Gaurav Bubna is the co-founder of Nextbillion.ai. They offer maps and routing APIs to other companies in transportation, logistics, and field services to incorporate into their applications, and improve their delivery costs, asset utilization, and customer experience.

They last raised a $21M Series B.

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👋🏼  How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

What I do is sort of like navigating a ship in a brand-new, uncharted territory.

I wear a lot of hats: I might be involved in product development, handling finances, and figuring out how to get customers. Also need to keep an eye on the big picture—how to grow the company, adapt to challenges, keeping an eye out on the broader industry.  

It’s a lot of problem-solving and decision-making in a fast-paced environment.

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🧐  What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

One thing that might surprise people is how much time a startup founder spends not working on the actual product or technology or sales.

I end up spending a lot of time on more mundane things like following up with people internally and externally, and dealing with legal, financial, and HR stuff.

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🏆  What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Even though I did a number of exciting things before, I think building this company and all aspects of it has definitely been the highlight so far.

Getting our first set of customers, fundraising, building a team, seeing our team members grow into their roles, signing our first F500 customers—it's all been amazing.

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🔍  What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?

Gen AI and AI Agents. It's definitely not just hype, and is starting to impact all aspects of company building. From how we build products internally, team building, and how we sell.

Definitely an area we're all taking an active interest in

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💼  What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Work for a fast growing company for a few years before joining a bigger company or an early stage startup. That's where you will learn the most in the fastest amount of time

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🗣  What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Everything about building a startup from a founder's perspective—all the lessons, highs and lows, wins, and all the fulfillment you derive from it

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🎥  What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Don't have an all time favorite but the most awesome recent one I saw was this Korean cooking show—black spoons and white spoons.

It was amazing seeing all this people who were at the top of their game, and how they faced new scenarios, different ways they think, all the cool challenges, and the work it takes behind producing something world class in a different discipline

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🍨  What's your go-to ice cream flavor?

My go to is definitely a mix of dark chocolate with something like salted caramel. A great mix of many flavors—sweet, bitter, salty. I can have it over and over!