Keshav Sharma of Augrade
What if you could create a founder in a lab from the DNA of history's greatest founders. What would that look like? Meet Keshav Sharma.
What if you could create a founder in a lab from the DNA of history's greatest founders? Which traits and from whom would you build this creature?
I’d take Elon’s ability to think from first principles, intensity, and execution speed. Elon has a simple rule: giving yourself 6 months to do something, will take you 6 months. But if you give yourself only 3 months, you’ll finish it in 3 months.
Jeff Bezos’ thought process around peoples’ problems and his emphasis on writing memos. He views every problem as a people problem. Understanding that principle and solving for it is extremely powerful. Bezos also stresses the importance of writing [memos] rather than any other medium because it’s fundamentally natural and true to humans.
Steve Jobs’ marketing ability and the sense that something, anything, is possible.
Sergey Brin’s dedication to the product and being in the weeds. For example, with Gemini, Google’s family of multimodal LLMs, he was a core contributor. To note, Brin’s net worth is $114 BILLION. It’s such a strong indicator as a person and engineer that he was not superficially involved but actually built and shipped code.
So, what would this founder look like in reality? Meet Keshav Sharma. Keshav doesn’t have one role model, but rather tries to embody the most critical traits and trades from history’s greatest entrepreneurs.
Yes, you are looking at the physical manifestation of a synthetically created hybrid founder with DNA inputs from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Sergey Brin. Well, and his dad.
No founder is complete without some parental influence. Keshav’s Dad has shown unwavering support for his son’s pursuit and imprinted his ‘never give up’ mentality onto his son. His belief in what Keshav is building has pushed him to keep going.
Every time his father was faced with any issue or challenge, the question that he would ask himself was, “what's the next step? How could I get this solved?” and the answer would always be the same, “I'll figure it out. I know I'm going to figure it out. I might not know how just yet, but I know I'm going to figure it out.”
Having that mindset, taught Keshav the importance of continuing to experiment despite failures and setbacks — to view them as steps on a ladder. “I have this notion that if you fail, it's not the worst.” And if you’re trying to do something difficult — which Keshav is — you’re inevitably going to fail.
“Let’s say, if you’re trying to do anything difficult, there are two options or there are two possibilities. Either you succeed or you fail.” And my dad and I are very firm believers of that.
Augrade: Augmenting Human Capabilities
A founder with the DNA composition of Keshav would surely take on a large and ambitious goal — and you’d be exactly right.
“I think my mission essentially is to augment human capabilities so that anyone can start a viable space tech company or build their own electric vehicles or build their own houses right out of their dorm room.”
That’s the mission — and yes, it’s quite bold. Keshav wants Augrade to empower and enable any person to build whatever they want, irrespective of their skill sets, backgrounds, resources, and surrounding environments. He wants to eliminate that criterion and ensure that they can successfully and viably build whatever they want to. So, that’s the main goal: to augment the capabilities of a person.
This nearly sounds like science fiction — enabling people to build satellites in their dorm rooms?! And you’d be right. To come up with such a crazy idea, you’d have to be influenced by other crazy ideas.
Keshav, an avid reader of science fiction, attributes much of his thought process around tech and innovation to the stories he reads. To him, science fiction plays a critical role in the development of new technological breakthroughs in real life. It “enables people to broaden the possibilities and the imagination of what can happen… it is a tool that helps you think beyond what is possible at this point.”
From an actual execution of the technology and science perspective, science fiction simply points you in the right direction — a sort of fantastical compass — and it’s your job to find the combination of talent and resources to breathe it into reality.
“In the world, there are two types of people: the realists and the dreamers. You need both of them to ensure the world keeps moving forward because if you completely rely on the realists, you'll never fly, but if you solely rely on the dreamers, you will fly too close to the sun. So, you need the realist to ground the dreamer and the dreamer to broaden the realist’s limitations.” And that’s an element that reality and science fiction have in common — this delicate dance between dreamers and realists, who together push the world forward.
Dreamspace: automating design and engineering and enhancing manufacturing for heavy industries
Augrade built Dreamspace, a spatial computing platform powered by AI to create manufacturing and construction-grade CAD models for heavy industries — think space, automotive, and AEC — within minutes. It can automate manual tasks around design and engineering and is designed to “help people build the future, faster.”
Dreamspace allows you to go from concept to manufacturing or launch in weeks, not months.
Today, designers and engineers spend months and millions of dollars and use multiple tools to reach the manufacturing stage, making it difficult to launch effectively in time.
Dreamspace enhances their productivity and extends their capabilities without compromising on quality. Now, they just have to describe the CAD model, upload relevant files with specs and requirements, and — voila! — they get the CAD model they can customize and collaborate on with the team all on one interface and online.
But wait, there’s more! You can easily export this file which is compatible with almost every CAD tool.
The goal is to create a platform for customizable outcomes so engineers and designers can focus on cognitively intense tasks. While there are some text-to-3D models available online, none of them are as accurate as an engineer or designer needs them to be.
The immediate benefits Dreamspace provides to your workflows are powerful.
shorter times to launch (get your CAD file in minutes, launch in weeks)
reduce your costs by 20%
one interface your entire team can collaborate on in real time
If you want to rethink tomorrow and improve the way we build, you need to change the way we experience and interact with technology. That starts with the design, engineering, and manufacturing of the machines that control these interfaces, and is precisely what Augrade is doing.1
Software startups::software enablers, Hard tech startups::Augrade
I love this framing by Christian Kiel of the cyclical evolution of startups and their enablers that follow.
The 2000s were dominated by massive software startups like Airbnb, Facebook, and Uber and software startup enablers like Brex, Rippling and Github defined the decade that followed.
Then, the era of hard tech began — companies like Anduril, Cruise, and Astranis were built. So what happens now then? Continuing this pattern would mean hard tech startup enablers will dominate the 2020s — and yes, that’s going to be the case.
At its core, Augrade is an enabler — it helps people build things. They simplify how people use, interact with and build hard technologies — like satellites, cars, and houses. They make it intuitive and personalized and are automating software and hardware development for the companies of tomorrow. And you can’t build the companies of tomorrow with yesterday’s technology.
Augrade was started when Keshav realized CAD tools haven’t changed even a bit over the past decade. In a world where technology constantly evolves, why have CAD tools remained static? he wondered.
“Why aren’t we leveraging technology to actually push the economy forward in terms of satellite creation, automotive design, architecture, and other stuff.”
This epiphany became the catalyst for founding Augrade.
However, the interface issue was still unsolved. The current human-machine interface for 3D design is cumbersome, hindering the creativity and productivity of engineers and designers.
“It’s obviously much easier for you to work with a 3D model because you can see it at scale or in ratio in an actual 3D space as opposed to on a 2D screen.” Also, working on a 2D screen limits the intuitive understanding of 3D models.
Keshav recognized the need to enhance the user experience (i.e. interface) and the tools themselves and built Augrade to address these challenges.
Building for Posterity
Keshav thinks a lot about how Augrade becomes a generational company. To do so he wants to enable anyone to come to the Augrade platform and say — “I want to create a satellite for Earth observation” — and the system designs it, engineers it, and manufactures it, end to end.
But if you’re going to build a generational company, you need generational talent.
At Augrade, the two biggest cultural factors are speed and brand. Think about any massive company that is being built, speed of execution and brand are the two things that matter. Everything else gets democratized and taken over by the competition, but these two elements are what stay embedded within a company through and through.
Failure is a feature of speed of execution, and Keshav’s team isn’t afraid of failure. “Even if the person fails 99 times, they still get up and try for the 100th time. Because they understand that the 100 failures don’t mean that this cannot be done. It just means, very simply, this didn't work. You still have to try and find something that works. So that’s the primary way I look for people in terms of the culture.”
Keshav noticed that the first couple of hires dictates the type of people a company subsequently hires — mainly as a function to complement the first hires’ weaknesses. “When I hired the first person on the team, and then the second person, from the third person and fourth person onwards, the first two people started dictating what kind of people they want on the team. And the way I think of it is, they essentially assess their weaknesses and find people who are strong on those weaknesses. Rather than maximizing and trying to learn and do everything, you identify what you’re strong at, you identify what you’re weak at, and find someone for whom your weakness is their strength. And then get them on board. This is how I think the team is evolving slowly. And that's the kind of people we want to attract.”
Beyond speed, brand, and awareness, the quality Keshav prescribes to the people he desires the most is passion.
“It’s about the passion. Can you do the work without anyone else telling you to stay longer and do it? We had a very strong deadline coming up, and one team member actually stayed up and worked through the nights and weekends without even mentioning it to me. She worked relentlessly — without anyone knowing — and got the thing done. I found out about it from the other team member when I was talking about what problems we face and how we navigate those.”
Companies are simply structures to organize people and it’s the the quality of those people that determines whether you become the next Anduril or not.
Who backs the crazies?
Needless to say, the future needs more people like Keshav and his team — hackers, innovators, engineers, and creators — solving the hardest problems. And you can’t solve today’s — or tomorrow’s — problems with yesterday’s technology.
But you also can’t build technology for tomorrow with no capital. And when you have a crazy idea to build software that enables anyone to build satellites in your dorm room, who can you turn to?
Well, Tyler Cowen and Jim O’Shaughnessy. Augrade has received grants from both Emergent Ventures and O’Shaughnessy Fellowships.
Keshav reflected on the function grant programs serve, specifically Tyler and Jim’s. “I think one thing that the Emergent Ventures Program does really well is it gives people the initial resources to get started on their idea even if that seems crazy to a lot of the people out there
, like the general investors and so on. And it’s the best way to start doing your research and experimentation. For younger people, Tyler's program [Emergent Ventures] helps that a lot. And they have this yearly convention called Unconference where they get everyone together and there’s an exchange of ideas. I attended the recent one and it was amazing. We got to meet some of the great people out there – Vitalik [Buterin] was there. Then we got to meet and chat with Tyler as well — it was amazing. You got to meet some of the great people out there.”
Jim’s open-mindedness but also his ability to understand how technology can work and rather should work resonated with Keshav. “He has that vision. At the same time, he’s also open to changing his vision based on the companies and the things that he learned. And so, I love that about him specifically. Even if he has, let’s say one thought process, he's quick to change that based on evidence and things surrounding that evidence and data points. And obviously, that is something that you look for in people you partner up with from a financial and support standpoint. When you're building a startup, a lot of the things will go to shit. So, you need people who understand that and are supportive of that. And I think these two support that very inherently.”
Building ambitious and hard things is well, hard. Futurist Peter Schwartz puts it, “It’s very easy to imagine how things go wrong. It’s much harder to imagine how things go right. It’s a big act of imagination, constructing a believable scenario of how all these forces come together to create a better future.”
It’s hard to redesign the software for hardware development and enabling anyone to build technology for tomorrow — but thankfully we have reckless optimists like Keshav.
Lessons from Keshav across People, Product & Culture2
People
Many successful and ambitious founders have troubled childhoods.
Parental support is the difference between success and giving up.
There are two types of people in the world: 1) realists and 2) dreamers – the world needs both.
Grant programs allow "crazy", ambitious young people to do the necessary research and experimentation for their ideas.
Investors should be able to quickly change their views/perspectives based on surrounding evidence, data points and the things they learn.
Don't read business books, read biographies.
Your childhood has a very strong effect on how you grow up and who you grow up to be as an adult and how you behave in certain situations.
People's belief, even despite a lack of understanding, is critical to help founders keep going.
Product
The best startups start as side projects.
Ask yourself, “Whatever you're building, is this going to be relevant in an AGI world?”
Science fiction enables people to broaden the possibilities and the imagination of what can happen.
The biggest challenges for AR/VR has always been compute, display and utility. And no one has been able to deliver that because they were missing the most important factor: contextual understanding.
We're entering an era where you can go from an intent to an output much quicker and faster without compromising on cost, time, or quality.
You're not competing with the competition today, you're competing with the competition when they see what you have built, and they try to replicate that.
Apple excels at making people drool over their products.
Culture
Forcing strong deadlines is an effective way to get shit done, fast.
Any big company that is being built, speed of execution and brand are the two things that matter. Because with time, everything else will be democratized and taken over by the competition.
Founders need to understand their customers' entire workflows, not just the immediate problem the customer wants solved, but the problem the customer will pay the most to be solved.