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Decision Making in Startups with Sunil Mukundan

Decision Making in Startups with Sunil Mukundan

Software People Stories

April 3, 202142m 21s

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Show Notes

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/