EP 91: Ishan Mukherjee and Rox - from being an outsider to building companies in Silicon Valley

We got to meet Ishan Mukherjee a little while ago and were immediately struck by the obvious (highly accomplished, pedigree of building and running products are scale) but also the personal similarities in our story from India.

This episode covers a lot of ground - his story, how education and family really shapes someone’s upbringing. We algso enjoyed getting into specific Indian sub cultures like the ones around “quizzing” (a big part of my upbringing).

And last but not least, we talk about his new company Rox and what they’re doing around sales and AI agents.

This was a lot of fun - enjoy!

3:04 Ishan's Story
4:43 Inside IIT: India's Most Competitive Universities
6:50 How Quiz Championships Shaped a Tech Founder
11:45 Moving to the US
19:38 Building Kiva - The Early Days
24:45 The Amazon Acquisition
28:30 Immigration
34:55 What is ROX
37:00 Where are AI agents lacking/ State of LLMs
41:35 Reinventing CRMs
43:45 How ROX works
48:30 AI's Impact on Traditional Industries
53:45 The Launch: ROX Goes Public
57:00 Advice to Young Dreamers
58:35 The Ultimate Quiz Showdown
1:01:30 Outro