Episode #14 – Saiman Shetty – Life at Tesla, Lyft, Mistakes as a founder, Not Settling for status quo.

In the latest episode, I chat with Saiman Shetty, an engineer turned product manager from the Silicon Valley, who has worked at Tesla, Lyft, and Nuro.

In his time in the US, Saiman has co-founded two startups, the first one being Hygiea, during his time at college.

Hygiea is a cool hardware/ software product that monitors garbage levels in trash cans. You could set it up in your trash cans, and it immediately tracks and relays whether the bin is full or not, predicts how much time is left before it needs emptying, helping enterprises manage their time and resources better.

Hygiea was a huge hit among the peers and went on to win many awards and accolades - and was one of the four winners out of the 128 startups that participated in Silicon Valley Business Competition at San Jose State University and received a one-and-a-half-year incubation offer from Plug and Play, one of the most respected incubators and investment firms in Silicon Valley which has incubated Google, PayPal, Dropbox and many other successful companies in their early stages.

Currently, Saiman is working as a technical program manager at Nuro, the robotics company that builds self-driving cars for delivering goods and is also building his second start-up called resumepuppy.com an online tool to help build resumes.

Given Saiman’s experience, this was a very thoughtful and truly wide-ranging conversation - we touch upon the mistakes he made as a founder, his experience in working at world-class companies, and how the company culture differs at these places and many more topics.

Check out thetakeaway.club for show notes from the conversation.