Decision Making in Startups with Sunil Mukundan

In this conversation Sunil and Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting talk about

• How he accidentally joined his friend in a startup, when his campus offer from a larger company was put on hold
• His liking for software, right from the 6th grade, influenced greatly by his father
• How various experiments and explorations he undertook, helped indirectly and subtly build his brand and portfolio
• How the startup experience is like an adrenaline inducing activity and one has the opportunity to pick up anything related to the product and learn, as a startup is always short on hands
• Learning the ropes of programming in the large - as a team and the interfaces and experience of working with hardware that will run your software
• That inputs could be from beyond just keyboard and mouse
• The added complexities of enterprise software, where your code needs to integrate and work with other pieces that move on their own
• Why one should design enterprise products that are least disruptive
• The unique experience when you see your first customer actually deploying your solution in the enterprise
• This is an experience that one can get only in startups and a story where this learning happened
• His transitions from a startup employee, one of the initial employees  (founding members) in a startup to a co-founder
• Understanding the impact of ‘not now’ situations and decisions
• The significance of explaining the process, when someone is not clear about decisons
• On what he considers non-negotiable
• The key skills and aptitudes necessary for anyone to get into a startup
• His guidance on finding the right reasons to change, particularly mid-career
• How founding teams assemble themselves and an optimistic outlook for a career in IT

Sunil Mukundan likes to describe himself as a startup junkie who loves to build products from ground up and be a part of primal decision making in a company. He has, over the years, dabbled in video, compression, networking among others. co-authored multiple patents in the video delivery and networking domain.

His linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunil-mukundan-9881563/