Quitting a job at Apple to go all in on a hardware startup

Vignesh Rajagopal
Welcome back to Fika Bytes I've been really, really excited about publishing today's episode. It's one of those conversations that will leave you with a jolt of inspiration, but not just like a vague nebulous inspiration. I'm talking actual actionable gems that you can take today and apply to your product development, to your customer research, to your go-to-market, all those things that will help you ultimately grow your consumer hardware business. We're talking to Dhaval today. He's the co-founder of Lotus. They're building a smart solution that is essentially telekinesis productized

Think like pointing at a light switch and being able to turn the light on and off. It's a game changing product, especially for those with limited mobility. And as you know, we focus on the founder stories here. So today's conversation is all about Dhaval's startup journey after almost a decade at Apple, working hard, climbing through the ranks. How was he able to say no to salary and dive headfirst into the craziness of the startup world? How was he able to

take all those years at Apple, all that product development experience and use it to build this new product. But also interestingly, what's the difference because the product development culture with thousands of engineers at Apple compared to being the sole founder of building the first V1 prototype of something, trying to get a business off the ground, two completely different things, right? So we go into all that and a lot of key insights related to kind of mindset, founder development, product development, and a lot more. All right, let's get to it.

Vigs
All right, we're live. I've got Dhaval here with me from Lotus. Dhaval, thanks so much for taking the time. I'm super excited to have you on the show.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Absolutely pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Vigs
Okay, so I want to talk about your founder journey. And before we start that, I think what I want to get people excited about is the actual product itself. You guys have a really cool demo video on your website, but for those that are listening on audio, just give us a brief summary of what the product is and what inspired you to make it.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yeah, so in a nutshell, for anyone with limited mobility or people with disabilities, it's a wearable ring that controls objects at home by pointing. But there's no app, no rewiring, and no Wi-Fi needed. And really the reason to kind of build this quote magical product was my own story. Actually, I was born with twisted knees. Me and my brother both.

And a couple years ago, so because of that, I'm on and off crutches a lot. And a couple of years ago, I had just gotten into bed at the end of a long day, but had forgotten to turn off my lights. But I was too tired to get out of bed, hop onto my crutches, hobble 10 feet, turn off the light and vice versa. So I just slept with the lights on the entire night and woke up in the morning, not having slept well.

Vigs
whole night. Wow.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Thinking, well, if someone like me, I'm this electrical engineer, so I'm an electrical and aerospace engineer by training. At the time, I was managing a division at Apple for iPhone, watch, and AirPods. And before Apple, I've even worked at the company that makes wall switches. I've worked at Lutron, for those of you who know. I have 37 patents. If a techie like me didn't even have smart home technology in their own home, what about everybody else? So that was the genesis.

Vigs
I love that solve your own problem. they say,

Dhaval @ Lotus
very much. Solve your own problem and you'll find other people who have the same.

Vigs
Yeah. So let's turn the clock back then talk a little about your background. So you said you were head of the division at Apple. Tell us about that journey and how it shaped your entrepreneurial experience here.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yeah, I actually, if I rewind the clock even further, so I was at Apple for about eight and half years. I actually started as an intern. So my very first projects were on the, this is back in the day now, Mac Mini and Apple TV, way back in the day. Yeah, this was when I was still at Georgia Tech. Then they gave me a full-time offer. I had a couple of options, picked Apple, moved across the country to come here.

And then my specialty was always analog electronics. So I ended up working on sensors and haptics. And so I started by working on the MacBook Pros, the trackpads. That was my specialty. Then a whole bunch of input devices. And then over the years gradually grew from kind of junior engineer to tech lead to manager and senior manager, et cetera. And so by the time I left, I was managing this.

division for multiple product lines and multiple generations for iPhone, watch, AirPods, and then special products. So that was my journey. Um, but around the, I want to say seven, seven and a half year mark, it got to feel like I had a good handle on things. knew what to expect. I knew what product life cycles look like. Even problems I didn't have solutions to, I sort of knew the process that would figure out the solution. So even though I didn't have the answer, I knew the process that would yield the answer.

And I remember around that time, this will sound a little philosophical, but it's true. Have you seen Hamilton by any chance, the musical? There's this line in Hamilton, which is, what is legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. And I remember I'd just seen that. You know, I'd been noodling on what I wanted to do next. Cause I, you know, it was on this career trajectory where there I was just going to get promoted to director. I could stay at Apple and make director, but then obviously I wouldn't make that position and then leave.

Vigs
Yeah.

Dhaval @ Lotus
because why would I make that significant position and then immediately leave? Well, at that point, I would have come close to completing either nine or 10 years at Apple. I hadn't ever experienced anything else, especially being here in Silicon Valley. So I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I had just seen this musical, and there was this line. And I remember thinking, 30 years from now, I don't know if I'll be telling my grandkids, hey, your granddad added the eighth camera in the iPhone.

know, certainly interesting. Don't get me wrong, it's a very tough, very interesting engineering problem. It's not simple. But I wasn't entirely certain how meaningful it would be. know, like if my phone had one less camera on it, iPhone otherwise, this is not an iPhone specific thing. I don't know how much worse off my life would be with one fewer camera in my phone. You know, like maybe my quality of life would go down from 97 % to 96 % or something. But...

You know, it was a tremendous amount of my brain power and obviously collectively, you know, put a huge amount of man, human power into these projects. And so it just felt like, and I don't know, very personal level, it felt like I could always come back to Apple. Maybe I wouldn't get the exact position I want. Maybe I wouldn't get the exact title I want. Maybe it even be the exact salary I want. You know, none of exactly what I want, but you know, I'll have a job.

I've been working here, I have the credibility, I know the people. And if not Apple, then any big tech company in the Bay Area would be happy to hire me, because I have the experience of, you know, I'll find some job. I won't be on the streets.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
That's not necessarily true of going the other direction. Like it would only get harder. If I wanted to start my own journey as a founder, at the time I wasn't married, didn't have kids. Now I'm married, we don't have kids yet. And so it felt like that would only get significantly harder as time went on. It's not impossible. This is not to say nobody can start a startup at later stages in life. That's certainly not true. But it gets harder versus that's very much not true for me going back to kind of my big tech career.

So, although it sounds great, I didn't take the plunge immediately. I still took a long, you know, cause it's golden handcuffs. was a very well-paying job, extremely well-paying job. Around the same time my parents were, you know, growing older. They live still where I grew up, which was in Dubai. So my parents are still in Dubai. They live far away. You know, they're getting older. I mean, my brother are both not near them. Both of us are here in the United States. So there were lots of reasons why I was considering still staying at Apple and not leaving.

Vigs
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
I think the thing that helped me out the most was talking to a ton of other founders, especially ones who were in big tech before and chose to leave. And so it was conversations like this. And you know, it's not one conversation that moves the needle. You sort of keep talking. You have many such conversations with lots of people you trust and you listen to their experiences and gradually one fine day you'll wake up and it'll never feel completely safe, but it won't feel as terrifying either.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
and that's when, you know, something clicks in your head you're like, you know, why don't I try this? And for me, I decided to try it for three months. I decided I'm just going to go out and talk to startups. I didn't actually start Lotus after leaving Apple. I decided to join a startup to learn how to do startups, which I'm really glad I did. But even that, you know, I decided, hey, you know, this is a little experiment. If it doesn't work, I'll come back. And that was the beginning.

Vigs
Okay, very cool. So I've never been in big tech, so I don't really know that part of it. You're the expert there. Those conversations you were having with other prior big tech now founders, was it more of like a, you had this like, why not me moment once you started to be accustomed to these people and being like, if they can do it, why not me? Or what was like your reasoning when you...

Dhaval @ Lotus
Actually

for me it wasn't quite that, although that is true, for some folks it was that. For me that wasn't quite the case. For me it was more... The more I had those conversations, the more a couple of things became clear. One was, you can always come back. I think the fear is, my god if I leave this job what will happen? But if you think it through, you know, they need somebody.

If they're going to take a bet, they're going to take a bet on they'd rather have you because they've worked with you. You have the experience. You obviously know the company inside out. They welcome you back with open arms. And, know, unless you leave on a bad note or something, which there's no reason to do, but in general, if they don't know somebody and they know you, they're more likely to give you the job if there is an opening. And there's always an opening, especially in big tech. They always have a need of good engineers and good leaders, et cetera. So that was one, which is.

You shift your brain from thinking on why should I do a startup to why shouldn't I do a startup? Because I have the fallback plan ready, right? You have your backup plan in place. The other thing that it starts to chip away, and this is gradual, is it chips away at the fear. Because the startup territory is this massive unknown, right? It's like moving to a new country. It's not that they don't have food there or groceries or human beings, but it's just this new country and you don't know what will happen and...

Vigs
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
how you'll be, even though you know people already live there, right? You're not moving to the middle of nowhere. And yet there is this fear of the unknown really is what it is for you. And so once you talk to people who are very much like you, it chips away at it gradually. You're like, okay, well, this person did, you know, they talk about their specifics. Like, okay, I quit Apple in April. Then I started talking to a couple of companies and you know, had a new job in another month and a half after interviews.

And I started and I kind of stuck with them for three years. you know, it becomes very concrete, which is they didn't die. They just had a bunch of conversations, picked a path. didn't end up in flames and know, chaos. It was fine. And I'm talking, I specifically looked out for people in sort of three categories. People that left Apple or Big Tech and never came back. People at Apple or people who left Apple or Big Tech and came back.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
And people who were never in big tech in the first place, like they've only known startups their whole life. And I talked to all three categories and it gradually chips away at that fear. Like, okay, I'm starting to understand what this startup beast is a little more, both from the perspective of people who've had my experience and people who've never lived it and both success and failure, right? Like that's that two by two quadrant. And once you've talked to everyone at the near like, okay, know, at minimum I could try it. If it doesn't work, I'll come back or we go to something else. And so.

Vigs
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Dhaval @ Lotus
I think for me, that was my experience. It started to be more of why not rather than why. And it clearly chartered a path on how I could achieve that, which is, okay, if you're terrified of doing your own thing first, go join another startup and learn. And so for me, that ended up being my journey. For others, you know, they jump directly to doing their own and good on them. I'm very glad that from my own personal lived experience, I would say I'm

absurdly glad that I joined another startup first, made all my mistakes, broke all my assumptions and learned on somebody else's kind of investment dollars, if you will, before I started doing this. So that was my dream.

Vigs
Right.

Yeah.

And that ties it nicely with your earlier point about like the longer you wait, the higher the risk is of doing that thing. it's kind of like you kind of build the self-confidence of your own skills and you're saying my skills are always going to be in demand, but my dream might not wait for me to go and start this.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah,

because I think, you know, there's never and some one of the other founders I've spoken to had told me this, there's never going to be a good time. It just isn't like it's just too, it's too big a project for it to ever be perfectly aligned with the stars in your life. There's never a good time to do a startup just because it's such a massive project. There's always going to conflict with something else in your life, either another job or your parents or your kids or money or something, you know, like you're maybe you're about to buy a car and you want to save up. So you want to continue staying at your job.

Now you've bought your car, you have to do the payments or you're about to buy a house. Startup is too big a project and it's over too many years. It's always going to conflict with some goal you have. You just have to do the startup first and then gradually figure out everything else around it. Like that's the only way to make it work. So to your point, it's constantly getting exponentially, not even linearly, exponentially harder to do it later and later. Cause those other big projects in your life will get bigger, bigger and heavier.

to move around, like how do you move kids around? So in general, that just gets harder, which is why a lot of startups are founded by folks early on. I also had a lot of imposter syndrome, so I would often worry, am I too late? Has it been too long? Have I been doing my job for too long and now it's too late to do startups? And this was when I was early 30s. Because you see all these.

Vigs
Mm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
famous stories and they were doing it when they were 18 and 20 and they dropped out of college and all this. And in my head, I was thinking, oh my God, I'm way older than any of them. Maybe it's too late. spoiler alert, it's certainly not. I actually have founders I really looked up to and they're close to twice my age. yeah.

Vigs
It's interesting that, you know, media doesn't talk much about the kind of journey that you have where you go from having a good salary, a big tech job, and then starting, know, think like people are more about the overnight success or the, you know, I don't know, the did it started selling newspapers at 12, like those, those kinds of stories you hear more. Whereas I feel like your path is the more relatable for a lot of people because a lot of people are in these jobs at the side idea, these side projects. And so I want to tell your story more than like the

the overnight headline stories, you know.

Dhaval @ Lotus
I actually, I personally think it's a great mission and certainly I value the fact that you're doing this because I feel like if I had heard more of these, it would at least chip away on the fear significantly more. And the reason, you know, big media tends to focus on those other stories is they're kind of crazy. Like it's the odds of that having worked are so astronomically low that the fact that it did work is the story.

But of course they don't focus on that. They're like, my God, you know, this happened and, and it's a, it's, know, it's well intended, which is they're not out there trying to change public opinion thinking, you should start at 12 or you should start at age 18. That's not the intent of the journalists covering these stories, but they have to cover the stories because it's so astronomically low of an art. It's like, you know, winning the lottery, which the odds are so low that you would become an overlapped millionaire that when it does happen, they have to cover that story. And yet I would say statistically,

Vigs
Exactly.

Dhaval @ Lotus
And I can say this now, not that I've been doing this for many years. I'm really glad I'm doing this now. You know, maybe, maybe if I, you if I were to nitpick on my own journey, maybe I would have wanted to start it one or two years earlier, but not significantly earlier. Like I actually think in many ways the path was good. And here's a, here's a myth I'd like to bust. There are a ton of investors out there that don't even want to invest in sort of unexperienced founders or inexperienced founders.

that specifically there are funds out there that only invest in working professionals. They only, that is their thesis. They do not invest in you if you're like a, you you've just come out and this is your very first gig and you've never worked professionally. That's not to say that's a bad or evil thing. Like massive respect to the founders that managed to do that. That's amazing too. It's just, I want to, because that's already the norm and the status quo in public perception.

I feel like that doesn't need any further bolstering. Like if you're quitting your school or this is your first thing out of school and you're 20 years old, good on you. That's fantastic. But I feel like the opposite end of the perception is not equally weighted. Even though in real life, that's very true. Like most of my founder friends are kind of similar to me where they worked in some job for some time, had the experience and then decided to leverage that experience to go do some high-risk project that was very well-intentioned.

Vigs
Exactly, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that is that's news to me that there's specific investors that focus on this. So thanks for sharing that.

Dhaval @ Lotus
One of my investors falls in exactly that category. They're explicitly

states on their website. We believe, and there's lots of studies on this. Of course, they're not as sexy, so they don't get as much media attention, but there's lots of studies that statistically experienced founders statistically lead to better odds in terms of an exit. The exit may be an IPO, it may be an acquisition, but you know, because you have the experience that odds of your start of dying are that much lower because you're much more efficient. You know, out of 10 options.

it won't work so you don't even try them, which means you don't spend money on it, you don't spend resources on it, and you save time. So your startup is that much more efficient. So anyway, sorry, you were saying.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, I was actually going to stretch that same, same topic a little bit because, know, fast forward to your journey, you quit Apple, you joined another startup and now you're starting Lotus. and the big thing that I want to understand is what were the skills from Apple, that helped you? What were the skills that you didn't have that you needed from the startup? And then finally, when you were just, you know, it's just you, I don't know if it was just you or if you had some co-founders, but I'm sure at Apple, had tens, if not hundreds of people that, know, you could ask for help. could.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yeah.

Vigs
assigned

tasks to. So how was that whole transition, both from your perspective with your skills and then like having no one to do the work that you had a whole team for.

Dhaval @ Lotus
man, gotta say I'm really

enjoying this chat. Nobody's ever asked me this. So it feels like a wonderful therapy session. It's actually great. So all good questions. I would say, let's start with the skills that helped. At Apple, there were a couple of things that they really drill into your head. And I think that's probably going to stay with me forever for the rest of my life. One was, and I've been in the room.

Vigs
Perfect.

Dhaval @ Lotus
when this was being debated. So this is a real thing. This is not a hypothetical principle. Does your product deserve to exist? And I've been in the room where this was being debated by leadership. So it's not a hypothetical. And the translation of that is you really need to be convinced that this is a really genuinely big and important problem. And in fact, I would even argue the emphasis on important. The big part is the VC part.

But is it a genuinely important problem to solve in?

And then the subtext of that is how do you, how are you so sure that it's really genuinely a problem? I you start with your own problem, but that you want to validate it. You want to talk to five other people saying, is this just a you problem? Or is this genuinely a big problem that is top of mind for a lot of people worldwide? Like that's a word problem worth spending 10 years of your life on, Selfishly, even at least use that as a filter. I will tell you most of the best companies and

the successes you hear of, they are going after a true deep problem. And this may not be an obvious problem, you. A lot of problems are things people don't like to talk about because it's not socially acceptable. That's a good problem. The importance being on the significance of the problem. What's very easy, and I will certainly say it happens a lot in Silicon Valley, very much including myself. That was my initial intent. I made a couple of mistakes on this.

You tend to fall in love with your perceived solution and not what the real problem is. Like you're like, I, I'm an engineer. I had this crazy idea where I could, you know, put A and B and C together and, it could be this really interesting product. Sure. But what problem is it solving? And is that problem really important in the world? So that was the first thing that Apple taught me, which is does your product deserve to exist? And the corollary of that is like, what problem is this really solving? Do you need, there's tons of gadgets. Do you need another one?

So that's problem number one or question number one question number two. Let's say you've convinced yourself that this is genuinely a Very very important important problem to solve that deserves solving through me or somebody else Then the second thing and this is very Apple is My solution the absolute simplest version of the solution to that problem Not a solution to that problem the absolute simplest version of a solution to that

And you just toil after this like nobody. Where, and I'm saying this, our tech seems very simple, but behind the scenes, man, it takes an insane amount of engineering to make it feel that simple. And I can go into specific examples, but like one example, we use infrared technology in our ring. It's the same tech that's been around for 20 years than your TV remote. So for instance, we originally thought we're not even going to make rings. We're going to make the things that the ring controls.

Vigs
I bet.

Dhaval @ Lotus
And it just snaps onto your things in your home using magnets. So there's no rewiring. And because it's using infrared, there's no need for an app or wifi. You literally, you just point to the thing you want to control and you push the button and that's it. You're pointing and clicking. It's like a superpower. So we were thinking, you know, everyone's got a TV remote. We don't even need to make that part, right? Like every, can use your TV remote. It turns out that doesn't work. TV remotes blast infrared. So it's sort of one thing turning on and off, only the thing you're pointing to.

everything in the room turns on and off. So we actually had to take on the very behemoth effort of making an infrared transmitter that is not a laser pointer, but not a blaster. It's more like an infrared flashlight. Turns out extremely difficult problem. It's actually a very difficult physical physics problem because you don't know how far the two things are. You don't know the shape of the room. It's a field of view of the transmitter, field of view of the receiver, the strength of the beam, and the shape of the room. It's a four degree of freedom problem.

Vigs
Yeah.

Dhaval @ Lotus
We could have just skipped it. We could have said, screw it. We're just going to make this product that you just use your TV remotes, even though the experience is crappy. we like, you just, Apple will not let you do that. Like they train you where it has to be the simplest version where the simplest version for people. If you think about it is they just want to point at a thing and click it. That's what intuitively seems to make the most sense, whether you can have the technology to do it or not. And so then you're working on that solution, not what you think is cool, but what's most intuitive and simple.

Vigs
and

Dhaval @ Lotus
That's probably number two. So is your problem important? Is your solution the simplest version of a solution to that problem? I think those are the two big things that certainly Apple taught me. And then I would say the third was not Apple, it was the startup that I joined.

There was part of it at Apple too, which is startups are not about the perfect answer. It's all about efficiency. That was a very important lesson. Meaning at Apple, I would spend five years perfecting the crap out of it before it was ever shown to the public.

Meaning, I'll give you my example right now. So we wouldn't be shipping our product now, which we launched two months ago, until we had six different ring sizes in four different colors. the rings were absurdly tiny and the product was extremely thin. The public would never even see it until you had achieved that level of perfection. You can't afford to do that at a startup.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
I mean, so right now we have three different ring sizes. I'm willing to bet if I spoke to some Y Combinator founders, not founders, like the founders of Y Combinator, you know, if I spoke to Paul Graham, he would ding me on it saying, you should have shipped when you had one ring size. Right? Like, why did you even wait for three? And we don't have multiple colors. We have one color and we get everyone knocking on our doors every day saying, wait, can I get this other color? And you know, you just can't afford it to have a perfect answer.

Vigs
Right.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Your goal is the most efficient answer. Not perfect. you're constantly in the startup to use a really weird nerdy math metaphor. At Apple, you're trying to get the 99 % answer, constantly. At startups, if you're lucky, you want to do 80 % and move on. In fact, usually you don't even have that kind of luxury. Like you want to do 60%, anything better than halfway odds and be like, I have bigger fish to fry and move on quickly.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
And so that was an important lesson because the biggest lesson you learn and you made this point. And Apple, if you need help on anything, you can pick up the phone and call somebody. If you need help on glue because you're not the glue expert, there's a glue expert somewhere. You don't know anything about glues, they'll tell you everything about glues. Things you had to know about. You want to know about injection molding, there's somebody who does molding. You want to know about compression molding. There's a whole other person who knows everything about compression molding.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Dhaval @ Lotus
You know, you want to do analog electrical engineering. There's a whole team for that. If you want to do FCC certification, there's a separate team for that. At a startup it's you. If you're lucky, there's more than you, but it's you. It's certainly at the beginning, it's like one or two people. There's like thousands of questions you don't even have the answer to. So it's all about efficiency, like fight the fires that would kill you and everything else, let the fires burn. And it's a very unusual skill to master. Like, you know, if I told you go to bed,

with five fires burning in your home, you wouldn't sleep. But at startup, you have to. You just pick the fire that you know is gonna kill you, so maybe you spray out the one right next to your bed. You just have to go to sleep knowing there are four other fires burning. You just have to be okay with it. So efficiency becomes very important, because you don't have the time or the money. Well, some would argue you have the time, but you definitely don't have the money or people. anyway, those are the big three. Fall in love with the problem, make the simplest solution, and focus on efficiency, not perfection.

Vigs
Yeah.

That, that last point about efficiency, not perfection. So not to like unpack your feelings here or anything, but how was it for you? Cause I imagine Apple kind of instills in you the sense of perfectionism, right? Where you're like, cannot be released. Like it will take another two years to get it to be like a millimeter thicker, whatever the case, thinner, whatever the case is. And then now you're faced with this complete polar opposite of like, like the led blinks ship it. So

Dhaval @ Lotus
extremely uncomfortable. Extremely.

Like you're just, you just feel uncomfortable all the time. Cause you know, you I'll make this very real. In my head, you know, I bump into my former colleagues from Apple and the startup, you know, all the time on a regular basis, right? We're all working here in the Silicon Valley. We meet on, you know, semi-regular basis to just for coffee or drinks or, or, know, you bump into them in a store.

You kind of want to hold your face up when you show them what you're working on, right? kind of, you don't want to cringe and show people that you worked with saying, this is what you're working on? Like, what did we train you at Apple? You know? And so there's this personal, very personal motivation, like you don't want to look like an idiot. And so, yeah, you cringe, you cringe a lot saying, on one hand, all these startup masters are teaching you, know, ship the first thing that is a significant step forward from anything else out there. If it's a...

significant step forward to shipping. Doesn't have to be perfect. Start shipping, you learn more that way. On the other hand, you have to keep face with kind of your old life and your old friends. And so it's a very discomforting feeling and you just have to learn to become more and more okay with it over time. And the closest analogy, and this is the first thing that pops in my head, it's kind of like, if you go to a friend's home who's just had babies or a small toddler,

Their home's a mess. Like I'm giving my brother's example here. He's got three small kids. He actually had three kids under four. Now it's three kids under five. You know, his home is a chaos. And I used to initially, if I'm being very, very honest, I used to kind of judge him on it. So be like, what is wrong with you? Because I've seen his home before. He was a tidy guy. And you know, sometimes I would walk in and be like, what is this? This is chaos. And you just gradually over time, you get to learn like,

Focus on important stuff. That's not important. Keeping your kids happy and alive and you guys being rested, that's way more important. Your kids are gonna throw their toys everywhere. If you try to go for perfection, you're never gonna sleep. So it's kind of like that. At a startup, don't worry about the mess, don't worry about the chaos. Learn to live in the chaos as long as you're working on the efficient path. That's all that matters. And I've realized now, if I circle back to Apple, the best leaders at Apple, they were really good at efficiency.

You know, like, if I'm talking about an engineering problem, let's pretend there is a correct answer. It's not always true. Oftentimes there's multiple correct answers. But let's say there's two or three, you know, roughly equivalent correct answers to solve a problem. The really best leaders that...

It's not like they would come up with a different answer. They would come up with the same answer that you or me would. The only difference was they came up with it three months ahead of time with only 5 % of the information. That's the difference. If you gave me three months and let me collect all my data and do all my experiments, I would come to the exact same solution. And the perception is that they are these geniuses that come up with the different answers.

The realities, they come up with the same set of answers. Maybe not the exact same one, but within the same realm. The reason they are who they are, like they're VPs and senior VPs is they come to the exact same solution or similar solution with 10 % of the information and five months ahead of time. And the reason they're able to do that is a combination of what I've noticed over time, two things. A, their fundamental engineering expertise is really solid. Like their fundamentals of science are rock solid.

So they can extrapolate in their head very fast. They can say, OK, if you double the thickness of this covered glass, the weight's going to go up by x factor of x, but the strength is going to go up by a factor of y. Net, net, you're better off. Go double the thickness, even without running the experiment. So one's their fundamental physics or fundamental sciences. And then the second is just experience, which is they have a ton of experience. They've done this before. They're like, I've gone down that rabbit hole before. Don't bother. So anyway.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

you

That's super interesting. I, I'm just like sinking in all these nuggets that you're sharing here. Cause not only are you sharing like advice for founders, now you're kind of talking about how to be successful at big tech companies. And so it's just loving, loving the advice that you're dropping.

Dhaval @ Lotus
I find that the same

principles get that much more exponentially important and helpful for survival in a startup. Like it may just help you progress on your career path in a big tech company. It's core to survival at a startup.

Vigs
Yeah, absolutely. And I have to say, like, even with all this efficiency in mind, like you might not be holding yourself to the Apple standards, but like your website, your copy, your design, even the product looks beautiful. And so, you know, your, expertise is really showing there.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Thank you.

Thank you. It's very kind of you. I tend to have enough imposter syndrome where I'm always nitpicking at the things that's not perfect, but thank you. That means a lot.

Vigs
Yeah,

we are our own worst critics, right? As they say. but speaking more on the product itself. So, you know, now you've talked about your founder journey, making the leap. but now you're, you're selling products, like you did the development, you did everything. how did that go for you? I mean, you have an engineering background, which not all hardware founders do, but I want to hear from your perspective. Like, did you build that first prototype yourself? and then.

Dhaval @ Lotus
This is true.

Vigs
What was that iteration process like until, you know, two months ago when you're live with production units.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yeah,

actually, I think that's one of the things that I really took to heart in terms of advice. And thankfully I did very much everything I thought I should have done, which was fantastic in hindsight. so the first thing, one of my previous mentors that told me is don't go build anything. Go talk to the people who you think have this problem and verify that first. So that was the very first step in the process. I didn't actually, I was convinced it was really the world's stupidest idea. And I'm not making this up. I genuinely thought this was the world's stupidest idea.

And so took me nine months to convince myself. I just interviewed people with different kinds of disabilities for nine months. That initial three months that I thought would just be three months, I extended it to four and a half, then six, and then nine. Arguably that was too long, but I took nine months to just take the time, interview people, and I wouldn't tell them about the idea. I would just tell me, these were nine hour long interviews. Yes. Nine hours long. For complete strangers, yeah, I would find them on LinkedIn.

Vigs
What? How did you get people to sign up for this?

Dhaval @ Lotus
and spread out over three days. So really long interviews with complete strangers and everything from when they woke up in the morning to when they went to bed at night. I wanted to know everything. When you get up, how do you get up? How do you get out of bed? If you're quadriplegic, how do you get out of bed? Is that a pain point? How big a pain point? How do you solve that today? Is that a problem? How much did you pay for it? How did you find that solution? Okay, what do you do next? And so on and so forth.

Vigs
And at this point, sorry to interrupt, but did you share your motivations for this or was it just like, Hey, can I interview you for XYZ?

Dhaval @ Lotus
You know, sometimes in the beginning of the call, like the first five minutes, I would say, hey, I have this idea. It came out of my own pinpoint, but I don't want to bias you. So I'm not going to tell you about it. And I really thought most people would hang up on me and they were saying, okay, I understand. And then I would proceed, you know, to tell them like, okay, tell me everything about your life. And I'm saying these were really, really deep moving conversations. Like people have shared with me about their sex life.

Vigs
Nice.

Dhaval @ Lotus
They've shared their insecurities, especially as people with disabilities. They've shared their dating life with me saying, you know, what it's like to be on these dating apps and as a person with a disability, like things you don't think you would ever share with a stranger. And they would really open up. So I have a ton of things that I would say, you know, I could do, go do probably four other startups because I'm genuinely convinced there are a couple of other fundamental important problems in the lives of people with disabilities. And then, know, anyway, long story short, if I move forward.

that really helped convince me there was truly a problem and that this solution that I had in mind could in fact solve this problem. Now of course I didn't know the engineering challenges that I would run into because I hadn't built anything yet, right? But definitely on paper even when I ask people saying, at the end of the interview, at the last hour of the last interview on the third day, I'd say, hey by the way I have this idea, what do you think?

And just every single, I did 33 or 34 interviews myself and every single interview, literally every single one said, my God, can you please make this already? And at that point it finally clicked in my head saying, okay, I think I have to start taking some risks now and start building. Arguably, I would say that took too long. You know, if I would say a good founder or better founder than me would convince themselves without trying to get that perfect data.

convince yourself in three months or four months. Like don't wait as long as I did. But of course now that helps me in other ways. So it's bit of hindsight 2020. So that was kind of process step number one. And then step number two, yeah, I built the initial prototypes myself. Like I was the one writing the code. I was doing the electrical engineering. I had a very early friend who then joined the company for no salary, who was helping me do kind of the mechanical engineering side of things. So PD and with 3D printing prototypes.

But the really best thing that I think we did was as soon as we made the first prototype, we gave them to some of these people that I'd spoken to. We literally gave them this piece of crap. I really mean piece of crap. Like I think it's not an arm's reach, but the very first ring was made out of Velcro and off the shelf parts that were huge. And so the very first ring was not this little thing that fits on your finger. It was like this little snake is this long.

Vigs
⁓

Dhaval @ Lotus
about a foot long, long wires plugged into an off-the-shelf USB charger pack battery, and a Velcro thing at the other end so any finger size could fit it. And we would give this to people and tell them, OK, live on this for a week. And one of the very early things, I'll give an example, was the second half, the switch cover that goes on top of existing wall switches. It was just a flat piece of black 3D printed plastic.

Vigs
Right.

Dhaval @ Lotus
And very quickly, like day two, we got a phone call from this user saying, this is great, I love it, but my, in that case, his spouse, his wife hated it. So we're like, okay, that's interesting. Why? You love it, but your wife hates it? What happened? And he said, well, you've covered up that wall switch. It's great that it goes on with magnets and all, because there's no rewiring, but now nobody else in the house can use it. Only I can use it because I have the ring.

Can you add some buttons or something to the front so other people in the house can use it too? So we're like, oh man, that's a fantastic point. We didn't think of that. So we added these small buttons. I have these still with me. And then we replaced it for the same person. And then he said, okay, this is a bit better because they can kind of use it. But those button things you made are really small. They have to hunt for it in the dark. And you made the button bigger. And so now, and by the way, these were all black. And so they said, can you change the color? It kind of looks ugly.

Now it's white and the whole front surface is a butt.

But we would have never learned any of that. And so now there's a word for this. It's called human-centered design process. You talk to people, you're constantly working off their lived experience, not what you assume is the case. And it's not a one-time activity in the beginning. It's a, keep giving it back to them. You make a Gen 2, give it back to them. Make a Gen 3, give it back to them. Gen 4, give it back to them. And ideally the same person. So then you see the progression. But I will say that one important thing, and this is an Apple lesson.

Listen to their problems, not their solutions.

And I say this with respect, people know what they like and what they don't like. They often don't know why or what the best solution is anyway, because they're not the domain expert. You're the domain expert. Right? It's like eating. Like if you go to a part of the, let's say you go to Iceland and you eat some amazing Icelandic dish.

Vigs
certainly.

Dhaval @ Lotus
You know whether you liked it or you didn't like it. But if I asked you why you liked it, you don't even know what spices they used, maybe it's some Icelandic flavor thing or maybe it's some special way of cooking. You don't know any of that, right? So if you were trying to come up with a solution, you would make up all kinds of things that were not necessarily true, even though you love that dish. And that's the idea. If you're a chef, I would love to hear what you think.

But if you're just a consumer and you love the thing, for me it's more important to know that you loved it or you hated it. So listen to the problems, not the solutions. Solutions should come from you. You're the domain expert. Where you can't expect somebody that's not skilled in the art to give you like, you know what you should do? You should change this LED and put it here and change it to this color. And you should use this other battery. Like people will come up with all kinds of ideas and that's good to hear it, but you should be the decider for the solution. But definitely listen to their problem. Cause people are very emphatic and clear.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
on what they don't like and why.

Vigs
Yeah, that's really good observation. I have a hypothesis. So tell me if I'm way off base here or not, but you said human centered design, which, we think of that as kind of this fancy construct, but I want to show that it's actually within reach for everyone. So what I imagine is that at Apple, you have access to users because Apple's doing like paid research studies and just has entire, so, so much access, right. But now with the startup, what you don't have with in terms of money or whatever you have with care. And I think, you know, maybe this is just you being humble, but

You kind of glazed over the fact that you are catering to these people one-on-one, you know, after you spent nine hours basically having a therapy session with them and then going and building this product, giving them something the very next day or the very next week after they give a suggestion. so like people are not just volunteering this information out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it because they see that you're trying to build something that'll change their life. It'll help them for the better. So.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yeah very much, that is 100 % accurate. There's a perception that it's Apple and there's this big company and they're doing something magical. It's just they're doing that within the employees of their own company, because they can. What you're doing is you can give one-on-one attention to end users, and funnily enough, they will end up becoming your first customers. Because they know you solved their problem, right? They saw the process. You worked with them the whole time. They've seen the iteration. You're building trust by definition.

And so they will become your first customers, which is obviously the first thing that you will need to solve as a startup, right? Cause your first VCs or your first investors, that's what's going to, they're going to ask you like, who are your first customers? How did you find them? And are they paying you? Right? Are they buying your product for money? and so this process ends up solving for all of that anyway, and leads to a good product. So human centered design tends to be this fluffy word. Basically you build stuff, you give it to people, try and solve their problem and iterate. That's it.

Vigs
Yeah. Yeah.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Build stuff, give it to end users themselves. Let them tell you what's not working. Iterate. That's it. That's the fancy human centered design broken down. Basically the thing not to do is don't iterate on your own, which is what most engineers tend to do. You're kind of like sitting in your room. Yeah. You're sitting near a desk and you're like, you know, I can make this 5 % better. Like to make all these changes, you're probably optimizing for something that users don't care about.

Vigs
Don't, yeah, people likes to get their head down, stay in their corner.

Dhaval @ Lotus
and so that's the important thing where we tend to do what's low hanging fruit or easy in terms of engineering, not important and importance only be engaged by the end user. And so that's what the fancy word human centered design just talk to users.

Vigs
Yeah.

Yeah. I think just like another additional point there is even when you're solving your own problems, like in your case, you're solving a problem for yourself. Even then don't rely just on yourself to give that feedback. Even then still go and find other people with similar adjacent problems.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Yep.

Yeah, and so that's a fantastic point. In fact, I'll double down on it. When people tell you to start with your own problem, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition.

You want to start there because if you're not even solving your own problem, then you're probably working on something that's not even important. Like this is the problem that doesn't have to be solved type of thing, right? So if you're at least working on a problem that is genuinely your problem, then you've checked off one minimum checkbox, which is it's probably important because it's a real problem, right? It's your problem. I think immediately after that, what you want to do is then go validate that problem on seeing, is this just a you problem or is this a 10 other thing?

And what you'll find is the answer will be somewhere in between. It's probably a real problem. But the problem is probably not the way you think about it. Because the way you've defined the problem for yourself is almost too specific to you. When you talk to other people, you will gradually hear variations of the same problem. And then you'll start to define a core subset of the problem that is common for a ton of people. And that's the problem you want to solve for.

not kind of your specific version of the problem. You want to solve for the version that applies to millions of people. And that's why it's important. Starting off with your own problem just helps eliminate all the ideas that you have that are not real problems. But it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. You still want to talk to end users.

Vigs
Yeah. And that's how you can have that outsized impact, which is a perfect segue to the final thing I want to talk to you about. this is kind of the next two minutes. It's just your platform to brag. So put your humility and imposter syndrome aside. What's your vision with Lotus? Where do see this product going? How do you see Lotus changing the world next couple of years?

Dhaval @ Lotus
So nice thing about the technology we're doing is because there is no setup, you can literally upgrade any structure on the planet in two seconds, and I mean that, if not one second, and you can take it with you wherever you go. Which translation, the vision is ultimately, it's telekinesis productized. It's like you can literally, and I mean this literally, you could literally go anywhere on the planet and anything you can see you can control.

at a distance, walking in for the very first time. I mean, I'm literally describing sort of telekinesis, except it's not an implant or anything like that. And I'm doing it from the perspective of it significantly helps people with disabilities. And it also happens to make life easier for everybody else. But that's my mission. Our mission statement is we build a tech that anybody can use. We just optimize for disability first, because by doing that, by solving for the worst use case first.

or the hardest use case first. You automatically solve for everyone anyway. So that's our vision. It's building this universe of ring-controllable objects so that any person, whether they're young or old, disabled or not, renter or homeowner, can stay at home with autonomy and dignity, or any place that they go to can become home in seconds. So whether you go to a hotel room or whether you're living in a rental apartment or you fly across the world and you're visiting your parents, everything automatically works.

And that's, it's literally telekinesis productized. That's the ultimate vision. Because imagine if you could go anywhere on the planet and anything you could set your eyes on, you can control at a distance without having to get up. but again, it's made from the perspective of helping people with disabilities. Cause that problem is a huge problem for them now. And then it helps, you know, your dad, your granddad of pregnant mom, you, when you're carrying grocery bags at home, right now, the two of us were sitting in a chair.

Vigs
Mm-hmm.

Dhaval @ Lotus
If you had to open the door for your pet, can't pause your meeting and go out. Or you're just cold and in bed. So just solving for that hardest case solves for everybody and that's our mission.

Vigs
I love that insight. and it sounds like the, one of the things to do to achieve this vision is to maybe partner with like construction developers, like going into new buildings, things like that. Is that on the docket for you?

Dhaval @ Lotus
So actually

we're doing a bunch of outreach right now to many different organizations. So what we didn't realize were all the various applications that could come out. originally, like I said, I was originally thinking this would help people like me, people using crutches, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, know, things like that. Anyone with limited mobility. Now we're realizing anyone that's deaf, hard of hearing, has a stutter or an accent, or just has vocal cord paralysis, they want this product.

We had to ask them, why do you want this? And they said, we can't use Alexa. We can't use any voice controlled assistant today, right? Because anyone that's deaf or hard of hearing usually can't speak nearly clearly for, or, you know, oftentimes they're using sign language interpreter, not everyone, but often. Or if you just have an accent, like Alexa doesn't understand my parents. So there's all these other use cases. We didn't realize that it helps people who are blind. We actually thought it could not help people who are blind because you have to point and click, right?

It turns out, because we've made it this flashlight version, as long as you're aimed in the right direction, you can point and click. So you don't have to hunt for the light, which turns out a very big problem for anyone that's blind today is their friends are not all blind. So when your friends come home, they leave the lights on and leave. And this is a common myth. I, as it used to seem the same thing, people who are blind can actually oftentimes differentiate that the lights are on versus off. They can't make out specific objects.

Vigs
I've heard that too.

Dhaval @ Lotus
But now imagine for someone who can tell the difference that the light is on to hunt for the light switch, ironically with the lights on, is very hard. And so now with the ring, they can just point in the general direction because they know where the switches are. Point in that direction, turn it off and move on. Also, funnily enough, most people don't realize this folks who are blind don't use their cane at home. They only use their cane when they go outside. So inside the house, the way they're

Vigs
Yeah. Yeah.

Dhaval @ Lotus
literally maneuvering inside their own homes is step counting. That is state of the art today. And so now, because these devices make a sound, they actually navigate by sound in their home. So there's no cumulative error because there's always a ball switch by every door. So you can always know which direction you're going. There are all these cases to the point you're making home modification companies, especially the ones that focus on helping people with disabilities.

Vigs
⁓ interesting.

Dhaval @ Lotus
We didn't realize we can help with rehab in hospitals. So if you've just had an amputation or a surgery or you're injured or sprained yourself playing soccer, this is significantly helpful. Like I was saying, one of the most popular use cases is pregnancy. So from prenatal to postnatal, getting up out of your chair is a very big problem, literally because of back pain or new dads. Actually, this is an interesting one. You've just put your baby to sleep. They're in your arms. You can't say, hey, Alexa, turn off the lights.

You will do anything to keep your baby asleep. You won't make a sound. And your arms are tied up too. You can't move them. But you can just push the button from your thumb and your finger, and you can turn off the lights or the fan or what have you. And so we're finding, again, our thesis. Optimize for disability usable by every.

Vigs
Yeah. I think it really, it's really commendable and it shows your kind of your help first approach to this because you're you I'm making faces over here because you're putting all these, all these scenarios in my head that I'd never thought of that you are not like, you are not a blind person. You're not a father, according to what you told me. but you're still empathizing with these people and understanding their problems at such a innate level. And I think that's what's kind of key to your products and your company's work. So great, great job on that. Keep that up.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Thank you. Thank you. means a lot coming from you, especially given all the other companies you see and the founders you talk to. So thank you.

Vigs
Yeah, absolutely. This was a bit of a longer episode, but you you said you had some time, so I thought we could go over. but yeah, thanks so much for. Perfect. yeah, thanks so much for coming on here. I'm sure our listeners are going to love this one.

Dhaval @ Lotus
Absolutely. It was like a therapy session for me. This is fantastic.

Thank you for having me.