diabetes. Te tell us about your time there.

Shalini Chander: 6:08

Okay. I learned my lesson. I asked the right questions. What series of funding are we on? How do we know it's stable? This time went through a headhunter, so I felt like they're probably on contract. And so I. They could also help me do some of the validation. and so that worked out of getting the offer. ultimately, like the first company, I was only there for two months. The second one I was there for maybe three months or so. when I got the news that they had to, I don't think their, I don't know if their funding dried up or I just got the news that they had to make some cuts on direction. now here's what was interesting. So they let me go. It was very traumatic for me'cause I love the company. I love the people, loved what I was doing. learning about diabetes care, And so when I did get let go from there, I was shocked and I was very just traumatized, right? so had to go back into job hunting mode again. and fortunately I think at this point in time, economy was okay enough where, got a couple offers and decided, and this is where Thatha, our grandfather comes into play. he had given me a book at some point, and it was a book called How to Be CEO. It's one of those little miniature books. I have it, upstairs somewhere, one of those books where it's got one sentence per page, It was something like, wake up early, when, and I remember like, when you're on an airplane, don't watch a movie. Just do work instead. somewhere in this book it said something about, what are the important jobs to have? And it made some sort of like comparison of, sales and marketing are the fun jobs to have, stuff like that, but they're like, you wanna be stable, which means you need to be doing something. operational. I think it may have pointed out like, be in charge of the product or be a product manager. Those are the roles that are really critical where people will never like, get rid of you. and at these two previous startups I had gone into product manager roles. And so when I was looking, I was debating, do I go back into consulting? Do I do some something else like that? and this role with Abbott came along and I got an offer there to go and be a product manager. We all know Abbott, it's a huge old company, so very stable. so decided to take that. and spent about four years there being a product manager in the cardiac space.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 8:25

we ended up agreeing that it would be a good fit and went through their process and ended up, as an enterprise rep for a Mixpanel, which great. we had a tough year that year, so it was pretty rough and I was starting to feel pretty burned out. I think after the assembled thing. that I might have been a little long for that world. I was starting to get pretty tired and, I was burned out really. and at some at some point. journey at Mixpanel, I knew that you had probably be a good idea for me to step away and some time. So that's what I did. At a certain point, I

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 9:02

Okay.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 9:03

a year and then decided to step away and I ended up taking nearly a year off.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 9:09

if you were to look back on your burnout, what were the things that kind of led to it and then because,'cause I've been in this boat, and I think a lot of people have, and I think, this is something that is really important to identify causes and for, and not just symptoms of.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 9:24

yeah.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 9:25

and I'm curious about, what reflection you might have done as to like when you get to that point. What you might be doing differently,

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 9:30

Yeah.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 9:31

where you see that happening in the future.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 9:33

it's like a number of different things. So it's, it's hard to pin down as you would expect. It's obviously not just one

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 9:37

Yeah.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 9:39

I think that if something really candid, there are a few things that really stick out to me. One, when you work for companies that have taken venture capital and the market's taken a downturn, which it had at that point. Things get tense, really tense. And I think that there are organizations and a couple of them that I work for are guilty of this. There are stages in Salesforce, right? So you have an opportunity, it's in Salesforce and it's, maybe the first, however the company decides to name their kind of, deal stages, right? There's discovery

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 10:17

Funnel.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 10:18

demo, and then, whatever. There's usually anywhere between five and seven of these stages. And there seemed to be this kind of growing trend in sales management. and I've talked to other folks that are other companies who, who've have seen this too, where if you take an initial call, it's discovery and it moves into, say, demo, which means you've just ask'em a bunch of questions about their company and what they're trying to accomplish by working with somebody like you. And you're just saying, okay, this is like a good enough fit to show them the product. That's it. That's like the only commitment that they've made. got to the point, and I think there's just a lot of downward pressure from, VCs to board to C-suite, C-suite to, just all the way down the chain. it eventually gets to a point where if you move something from discovery into demo, expectation is there's no reason you shouldn't close that.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 11:13

Huh?

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 11:14

And

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 11:14

Yeah.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 11:14

it's just not true. One, it's an unreasonable expectation. And they'll, and look in their defense, they'll turn around and say, oh no, we actually bake in, a 25 to 35% close rate. But the pressure for each individual deal, it just gets, it becomes a lot,

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 11:31

They expect you to close earlier in that funnel. that pressure is coming when things are not like, it's just like things are not going as well. The economy's going down. Funding is drying up like broadly in the economy.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 11:42

Or you're in a crowded space and getting outpaced by somebody else, or, or they, maybe their value got marked down or

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 11:49

right.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 11:50

there's like a number of things that can happen. I'm not saying any of those did, I think that there's just the downward pressure when things are not going as well as, some executives would

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 12:01

Uh,

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 12:02

see, just especially on the enterprise side, right? Because

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 12:05

right.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 12:06

is pulling in large logos. Like I, I worked with Honda and a number of other folks, these very large organizations and, part of the, OR enterprise Motion is you kinda have to map out an entire company and try to figure out how to sell into each one of those,

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 12:23

Yeah. what I'm hearing from you is maybe some symptoms of some of the downward pressure that ends up being applied onto the company and the sales organization. What was happening on the ground? does the start happening at assembled, did that carry over into MixPanel? Because you talk about burnout, right? And it sounds like you're describing one of the symptoms. Were the facts on the ground in terms of what your close rates were actually changing at all? Was that actually getting worse? for the sales organization?

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 12:49

yeah. I was, I was, I, yeah, I wasn't hitting, my number. I wasn't

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 12:54

okay.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 12:55

a quota, for that year. It wasn't atrocious,

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 12:57

Yeah.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 12:58

but it was one of those things where it was kinda like, ah, man, it

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 13:01

Yeah.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 13:01

it's just a, it's just an icky feeling, you want to be at a hundred percent a quota. your comp is. 50 50 base and variable, right? At

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 13:10

Yep.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 13:10

of these account executive roles. And yeah, it sucks. It just doesn't feel good. You have to go every quarter, you do a QBR, quarterly business review, and you sit down and you say, Hey, these are the deals that didn't work out right. And the idea most of the time is to do, a constructive post-mortem, right? Hey, why didn't this close? What can we do the next time? sometimes they're constructive and sometimes they're not as constructive. It really depends on kind of the, um, the leadership that's around you. And, I was just tired, Varun.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 13:44

Yeah.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 13:44

really tired. I, I felt, I bounced between, Google assembled a mixed panel all within. a couple of years, and I, you, it takes a while to get your footing as a salesperson in any new organization, right? There's a learning curve on the product. There's building your book. There's, all the, mapping out the organization for yourself, just internally Hey, who can I go to

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 14:07

Totally.

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 14:07

to get answers, through these sales processes? And I was just tired of it.

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 14:13

a couple of things that I'm hearing, which is there's a lot of different factors. The actual, like the, there's a big one, which is essentially is like the environment became hard to, to. To sell. And so there's a lot of pressure like externally, internally, and then you're forced to make a lot of shifts,

marshall-robins_1_04-04-2025_133346: 14:31

I was just tired, I think it had, I. my push out was personal. I was just exhausted. And, I think it was time for me to figure out how to get my blood pressure down

varun_1_04-04-2025_133345: 14:43

Yeah. and the reason that I ask all of these questions is really we're tracking those like push-pull factors and like we're seeing the kind of trends in your pulls of being like, like opportunity for advancement people and product. And it like you, it does seem like there was some elements of all three when you went to Mixpanel, but you were already in your like, beginning phases of burnout and those things are not necessarily enough.