Today’s guest is Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of Trust Radius. You’ll want to be sure to listen to this episode to hear how Vinay’s experience with racism growing up shaped him to be more empathetic, how Vinay addressed racial bias issues in the workplace, and ultimately, how being fired from a job was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Vinay was born & raised in London and was the child of immigrants. His mother was a teacher and his father was a car designer, and his parents loved to travel and camp at lots of different places. Back when Vinay was growing up in London, there was still a great deal of racism, and he remembers being verbally abused and physically bullied very often in school. He attended the University of Cambridge, and wanted to work for a big consulting firm after college. Due to the ongoing racism during the time, Vinay couldn’t even land a first-round interview even though he was near the top of his class. Since he did so well in school, he was able to get into Standford to pursue a master’s degree in engineering economic systems. During his time at Stanford, he was approached by the same consulting firms to interview with them, the same ones that he couldn’t get a first-round interview with after graduating in London. Vinay would not take this lightly – after he was hired on at Bain & Company, he worked hard to demonstrate how there was a racial bias in their recruiting process.
After Vinay got his MBA from the Harvard School of Business, he ended up at a computer software company in Austin, TX, as their director of e-commerce. Before finishing his first year, Vinay openly disagreed with the CEO, and was fired because of it. That would be the turning point for Vinay. He says that was the best thing that could’ve happened to him, because he was now able to finally satisfy the entrepreneurial bug that had always been itching inside of him. The first company he started was an online fundraising solution for nonprofits, making it easier for nonprofits to raise money.