The Founder Bottleneck Nobody Wants to Admit, with Prashant Agrawal

In this episode of Unapologetic Leadership, Cory Dunham sits down with founder, investor, and business advisor Prashant Agrawal for a powerful conversation about entrepreneurship, investing, leadership, and the hard truths many founders avoid. Drawing from his own journey of building and losing businesses starting at just 17 years old, Prashant shares what separates businesses that create real value from ideas that are simply wrapped in flashy presentations and hype.

Together, they unpack the biggest mistakes founders make when seeking investment, why investors care more about execution than billion dollar market projections, and how many entrepreneurs become trapped chasing money instead of solving real problems. Prashant explains why “money is not the problem, you are” and reveals what investors are actually looking for when evaluating startups, founders, and scalable businesses.

The conversation also explores AI startups, founder mindset, humility, resilience, self awareness, and the importance of building businesses that create tangible impact instead of temporary excitement. Through real world examples and brutally honest insights, this episode offers valuable wisdom for entrepreneurs, founders, leaders, and anyone looking to build something meaningful in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.

About Prashant Agrawal

Prashant Agrawal is a seasoned operator with more than 25 years of experience across global financial services, venture development, entrepreneurship, strategic transformation, capital sourcing, fundraising, and advisory. A former Senior Vice President within top global banks managing multi billion dollar portfolios across 70 countries, he later transitioned into entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture development.

He is the Founder and CEO of Be Pacific Collective, Co Founder of SPStarworks™, Partner at 1cent and w6, and has advised businesses ranging from software and hardware companies to public agencies and growth stage ventures. Known as a storyteller, connector, strategic thinker, and creative problem solver, Prashant combines corporate leadership with entrepreneurial experience, including building and failing his first business at age 17.

Connect with Prashant here

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/1pka/
Email: p@bepacific.vc

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Unapologetic Leadership. If you felt stressed, overwhelmed, wrestling with the imposter syndrome, wondering if you're just not good enough, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Corey Dunham.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello and welcome to this episode of Unapologetic Leadership, where I have Prashant Agrwal, who is a founder, integrator, and investor. Welcome, Prashant.

SPEAKER_05 0:33

Thank you, Corey. Thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here and pleasure to be talking to you.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Excellent, excellent. I appreciate you being here. And tell us what do you do and how do you impact the world?

SPEAKER_05 0:44

I think, in my probably simple words, I think my impact on the world is I help people build businesses. I think that's the simplest way I could put it forward. And it kind of relates back to my own story because I built my first business at 17 and I failed, which was not so fun. And then I got myself into banking. And yeah, so my story sort of goes back many, many years where I'd feel deeply and passionately about helping people build businesses. And I feel that the kind of support or the kind of encouragement I could have gotten or should have gotten at 17 could have led me to a different path. But yeah, here we are.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah, but I think that's great. One of the taglines on your LinkedIn account says, Money is not the problem. You are. What is that? What are you saying to people?

SPEAKER_05 1:40

So what I am saying to people quite often is that people, especially founders, if you're wanting to build a business or if you're wanting to build yourself a career in any field, people usually chase money, right? And people say that, you know, I want a million dollars for this and I want a billion dollars for that. And what I tell to people is don't chase money, chase value, chase what you're building, chase the product you're building, chase the service you are building, chase the value you're creating, chase the impact you are creating in the world. So for me, that has sort of become my sort of trademark line or quote, if you will, where I keep telling people, money is not the problem. Money will come. If you are building the right thing, if you're building the right product, if you're building the right service, money will come. Money is not the problem. The problem is how you approach it, the product you are building, the service you're building, and whether you are chasing money or you are chasing value creation and impact on the rest of the world. So that's what I mean when I talk to people and when I tell them, money is not the problem. Don't worry about money. Show me the value, show me the product, show me the service, show me the impact that you're creating. And I see that every day because as an investor as well, I do have a lot of inbound and in-flow uh founders trying to pitch things to raise capital. Many times stop them in their pitch and say, Hey, I hear you, I see you, but you're simply asking for money to go and build something. You haven't really built anything. So show me what you have built, and money will come. Money is not the problem.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:21

It's the solution, it's the product, is the value you're creating, is the impact you're creating.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So you're basically saying they need to share with you the story and that end goal of what the results are going to be and why they're doing what they're doing, rather than just trying to pitch you for, hey, how can I get some money? And maybe share some other things. I don't know if you have an example of what people start to talk to you about when they're pitching you that maybe goes way off track instead of focusing on that value proposition.

SPEAKER_05 3:51

Absolutely. I can give you a number of examples of the ones that we see, and at least especially what I see, the most common ones is where people will come with this beautiful research. It's almost like a research paper. They have done, you know, some fantastic research, right? And you know, they have scraped Google and they have scraped the internet and they have got all the information pieces together. And everybody's, I think, love for a trillion-dollar market is it kind of shines through in that research that the product that I am building or the application I am building or the technology I have or whatever have you, you know, it has got a trillion dollar market or hundreds of billions of dollars, right? And it's beautiful research. And I look at it from a point of view to say, hey, I see your research. Can you tell me how you will make your first thousand dollars? Or the first hundred thousand dollars, depending on the size and the nature of the product. Like I am not worried about your trillion. I mean, a student, if a five-year-old, six-year-old primary or kindergarten student can actually go and you know, pipe words on Google and internet and come up with that information. So don't show me that. Show me how you will make your first thousand dollars or $100,000 out of the product you're building.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:11

So for me, that kind of it's almost like unpeeling that onion in that process to understand the product you're building, the value you are creating, and how you will get to your first customer or first few customers, and how you will make your first few dollars instead of coming me and asking me to write you a check for however much you're asking to fund you to go and build. So I almost try and tell people that don't ask me to fund your science project, show me the product you have built and the customer market you have captured or created, I will help you grow. So I think the differentiation I try and make is if you're asking for me to fund your project to build something, I'm out. If you're asking me to help you scale something you have built and you need that capital to help you with the velocity of growth, sure, let's have a conversation.

unknown 6:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Okay. Yeah, no, it's very interesting. So it sounds like the Shark Tanks on the TV show that they've already done something before they reach that point. Is that pretty much what you're saying, too?

SPEAKER_05 6:21

Not as glamorous as Shark Tank, but yes, that's the message, yes. Because a lot of times, you know, I think people are still infatuated, and I use the term infatuated here because people are infatuated with the idea, oh, I'm gonna go and walk into a coffee shop or a restaurant in the Bay Area, and I will find an investor sitting there sipping coffee, and I'm gonna write an idea on a piece of paper and slide him a piece of paper, and they're gonna write me a couple of million dollar check.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

That doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_05 6:51

That doesn't happen anymore. You know, you have to have a conviction and investment in your own self, in your company, in your product, in your idea, and you have got to show that. You have to show that and demonstrate that to an investor that yes, I have built something of value, I have built something of credibility, and it is going to make an impact and change in the world in a certain way, and then I need you, the investor, to help me, you know, accelerate that. I think that's the message uh I try and I give it to the founders.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah, okay. And now, would somebody coming to you, would they end up with multiple conversations with you before it's like, okay, yeah, either I'm out or yeah, this sounds good that I'm leaning into helping you invest uh in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_05 7:42

So I am out conversation is fairly quick. I think uh in the first conversation or by the end of the first conversation, it's quite clear, yeah, I'm out. Because it doesn't take more than I would say 10 minutes to be clear that yeah, it's not going anywhere and it's gonna be not of value. So that is quite clear. There has been one or two instances where the founders have taken that feedback or have taken that conversation to heart and have gone back and done something about it, and they come back for a second and a third conversation, and we have done something about it. So that has been a fairly rare occurrence. But in cases where uh they are building something of value, so what we do is if we are not directly investing as an angel group or an angel syndicate, we also have a very wide variety and a very large network of investors. So we work as syndicate, we work as in capital advisory capacity, we also work as their board advisory capacity. So we would try multiple ways to get that business the capital that they require or that they need, directly or indirectly. So we have uh MA partners, private equity partners, family office partners, banking partners, institutional and private banking both. We also have direct, very curated partnerships with angel investors who invest directly, high net worth individuals. We also have international uh investors who operate across multiple geographies. So we will support and work with the founders, with the business in multiple capacities, because the common theme for us is we want them to succeed, we want them to build a bigger, better business, and we would engage in multiple capacities, not just as you know, somebody who can just write a check, but also as advisors, but also as capital sources, but also as investment bankers, also as you know, their MA advisors. And yeah, depends upon each situation.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, yeah. No, that's quite a bit of things. And where is a good place, someone to start? Because it seems like there's a lot of potential hoops to jump through, or just having a great presentation, communication skills, and focus on value. I mean, I don't know if those are the initial starts, or where should somebody start? I know you keep talking about having a good product and focusing on value, but what if they can't really articulate that very well?

SPEAKER_05 10:09

So that is very common, Corey, that we meet a lot of people who cannot really articulate the value they're creating. And we are very happy working with them to articulate the value. I think what we look for is the authenticity and the genuine openness to recognize that I need help and I'm going to use this help and work with this help. Having said that, help is not free. Let's just be very clear. You know, we are not running a charitable and not-for-profit charity organization. End of the day, it's a for-profit business and everybody's engaging for a certain value. So I think two things that we look for in working with any company, any founders or any investors is one, they clearly understand that they need help. Because recognition of the fact that I need help and I don't need help is also a very, I would say, decisive place to be at. Because many times, even though we can see it that the founder or the company needs help, and if they are in this sort of stage of denial or non-acceptance, that no, no, no, no, no, I'm fine, I don't need help. There is nothing we can do about it.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:28

We don't tend to press further or push further that no, no, no, you need help, you have to work with us. We don't do that. If you don't want help, if you want to be, you know, it's almost like if you don't want it, that's fine. We are not selling you anything. We don't want to sell you anything. When you are ready, when you need help, when you want to work with us, we'll be here. Yeah. So that is the one thing we look at. And the second, the authenticity of you know, you're not buying a free lunch. You are you're working with professionals, and you know, and this is where the tagline again comes into play that money is not the problem, right? And also the second sort of sub-line to it is you gotta spend money to make money, right? Uh, I mean, we usually see at least a couple of such instances every other week where founders would like to, you know, raise in tens of millions of dollars, but they wouldn't be willing to spend a couple of hundred, a couple of thousand dollars to that pathway. And that's I find and my not only me, but many, many people in our network, our partners, we all find it very sort of disingenuous that you expect someone to write you a check of a couple of million dollars or tens of millions of dollars, but you have not invested or are not ready to invest a very small amount out of your own. So if you are not investing in yourself, how can you convince somebody else to invest in you? Yeah, I think that's how we evaluate as well.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Yeah. No, I I'm glad you point that out because I don't know if that's a culture thing, or because we're getting so much free information, like through the internet, through research, through AI, that's a culture thing, or some of these young founders or new founders, if you will, haven't had the either the training or the mindset or just the guidance to let them know, hey, you know, this is not just a one-way street, as you're pretty much saying. You're gonna be investing as an investor way more than 95%, pretty much. And they're just investing just a little bit for themselves. So yeah, I don't know. Do you think that's a culture thing, or do you think it's just people not being educated? So the few that do come back and have implemented, you know, they've invested a little bit, their time, energy, money, they've learned from you, they've taken some of the steps and improved on what they're doing and then come back. You feel that that's you know, just our society is like that nowadays, getting free stuff?

SPEAKER_05 14:07

I would say no. I mean, I would like to think that there is a common denominator or there is some sort of a trend, but in my experience, no, that's not true. So I have not observed any trends around age, around a certain demographic, around any ethnic backgrounds, or around any cultures. Like it's all varied, right? I mean, uh so I wouldn't be able to say a certain age group or a certain demographic or a certain culture has had that. I it's pretty widespread. I think that the differentiator is people who understand business versus people who do not understand business. It's quite simple as that. So I'll give you an example. I'm currently working with a group of founders, but it's a new company. They only started about a year and a half ago, and they are 22, 23 year olds, right? They are, I think two of them are 23, one of them is 22, something like that. Between them, I was very skeptical, to be perfectly honest. That, you know, I mean, are they running a school project? Are they trying to build a company? They came to me saying that we just want to talk to you. We don't know what we're looking for. So they came with a blank slate, an open mind that we still don't know whether we should raise capital, we still don't know whether we need advice and mentorship, we don't know what our next couple of years would look like. But what we do know is the product that we have built and the traction we have generated in our local market has tremendous value, has tremendous potential. So that's all they came to me with. And I was like, hmm, that's very interesting at that age. And they're first time, they're first-time founders. They don't have the experience or the you know, the wisdom of running multiple businesses and what have you. So they were very, very open-minded about it, just asking for help. That we need help, but we don't know what we need help with. Yeah, you know, so that was their that was the spot they came to me with. And it was such a joy working with them because it was an exploration, it was a journey to find out okay, this is what the product does, this is what it could do, these are some of the partnerships we could form. So they not only got money, they got money, advice, mentorship, a fantastic community. And I think it is such a fantastic example for me, and I'm feeling happy sharing it with you. One of those things where they didn't come asking for anything, they actually came with a bit of a confusion saying that someone has told us to go and talk to you, and that's why we are here. We don't know what why we are here, we don't know what we need, we just know we have to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah, and to me, that speaks of a few different things that came to my mind. Number one, humility, being humble. Also, they were had an openness, yeah, curiosity, and they were willing to learn. So I love that. And just coming with, ooh, yeah, we don't we have no idea what to start with, but we know we have something.

SPEAKER_05 17:20

Exactly. And this is just one of those examples where they were first-time founders and they appreciated somebody telling them that go talk to this other guy, in this case me, to get the conversation going and you will discover more. So they didn't ask for money, they didn't ask for anything, they just didn't know where to go and what to do, right? Yeah, on the other side, I've also had people who have already come with this preconceived notion that you know, I have I'm a software developer, I know coding, I have built this, I have built that, and my company is already a 20 million valuation company. And this is a conversation from yesterday, just yesterday, right? Somebody came to me with a 20 million valuation. The product is not even built completely. They have done a valuation on, I don't know how, they came asking for I think five or six million with a 20 million valuation of a company, a product which has not yet been developed. And I was like, okay, how does that work? Like you have already created these values in your head without a product or anything to show for it. And then we had to again unpeel it layer by layer by layer by layer to make them understand that everything you have put together is a beautiful research project that you know any student could go online and create it. I don't see any value here. I mean, anybody can slap around any numbers and say, oh, I've got a trillion dollar market. Well, yeah, that's great, but I'm out because it doesn't make sense. Yeah, it makes no sense of what you're building. So yeah, it totally depends. Like, I mean, we have had multiple time founders as well who have built businesses in the past. Sometimes they are very reasonable and sometimes they're not. So it totally depends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah, no, that makes sense, the variety that you get. And going back to what you said, you starting your own business, I believe you said at the age of 17 or 19.

SPEAKER_05 19:11

17.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

17, yes. And you were saying that was kind of a miserable experience, but how has that shaped some of those experiences or maybe learnings? How has that shaped how you deal with founders, how you do business for yourself, and potentially how you run your life?

SPEAKER_05 19:29

So I think there are multiple layers to it. The one is that I have a very deep level of I would say love, affection, compassion, genuine, you know, a care for the founders who are building businesses. And that's the one overarching layer. And I think within that, there is a very specific, I would say, love and passion for people who actually build solutions and products. There is a bit of a, I would say, dislike, if you will, for anything that looks or seems fake. And that's what I think. Sounds interesting.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah, what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_05 20:12

Yeah, so many times there are business plans and these research papers. Everything is on paper, but there's nothing to show for it. It's almost like people have created these beautiful plans and ideas on paper, and they are basically doing which in the investment world we sometimes call as paper trading, you're almost kind of creating a paper and wanting somebody to believe in that idea on a piece of paper and write you a check. I think there was a time, maybe a decade ago or more, where you could sell ideas like that and somebody will bite into that idea and write. But I think even though there is more capital available globally today than has ever been in the past several decades. But with the global economy and the world economics and the world politics and where we are today as a society and as a world, the deployment of that capital and the trust that investors have on such ideas is kind of fairly calculated and people are careful. They don't want to sort of get involved and dragged into ideas that never take flight, that never take shape into anything real. So I think my own journey, my own business, I would say, background has helped me separate between genuineness in building something and sort of showing off and not building something very clearly in a way. So for me, I think in my life, I'm driven by companies, businesses which create tangible value, which create something tangible for the world. It may be a certain kind of impact, it may be a certain Certain kind of improvement, it may be a certain kind of convenience, but something real, not just a piece of paper or a presentation which has got flashy infographics, not just that, but something real. So I think I am driven by separating the real from the not so real.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yeah. Yeah. And I was gonna joke too. I was like, what, you're not impressed with all the Canva artwork? You mean I have to hand draw my I'm just kidding. But yeah, no, I I see what you're saying. No, that's pretty cool. So with a lot of it sounds like potentially there's a lot of founders or people wanting investment that potentially get chewed away. And I don't know if that's 90% of them, because there's so many ideas out there, as you said, so many ways to create ideas, especially through AI, and when have it produced the paper and the backing and the this and that. But it seems like a lot of them would get turned away unless they're using some real creativity. And like you say, they produce something. They have some way to say, hey, either we've got some ideas or we've taken surveys or we've gotten some tangible results at this moment in time, and we've done some legwork, and now we're coming to you for that next step or that next set of help that's in terms of yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:15

You're absolutely right, and I'm sure you would have heard this term AI wrappers, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Uh I I have not actually. That's new to me.

SPEAKER_05 23:23

Say that again. What's it called? AI wrappers. Okay. W-R-A-P-P. It's like a wrapping around something.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Oh, gotcha.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Yes. The gift wrapping. There is this terminology in the startup world called AI wrappers. So a lot what is happening is a lot of times, first-time founders and young founders they would go and figure out a certain way to create a certain process or a service or a certain step by creating an app or a platform which runs with AI at the foundation, which could be any of the GPTs, any of the large language models, any of the publicly available, you know, GPT, you know, tools. And they are nothing but a wrapper, almost like a wrapper put around something, and they do not have real coding, they do not have any real tangible value beyond a certain point. And if you search about it on even Google it, what does an AI wrapper mean? You'll probably get the context. Where people are building businesses which are just AI rappers. Anybody could replicate it pretty much in five minutes, right? So we see a lot of that being turned down and people being told to go and build something real because it's very easy. So with all the tools available and low-code, no-code tools available, you have automated coding available, you could actually create a mobile app in under 20 minutes. You could code a mobile app yourself in under 20 minutes, right? And a lot of people do that. Now, it's great to be able to build those things, it's great to be able to showcase that I have been able to solve a problem by building a tool like that. But is that product going to capture a trillion dollar market? No. Is that product or is that tool going to be able to get, let's say, a million people to pay for it? No. You have managed to create a product fairly easily, fairly quickly, which is fantastic, and that's the world we live in. But is an investor going to invest money which can be replicated in five minutes? No. So a lot of that is happening. What we see is there is a lot of copy paste of existing tools, which is for competition, but at the same time, it also must have a certain differentiator, it also must have a certain very specific value proposition, which others do not. And if you are able to clearly articulate that, demonstrate that, showcase that, absolutely, it could be something valuable. But it depends product to product, it depends, you know, domain to domain. So we see a lot of that happening. And that's why sometimes we have to be extra careful when there is a SaaS or an AI platform involved versus you know metals and machinery and tools involved because that's more tangible.

unknown 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Right, right. Yeah, and speaking of the whole wrapping type of thing, is I know there's a whole industry, and maybe here in Michigan, at Michigan State, I believe, where they have a whole degree where you can learn how to a packaging basically, packaging of a product for retail. And many times what I'm hearing from you is that some of this wrapping may be more beautiful and more extensive on the outer layer, the shallow side of things, but there's no depth, there's no real value inside of that package. But because of the wrapping, if it looks really good, like we see in retail, that people are gonna buy things way more than if it had poor wrapping. But it sounds like you don't just go with the wrapping and say, Oh, that looks so beautiful. Let's hand over a couple million. You're actually getting to the depth, getting to the value, getting to the substance if it's there.

SPEAKER_05 27:25

Absolutely. And I think it's not just us. I mean, I think people who look at those products, uh, I mean, human society in general, and I'm of course generalizing, right? People who use, I mean, anybody today who has a cell phone in their hand and who has a computer at home or a laptop in their backpack, people who have the slightest of I would say, inclination on technology would be able to very, very quickly compare and see the value of such products very, very easily, right? Like if somebody comes to you and says, I've got this new widget, I've got this new app, and I need you to pay $50 or $100 for it every month, in your mind you're thinking, huh, do I need to really pay $100 for something if I can find a similar solution or a better solution for $5 a month, or sometimes just for free. Yeah. Right? So, and I think that recognition and that understanding, many times some founders are blindsided to. They feel that if they have built something which is shiny, people are going to get attracted to the shiny object. Yeah. We have to almost like burst that bubble very quickly and say, no, that's not how it works. You will have to create real value, tangible value to be able to get somebody to pay you for it. And that's why one of the questions we ask is, okay, show me how you are going to make your first $10,000 or $1,000, whatever it is, right? And walk through the journey of acquisition of that customer and getting them to open their wallet and pay you money.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Yeah, no, that's really good. And how did you, you know, have there been examples where maybe you have kind of bit or bitten onto something and it's kind of burned you, or you've had some type of lessons with that? But how do you stay aligned with your values now? As I would imagine, just getting started with what you're doing, along with then moving along, you gain more wisdom. But initially and early on, how do you handle those big decisions that could really get you in trouble? That maybe a lot of ideas fail. I don't know what the percentage is, but a lot of them out there that do get backing. It's like, hmm.

SPEAKER_05 29:51

No, that's a great question, Corey. And I think in my own example, I've built multiple products and services over the past years. So after my business failed in the very early days, I got into banking. I was a corporate slave, if you will, for 20 plus years. And then I left banking and I got into consulting. And through that consulting journey, I also became a founder again. I kind of started building products, built a few companies, and half of them failed because either our pricing got you know beaten by somebody else or got over competitive, or our products probably did not keep up, or somebody else built something better. Or we realized during the journey, like one of my recent last year, for example, the B Pacific brand that we have built and curated over the past couple of years with so much love and passion, we started off as an idea validation SaaS platform. So this was a platform which I built to solve my own problem. I would have founders coming to me pretty much on a daily basis asking me to validate their business proposition, their business idea, whether it's a good idea to build upon, whether it's a good business we should build or not. And I was doing a lot of coaching and mentoring work at that point through multiple universities, multiple educational institutions, uh, entrepreneurship programs, et cetera, et cetera. And I was spending absolutely enormous amount of time, almost my entire day would go in just coaching and meeting with founders. And solve that problem through technology. We build this platform called the Pacific Play Platform, where a founder could go online, input their business idea, go through a series of questions. It was almost like a 12-minute assessment. And at the end of it, that assessment will give out a report, fairly, fairly robust and structured report to founder about the validity of their business idea, success, longitivity, profitability, and whether they should go build it or not. And we had great fun with that all of last year. And those founders, those assessments would then lead into business validation, investability assessment, etc. So, to give you an example, this was great, but at some point we recognize that our core focus along the journey has been helping founders raise capital, helping founders go to market and work on their overall business planning to become investable. So we had to put a pause on it last year, where we kind of took a step back, we made a pivot in our own business, and we formalized our venture capital and venture capital advisory structure and venture capital investment structure more formally. And the platform was decommissioned and we licensed it out to another agency who is now using it as their in-house tool, but we no longer promote that product because it has been decommissioned. And to answer your question, we have had multiple pivots in our journey, and I have had multiple pivots as a founder building on ideas. Some succeed and some don't, because you have to have that cognizance that not every idea is going to succeed. Not every idea is going to turn into a billion-dollar business. Sometimes you build things which will not make a billion, but maybe small amounts of money here and there.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yeah, this whole talk has been amazing. So I just want to thank you so much, Persant, for just sharing your perspective, your wisdom, and also your journey, because it started when you were pretty young. So thank you so much for being on my show here.

SPEAKER_05 33:43

Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to be here, Corey, and thanks for having me. I hope someone's life can change or they can make better decisions by listening to all the mistakes I've made. So I hope I hope that that happens.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah, and it's not just the mistakes you've made that you've been able to learn from, but all of the examples that you've given of other investors who have come with basically the shiny wrapping on things or haven't clarified enough what the value is, which is what you look for. So yeah, yeah, definitely appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_05 34:15

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Yeah, you're welcome. So what's the best way people can get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_05 34:21

I think the easiest way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. You know, uh drop me a message, you know, drop a text uh on LinkedIn, that's the fastest. Uh, and my email. So sometimes my phone is off or silent, you know, it doesn't really work very well. But yeah, email and LinkedIn is the fastest and easiest way to get in touch with me. I'll drop the links for you to share with everybody. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

All right, well, thank you. And if you don't mind spelling your name, I would appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 34:46

It's Prashant Agraval, P-R-A-S-H-A-N-T. It's pronounced as Prashant. It actually comes from the old Sanskrit language, and if you translate that, it translates into Pacific Ocean. So that's something which I did not know and I learned you know fairly recently. And also my last name is Agrawal, A-G-R-A-W-A-L, pronounced as Agrawal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Thank you. Thank you. I love that uh whole idea that the Sanskrit meant Pacific Ocean, which is huge, which I think of the whole investing and the VC and everything else in that whole area that, oh, that's really cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Apologetic Leadership, where it's not about the shiny rapping or AI wrapping. It's about value creation. And it's not about the money. It's not about the money. Again, it's about creating value, having passion, and being able to articulate what it is you're doing to try to help the world or create a service that is invaluable. Thank you again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Upologetic Leadership.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

So that's it for today's episode of Unapologetic Leadership. Head on over to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Corey Dunham himself. So head on over to Unapologetic Leadership Podcast dot com and pick up a free copy of Corey's gift and join us on the next episode.