Why Most Startups Die - Even With Brilliant Founders

TiE Talks

Ever met a guy who politely told Google and Twitter, Thanks, but I’ll pass?

I’m Prantik, and in this episode I sit down with Vijay Krishnan—my fellow IIT Bombay alum who swapped a Stanford PhD track for back‑to‑back startups.

He shares how a non‑conformist streak led him from a personalised search engine exit to co‑founding Turing, the remote‑first unicorn matching global developers with Silicon Valley teams.

We talk candidly about turning down big‑name buyouts, why the diameter of the planet is his hiring radius, and the real gaps AI still can’t bridge.

If you’ve ever wondered how to pick the right market, build an all‑star distributed team, or say no to safe bets, Vijay’s story will hit home!

IN THIS EPISODE
(00:00) Ever wondered if entrepreneur DNA is just a myth?
(02:15) One habit Vijay swears built his billion‑dollar mindset.
(05:00) Flashback: tinkering with AI before it was cool (or useful).
(09:15) IIT vs Stanford—my guest’s brutally honest scorecard.
(13:45) How do you look Google in the eye and say nah?
(17:30) The day we realised we were up against Netflix—and laughed.
(22:45) I camped in a recruiter’s office; here’s what I saw.
(27:15) Your hiring radius is the planet —bold claim, or proven hack?
(33:00) AI still can’t copy‑paste… yes, really.
(38:30) Remote work wars: Vijay’s take on the RTO backlash.
(42:45) Rapid‑fire secrets: favourite book, hero—and a community he trusts.

Vijay Krishnan
Founder & CTO, at Turing.com. Turing.com enables foundation model companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and many others to improve their capabilities in areas such as reasoning, coding, function calling, multimodality, factuality, safety, frontier STEM knowledge and more through expert human data for Evals, SFT, RLHF, and DPO. Turing also helps large enterprises like Pepsi, Disney, and J&J strategize and execute various AI solutions to create outsized business value. Turing achieves both these through its talent pool of over 3 million software developers, data scientists, and other knowledge workers spanning 100+ countries, all automatically vetted through 100+ tests of skills and expertise. Founded in 2018, Turing became a unicorn in 2021.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijay0/

Prantik Mazumdar
Prantik is an entrepreneur & venture investor and acts as a Digital Transformation Catalyst in organizations to drive sustainable change and impact.

After pursuing a major in Computer Engineering & a minor in Technopreneurship from the National University of Singapore (NUS), he kickstarted his career with the Singapore government (Enterprise Singapore) to drive international trade promotion for the island state.

He started his entrepreneurial journey with Happy Marketer in 2011 where he spent a decade building & scaling up one of the best and most awarded independent digital marketing services firm in the region that served brands like Standard Chartered Bank, Income, Great Eastern Life, Royal Brunei Airlines, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Starbucks, Ping An, Grab, Shopee, GoJek, Kimberly Clark, PropertyGuru, PegiPegi, Starhub, Singtel, Nanyang Business School, Kaplan, INSEAD amongst many of its prestigious clients.

ABOUT TiE Talks
TiE Talks brings to you leadership and venture-building lessons from founders, investors and experts in the TiE Singapore network, a vibrant ecosystem of Asian entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, and industry professionals.

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