A special tribute to Samir Bodas, co-Founder and CEO of Icertis and Board Member of TiE Seattle

In this heartfelt episode, Monish Darda remembers Samir Bodas not just as the CEO and co-founder of Icertis (https://www.icertis.com/), but as a close friend, co-founder, and extraordinary human being. He shares the origin story of Icertis, the trust that defined their partnership, and the values that shaped the company’s culture. Icertis is the market leader in Contract Lifecycle Management.

This is a moving conversation about entrepreneurship, friendship, resilience, and the legacy Samir leaves behind.

In this episode:
- Samir Bodas’s legacy as a founder, leader, and mentor
- The origin story of Icertis and an unexpected path to product-market fit
- What makes a great co-founder relationship
- The meaning behind Icertis’ “FORTE” culture
- Navigating leadership through personal and health challenges
- Lessons on resilience, purpose, and building a lasting impact

Monish Darda is a cloud-technology pioneer and serial entrepreneur with a 30-year track record in the enterprise software space. As CTO and Co-founder of Icertis, Monish has overseen development of the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform, the leading contract management solution in the cloud. Monish has also led Icertis’ successful deployment of cutting-edge AI and blockchain technologies, which have earned Icertis numerous industry accolades including recognition on Forbes’ prestigious AI 50 List for two years in a row. Monish has a BE in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s degree from Florida Atlantic University.

Brought to you by TiE Seattle
Hosts: Shirish Nadkarni and Gowri Shankar
Producers: Minee Verma and Eesha Jain
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@fromstartuptoexitpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In this heartfelt episode, we pay tribute to Samir Bordis, the late CEO and co-founder of iSertis, Seattle Orcas, and Thai Seattle board member. Join us as we delve into the memories and legacy of Samir through the eyes of Monish Dardha, co-founder and CTO at iSertis. Monish shares intimate stories of their journey together, highlighting Samir's visionary leadership, infectious laughter, and unwavering dedication to building a consequential company. Discover how serendipity played a role in their entrepreneurial path, the challenges they faced, and the values that shaped the company's culture. Sharish and Gary also shared their stories of Samir as a friend and co-born member of Thai Seattle. Welcome to the Startup to Exit podcast, where we bring you world-class entrepreneurs and VCs to share their hard-earned success stories and secrets. This podcast has been brought to you by Thai Seattle. We encourage you to become a Thai member so you can gain access to these programs. To become a member, visit www.seattle.tai.org.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Hello everyone. Today we'll be paying a special tribute to Samir Bodas, the CEO and co-founder of iSertis, a leader in contract lifecycle management, who passed away recently following a courageous battle with cancer. Samir was also a longtime board member at Thai Seattle. We will be interviewing Monish Dada today, who is a co-founder and CTO at iSertis. He started with Samir back line on iSertis. And he'll be sharing his memories of Samir as both a visionary entrepreneur and leader. But before we get started, let me share my personal memories of Samir as a dear friend, colleague, and a successful entrepreneur. I've known Samir since the early 90s when he joined Microsoft. I was actually on the interview loop and thought he would be a great hire for Microsoft. It was clear that he was a smart, energetic young man who had a great future ahead of him. While we didn't work together at Microsoft, we kept in touch socially. He was a great friend, had an amazing laugh, and was very friendly. Later, after many years, we both joined the Board of Seattle, uh Thai Seattle. Samir was a very active member of Thai Seattle board. Even though he was very busy running iCertis at that time, it was very clear that he was very passionate about helping other entrepreneurs. He gave his time generously and was one of the most active members of the board. His advice and guidance were invaluable in helping Thai Seattle become a major force in the Seattle entrepreneurial ecosystem. So it was a real shock to hear that he had passed away after a long battle with cancer. The Seattle area has lost a great entrepreneur who has always led with integrity, and he'll be sorely missed. With that, let me now welcome Monish Dada so we can share, he can share his memories of Samir. Welcome, Monish.

SPEAKER_05 3:43

Thank you so much, and Gauri. Thanks for the opportunity as well to share my memories.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

So uh, you know, a lot's been written about Samir, um, and we'll discuss kind of his attributes as a visionary founder and leader, etc. But tell us what he meant to you on a personal level.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

Uh, what can I say? Every time I remember him, there's a big smile on my face. He made me laugh. I remember when he turned 50 and I turned 50. We are just one month apart. Um, um, birth dates are just one month apart. And he called me and he said, you know, Molisha, and you know, this is my 50th birthday. I made a resolution. I'm going to laugh more in the rest of my life than I laughed in my first 50 years of my life. I think that's, you know, what I remember every time I remember him now. I think he's he's been a brother, he's been a friend, he's been a co-founder, especially when you start a company and you get the company to the level of high service that we did together. Uh, you get much closer than even sometimes your wife, your kids. You know, he was on speed dial before my wife, and I'm sure his his phone was exactly set up like that. And uh it I can't put it in words, but I think you know, you you get to know a lot about people when you work with them so closely, day and night, right? And you always said, you know, I was a very late riser, but I went to sleep very late. So even today my schedule is like two in the morning. I go to bed at two in the morning, wake up at 8.30. And we always used to say between the two of us, we have like only two hours where we are not talking to each other. So that's how close he was, and that's uh that's what he meant to me.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

That's right. That's right. So uh, how did you first come to uh meet Samir? Uh looking at your background, and it didn't seem like you had worked together in the past. Uh had you worked with him in uh in the past?

SPEAKER_05 5:45

No, so it was very interesting. He was the CEO of Aztec Soft, and what happened was my co-founder had actually gone to school with him. And this was my first company with this started in 1997. And we had a we had our own building in Henjawari, which is IT park in Pune. And Aztec Aztec Soft was building the facility just in front of our office in Henjawari. And Samir was very involved, so he you know, he used to come at least once a quarter to visit and see how the building was progressing. And of course, it was a construction site, so he would come and sit in our office because he knew my co-founder. That's how I first met him. Um, very casually, you know, we got to know each other, found it very interesting. And then, as it happened, my company got acquired by a company called PMC. His company got acquired by a company called Mind Tree, and I became his customer. So AztecSoft slash MindTree kind of did some work for us at BMC. That's how I came to know him more because of that acquisition, and they were so close to each other, Mind Tree's acquisition, and BMCs. In a year, we kind of said, Hey, what's next for us? Um, we've gone through this acquisition, we don't want to work for a big company. Let's figure out something. So that's how this idea of iService came out. I see.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

So um what uh obviously you got to know each other, etc., but you didn't really work together. So what made you decide to uh partner with Samir at that point? You know, what were the key attributes uh that you saw in SAMI that made you want to do a startup? Because it can be a long journey, pretty long journey uh together.

SPEAKER_05 7:31

That's right. And you know, actually finding a founder that you like and frequencies kind of match is very hard. I said this was, by the way, my seventh startup and Same's third. So we had both got through that journey of finding co-founders, working with them, and figuring out, you know, what those relationships were. And so we were both careful, as you would think we would be, right? Uh, you know, coming into something like this. And we knew each other, but we didn't know each other closely enough. It never worked. Uh but I I still remember there's a small coffee shop on Ferguson Road in Pune, and we went to have a coffee to figure out what we would like to do. And he said, Monish, you know, what do you dream? And I said, you know, I've been brought up, you know, in in yeah, you know, even though I studied in India all the I in the US, uh, did my master's in Florida. I'd spent a lot of time in India and I was based in India. He was based in Seattle. Uh. And I said, you know, I've always been brought up my whole professional life thinking, or people telling me that no consequential company, product company is coming out of India. And this was, you know, in the 2000s, there were like very few companies who were global companies that came out of India. And I said, you know, we've, you know, I've I've I've worked through six startups. I would love to build a consequential company that can come from India. And he said, Exactly, I think, you know, if we can figure this out, I don't have a product idea, I don't know if you do, but I would love to build a consequential company, no matter what we do. Right. So I remember when we started ICERTS, we didn't have a product. We did not have an idea. We said we'll figure this out as we go, but we were very clear that we wanted a wanted to build a consequential product company. And that struck, that conversation struck with both of us. As we as we worked through the pains of a startup, we never forgot that. And that's why you see the ISO culture, the values that we call forte became such a big part of all of our lives, and all of all ISER ships as well. That resonated with both of us like really well in that conversation.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

That's great. And we'll explore forte in more detail uh in the conversation. So, how did the idea of uh ISERS come about? Uh as you said, you didn't really have a product idea at that point. I understand that there was some serendipitous meeting with the legal counselor, Microsoft, that kicked things off. Can you talk more about that?

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Yeah, absolutely. And like any other idea that comes in and becomes a seed and grows into a tree, serendipity plays a big role, right? So we were doing uh a lot of things. We're trying to figure out what to do and you know where to focus. And our theory was the cloud is coming, there's a wave. Sameer always used to say to be successful, you have to either ride a wave or create a wave. We knew we were not in a position to create a wave, but we we could see this whole cloud wave coming. And uh, we were thinking we should ride this wave, and you know, the first applications that would move to the cloud would be not the core applications like ERP or supply chain or finance, but they would be the surround applications that would actually first move to the cloud where the CIO would be ready to move without too much hesitation. So we were busy building some of these surround apps, surround ERP apps, as we call them, including stuff like transportation management and warranty management and so on. And Sarnir was at a dinner in Seattle and he met a long-term friend of his who was an associate general counsel in Microsoft. He said, Sameer, what are you doing? And uh Sameer said, you know, ICERT is, you know, we've been like two, two, three years now, we're doing this ERP surround. We are very bullish about Azure. It was called Red Dot then, as you know. Early days of Azure, it had not even been released, but we were working with Microsoft on that. He said, but we are not the Microsoft stack, but you know, we are doing these products. And he said, uh, so this guy who he met said, you know, I don't know what your what ERP surrounding is what you're doing, but we have a real problem at Microsoft. I just grabbed a $50 million project uh to get all of our templates in order in our legal department. Would you be interested in doing something with Microsoft? And um uh I love the way you talk about Azure and the Microsoft stack, and this is what we are looking for as well within Microsoft. And so Samir was like, you know, just not sure. He said, okay, let me think about it. He called me. He said, Monish, you know, I met a friend of mine, he was saying, you know, can you do CLM? Um and uh I said, Samir, I know all about CLM. And he said, How you know I I never heard the word, I've worked with contracts before, but I never heard of CLM. And I said, No, nothing to do with contracts, it's cloud lifecycle management, because that's what we you know, I've been working on in BSC. And he said, No, no, no, I'm talking about contracts and CLM is contract lifecycle management. And I said, So I looked it up and I said, you know, Sameer, if it's Microsoft, let's do it. That's how we actually got it accidentally and cost Serendipity. Completely got into CL.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

That's great. So that was the basis for really the core foundation for iService. But originally, as you said, you had built a suite of enterprise applications because you were not convinced that contract management on its own was a big market. What made you decide to focus just on contract management?

SPEAKER_05 13:12

No, actually, we didn't even think about it as a market. What happened was because we got Microsoft as a first customer and we were doing other things as well at the time. I was in Seattle, uh, I was in Bellevue and Samir and a friend of his had gone to play, we had gone to play golf at the Bellevue Public Municipal Golf Club. And his friend asked us casually, hey, what are you guys doing? And we said, you know, we have micro, you know, we're doing all of this stuff, and then we have this contract management stuff that we're doing with Microsoft. We just signed with a large pharma company, and then we signed with a couple of companies in India, which were about 500 million in revenue. So large companies. Uh so I said, you know, we said like four or five customers in CLM, and then we're doing all of this other stuff. And I said, you guys, you don't understand what you're doing. You have like at your size, we were about maybe 70 people then. At your size, you don't get customers like that, like Microsoft and like one of the largest pharma companies in the world, and one of the largest IT services companies in the world. You should forget everything else and focus on this. And that was kind of a come to Jesus moment. We both looked at each other and we said, yeah, that makes sense. Actually, it looks like we are finding traction here and we'll not be focusing on that. And that's the time when we decided we'll focus on CLM.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Right. And that was uh Pradeep Sangh? That's exactly a very successful entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_05 14:43

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. That's good. That's good. So Pradeep changed the trajectory of what we were doing completely.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

That's amazing. Great advice, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

So let me now turn it over to Gauri. I think he'll carry on the rest of the conversation. Gauri, over to you.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Yeah, hi Bodish. Uh first of all, you know, uh, I want to share a little story uh of my interaction with Samir. I met him much later than either of you. Uh iCertice was well underway. You guys were raising the first round of funding. Uh Vijay Vashi had called me and said, hey, uh I was I was uh had exited at uh making some investments with other people, and uh he said, Why don't you listen to Samir? I I sat and talked to Samir and uh I had no idea what he was talking about. It's like uh you know, I was thinking, man, what's he saying? So I went to the Bay Area that weekend, talked to somebody else, and they were all saying, This looks like quote to cash. There was a whole category called quote to cash. And this looks like these guys who were doing it would extend it, or Microsoft one day will wake up and do it internally. These were all the pushbacks I was getting on our very valley kind of a thing. And um, I came back and said, uh Samir, I'm starting out this early. I don't know if I can make it bet what you're looking for, and and and until the last time I met him, I said that probably the biggest miss I've ever done in my whole life was not investing because I I I had it in my hand to just put 250,000. It wasn't like I was putting millions of dollars. But when you're a small starting out, you'll you have all these fears and all this. And he uh he said, No problem, just you know, we'll continue to talk. And ever since then, Samir and I talked continuously about the mess. But he said, But what I remember of him is the laugh that he would come and say, You have you still not forgotten the mess, have you? He says, No, just laugh about it, don't worry about it. There'll be another one you'll come along. I was so Samir, right? He just kind of didn't think too much about whether I invested or not invested. And he held a lot of our Thai Seattle board meetings were held in the iSerter's office right off of 520. I know. Exactly. You know, we would meet there, and it was a great uh, you know, it was great to get to know him through that through that uh through that association. The the thing that I want to ask you is there's a lot of stories of product companies having services arms. There has never been successful companies that started as a services offering spin out a product. Just the you know, and it's not for lack of trying. There's lots of service companies have historical, you know, track record of failing miserably in spinning out products. Right, whatever the case may be. But you guys, was it the size? Was it the founders? What was it that made you take that leap? Because you had already built some muscle. You're you're employing 70 people, so you're making some money and you know, not and not great amounts of money, but still you're in comfort zone. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 18:04

We're building a lifestyle business at that point already, right? Yeah. I th I I think it's a very good question. I think if you look at it, because we had done startups before and because we had got through the pains of acquisition, we knew that we could afford to take our time before we kind of landed on what we wanted to do for the next decade at least. So the services was, and you know, I'm I'm being a little immodest here. The services was a little bit of, you know, let's figure this out and till then do something kind of a thing, right? Uh the money was not important for both of us, which was good. I think every time I've got into a situation where I'm in a company or I'm raising money and I don't need the money, it feels like, you know, I'm in a I'm in a position of strength. It is definitely useful. But what I did was I took the time to build a platform at that time on which we could build many apps. Because you know, I had the time at all the time in the world, services was you know not very intense business at that time, money was flowing in fairly freely. Um so we were always looking for an opportunity to build a product. And so our and our DNA, both, you know, Samir came from a services background, but he also came from a product background. He started his career in national instruments and then Microsoft, the you know, purely product, product management, and so on. Then he moved to, as a CEO, he matured to be the CEO of a services company. But the DNA was still product. Even services used to tell me stories about Disha and uh Aztec soft, and I could see that it was the product mindset. Even though it was services, it was transactional sometimes and so on and so forth, and you know, people oriented, the DNA was still product. And I think that's what my you know, I've seen so many companies in India. I've seen Infosys and TCS try to make products, I've seen smaller companies try to, services companies try to make products. They try to do it with a services mindset. You know, it's not good or bad, it's not right or wrong. It's just the DNA or the thinking that kind of constraints you. With products you take more risk, with products you have more patience, with products, you really need to know that you can't keep listening to customers. You have to listen to yourself first and then tell customers how things should be done. And with services, you're really doing what the customer is telling you. So that kind of change in DNA or change in thinking probably was already there for us. So that transition became very simple. We uh you know, I I cannot tell you how many services opportunities we have passed and passed like this without really thinking, because we didn't think it was strategic to what we were wanting. We were usually it's very tempting, right? Because it's quick money and it's guaranteed money almost, right? As opposed to building a product and spending money first before you can see the money come in. And then the other side of that is also equity. And I think Sarin was many he was just so good at this, right? Sensing, you know, when to raise money, who to go to, how to position. I remember our first deck when we first pitched to an institutional investor was five slides. Black and white, no pictures, uh just bullets, right? Simplest deck that could be. But he made this look so powerful, right? The whole idea and the opportunity and so on with those slides. It was sheer magic. And I think that DNA that came through that kind of converted us to being. What we wanted to do anyway. So that transition was easy for us.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

So this uh we talked about mindset both of you brought to the table and and also when you started, meaning you had a certain level of security from your past exits or life in general that you could take the time to do it, right? Two parts of it. One, at least from our audience perspective, right? A lot of them are looking for co-founders. In your case, you had a long history with others and had a network of people that you had worked with and sold it Samir. So you could have picked anybody from your own past where you are comfortable with, where you had gone through all this, right? So when looking for that co-founder for this, for a journey, which arguably, as you said, it's equivalent to a marriage, meaning they are long, they are frequent conversations, etc., how did you come to this conclusion, hey, this is the person I'm going to embark on this journey on? Because it's not a you had other choices, clearly, having done seven startups, there were lots of people who would have followed you again into a new one because they've been successful with you before. So how did you get to that point?

SPEAKER_05 23:15

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think you know, Samir also had the same choice that I did. His network was big and he'd already done a couple of startups at that time. And I think again, serenivity plays a big part, but also at some point when you've when you've done startups and you worked with other co-founders, you get to feel what is right. Both of you bet Samir. He was larger than life. He was like bubbling with energy. Imagine me, you know, 16 years ago coming out of a big acquisition, one of the largest of my life, having made some money, you know, having had, you know, our company be, you know, go public on the Nasdaq. I was I was not really looking for, hey, you know, I'm not looking for a co-founder. As I said, we didn't even, both of us, we actually didn't even have a product idea. What happened was I think the I think our frequency is just bent. We were so comfortable talking to each other. We were so comfortable talking about what we wanted to do in life. We're so comfortable talking about, hey, you know, is there a hurry? You know, what kind of company, what kind of culture, what were the mistakes we made. So those conversations that happened in our office when you used to come and sit with us, uh with my co-founder, uh actually built that relationship without us even realizing it. And then it happens, like you you just become comfortable with each other. And then when you think about doing something, the first name that pops up is those people. And that's what happened to both of us, I think. So when we said, hey, now it's like you know, one year our lock-in is ending after the acquisitions, we would like to do something else. The first name that popped up in both of our minds was each other, right? So from that perspective, I think it helped kind of come together. And then that conversation in the coffee shop was a seal that it was it was what I wanted to do, and it was what he wanted to do. And uh, we were convinced that we could work together. And it is hard. It is hard, you know, you've both worked uh with co-founders, you've been co-founders before. It's very hard to work with co-founders over an extended period of time. It's worse than marriage, right? Because there's so many things that you would you actually fight on, right? You have so many disagreements. You have to develop that kind of trust saying that, hey, if you have a disagreement, if the other person is fighting with you, they are coming at it because of the right intention, not because of the wrong intention. And I think we had that complete trust in each other that every year we used to spend two hours or three hours thinking about are we the right people in the company? Do we want to do this job? And is this somewhere where we should start looking for a CQ or a CEO? Every year we had that conversation without fear. Because we were, first of all, you know, we were also privileged. We had backing, we had a little bit of money, so it's not like you know, it was a make or break situation. So it was comfort zone. Raising money always came to survey very naturally, you know, thankfully in isolation's case very easily. So we're never under money pressure, except maybe for one or two points in our in Isaac's career. But because of that, I think we had complete trust in each other. And even if we fought fought like we fought all the time on all kinds of issues, but five minutes later we would forget and you know we would go to McDonald's and have a McClurry, which he really loved. So I think that's how it that's how we came together and we worked together for so long.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Got it. So, you know, you bring up a great point, right? In all co-founding relationships, life or companies, right? It's um when you hit this trough of adversity, you look out at your partner and say, Do you have my back, or vice versa, right? Because you gotta have your back, even though you're fighting for a cause. The cause could be direction, who should be this, who should be that. But the fact that you guys had this fundamental conversation, are we the right ones to do this job? Which means that you weren't worried that somebody's taking your job. You're giving it to somebody who is capable of doing it, was a was a fundamental thesis, right? But the hardest part is when the science and the medicine spoke to you through the family and others, that uh he can continue in his job while you have to continue in your job, right? That that was a big uh um and how personally was that uh difficult? Because this this is not a situation that happens to very many founders. This is a very unique one where you are still rising and one founder has to s uh step out for reasons that are nothing to do with performance. So, how did you um sort of digest it and come to terms with it?

SPEAKER_05 28:31

Again, it's uh it's an excellent question. So, what happened even before Samir had his health issues? I had a health issue. I lost vision in my left eye and uh had to take a break and you know, I had to figure out. And it was all treatable, everything happened, so you know, it all kind of fixed itself. It was there was a period of about eight to nine months where I was like, you know, is this really what I want to do? Right? And can I continue to do this? Because both of us, we loved our work. So we used to do 16 hour days like every day. We were like completely in bought. And Samir called me once. He called me and he said, Bonish, are you worried? I said, Yes, Sameer, I'm a little bit worried. You know, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. This is a situation I never kind of in my life. And he said, You know, you know, Patoni played with one eye, you know, he's batting with one eye, don't worry about that. He will figure things out. Um and he said, Don't worry about ISO. I'm here, we'll figure this out. It's all going to be fine. So forget about everything else. Just focus on your health and just get better. And then three years down the line, when he called me and he said, Ponisha, I have some news and this is what's happened. I said, You told me, I'll give you the same advice, don't worry about it. Just focus on your health, we'll do what we can. And we'll figure this out. So nothing to worry about. And that that kind of lifted the load off us. And then the conversation was, okay, if I can't be CEO, do you want to be CEO? And you should know me. I can't be CEO. I just don't I'm not even interested. I can't do it. I'm not even capable. And we already had someone that we had hired, and we we made succession plans when you know I went through that because we thought it would be good to have succession plans. So you already have someone in place, so that someone became CEO very naturally, and that transition was pretty smooth. Now, was it hard? Of course it was hard, no question about it. But you know, because Sameer was larger than life, I always thought he would, you know, he'd come back. Like it just be a matter of time and everything would get fixed and everything would be fine. So you know, we never thought life would play any trick uh that we never expected. But such is life. I think at the end of the day, what is important, you know, and we we've talked about this before, Samir and I have many times. What is important is how the world remembers you. You know, you've got to go what day it's how the world remembers you, you know, and he used to say, hey, all I need is really for people to think he was a good man.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

And that he was. There's no question about it, right? Everyone everyone who had ever interacted with him would be shocked at the generosity of his time, even though he was very busy. And I knew in my back of my head that he was, man, that's a lot of time for him to take you know, running a startup. You know, founders have this, you know, sort of uh take no prisoner approach. He wasn't that. He was he was uh kind and at the same time firm. It's one of those beautiful lines he walked very well. But this leads me to my last question, FOTE. Everything you've said seems like it fits into one of those, one of the acronyms, the acronym of FOTE. So it looks like it evolved through through your time, the time together. Maybe for audience, you could explain what is it that FOTE is and how you guys have embarked how you embarked on it and how you have imbibed it as a company.

SPEAKER_05 32:16

It was very interesting. So I think one of the very early con conversations we had was if you want to build a culture, it's it's not easy. You can't just tell people, hey, this is our culture and behave like this. People don't do that. It doesn't come naturally. Not because they don't want to, it just doesn't come naturally. So we said, you know, everybody has values, they put the values on the wall, they tell people to read them, and so on and so forth. How could we make it such that if I woke up someone in the middle of the night and asked them what the isolated values were, would they be able to quickly remember and um and kind of say them, articulate them, not just say it, but articulate them. And so I I remember in Pune we were playing with you know different, you know, what what do values mean for us, right? You know, it's like customer centricity or fairness or respect. And there were like 15-20 words uh on on on the board. And uh you know, our our HR, um head of HR, she was like playing around with it and she said, Hey, you know what? If I collect these five words, they become forte as an accurate. And so we said, Yeah, that looks good. And so he said, This is something that we all can remember, including you know the founders. If you ask us what our values are, you know, they're forte, and for day stands for fairness, openness, respect, take work, and execution. So it also kind of has a rhyming quality to it, so we remember. And so we said, you know, any values, they're not bad, they're not good. You know, you know, many companies have values and they have words that represent those values, but this can something, this is something that we can actually take, claim our own, right? So that's how it started. And what we did was, I think it was not just how easily they are remembered and how they rhyme, but also we made it a point that every year when we had our senior leadership meeting, we went through the occasions in back year for us for study where we were not for day. And I think this negative lesson did more for us and for the culture of ISERTIS than anything else. And because we, both of us, I think Samir especially loved to be vulnerable. He he had he never had a problem saying he was wrong or he made a mistake and so on. And we actually brought this through our hearts, from our hearts in terms of where we went wrong. Because we did. Sometimes we were not fair, sometimes we're not respectful, maybe sometimes you know I was angry and I said something in anger which I shouldn't have. You know, maybe sometimes it was not teamwork. And we made sure that we shared this with the team. And what that did was people started thinking about it, hey, where did I go wrong? And as soon as you start introspecting with your values, you just imbibe them, right? You don't forget them. And then we said, hey, this is what we want to do with every decision you take. And being forte became like a keyword. And then we did interviews with people who knew what to ask people to figure out whether this was a forte conversation, whether people understood what was forte, and so on, so forth. So we did we went through a series of things and steps that we did to make sure you know the values and the culture evolved from there. And it was it was it was great learning for me. It was great learning for me for me, the way Samir actually had that kind of view of taking an idea and then actually executing it. I was I was good at thinking about ideas. He actually could tink them and make them real, and I think that worked very well for us, I must say.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

The best ideas originally there. And the fact that you pointed out one thing, which is uh most humans find it very hard that Samir was openly vulnerable. He would just wear his vulnerable, and I remember this about him so well, so well, that he would just be. I don't know, I don't know, Gary. Let's figure it out. And it wasn't like he was trying to hide something, he just genuinely was saying, let's collaborate. So your forte was a reflection of the two of you, isn't surprising to me. I think it totally reflects Samir as a person the way I I remember I would remember him. I would still remember that laugh. Nobody could forget that laugh. Nobody could forget that laugh. So, Samir, wherever you are, once we join you, we'll laugh more. Thank you, Manish. Back back to Shrich.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

Thank you. Uh thank you again, uh Monish. Uh, this was a great conversation. Um sad, but also very uplifting at the same uh you know, time. As uh Gaudi mentioned, uh, who can forget his uh you know great laugh? Um but you know, uh he was a very focused guy. I could see that in the uh board meetings. Uh he was uh very focused on helping Kai become a uh major force in the Seattle area. He gave his time generously, he mentored people, he participated in our programs all the way all the time while doing 16-hour days. So he was uh really uh amazing human being, and we'll be greatly, greatly missed. And uh I'm sure he's looking down uh at you guys and uh wishing you all great success with I said. It's a great company, one of the few um companies out of Seattle and India that have done really well, and I wish you all the best moving forward.

SPEAKER_05 38:46

Well, thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I remember Satya sent us a video when Sameer passed away, and I don't remember the exact words, but he quoted a song, a line of a song that Sameer used to love, and it read something like Tadirki Hava Kavi Naran Kadikavikara. I think the word I got it wrong. But it it's so true, right? Like you go through these ups and downs uh emotions. I miss him, but whenever I remember him, I have a big smile on my face. I'm very grateful for all the memories that he left. He's one of a kind.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to our podcast from Startup Brexit brought to you by DICE Seattle. Assisting in production today are Isha Jain and Mini Varba. Please subscribe to our podcast and rate our podcast wherever you listen to them. Hope you enjoyed it.