Omer (00:12.640)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their strategies and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
This episode is about a guy who came up with an idea for a startup after noticing that many freelancers were struggling with a specific problem.
And then he realized that Airbnb hosts and Uber drivers were also dealing with the same problem.
So he set out to build a product that would solve that problem.
Now, the product wasn't an overnight success, but the feedback from the market was positive enough to keep going.
Today, his product has over 100,000 users and is continuing to grow.
Most of the growth has been driven through content marketing.
But he didn't just create content, he put just as much effort into distributing that content.
So in this interview, we explore how he made content marketing work for his business, and we look at how he's built a business within the Uber and Airbnb ecosystems and beyond, and how that has turned out to be a successful business model.
So I hope you enjoy the interview.
Today's guest is the co founder and CEO of Hurdler, a mobile app for independent workers, freelancers and solopreneurs to seamlessly manage their business finances.
It tracks all of your income streams, expenses, and tax deductions in real time and on the go.
Previously, my guest was the founder and CEO of Visual Homes, a software company focused on property management and real estate solutions, which he built and sold after 10 years.
Hurdler was founded in 2012 and is based in the Washington, D.C. area.
So today I'd like to welcome Raj Pascar.
Raj, welcome to the show.
Raj Bhaskar (02:22.520)
Thanks for having me on board, Omer.
I really appreciate it.
Omer (02:25.000)
So let's talk about you first.
Tell me a little bit about what gets you out of bed, what drives and motivates you.
Do you have a favorite quote?
Raj Bhaskar (02:33.080)
I do.
And I'm not sure it's a quote more than a motto that I live by.
And that's I'm the same person inside my house as I am when I walk out the front door.
And what I mean by that is that you don't get two rajas.
There's no business Raj in and personal Raj.
I have one set of values and I apply that to my entire life.
Omer (02:56.600)
That's interesting.
Why is that important for you?
Raj Bhaskar (02:59.400)
So I had my prior venture for 10 years.
10 years and two months.
And I've been at this one five years, and I just turned 40 a few months ago.
And I think in that short amount of time I've seen there are a lot of folks out there who will do anything for money.
Things that often I think that compromise your values and you have folks that you know.
I've done a lot of angel investments.
I've done about 40 and I'm not active anymore.
I'm focused on my venture.
But I've come across quite a few characters who I'd say do even fraudulent things.
And I just decided years ago that I like talking about this because I think if more people operated like this, I think majority of people do,
Omer (03:53.530)
and
Raj Bhaskar (03:53.810)
it became more of a known thing, a way that people live like good karma, then I think things would in general, people would be happier.
Omer (04:05.290)
I gave the audience a little explanation about Hurdler.
Can you tell us in your own words what is the problem that you're trying to solve here?
Raj Bhaskar (04:17.640)
Sure.
So Hurdler is for any entrepreneur, freelancer or independent professional or contractor that's essentially running their own business or has side gig income.
And that side gig could be driving for Uber, it could be doing freelance projects, could be that you're an Airbnb host.
Any other income that's coming on the side outside of any full time payroll job that you have.
And the premise value prop was to provide a product that made it easy for entrepreneurs to know their real time business related finances.
And for many of these folks, their business finances are so commingled with their personal finances that they really need to know everything so they can do better business and personal financial decision making for the future.
And so we kind of, that's kind of what we led with.
And one of the key things we built was a real time income tax calculation engine that the real power of that is that for all of your income that hasn't been pre taxed.
So any, you know, if you're a full time worker and you get a monthly or bi weekly paycheck from your company that's already been taxes have already been withheld.
But everything else, whether it's your investments or side gigs, those don't come pre taxed.
So you need to set aside the right amount of taxes.
And there are just so many folks who are caught holding the bag at the end of the year.
They've overspent and they don't even have enough to pay their tax requirements.
Omer (06:00.880)
I want to talk about Hurdler and kind of start the story from how you guys came up with the idea.
But before we do that, let's kind of go back to 10 years earlier and when you started your previous business, Visual Homes, and you kind of ran that business for 10 years before you sold it.
So can you tell us a little bit about what that business was doing and how you got into running that business?
Raj Bhaskar (06:34.960)
Sure.
So Visual Homes was a financial and compliance management platform for affordable housing subsidized housing.
So any housing that the US government provides subsidies for.
And so our clients were primarily public and affordable housing agencies all around the country.
And we built that from.
Well, we built it up to about a half a million units managed on the platform.
And units would be units of housing, units, homes.
And so half a million units of housing, couple million residents managed on the platform and then we were processing around 200 million in monthly rental payments.
And that's for affordable housing.
So if it was market rate, housing would have been closer to a billion in monthly rental payments.
So these are pretty big financial systems that the agencies were using to run their entire back office operations.
And some of our largest clients had over 500 users.
They would use this daily, like more than they would use email.
Omer (07:48.760)
How did you get into this business?
Did you have a background in property management or like how did you start?
Raj Bhaskar (07:55.880)
I didn't have any background in property management.
So we actually bought a small software company that was doing this for small agencies, did a deal where didn't require any capital up front and developed a quick plan to take it to medium to large agencies while upgrading the technology.
So initially started off with doing development in India outsourcing and then trying to get a larger housing agency to be the early adopter of that.
Omer (08:29.590)
So did you have the same co founder for that business as you have now?
Raj Bhaskar (08:38.780)
You know, I'm laughing.
So my brother is my co founder on this startup and he's nine years younger than me, so I recently turned 40.
So he's 31.
I was 23 at the time.
I guess he would have, he would have been 14.
Not exactly.
Omer (08:59.260)
Well, he's never too young to sell it.
Yeah, we'll talk about that.
Raj Bhaskar (09:04.180)
He was even interested in business at the time.
He was definitely into computers.
Much more so than I was, ironically.
Omer (09:10.940)
Yeah, I definitely want to talk about how you guys kind of decided to, to work together and how that's, that's going.
Okay.
So, so Visual Homes, you, you built that business for, for 10 years and, and then how did the opportunity to sell that business come about?
Raj Bhaskar (09:31.900)
So the company we got acquired by Yardi is a quiet company, but it's a dominant player in the real estate tech market.
It has half of all U.S. apartment buildings, multifamily apartment buildings, using its software that's through property management companies that do all the management of the buildings.
So it's the leader in the space.
And they do, they now do like every single vertical of property management or real estate management.
So they do multifamily, commercial and even they have an investment management platform for REITs.
But even within multifamily they do military housing, senior housing, affordable housing, public housing, every kind they do now.
So for we have very, we had top notch regulatory logic and we had an excellent reputation in the industry.
So for them it was, I think it was just a solid fit.
Omer (10:42.580)
So did you, did you go out looking to sell the company or did they approach you?
Raj Bhaskar (10:47.940)
I think it was a mix.
I mean we knew of them, they knew of us.
We actually had conversations with Yardy over a two year period on and off
Omer (10:58.330)
like why did you decide to sell it?
Were you kind of feeling like, okay, in terms of it was an offer too good to turn down or you kind of just felt like you had had enough and were looking to move on and do something different?
Raj Bhaskar (11:12.970)
Generally there's a number of factors that go into it, but I think at the end of the day it made, made excellent business sense.
You know, when we look back that when we decided to partner with Yardi, it seemed like all the synergies were just, were just solid, like perfect match.
And now I can say like even six and a half years later, like that's true, like that is definitely true because everyone's still there.
And I think that's a, for me that's a bigger definition of success than you know, what the financials were.
Financials were solid as well.
But that's not like, at least for me, that's not really a key driver.
Omer (11:51.860)
I know you, you don't talk about how much you sold that business for, but can you kind of give us maybe a sense in terms of, you know, how things changed for you?
Raj Bhaskar (12:02.340)
Sure.
So nothing really changed.
It's pretty funny.
So I have a, to this day, six and a half years later, I have the same car I was driving then.
And I will say the only two things I've bought since were a house because, well, an engagement ring because I got married and then a house.
Now I have a one year old.
But those two things are going to happen whether the business exited or not.
They're independent of that and I try to stay low key for those things.
Not much changed beyond that.
It's, you know, it's 10 years and 10 years is not a short period.
But what I, what I look back, what I liked is, and I'm doing this with hurdlers, I really enjoyed building something that lasts.
I see a lot of startups that either they don't last or it's more like a house of cards and you pull one little thing out and the whole thing falls apart.
And visual homes, we had like every single department, we had clients live, we had communities relying on this.
At the end of the day it's citizens in need or relying on the platform.
And that's something we're doing here.
Here we're helping out another sector and it's entrepreneurs so we can't mess up financials.
And that's so I knew when we wanted to do another venture we wanted to do financials because we have strong suit in finances and compliance.
Omer (13:39.980)
How did you come up with the idea for this business?
Raj Bhaskar (13:43.260)
So my prior venture was at the end of the day it was a financial management platform, but it was for large agencies that were helping citizens.
So here we started off that I wanted to do another financial management platform but something more consumer ish.
We initially the idea was to just to build a small business accounting system but modernized for mobile like a mobile accounting system.
And part of that is there's a few things going on, like it's our background but also like I was saying, my guys, that's their strong suit.
So we could, we could do that, we could pull that off.
The other thing was that after I'd exited the company, I took a survey of the land out there and nothing had really changed in the accounting and finance world other than software moved from your desktop to the cloud.
But that didn't really matter and that didn't really change much.
It wasn't even the cloud at the time, it was just software to the web.
But mobile was going to be that big thing.
It's obvious now, but so many years ago people weren't gung ho.
Majority of people I surveyed had no interest in doing their finances on their phone.
It was laughable when we started building the backend.
Omer (15:02.910)
So I guess you still did that even though if it was laughable, you kind of saw the trend in terms of what was happening with mobile and the potential long term opportunity there.
Raj Bhaskar (15:15.390)
Yes, definitely.
And so we built a small business accounting system and mobile and I took it to 25 of my entrepreneur friends that have different types of businesses.
Those were my first users of that, of that system that we never made public.
It was from that that we ended up focusing mostly on solopreneurs and freelancers and not small businesses with multiple employees.
Omer (15:43.240)
What did you learn by having those 25 entrepreneur friends using the product?
And specifically, I'm interested in how did that change your plans?
Raj Bhaskar (15:53.720)
Well, there's two things.
First is that we realized that whether we went after the small business with multiple employees or the solopreneur, we had to win over the entrepreneur, the CEO.
But if the CEO had a team, had a controller, an accountant, and other employees, we also had to win them over, which is a lot more work.
So that was one thing.
And then the second thing was literally our first pilot user, one of my friends had emailed us one night.
He was in Colorado, and he was using our app with a.
And he'd had dinner with a friend who was another business owner, and he took.
He was taking care of the bill, and he pulled out his phone with our app, took a picture of the receipt, and his friend was asking for what he was doing, and he showed him our app, and that was beta at that time, and showed him all the different features.
And that guy loved the app and suggested that this would be a great app for his 3,000 real estate agents of his brokerage.
And he was the Keller Williams franchise owner.
When he shared that, when my pilot used to share that info with us, we did a little more research and we, you know, the real estate agents, of course, are 1099 folks.
And then anytime you type in at that time, 1099, Uber and Airbnb popped up.
Omer (17:18.830)
Can you just explain for people who are kind of outside of the U.S. what a 1099 is?
Raj Bhaskar (17:23.150)
Sure, 1099 is a tax form, but now people use that term often to describe folks that are not on a payroll that get paid by these other companies.
And when you get paid via 1099 method, you're on the hook for paying your own taxes.
Omer (17:43.740)
Cool.
Raj Bhaskar (17:45.100)
So in that one weekend, that's where.
So we had already been thinking of, we're going to go after solopreneurs.
And then we figured out our initial target markets, which were Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts, and real estate agents, all very different.
Omer (18:01.020)
And did you decide to tackle all three of those verticals at once, or did you pick one first and say, let's start here?
Raj Bhaskar (18:09.800)
So we, we did all.
It's yes and no.
Yeah, it's pretty tricky because.
So we publicly were tackling Uber and Airbnb at the same time.
Privately, we were tackling those two plus real estate agents.
So real estate agents is a lot.
Anything in real estate generally takes a much longer Time period.
So that was something I was working on in the background while my growth team was focused on Uber and Airbnb.
Omer (18:35.890)
Were there big differences between the requirements of these people in these different verticals?
Or were you able to kind of establish a common denominator and say, okay, we can kind of simplify the product development by maybe coming down with, you know, kind of focusing on a.
A simplified feature set so it's easier for us to kind of tackle across these three vertical segments?
Or did you not do that and just say, we're just going to do whatever we need to do in each vertical?
How did you approach that?
Raj Bhaskar (19:10.030)
So we have a core engine we like to call our profit and tax engine.
That that core engine is used for all verticals.
And then we tailor the user experience for the vertical with each vertical has unique features on top of that engine.
So, for example, a real estate agent, their user experience is focused a little bit more around their listings, like their clients, and the profit and loss by client and their commissions versus an Uber driver is focused more around their driving and mileage.
And their driving expenses versus Airbnb host, again, is back to how much money they're making on their property.
They're all using the same engine because most of the tax consequences are the same.
Got it.
And now there's the trend.
Of course, the modern entrepreneur has multiple income streams.
So the way we designed our system is you can see your profit by each income stream.
So you could say, well, I'm making good, great money on Airbnb, not so much on Uber, but my freelance business is doing very well.
Omer (20:22.490)
Yeah, And I'm getting a Realtor's license as well.
Raj Bhaskar (20:27.050)
That's awesome.
Omer (20:28.010)
Okay.
All right.
So you kind of had these 25 friends who started to use the product and gave you some feedback, and then you decided to focus on the Uber, Airbnb and the Realtors.
Let's talk about some kind of growth tactics that you guys used to get the word out about Hurdler.
So maybe we can start with Uber.
Raj Bhaskar (20:56.500)
So my head of growth came up with a strategy that leveraged a bit of content marketing.
And so what we did was we created a blog post for the top 16 tax deductions for Uber drivers.
That was the easy part.
Creating a blog post is no big deal.
You can write it yourself or hire a freelance writer to do it fairly quickly and cheaply.
The hard part is you have to market the blog post.
So it's kind of funny you're creating a blog post to market your product ultimately, but at the end of the day you have to market that blog post.
So you're always marketing.
And, and so what he did was he made friends with every single Facebook, every single admin of a Facebook, Reddit and subreddit group that targeted Uber drivers.
Those admins were drivers themselves and they loved the value prop of this app that we were developing for them.
And so all of them agreed to pin the blog post to their groups, to the top of the groups through for a two week period.
And he got them all to do it during the same two week period.
And that was the hard work.
That was the, the real thing.
And that's where we got 3,000 Uber drivers signed up.
Omer (22:16.360)
Couple of lessons here that I think we should kind of call out.
One is the importance of not just creating.
There's a lot of talk out there about creating unique content and something that is really going to be high quality and you know, all of the, all of the things that we sort of hear about content.
But what I'm hearing from you, and I think it's, it's sort of a piece which is often a little less talked about, is you can't just create this content, hit publish and then sit back and expect things to happen.
Well, sometimes they might, but most of the times it probably won't.
And so you probably need to spend more time distributing and figuring out how you're going to market the content, which is then going to market your product.
Then you spent kind of creating it.
And so, you know, you talked about, you know, your head of growth kind of going out and making friends with admins of Facebook groups and reddits and subreddit.
Like, what does that mean?
Like, what was he doing?
Raj Bhaskar (23:37.380)
Well, so he was, I think we call it cold calling 2.0.
You're hitting them up either through chat or connection requests and talking with them online.
Mostly I'll say character based communications, email or chat and maybe some video calls to really, really get to know them and talk about the value of the app and also figure out how we can help their own groups.
And yeah, I mean it's hustling but with good intent.
And that's the thing, like if you lead with a value prop and it's a shared value prop, then people are happy to work together.
Omer (24:18.540)
Okay, so you had that and you got about 3,000 Uber drivers signing up.
What else did you do to find users?
Raj Bhaskar (24:31.020)
Sure.
So from there we actually produced a 20 page financial and tax planning guide for Uber drivers and we promoted that to the same folks, to the same admins but as well as these 3,000 that signed up, and we picked up another 5,000 drivers.
So we were at 8,000.
So I almost tripled the base.
And from that group, we surveyed users and we picked out 200 folks to be the first early users of our app.
Omer (25:06.600)
So at that time when people were signing up, I should have clarified this because when people used to 3,000 people signed up from the the tax deduction blog post and then another 5,000 from the financial planning guide, these people were kind of giving you an email address at the time, Right?
They weren't downloading the app, correct?
Raj Bhaskar (25:27.380)
That's correct.
And so we notified those folks, the early folks got them on board, and then from there, kind of, we started getting more and more users on board.
And most of our growth was organic.
A couple of times we got a push from a couple of Uber cities themselves, sending out direct email promotion to download our app.
They love that it's a free app as well because it helps drivers maximize their income.
Really.
It's taking care of all your deductions, tracking all your expenses as well, and giving you real time tax estimates.
There's no other app that gives real time tax estimates.
There still isn't.
And so that's something that's very important for people to have.
And so it grew from there.
And folks are referring out our app.
Word of mouth.
You hear that all the time in marketing.
How can you create word of mouth?
Well, if you create value and you really please your users, that's how you can create word of mouth.
You also have to make it easy for folks to refer you or your product.
So we have little things in the app that help do that, which is common in many mobile apps.
Omer (26:45.880)
Can you maybe just give me one example of something maybe that people were struggling with maybe in the earlier days when they were using the app?
Raj Bhaskar (26:54.200)
Sure.
So one of the key things in our app is if you want to automate expense tracking.
The only way you can automate is tracking expenses is to link our app with your.
The credit card or bank account where you.
Where you charge your expenses to.
And so a lot of, you know, there's a good amount of folks who don't want to do that for any number of reasons.
Omer (27:18.040)
There's got to be trust, right?
Raj Bhaskar (27:19.880)
Sure.
So how do we build that trust in a short amount of time?
Because there literally is no other way to automate expense tracking.
You can't automate it if you don't have data feedback.
That was actually one of the mistakes I think we made early on and we made it early on because I directed, I directed my guys that we have to have.
I want it to be automated before we go out because that's what I want as an entrepreneur.
I don't want to just have a good looking spreadsheet functionality on your phone where you have to enter anything.
I want something that saves me time and money.
Omer (27:58.850)
And so why was that a mistake?
Raj Bhaskar (28:01.250)
Because I wouldn't let them release like an MVP that had all manual tracking.
It had to be automated.
Omer (28:07.570)
And so what was the impact of that?
It just took longer.
Raj Bhaskar (28:12.410)
Yeah, it took a bit longer for us to release and we could have been out there sooner because there were a lot of folks who preferred manual tracking because they didn't want to link their bank account.
It was amazing.
To me, it didn't seem obvious, even though of course it's obvious after the fact.
Omer (28:31.310)
Now the product, the app is free and you generate revenue through other means.
And we can kind of talk about that in a second.
One thing I wanted to talk to you about was when I look through your site and look through the faq, there's, there's one kind of question which talks about like, how much does this cost?
And it says, you know, Hurdler is currently free.
And one of the things that I've noticed lately with, with some businesses who sort of go down this model is they kind of have a, you know, forever free, right?
In terms of you're going to sign up and in terms of whatever the basic offering is, that's always going to be free.
And so maybe I think of like Trello as an example of that.
And they, they do that very well.
But then on top of that, they provide value add type services.
They may provide specific features that are more relevant for teams or for enterprise customers.
And those are the things that they charge for.
But when you go in there, they're kind of very explicit that look, this kind of the base functionality is always going to be free.
And I didn't see anything like that on Huddler.
And when it kind of said currently, it was like, okay, are these guys at some point going to start charging for this product?
And if I wasn't a, you know, an Uber driver or somebody who sees some value here, am I going to be concerned that I've kind of invested all of this time to get this information in here and then in a few months time I'm going to have to pay something every month that I didn't expect to or want to.
So what is your thinking around that?
And am I just making an issue about something that hasn't been an issue for you guys.
Raj Bhaskar (30:30.810)
Well, I don't think it's been an issue for us.
That being said, I am sure that there is some percentage of folks who fall into that bucket who need absolute clarity before moving forward.
The way we operate.
If I tie it back to my personal motto, I'm the same person inside my house as I am when I walk out the front door.
That means I won't do anything to make money.
That's part of my core values.
If we switch to a paid model where the user had to pay to use the product, even then there would be not only months of advance notice, but they would still have the ability to extract their data.
And in fact, in our app, we actually allow users to sync with their personal cloud.
So with their Google Drive, Dropbox box, even Microsoft OneDrive.
So all their reports and that financial data is already stored in their personal cloud.
So we don't hold any of their data hostage at all.
And that's not something we would do.
We have folks like, you know, a lot of Uber drivers, they're online maybe a few months out of the year and because they're in between jobs and it's a great gig to do when you're in between jobs because you still have fixed ongoing payments they have to make for living expenses, rent, mortgage or food.
And so they'll come back towards the end of the year when it's time to file taxes and email from the app, just email their tax report data directly to their accountant or tax filer.
And so that's something that would always be there.
But yeah, we haven't seen an issue.
That being said, we also have not.
We haven't committed yet to saying forever free.
I wouldn't be surprised if we end up doing that.
Omer (32:30.260)
So the app is free and you have over 100,000 users.
Can you explain how you're generating revenue?
Raj Bhaskar (32:41.220)
Sure.
So we've this, this past tax filing season, we rolled out a tax filing service in conjunction with H and R Block and users who use that service, leveraging the data they were already tracking in Hurdler, it got them somewhere between 40 to 50% complete with their tax filing process and saved them quite a bit of time.
And we got them an excellent rate on the filing as well.
And for folks who use that H and R Block, we'd share a little bit in the filing fee and I think so I'll call that value added service.
And I think we'll probably launch a few more things just like that in the next year.
And then so that's one revenue stream or a bucket of revenue streams.
And then the second is that our whole platform, including our mobile apps, actually consume our own API.
HR Block was the first company to use our API and we have a few more companies that are, that are using it right now that we haven't announced.
And I think you'll see some big companies, maybe financial institutions leveraging our API to provide value added services to their clients, similar target users that we have, but they'll be doing their own distribution and white labeling.
And so we'll be compensated through that, through the consumption of our API.
Omer (34:09.090)
All right, let's get onto the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Raj Bhaskar (34:17.160)
Sounds good.
Sure.
Omer (34:18.440)
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Raj Bhaskar (34:22.920)
Focus.
Omer (34:24.440)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Raj Bhaskar (34:29.640)
The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papazon.
Actually, it's about focus.
Omer (34:36.440)
Yeah, it's a good book.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Raj Bhaskar (34:44.689)
So I won't use Focus, but that is a theme with me.
But I'll say you gotta be hungry.
You've gotta be really hungry.
Omer (34:53.809)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Raj Bhaskar (34:59.329)
Well, I don't know if you count, like working out.
I work out quite a bit.
For me, I like to think through things as I'm running and often, almost always like if, if I don't have a particular item to think through while I'm running.
Before I go on a run, I'll ask my team members if they want me to work something out for them before I go on the run so I can work it out while I'm running.
And sometimes I'm thinking so deeply during the run that I almost get hit by a car.
Wow.
Like if it's in dc, like in the city.
Omer (35:28.300)
Yeah.
Not probably the best place to get into flow while you're running.
Raj Bhaskar (35:33.420)
Definitely.
So it's better to hit some trails.
But it's a little hack that I'm just thinking through.
So I'm still working in my mind.
Omer (35:42.520)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Raj Bhaskar (35:47.960)
I don't focus.
I mean, I do one at a time.
I don't even.
I don't consider myself a serial entrepreneur.
I've had one prior venture.
The only way I could be considered serial is if you include all the different things that did to earn cash.
Cash while I was in elementary, middle and high school, which I don't count those.
So it wanted a time.
Omer (36:13.180)
Do you get a lot of ideas for other things that you could be doing?
I mean, I hear that a lot and personally I get that as well, that I'm working on one thing and I know I should be focused.
But then another idea comes up and it's so exciting.
Raj Bhaskar (36:27.020)
Yeah.
Shiny.
That's the shiny new object.
Yeah.
You gotta resist the temptation.
Omer (36:33.210)
So do you.
Do you suffer from that or.
Raj Bhaskar (36:35.690)
I don't now.
It's not to say that I never have in my life.
Early on in my prior venture, I probably did, but it takes some work, I think.
Omer (36:44.170)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Raj Bhaskar (36:48.170)
I was kidnapped by a taxi driver in India when I was 17.
Omer (36:53.450)
Serious?
Oh my God.
Raj Bhaskar (36:55.050)
I lasted about 30 minutes.
That was a long 30 minutes.
Omer (36:58.690)
Wow.
Raj Bhaskar (37:00.610)
I'll say.
I mean the.
If I want to sensationalize it, I'll say my family rescued me, but I'll just leave it as I got lucky.
Omer (37:08.610)
Wow.
Oh.
And now finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Raj Bhaskar (37:17.330)
It.
So it is.
So I'm.
I don't know if this counts.
I mean, I'm literally focused on.
So this is the first time in my life I've actually had two ventures going on.
That's, you know, I have Hurdler and then I have my 1 year old, 15 month old.
Actually had the 15 month checkup earlier today.
And so that's my competing interest for the first time with Venture.
Because, you know, with my wife, she knows like, you know, we work well together and he doesn't.
Yeah.
My song just calls all the audibles.
Yeah.
Right now, I mean, that's the.
That's, you know, when I'm driving home from work at night, I'm getting myself together for prime time.
Right.
So it's to bring my hay game home to, you know, that, that final hour before he goes to sleep.
I call it turn down service.
It's for me to just entertain him non stop because if you slip for a few seconds, he might turn the other way.
It's.
Yeah, you gotta.
It takes a lot of energy.
So that's it.
Beyond that, I like to play basketball full court.
And I only started playing actively like five to seven years ago.
So I was probably.
I should be playing golf right now, but I'm like 10, 15 years behind all those kind of things.
I actually think I'm still improving.
It's kind of strange.
Omer (38:47.460)
Awesome, Raj, thanks.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
It's been really great to get to know you better and sort of hear the story of Hurdler and what you're up to there.
Like I said, I've been really impressed with just getting to know you and sort of what you've talked about with your values.
And I think that is something that is so important and it's so easy, I think, for many of us just to, you know, kind of forget some of those things.
And especially in a very competitive or pressure driven kind of environment where you've got to generate revenue or whatever that is.
And so I love kind of, you know, seeing how, how important that is to you to sort of have the integrity and, and, you know, maintain your values.
If, if folks want to find out more about Hurdler, they can go to hurdler.com and that is h u r d l r dot com and you can download the app from the Apple Store or there's an Android version as well.
If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Raj Bhaskar (40:08.270)
So in our Hurdler app, we have in App Chat, live in App Chat.
That's the best place to reach me.
Omer (40:14.590)
Okay, that's a new one.
Raj Bhaskar (40:18.270)
Well, it's something I took from prior venture in terms of providing solid service.
So we're a mobile app that has service like you talked about.
Folks probably have questions about things.
We have a customer success team led by a CPA that answers those questions.
Omer (40:34.330)
Wow.
Raj Bhaskar (40:35.290)
Omer, I really appreciate you having me on board.
And anytime I can help you out with anything, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Omer (40:42.570)
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
And yeah, I'd love to stay in touch.
And maybe once you've got your kind of API business announcements out, maybe we'll get you back and talk about what you've been up to there.
It sounds like you've got some interesting things planned.
Raj Bhaskar (40:57.930)
Definitely.
That sounds great.
Omer (40:59.130)
Awesome.
Thanks, Roger.
Wish you all the best.
Raj Bhaskar (41:01.210)
Thank you.
Cheers.
