Minal Mehta - Pan Asia upbringing, scaling next billion users for YouTube, tech in the early 2000's vs now, career coach at Harvard & Founding TakeTwo!

The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal

Take flight into Minal's journey -- growing up in India, learning ambition and owning yourself from her mother and the drive to be better from her father; and then going to Singapore to finish her last years of high school!

Post high school, Minal secured a full scholar to Stanford University, which started her journey in the US and Minal’s foray into tech in the early 2000’s working at Expedia and Amazon in the early days, then doing an MBA at Harvard followed by exciting roles at the likes of LinkedIn and Youtube leading product including building YouTube for the next billion users.

I also asked Minal about the creator economy, how to build a life post MBA, advice for new graduates, and hear about Take Two, the new venture Minal is building with two co-founders!

TIMESTAMPS

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15:10 - Assimilate in a new culture at school: Attending a high school with 300 people per class, all Chinese with Minal being 1 of 7 scholars from India

16:40 - Applying to Stanford from Singapore

18:45 - Power of own voice, 2003 after dot com bust studying at Stanford

24:20 - Opportunity to join Amazon in 2003

24:55 - Amazon first principles from Day 1 when they started in 2000’s

27:15 - Learnings early on (work + India) to utilise in career

28:35 - Why MBA and why Harvard

30:30 - two benefits from Harvard

34:05 - building a life post Harvard

38:05 - What should a graduate look for in first role post study?

40:15 - optimising for Learning (whether its joining a startup or a reputable brand name)

40:20 - what have you done, not where have you been

42:15 - solving a problem that fits with who you are. Example of how Jeff Bezos couldn’t build Google and Larry couldn’t build Amazon

44:30 - Learnings from working with Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner at Linkedin

48:50 - the creator economy; getting best reach for your content

52:40 - Thinking behind LinkedIn groups (Minal was head of product)

55:20 - Minal starting TakeTwo and story behind going from corporate to entrepreneur

1:01:30 - Finding co-founders, why, how

Enjoy!

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This episode & show is to inspire all us to be high flyers in any aspect of life & flip the notion of a high flyer, learning from value creators to help us all be 1% better everyday, together.