From College Dropout to Tech CEO: My Journey

Full transcript

So, welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today we're joined by Nikhil. Nikhil, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So, why don't we start by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what have you been up to? Yeah, yeah, that's a big question, but I'll keep it short and sweet. So yeah, my name is Nikhil Bimal. I have been in technology, startups, innovation, leadership for the last 14 years you. of my life. You know, have a pretty fun story. College dropout, for example, you know, to run a tech company, did the whole thing. Started my first tech company while I was still in high school and had my first venture capital money back then, too. I run companies in different spaces, everything from the first company was in hospitality all the way up to, you know, more recently working with large enterprises, working with Fortune 500, building technology for them, working with their leaders. Things like that. So I've run things sort of in the space. I've angel invested before as well. So that's for fun. you.

I, you know, kind of love the finance world, love venture capital. And yeah, you know, right at the current moment, I'm, you know, doing a lot of projects a little bit more with a smaller team and for just myself. But working on some major implementations with still, you know, large Fortune 500. We work with some cities, working with some really interesting clients on adopting artificial intelligence in a meaningful way. So not just replacing a bunch of employees and not laying off an entire company, but actually, you know, what does it mean to have a proper use of adoption and transformation and you. innovation? And I don't even really love using those words anymore because it's not like those are nice marketing, but it really is about the process. Every company is different. Right. And I love what I do. So, yeah, I currently, I guess we and a small team that I have, but we pack a big punch. We do a lot of incredible things. And we also built in our spare time, we build products. So one cool thing I can mention is I built a mobile game recently that has AI actually kind of powering like the game engine, some of the mechanics and matching and stuff. And it reached 200 ,000 users in its first month. So was just like, it was a side project that took off. Right. And sometimes it's fun when you have those little things and,

you. know, get to experiment with your team and all that. So, yeah, no, a lot of, a lot of fun stuff. And then, oh, and I guess the cool thing you. Then is I'm also working on a book this year that should come out sometime this year as well. So, yeah, a lot of, a lot of cool things in the, in the pipeline right now. Yeah. That you. So, you moved from Minneapolis to Chicago last year, specifically to plug into the angel and founder community there, right? What does a typical week look like for you now? Like how much of your time is on CX2 labs versus doing advising versus the new brand that you're launching? Yep. Yeah. So I'll, clarify I'll that I've actually lived in a lot of different, so I, I left Minneapolis officially about, it's actually 10 years ago now. So I've been, I've been in tech and startups, like I said, for about 14 years, but left Minneapolis about a decade ago, a little, a little under a decade ago to live in San Francisco.

And then, so then Chicago and Los Angeles and Austin were after that, but I lived in, I lived in San Francisco for a number of years and did a lot of startup work out there, obviously, and venture capital work out there. And then I, and then I moved around. yeah. So yeah, now I'm in New York city officially. And that's to, again, tap into a different resource and be part of a new community. But yeah, I've kind of been a part of a lot of different startup communities in the United States, but yeah, sorry to get to your question day in the life right now. Right. So yeah. So CX2 labs is rebranding as well. Like I have a new brand I'm working on and then CX2 labs is going to be called something different very be, really? I soon. a leading then 94th and number heart very And i 수가��at. nose. Then with Then you're very dealing from like customer. Well, you.

it's called, it's coming to be called the accelerated company. It's already sort of a new company officially, but I know I saw on LinkedIn, I kind of haven't updated everything yet, but I'm also working a lot of my personal work. So again, I have this book coming out called the essential pivot. It should be out by the end of the year, working on sort of a book deal and a lot of cool opportunities for that. And what I'm sort of working on right now is like part, part of the work that I do is obviously, you know, I'd call it partnering with large organizations, right? Fortune 500 is global 2000 on figuring out, okay, you have AI adoption, right? you. Not even just like, not that they don't have any AI or not they're using it for the first time, but they have it. And they want to leverage it in, in, you know, real impactful ways, right? Figure out ways to, you know, craft the perfect offer for their customers, you know, figure out, you know, what's next for customer service, what's next for the customer experience.

And so a lot of the work that I do is it's not necessarily, I used to do more work on like future of work. And now I focus more on like the consumers, customer a side, right? So helping companies, you know, extract important data for different markets, right? And different, you know, That you. international, like international versus national, where that company is based out of, right? So it's a lot of interesting work. That's, you know, probably 50, 60 % of my day, maybe a little bit more depending on the day of the week. And the rest of the time, I'm doing a lot of work with the personal brand, right? So again, with this book thing, I have someone helping me work on that. I, you know, do some, not really podcasting, but I do like small private events in New York City, where I invite, you know, some of my friends who are in the leadership space and some of my clients even, and we talk about, you know, what the future of AI looks like, future of, you know, data, right? you.

Just future of energy, like all, all these cool topics that sort of stretch the mind and challenge conventional, like we're not just talking about all the good stuff. We're talking about the good and the bad and the ugly and everything in between, right? So I do a lot of, you know, I guess the other half of my time or other part of my time is focused on community efforts. I do a lot of travel. I speak a lot. I've done a lot of judging at like hackathons and, and, you know, been spoke at universities and things like that. So just been trying to balance that lifestyle. It's quite busy. It's quite chaotic, but I love what I do. Biggest thing I'll say is that every you. single day I wake up super excited for what I do. I, again, I think I mentioned, I have wake a small team, but an incredible hardworking team that, you know, keep, helps keep my schedule running. They help, you know, provide the services to my clients and, for know, help me. I also do a lot of startup advising. So I also, you know, find time to give back to the community that sort of, I come from originally the startup community. So I do my best to also give some portion of my time every week, even if it's a little bit on the weekends to give back, right? To mentor new first -time founders, help to them raise venture capital and to just navigate the crazy landscape because it's always changing out here with, with artificial intelligence, machine learning,

you. Thank centers, right? any topic you want to talk about, right? Everything is changing. And I like to do my best to help people navigate that change the best I can and empower, hopefully great ideas and great innovation and motivate people the right way. So that's what I do. That's my daily, that's my week. Yeah. Yeah. So -hmm. So -hmm. Uh yeah. Yeah. Thats now. Up. Yep. Yeah. And I, and I, and I think I know which piece you're talking about. It's an older, it's an older piece actually. So I so, I should maybe remove it and, or rewrite the answer because I don't agree with that take anymore. I think when I got started, I will mention when I got started in, i, so I've been in AI for basically 10 out of my 14 years career, right? I started as more of a software engineer and then I became more product and CEO, COO. And that you. wasn't more always been born in the AI world.

Uh, the biggest difference is that when I got started with Then AI, when that all came to fruition, there were a lot of companies, big companies that were like, okay, Chatchat A and Claude store a lot of data, right? They take a lot of data there. Of know, it's kind of a back and forth relay and they didn't want their customer or company data on the infrastructure of, i, you know, an existing model or NVIDIA or somebody else, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. The industry has now shifted. Everyone is okay with, you know, being on Google cloud, on Azure, you. on NVIDIA, on NVIDIA's platforms, on AWS, right? Uh, you know, and even Apple has like, you know, AI, they're trying to get into everybody's phone, right? So however you're going to outrun it, it's, it caught up, right? And so obviously my, I will, I will mention, I'm not obviously, but I should mention my tune has completely changed. I'm much more of an agentic, you know, champion now, right? And I still do champion LLMs. I think specialized, I have seen a couple of startups and a couple of companies make SLMs work, but unfortunately the rate of a big company or even the rate of how agents, like what agents

you. can do now has outpaced the need. So you're basically building your own infrastructure and kind of just like spending money to catch up all the time, right? You're not actually spending money, you know, innovating it and thinking about the use cases. You're worried about like the ground floor when you should be on the hundredth floor already, right? And you should be up with the, you know, up in the big leagues. So, uh, I don't recommend it for companies anymore, right? I, I definitely focus more on, you know, uh, multi -agent structures on, uh, you know, more complex, uh, you know, reasoning, tree of thought reasoning, all that fun stuff, right? Graph, graph of thought reasoning. There's so many new terminologies you. I use on a day -to -day basis, but, uh, yeah, no, I, I don't recommend specialized SLMs, but I will justify that at the time that was like the cool, that was how I was getting big companies to buy in, right? That's how, that's the kind of work I was doing with big companies is helping them.

Unfortunately that, you know, we, you can't predict the future. Things have adjusted now, right? And so, we, I have a, I, I, uh, have a different tune that I sing now, but, uh, it's been interesting. It was, it was very interesting because at the time everyone was convinced, pre -agents, everyone was like, okay, it's LLMs are the cool thing and SLMs are going to be the big next thing. And maybe for like a second they were, but then agents took over. I And think agents are like the lasting technology in that case, in that world. Yep. And now it's about, again, now it's not about just making them functional, it's about making them actually intelligent, understand, a, you know, have a human right in the loop and all these other concepts, right? Where, uh, it's more than just doing tasks. It's actually driving things forward. It's actually bringing in revenue and commercial opportunity and all that stuff. that's And what I, that's where I come in, right? Not necessarily building them, but expanding on the concept and understanding how to move forward, you know, with, with big companies, big teams, large customer bases, things like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. -hmm. To Thing you. Yeah. That's, Yeah. that's been a fun, I, and, and that's kind of cool. Cause that's like the Z week is actually the name of the original newsletter from like a decade ago. And I've just kept the same audience, but changed the name a few times. Right. So like now I'll be named after the book and stuff, but it's kind of cool. Cause I just, I've had a lot of people who've literally been with me since that amount of time, product leaders, people that I know who like, you know, they were, you know, people who reach out to me, Hey, I'm a high you. schooler. I'm trying to get into this or whatever. And, or people in college, right. Who are now well into their career, run their own startups and doing all these cool things. And I'm, I keep in touch with, you know, some of these like super, call them super followers. Right. But also a lot of new people in the process as well, which has been super awesome as well. So yeah, the, the coolest thing I've learned, I think with building an audience is that at the end of the day, like it's interesting because I, I'm fundamentally, my career is like AI for the most part, right. AI and technology and startups, but what people seem to be really drawn to, and what I'm going to

you. be writing about here in the future with my book and even the new iterations of newsletter is more about like the, like some level of like the story, right. Of how you even get to like, you know, you're, how does it go from, okay, you're reading about AI, right. I do a lot of research. I have a team that helps me with research. How do you get from that point to actually building, to actually, you know, advising for these big companies like I do. Right. And I've been, I think it's interesting when I kind of tell a story, right. When I kind of build a 10 year, when I, when I add to the gaps, right. Okay. It's been 10 years. What happened you. in year one, two, three, four. When I kind of share that a little bit, I feel like I get a lot more people who reach out to me like, Of, you know, this really resonates with me. This feels a deeply connected to my journey. Right. Like I feel like when I write about, you know, how to, you know, add machine learning to give you focus. Right. I mean, that gets opens and stuff. Right. But that was like, not the, that wasn't the cool stuff. That wasn't really the engaging stuff. The engaging stuff was the more human stuff. It always has. But I think the functional stuff has a place, right. The, you know, I used to, it went in the very early editions of the newsletter. used I to share like, you know, it wasn't called gen

you. AI or anything. was It like no code, low code was the big trend at that time. So sharing all these, you know, how I added more hours to my week by using no code or whatever, like way before Zapier was an AI tool. Right. And now all these years later, it's evolved and people are, again, it's like people do resonate with how to do something, but even more, they understand, they want to understand the why, right. It's not just the how it's the why it's the why now, right. It's the purpose. So yeah, no, it's interesting. You brought that up because one huge reflection is that that we, that original newsletter, which I started you. on LinkedIn is, up, or, you know, I kind of started on the web back then is still, it still has, like, I think out of that 20 ,000, 2000 are still from that newsletter and a big chunk of them still read it every week. It's still like, or not, I've been writing monthly now, but I'm going to go back to weekly, but, um, people still read it from who have been following me all the way back then. They know who I am. And we still talk on Twitter all the time or on LinkedIn or on Instagram or wherever I have it. And yeah, tons of new people as well. And they all, the old subscribers and the new subscribers, they really do resonate with the how, right. Not the why is great. The why is great, but they love that. Even if I added at the end, right. Even if I played with the content, even if I had the, the why now the why the purpose, right. The meaning behind the work that I do and what it actually unlocks, that's where people are like, okay, this is like something I want to learn more about, or this is where I want to, you know, have a conversation. I love having the conversations. So, sorry, I hope that wasn't too long of an answer, but I wanted to, I wanted to be, up, it's a cool story.

It has, it has a story of its own, right. It has a life of its own. So And now it's going, now it's you. Quote unquote, but it's just iterating into you. Thank next version, you. new brand. And it's going to be a big part of, you know, me. And it's a lot of that stuff is going to be, but, in the, you know, in the item that I publish later this year. So that'll be, that'll be exciting as well. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Think you. Oh yeah. That's a great question, man. That's a, yeah. Cause it, cause it is funny. They both tech, like at the end of the day, they both technically got the same service from me, right. The same consulting, just different branding, right. Different naming. I didn't need to, I'm not, you know, I'm not from entertainment. I'm not from football. I'm not from sports. Right. Im, and with Microsoft, you know, I'm not, you know, like I, I came to them from a very different approach. Right. But the one thing they both very you.

looking for that I think is infinitely important. And a lot of people are talking about it now, and they've been talking about it for a while, but I still think a lot of people get it wrong is the difference between pace and speed, right? These companies, a lot of companies I work with want to be fast, right. They want to outrun competition. They want to outrun, uh, you know, the market trends, right. They want to be, they want to predict what's coming next. And that's totally within their prerogative and, and totally the way to think about it. And I don't, I don't think that's wrong. What is wrong is when you're trying to just push stuff to market, just to like push stuff to market, right. Just to have, of, we're doing this, we're doing that. you. We're doing this, we're doing that. Right. And the one thing that I really enjoy doing and what I've, what I've got, what is sort of my call it a specialty when I come to these companies is understanding the degrees of change, right.

The, you know, like the type of pivots. So there's, you know, there's little pivots you can do little incremental change, right. Which is fine. And you know, like it is necessary though, right. There, there has to be something that's foundational and you can't just, you can't just demolish, you know, a foundation and start over every week. You have to have something that's like stable. And then there's different kinds of changes you. where, okay, the market, the team budgets, uh, interest, general consumer habits, like things have changed enough where you have to follow that signal. It's not noise. It's actually a signal, right. And then you have to make a bigger, you have to make a bigger, more deliberate change, right. You have to find the money for it. You have to find the state, you know, have I to get stakeholder approval. has It to go up the chain. All these different things, you know, have to happen very deliberately. And I think a lot of companies, and especially I do have to say a lot of startups in mid markets think that all the big companies are just like doing you.

something dramatic every week. Because it does look like it, right. It does look like, you know, when McDonald's does some AI thing or when Coca -Cola does some AI thing, or do big companies, it seems dramatic. It's on the news. It's everywhere. And so a lot of people think, okay, these companies are doing this every day, every week. They're constantly changing who they're hiring. They're changing this or changing that. And I mean, it is fast, but it's not as fast as people think. There is a lot more pace. There's a lot more, you know, delegation than I think people see. And, a, I, you know, I, I help, you know, manage a lot of that and architect a lot of that thinking and thought process, you. uh, with the companies that I work with, particularly more in R and D, not in like, I don't work in like HR or finance or anything, but in R and D, you know, I do a lot of cool work or in it historically.

Uh, I do things where, again, it's like, even sometimes inside of those companies, there's a lot of appetite to change quickly, but they're realistic about it. Right. They're, they understand that that's a risky move and, and you have to think these things through, but you also can't be too slow. So the thing that I think is wrong in the market is that everyone feels like they're too late, right? Fundamentally big companies, small companies, mid markets, whatever, everyone thinks they're too late to something. And you. I mean, that is possible to be too late. Like if you're still using a fax machine, you're kind of too late. If you're like, you're kind of running really, really behind. Right. But at the same time with AI, like, you know, it's people are not just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I mean, maybe some startups are, but bigger companies, it is deliberate decision -making. It is delegation. It's not one person inside of a company doing this whole thing. And I think sometimes with startups or mid market companies, they tend to blur those lines. think, They okay, well, you know, I want to be as big as those companies. I want to be a, and M I want to build my, you know, corporation.

Right. So a lot of founders try to do it themselves or they try to rush the process, but it's more, it's more deliberate than that. It is, it is more than just what meets like the meets the eye. Right. And I think a lot of people have to, it's not that they have to slow down. It's just that they have to pace themselves. Right. They have to understand that it's not drastic change. Don't throw out the playbook every week. Right. Write your standards, write your playbook. But you know, some weeks are going to be incremental and some weeks are going to be leaps, right. Some months are going to be leaps. And you know, you have to consider your runway. You have to consider, you know, financials, your team, the state of the market. Right. Because sometimes you. people go too fast and they're missing what the market, you know, what's going on with the market. Right. Because they get so like down the keyhole.

So long story short, man, it's like, I think I'll put it all into the essential concept, which I love to follow. And if I man to my, throughout my whole career, which I've heard a lot of is signal versus noise. Right. There's a lot of noise, social media, Reddit, you know, the internet, you name it, right. Just media in general, right. Traditional media. And then there's signals, actual signs that, you know, the work you're doing needs to, you know, move to the next stage, right. Or needs to pivot or needs to you. change. And, you know, I, my whole career is helping is essentially more than just building technologies, helping people understand what to do with those signals. Right. Not just how to identify them, but also, okay, what's next. And I think a lot of people should stop and think, right. Rather than just kind of keep making noise or keep following the noise. So that's a cautionary tale. Cause I've seen a lot of failure. I've seen a lot of success. Uh, you know, and even in my own career, I've also been occasionally, uh, call it, you know, I've heard the calling of the noise, right. I'm like, okay, maybe I should follow the noise this week. And yeah,

you. it burns you out. It, it hurts your, you know, it's like, it's, there's good risk, there's bad risk. Right. And you have to be able to kind of tell between the two. So to keep the answer short, I'm not going to, I could go down rabbit hole for three hours. If we, if you let me, right. Um, you know, it's, it's about understanding signal versus noise and understanding pace versus speed fundamentally and understanding the difference, right. Fundamental difference, not just, not just saying that you do, but actually sitting and thinking about that, right. Which, uh, as attractive as going as fast as possible with as much as you can, like, it might seem really cool, but you can't do everything. And usually the everything companies don't really make it as far as they, like, there's a lot of people who sell, try to sell everything. And then they're actually selling to nobody, right. That's the irony because there's so much, you know, change and there's so many other companies already doing that. Right. So, um, you know, something to consider with specialization and niching, but I'll stop my answer there. That's, that's the official stop, hard stop.

I'll let you answer, ask the next thing, if or you want to expand on that. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. To -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. To -hmm. To -hmm. To, that's a good question. You know, I, I will be completely honest, a, you know, kind of vulnerable for a second here that I definitely have been trapped in what I like to call. It's like, it's a founder mindset. It's very much a founder mindset, which is this like doom loop of like, I a I'm the only person who can do it. Right. It's my personal brand. It's my company that I started. It's like, you know, if I, if I don't have business partners, I've had, I've had companies you. with business partners before where it's a little bit of a different dynamic, but when it's, when I'm doing something on my own, it really does feel like, okay, I can't give this knowledge to anyone. I have to do it myself. have I to stay up at the, you know, do the late nights, whatever.

And throughout my career at different points in my career, I've gotten down that trap a little bit, right? Like only I can fix this problem, but what I've discovered and what I'm doing differently with this rebrand and I, and I've been doing, you know, mostly I would say for the last half of my career. So call it like the last, you know, seven years of my career, right? After, after I got through the bumpy start and through the first startup and all the crazy stuff, the one thing you. I learned was the art of delegation, right? The art of actually inviting people into your world who knows something better than you, right? You cannot eat. Sometimes you don't know yourself well enough, right? You need, you know, I tell founders, go to therapy. It's good for you, right? You have to learn about yourself and you have to hear it from somebody else because it's so easy to get trapped in this loop, right? Where you're like, you're, you're, you're literally banging your head against the wall, trying to figure out a problem or trying to figure out why you don't like this color or that color or this name or that name. And sometimes just having the perspective, a second opinion, a third set of eyes,

you. you know, whatever it might be that has just changed be like, you know, we talk a lot about AI helping you do that. And I think that's fine, but human can't still can't, or sorry, AI still isn't fully human. It does not resonate. It doesn't understand the markets perfectly. It doesn't understand what you've been through or what your peers have been through or your target audience has been through in every way yet, right? And that's where having other people to work with. And that's where, you know, having the proper part, you know, not even like partners, but like, because I don't have any partners with my personal brand, but just the right people involved, right? The right support is, you. is infinitely helpful. And asking for help is, can be hard for founders too, but you know, I recommend it. Like it's, it really has helped. That's where I saw the difference between slow success and faster success. I really do, right? It's when you build the right team, you have the right support network, have you the right tribe, right advisors, all these things make a world of difference that I think a lot of business books and even a lot of LinkedIn and a lot of threads or Twitter, you see a lot of like, you can build a, you know, I think you can, it's funny, I saw an article that was like the first billion dollar company by AI. And it's so funny

you. because if you open the article, it's actually the guy and his brother who did it, right? It's still two people, right? Even if it's claiming that, oh, it's like, he is a solo founder, but his brother was like an early investor or some sort of like early, like he helped his brother, helped his unlock a whole pipeline. Right. And the company is an add a billion. I think it's a little bit misleading, but like, I think we're going to see that. It's like, even if you have the best idea in the world, you do still need an audience, right? You still need super users. You still need people who can tell you what's working, what's not right. So, you know, even if you're running it alone, having that support network is going to be, I don't you. think it's ever going away, right? There's no reason to do this thing. It takes a village. I still agree with that. Your, your network is your net worth. I do still agree with that.

And so, yeah, once I kind of got over myself about that, things changed that I remember that seven years ago been those things changed and, and it has not been the same since. And it's admittedly been a lot faster than the first seven years of my career, first five to six, seven, as exciting as those were, it was an evolution, right? And, and I'm sure, you know, it'll evolve in different ways, but that was the one thing that really, five it keeps working, right? It never has stopped working despite new technologies, new situations, new companies, new scenarios, new brands, having that village, having that tribe has been immensely helpful, you know, itll the current moment that we're talking now. Yeah. Without fail. So, yeah. Best place is my personal website right now that I just sort of relaunched is, is going through even more, you know, cool. I'm going to be adding content on there and stuff, but it's nvmalcom .com. So N -V -I -M -A -L .com. So first initial, last name.

And, uh, that would be probably the best place in LinkedIn. Nikhil Vimal on LinkedIn would be the other best place. I have like a sub stack and I have some other stuff as well, but I'm not really active on a lot of platforms. I'm trying to kind of consolidate a little bit. Uh, but yeah, I have, I have, uh, those would be the best place to find my newsletter, my work, my writing, uh, new announcements, new cool things. And, uh, yeah, I'm eager to share this podcast and share that, you know, I've been on this as well on, you. on those, uh, mediums as well. It's, it's been an absolute pleasure being on, on this episode today. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks so much. I hope to be back someday. That'd be fun. Yeah. Thank you.