Nitin Bajaj

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Shan Mohta. Shan, welcome on the show.

Shan Mohta

Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be here.

Nitin Bajaj

Likewise. Great to have you here. Start with who is Shan?

Shan Mohta

Oh, yeah. It’s a good question. So I was born in India. I grew up in the Bay Area, studied mechanical engineering in school, and down in LA, where I am right now, actually, worked in a bunch of cool companies, Microsoft, Apple, Skydio, and now I’m the co founder and CEO of a startup called Vendra. More traditionally, you know, I love spending time with my family, my girlfriend, our dogs. Maybe not so traditionally, I also love working on and racing cars, breaking things, and fixing a lot of the same stuff that I broke. So that’s pretty much my whole life in a nutshell right now between running a company and spending time with people and doing things that I like outside.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. We have a lot to talk about, especially breaking stuff and racing things and just being being somewhat out there.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Yeah. I’d say it’s a non traditional talking point, which is you know, it’s good to start conversations with, I think.

Nitin Bajaj

But the one thing that I’m generally curious about is, you know, when people have so many different options that are considered safer, more secure, maybe more comfortable, convenient, etcetera, Why do people take the entrepreneurial path and journey? And in your case, you know, you could have stayed on at Apple or any of the other bigger names, take those big fat paychecks, benefits, and everything that come with it.

Shan Mohta

That was nice.

Nitin Bajaj

Right? Why Vendra? Why do this?

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Yeah. I had an investor once ask me why chew glass, which is the first time I’d heard that term, but I think it was Shan. Right? It’s a good question. You know? It’s honestly something that I ask myself a lot sometimes as well. I think I think my parents have been big drivers in this. You know? They’re my mom runs her own business. My dad is always trying new things. You know? And, you the same exact question I got when I left Apple to go to a startup called Skydio. Right? My friends are like, why would you leave Apple? Right? And, obviously, from that to, like, starting your own thing, like, are you crazy? Like, there’s a lot of different things that I think there are to try in the world. You know? I I I’ve always been one to you know, always be looking for sort of the next thing and ways that I can grow professionally, personally, you know, experience something that I haven’t done before. And I think, you know, when I was at Apple, I really liked being part of Apple, right, being part of the machine, being, you know, contributing to top tier high quality products that that company is known to make. But I wanted something a little bit more where I had more ownership and smaller scale, which is why I went to Skydio. And Skydio really exposed me to, you know, how startups operate, how you can own a big chunk of it. You know, I interacted with the founders, the CEO, the CTO quite regularly, and it humanized basically starting a company. Right? When you’re at Apple, you see Tim Cook, and you’re like, this is this is is a celebrity. It’s a legend. Right? Not to say Skydio cofounders are not legends. They are in my book, obviously. But when you work there, you talk to them, and you’re like, you know, I I could do this is this is doable. You know? And I wanna have a good idea. I wanna commit to it. I wanna see it through. I wanna build not just a product, but, like, a company, a foundation, an architect, something like that. And that was really the motivation for starting my own thing. And like I said, my parents were big drivers. You know? They were basically like, comfort can always come and be there. Right? You can always go back to an Apple or whatever if you need to. But I think we were just in a good time in my life where, it made sense to take a big risk, and hopefully it pays off.

Nitin Bajaj

1. We’ll find out pretty soon, but Yeah. I have all of our best wishes. Now tell us what is Vendra?

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Very simply, Vendra is a US based manufacturing marketplace. Engineering teams who need physical parts made, you know, machined or molded or three d printed even, they’ll come to us, send us their parts, and then we have a system that matches them to suppliers across The United States who have open capacity, which means they have idle machines, they have extra manpower. They’re basically ready to get to work immediately on these, and we’ll connect that, facilitate the connection, and then we automate a lot of the manual processes for the buyers. So you as a buyer send us a part, you immediately get a few quotes back for a part you need made faster than it would be to do it manually and better than other platforms that do a lot of, like, obfuscation and hiding of suppliers from you. And, really, our goal is to democratize manufacturing, starting with The US, obviously. You know, you should be able to get parts made whenever you need them with zero barrier to entry. Right? And I think we’re already laying the groundwork to that. If you go to our website now, you fill out one form, submit your parts, and we’ll start the entire process and get you pricing and quotes and all that with literally, you know, zero sign up or barrier to entry. So that’s what we really see as as as the vision for the company moving forward, and that’s what we’ve been building towards.

Nitin Bajaj

Sweet. I know you guys are just kinda getting started on this, journey. So instead of asking you what type of impact has already been created, I would love to hear what’s the vision. Where do you see, you know, the next six or twelve months as far as the road map, as as far as the reach, the amount of work, and value that you think Vendra will be able to bring to its, customers and its vendors?

Shan Mohta

Yeah. That’s a that’s a great question. The amount of work is gonna be very high, so get rid of that one first. But I think there’s a ton of value to be generated for both sides here. Right? I’ll talk on the supplier side first. You know, we we speak with so many vendors and suppliers, and we do cold calls and factory visits and all that. And like I said, you know, these guys have open capacity. They want to work. They want to get out there, but most vendors don’t have sales teams and sales operations. Right? They’re spreading their expertise through word-of-mouth. Like, you can have some guy who’s an expert at machining, you know, impellers for a turbine. Right? But some guy who needs that made across the country will never get to know him or find him because the word-of-mouth is not gonna travel that far. That’s just sort of an edge case and example, but that’s a sort of, you know, facilitation that we’re able to provide. So I think there’s a ton of value to be added to both sides. You’re right that we just got started. I mean, we sort of pivoted to this idea not more than a month and a half ago, is when we really started architecting it, building it. But in that short time frame, you know, we’ve already gotten customers like Apple and Skydio using our system and ordering parts. We have a bunch of defense customers in the pipeline. We’re waiting for some US government compliance stuff, paperwork to go through before we can handle their parts, but we see demand for this. You know? People want stuff made. You know? Manufacturing is coming back to The US in a big way. Obviously, tariffs are a more recent local thing, but there’s been a push for many years. And I think that there’s really a ton of value that can be added to facilitating this exchange. And our early demand has just shown that. So we’re we’re pretty excited to get on these, you know, larger blue chip accounts, but also support a ton of start ups, like YC companies and all that who need stuff made. Yeah. It’s it’s very exciting for the next twelve months, basically.

Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. It is an exciting space to be in. So, again, congrats for the the road map and what’s, coming here in, I guess we’ll find out in the next few weeks even.

Shan Mohta

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. Keep a lookout for some announcements. We’ll keep, we’re we’re we’re wrapping up sort of the the social media game and, and making sure our our word is out there.

Nitin Bajaj

Amazing. Now as you go through all of this, you mentioned a few things that could be potential challenges. I’d love for you to call out the one big challenge you’re facing.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, like I said, chewing glass. Right? There’s a lot of uphill battles. I’d say the biggest one actually right now is distribution. You know, we need to basically get Vendra in front of as many engineers, hardware engineers, mechanical, electrical as possible. You know, the cool thing that we’ve seen is anyone who seems to touch our platform loves using it. Right? We give them direct access to suppliers. We give them full transparency. They know the exact pricing breakdown, and they have full control if they want a special finish or this or that. We enable all of that in ways that other platforms Shan, but now it’s just a matter of getting it into people’s hands, and then getting them to switch away from a legacy provider that they have to giving us a try, essentially. And, you know, there’s ways we do Shan. Obviously, social media is one, manual outreach, cold outbound is one. Making the barrier to entry minimal, like I said before, is another one. Right? There’s minimal switching costs. Right? It’s not like they’re married to other systems. They just need an easy way into ours. So I see all that kinda culminates into the challenge of distribution and switching customers from someone else to us. And it’s a learning journey for us. Right? I was never in sales or marketing or outreach, but, you know, with the help of a lot of good books, actually, I’ll I’ll recommend a book later. But, yeah, with the help of some reading material and a lot of AI tools to help generate kind of content and keep us on our toes, I think it’ll be a fun learning experience for us, to not only be good on the technical development engineering side, but also, you know, getting it into people’s hands because, ultimately, that is, you know, the defining metric of a company. It’s distribution so much even product.

Nitin Bajaj

Amazing. Now on the flip side of challenges come opportunities, what’s the one that, excite you the most?

Shan Mohta

Yeah. That’s a good question also. You know, there are certain industries where getting stuff made locally in The US is kind of nice to have. Right? Consumer tech, you know, if I can, you know, get customers like Apple who we’re working with and other ones, It’s cool if we can have those accounts. On the other hand, there’s companies that or industries rather that absolutely need stuff made in The US. You know, a lot of those are regulated, like defense, military stuff, and also, like, space tech and energy and all that. Those, obviously, I’m very excited about because we have the best solution for domestic production of any company out there. Right? It’s just a matter of us getting it into their hands. And of that large group of things or companies that need stuff made in The US, I would say, like, space tech especially really excites me. I don’t know if I mentioned very briefly, but we went through the y combinator batch last year, summer twenty four. We had a lot of companies in our batch, you know, doing space tech, like, really difficult advanced space stuff. One was doing data centers in space. Mhmm. One was doing in space, repair and refueling hubs, like a gas Shan, but for a rocket up there, which to me is just the most mind blowing space age stuff. Right? And and getting those guys to, you know, have us support them for getting parts made, for for supply chain stuff, for facilitation of, you know, supplier introductions and and all that sort of stuff would be so cool. I mean, I I would love to get into that space and have Vendra be the name brand for, for getting parts made for your spacecrafts. I think I think that’s an opportunity that, like, we’ve been pushing really, really hard on and and really excited to onboard some customers there.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s so cool. Right?

Shan Mohta

Just Isn’t it? Like, it’s just that I don’t know, man. The the way that things people come up with for, like, space related technology is always just a step above everything else I feel like in terms of creativity and just novel novel solutions. Because literally on down right? You can pretty much do whatever you want up there. Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

And what I love the most about this is you get to write with them. They have to go figure out all the crazy stuff, and then they come to you and say, hey. Now make this happen. Make this a reality.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. And it’s it’s super, you know, crazy talking to them. Right? Because we have our development challenges and stuff at Vendra. Right? We have to push code or do this or get compliance. And I talked to some of these friends who are building these space companies like, oh, what’s your challenges? And they’re like, oh, we have to book space on the next Falcon nine rocket, and then figure out the deployment strategy once we’re up in low Earth orbit. And I’m like, that’s cool, man. That’s it’s a different global challenge, but that’s very cool.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s so cool. And I love the fact that, you know, you’re hand in glove collaborating with them, learning with them, also sharing a little bit of the pains that are, you know, they have to go through.

Shan Mohta

%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

It’s the whole ecosystem that has to come together as Nitin be for making these impossible things happen. And, you know, it’s like we’re living in

Shan Mohta

the And that’s and that’s what I like about building in hardware. I mean, I’m a hardware nerd, right, mechanical engineer, and I worked at at all these companies literally designing and developing stuff. And one of my reservations for starting a company that was pure software was losing that touch, you know, losing connection to that side of it. But with this pivot, with this sort of, you know, emphasis into manufacturing and facilitating stuff, I feel like I’m right back in it, which is really cool because now I get to see all the cool stuff these companies are designing and help them actually get it produced without doing the hard technical design stuff. Let them handle that, and and we’ll help, you know, get it made. So I really do think it’s it’s a cool position to be in right

Nitin Bajaj

now. I love that, and I can see the passion and joy that comes with it.

Shan Mohta

That’s great. Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

Now as we look forward, I love to pause and reflect and ask people to share two moments from their life. One, where things did not work out as you’d expected, and there was failure, lessons. And another one where things exceeded your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

Shan Mohta

Hopefully, the second one, there’s a lot more to come, as we build, but I’ll I’ll answer the first one. I think that’s it’s it’s a timely question. I think it’s very relevant for us as well right now. You know, we we got into YC last year to build this, software product, actually. We were building, a project management system for hardware companies, trying to solve a specific pain point that I felt in my own career. And I won’t get into the details of it very much here, but, ultimately, that product didn’t pan out. We tried building it. We were selling it. We actually scaled it to 6 figures in revenue. It was not like a complete, you know, failure by, like, a revenue metric. But, ultimately, I think the the challenge was that and it’s advice that we got from our YC partners and from other friends who built in this space is you have to be as close to the money as possible, and you have to be as close to the product and justify and show actual ROI. The problem with what we were building is we were building really a productivity tool for hardware, which at the very core is a nice to have. Right? It wasn’t really solving a hair on fire problem, and ROI was always abstracted. Right? When they would someone company would come to us and say, yeah. This vendor software is cool. What’s my real benefit of using it? I couldn’t look them in the eye and say, you’ll save x thousand dollars a year. I could say, oh, your engineers will save some time. It’ll be good. Trust us. Like, you know, you’ll be more operationally efficient, which is not a great sell, ultimately. Right? Because we are far from the money. We are far from the product. And we were going through pivot hell a little bit. What, you know, we really kept thinking about was the main learning was that we were far from money. We were far from ROI. How do we get close to that? Where in hardware is there willingness to pay? Is there actual demand for product? You know, is there low barrier to entry where you don’t need all these teams aligned to use your software? And that’s what really got us into this thinking where, you know, these companies need parts manufactured all the time. Mhmm. There’s thousands of manufacturers who I know are sitting idle because they’re calling me, telling me, hey. Please send me parts.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shan Mohta

You know? And that’s where this marketplace approach, this automation, this algorithm to match, you know, a buyer to a supplier with AI, with all these automation tools. That’s where the groundwork for that started coming in. And I think it was such a good learning for us to try to sell a product for, you know, six months, struggle to get big name brand customers like Apple and Skydio, and then pivot into this new approach. And within weeks, you know, we’re servicing those companies and giving them actual physical hardware. So I think that’s a you know, literally, the companies we struggle to sell to are now coming to us saying, please help us make this stuff. That one eighty, I think, has been really cool, and I I really think, you know, me and Anish, Anish, my cofounder and my CTO, we we thought long and hard about some of these lessons, and I think it’s been really, really good for us, in the recent, you know, past few weeks, building and scaling this new thing.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing to go through. You know, first off, kudos to both of you for taking that feedback head on and making that pivot because in many ways, in many stories, the very reason an entrepreneur goes on to take on those crazy challenges, comes with a lot of, for lack of a better term, ego. And it’s not easy to accept this feedback and stare this reality and say, yeah. We gotta move on to where the money is to where, you know, there is validation. So kudos to you both for being able to make that transition and for seeing the results that you’re seeing now.

Shan Mohta

And, you know, that’s that’s a really good point, actually. We we were quite stubborn at the beginning. Right? Because it it it comes with the landscape of we have this name brand now, this accelerator. We have funding. We can we should be able to sell. You know, we approached it a little bit naively in a good way in that we’re gonna sell it. This is gonna be fine. It’s gonna be great. And it took a few brutal meetings for us to be like we we had a customer in one of our early meetings. Now that I think back, it just refreshed my memory. He we literally got on a call with him, and he was like, you couldn’t pay me to use this. And then we had another you know, we we there’s this, like, alumni networking event where we met these, like, legends in hardware, who’d done successful companies in the past, and we pitched them on our product. And they’re basically like, you guys gotta stop. You guys need don’t don’t go down this path. This is a bad idea, which felt like a slap in the face. I mean, that was one of the worst evenings of mine andAnisha’s life, I think, where we were so directionless and literally just like, what are what what are we doing? Like, this is not a good idea. But, you know, obviously, time heals that wound and, like, you build and you iterate and you you know, we went through a bunch of mini pivots and product ideas as well. Like, tried a lot of stuff. You know? And maybe the current product will evolve too. I mean, that’s what, you know, market demand and feedback will tell us. But, yeah, we we definitely had some ego, which got stripped away with time and and made us more malleable and a little bit more, open to, you know, meeting customer demand, I guess, or or feedback. But yeah. This is

Nitin Bajaj

this is the classic entrepreneurial journey. Right? We Yeah. Fall, but we as long as we keep getting back up, as long as we’re finding keep finding that direction and, keep going, this is this is amazing. So, again, kudos to you.

Shan Mohta

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Nitin Bajaj

Now take a step back, and let’s talk about when you’re not working, when you’re not thinking about problems and customers and hardware. What do you do for fun? What do you do to de stress?

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Good question. I recently moved in with my girlfriend and my partner of many, many years.

Nitin Bajaj

Congratulations.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. We’re down in Orange County. I split my time between OC and SF. SF is still where the company is, so I’m up there a lot of the time, working, with my cofounder. But, you know, besides spending time with her, you know, like I said, I do a lot of stuff with cars, do a lot of stuff with my hands. I’m always trying to build stuff, and tinker with stuff. We were just at, Laguna Seca Raceway, a couple weeks ago. We were out there lapping the track, driving, for a track day and stuff, and I completely burned through my brakes so I don’t have to replace the whole system and figured that, you know, it’s a whole mess. But that stuff, which traditionally would add a lot of stress to someone’s life, I see as a really nice escape, because it enables me to, you know, work on stuff with my Shan. And and that’s that’s really where I find a lot of joy and pleasure, I guess.

Nitin Bajaj

Good thing I now know if I break stuff and when I break stuff, who to reach out to.

Shan Mohta

Yes, please. Yeah. I get a lot of texts all the time saying, hey. My car is doing this. What does that mean? Or, like, x y z is broken. What should I do? But, yeah, it’s please do. I’ll help.

Nitin Bajaj

Wonderful. I’ll take you up on it pretty soon. Of course.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please.

Nitin Bajaj

Oh, any book or podcast? I know you have a book ready for us to share. So, yeah, go ahead.

Shan Mohta

Yeah. Well, so, you know, one of the books that’s been really good for sales stuff for us is this one by Pete Mhmm. I think, founding sales. I thought of it when we were talking about some of the sales stuff, but it really breaks down, you know, and and sort of, I don’t wanna say humanizes, but, like, makes approachable the the idea of sales. And other than that, you know, I I’ve been reading a lot more fiction lately. I I didn’t read books for a long time, you know, after college, you know, just because a little bit, you know, rebellious against books, right, once you’re working. But reading fiction is, like, it’s a nice story. I don’t know how to say it, but it’s, you’re almost transported to a different world, and you’re you’re part of it. So I’ve been reading a lot of that, and space fiction and sci fi has always been really interesting to me. I would say of all the stuff I’ve read, probably Project Hail Mary by, Andy Weir, I think is his name, the guy who wrote The Martian also. Probably one of my favorite books of all time. It’s like a, yeah, space, some guy lost in space, and he basically befriends an alien, which sounds ridiculous, but they they get back to safety and blah blah blah blah blah. But highly recommend it, because it has a lot of cool space themes and novels as well.

Nitin Bajaj

It also makes sense for you given that you work with a lot of the guys that are in space.

Shan Mohta

Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me learn their lingo a little bit more. Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

Good talking points, good conversational pieces that I’m sure you pick up from the book.

Shan Mohta

That’s right. Exactly. Nice.

Nitin Bajaj

Now on to my favorite part of the Shan, we call this the one line life lessons. K. So I’d love for you to share your one life life lessons with us.

Shan Mohta

One line. Yeah. Yeah. I I remember looking into this. You know, I I feel like I’ve never been defined by just, like, oh, like, this is a quote that I live by or something like Shan. But I did do some thinking and digging, and there are a few. I don’t know if you ever watched the movie Cars, the Pixar movie.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shan Mohta

The opening scene of that, you know, it’s Lightning McQueen in his trailer, and he’s, like, visualizing him winning the race. You know? And he’s like, I am speed. I am this. Like, that it’s I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s it’s such a fun scene. My old roommate and I used to talk about it all the time because we’re both huge fans of cars and that that movie. But just that, like, you know, being fast at things. Right? Whether it’s driving or, like, figuring out start up stuff or whatever. And when I say driving, I mean, on a racetrack, not on public roads, obviously. but that that I feel like really sort of symbolizes a lot of the way, like, we like to do things, that me and Anish like to do things, that me and my partner like to do things. And another one I would say is, from another movie, actually, that I think is quite good is from Top Gun Maverick, the latest one. We’re in that scene. He’s in the in the in the in the jump seat, and he’s like, don’t think, just do. I think Shan come to really be quite important to my life recently where I’ve been a serial overthinker for most of my life. You know? Just you think about decisions, think about this, you have analysis, paralysis, whatever they call it. And the approach I’ve tried to take more recently is to just build something and launch it or, you know, that’s been obviously a startup example, but just do things. Just do things and and then evaluate the outcomes and iterate as you go as opposed to being in this paralysis mindset where you’re thinking, you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what step to take. So, yeah, don’t think, just do. I think really has been quite core to the way we’ve been, at least for the past year, trying to live. And I I think we’re gonna keep doing it because it it keeps things fun. You know? It keeps things interesting when you’re constantly trying something and then reevaluating, getting feedback, trying new things. Yeah. Hopefully, those were I only have two for you right now, but, those are the two important ones to me, I think.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, thank you. And I believe in both, especially just just keep doing it. It’s all about the action. Right? And

Shan Mohta

Right.

Nitin Bajaj

Action will inform where you go from there and what you’re doing right and do more of, and what is not working and we need to do less of. And that keeps you Yeah.

Shan Mohta

And I don’t wanna dissuade any overthinkers out there. You know, like, definitely think. Thinking is very good, but, you know, there’s a there’s a point at which you have to just try something, and then think of the outcome and think of the feedback and then try something new as opposed to only thinking. I maybe this is really confusing now, but I hope the point that I’m trying to make is clear here, in in terms of that specific mentality.

Nitin Bajaj

It makes sense to me. I’m sure if it makes sense to me, it makes sense to the other 99.9.

Shan Mohta

Perfect. Perfect. Okay. We’re good.

Nitin Bajaj

Shan, thank you for being on the show, sharing your journey and story. Congratulations on all the successes so far. And as you said, there’s many more to come and would love to bring you back on and talk about more of these accomplishments, here in the near future. But, looking forward to breaking things and having you help us repair them Bajaj. And, looking forward to, a lot of this journey and, sharing this with our audience.

Shan Mohta

Amazing. Yeah. You know, I’m always a phone call away whenever you need car troubles or car help. So but, yes, thank you so much for having me again. You know, your stuff has been really, really cool. I’ve been following your podcast and stories and and shows that you put out. And, again, very honored to be here. So thank you so much for taking the time to to have me on.

Nitin Bajaj

Thank you.