Gokul Rajaram, Product Executive @ Doordash
Gokul Rajaram serves on the executive board at Doordash and is also a Board Member of Coinbase, Pinterest, Trade Desk, and others. Gokul’s career has spanned multiple iconic companies including Facebook, Square, and Google, where he helped build Google AdSense from the ground up. Gokul is viewed by many in his network as the most helpful and humble person they’ve worked with, traits that shone through in our conversation with him.
In this episode we spoke with Gokul about the following:
His belief in generously offering help, and why it’s actually “selfish to be selfless”
Shifting from a paradigm of solving problems to one of identifying the right problems to solve
Why all good leaders need to be both “in the clouds and in the dirt”, and how his life experiences impacted this view
You can listen to him below, on Apple, or wherever else you get to your podcasts.
On how his education at IIT supported the foundation of his career
There’s data that shows that immigrants who come to the US find things quite easy in the United States, especially related to education. I think that’s true. Almost anything you go through here won’t be as tough as it was back at home [In India].
These difficult experiences are kind of good for you. Almost anything you experience afterwards may be a piece of cake. The Indian education system prepares you for certain things, which is a given set of rules and to work very well within those rules. Although, it doesn’t prepare you for situations where there are no rules, and it’s completely unconstrained, and you have to figure out what the rules are.
Once you get to work, there are no rules. In fact, rule followers don’t do well. You’ve got to break the rules. You’ve got to create your own rules. Going to business school unlocked this thinking for me. It’s when I realized that these rules are artificial, and people are the ones that have set them. It gave me the belief that I can set my own rules. That’s what I think we all need to get into the mindset of in our careers, and hopefully in our personal lives.
On transitioning from a life of scarcity to a life of abundance
When I went in for my first performance review at one of the first jobs I had out of college, I remember when I went in for my first performance review. I expected that I would get a stellar review because I had done everything that I was told to do. For every project I was assigned, I had done it faster and better. My code was the best. I was expecting a good review. Then my manager shared that I only “Met Expectations”. I was like, hang on, what do you mean meets expectations? I had never heard that before.
He told me it was because I hadn’t suggested anything new. I was thinking outside of the box. I was like; you didn’t tell me to suggest anything new. He replied by saying, that’s your job! So that was an interesting realization to me. It took me a few more years to understand this. I think it comes with maturity. It comes with confidence. It comes with being put into situations where you have discomfort.
Why Gokul believes it’s selfish to be selfless
One of the things that I have learned in my life is that you got to pay it forward. I believe in the concept of karma a lot. I feel the universe does good things for you in strange ways if you can help. It’s become a cornerstone in my life that if someone asks me for a favor, I’ll do it unless it really inconveniences me. Most people are just asking for email intros or 15-20 minutes of my time. It’s super easy for me to make time for that.
In general, it’s a selfish thing. The long-term selfish thing is to be selfless because you never know! If you have too much hubris, nothing separates us from each other. Really we’re all human beings. We are all placed in serendipitous situations, and some are luckier than others. It probably doesn’t hurt to help.
Like reading about Gokul? Want to get notified of any new episodes of the podcast? Subscribe to our newsletter here.
Until next time,
Jay and Angie