TO BREAK INTO STARTUP C-SUITE BEFORE TURNING 35
You’re Smart, Driven, And Ambitious –
But Are You C-Suite Ready?
short ebook you’ll discover:
Why most of the professionals never reach the C-suite?
What mistakes they make along the way?
What are those key skills that no one teaches them to stride ahead?
With actionable insights and real-world examples - from OpenAI’s leadership shake-up to OYO’s resilient teams - this is your playbook to rise to the C-suite, faster and smarter.
Every day you wait, someone else is racing ahead. Opportunities won’t wait, and neither should you.
Let’s get started…
Influencing Stakeholders
In the chaotic world of startups, influencing stakeholders isn’t a “nice-to-have”
skill – it’s your superpower. The difference between delivering on the company’s vision and watching it crumble lies in your ability to align priorities, earn trust, and drive decisions that matter to your stakeholders – both internal and external.
3 core elements of stakeholder management
Alignment:
Synchronise goals with organisational priorities to ensure everyone is focused on what matters most.
Credibility:
Build trust through consistent expertise and reliable delivery. Trust earns you influence.
Collaboration:
Foster teamwork and shared ownership by encouraging distributed decision-making.
Example:
In November 2023, OpenAI faced a meltdown when its CEO, Sam Altman, was abruptly ousted by the board, citing “a lack of confidence” in his leadership. The backlash was swift—mass employee resignations, public outcry, and a leadership vacuum that threatened the company’s future.
Amid the chaos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stepped in as a mediator. Leveraging his credibility and deep stakeholder relationships, he aligned conflicting interests and negotiated a resolution. Within days, Altman was reinstated, the board restructured, and OpenAI stabilised.
This high-stakes intervention showcased how trust, alignment, and influence can salvage not just leadership, but the vision of an entire organisation. Nadella’s actions reaffirmed that in moments of crisis, effective stakeholder management isn’t optional—it’s the difference between collapse and comeback.
Designing a High-Performing Team
Startups often fail not because of bad ideas, but because of bad teams. Misaligned values, disengaged employees, and lack of leadership is usually the main factor that cripples the growth of a startup.
A high-performing team not only solves problems faster but also creates opportunities you didn’t see coming. To build one, focus on hiring for values, developing leaders from within, and ensuring continuous engagement.
Hire for Values, Not Just Skills:
Skills matter, but values matter more. People who share your company’s values will show up, step up, and stick around when the going gets tough.
Nurturing Talent:
Your team has untapped potential waiting to explode. Invest in their growth with mentorship and clear paths for them to shine – and watch them become your ultimate growth driver.
Engaged Teams:
Engaged teams win. Regular 1:1s, honest feedback, and clear accountability keep everyone energised and pushing toward the same goal.
When people care, magic happens.
Example:
Flipkart is a launchpad for leaders and innovators. With programs like "Aspire," it turns potential into power, equipping employees with the skills to thrive in bigger role. But here’s where it gets exciting – the Flipkart Mafia. This elite network of ex-Flipkart employees has gone on to launch over 200 startups, shaping India’s startup scene with bold ideas and billion-dollar businesses.
Nurturing A Mission-Driven Culture
Most leaders underestimate the power of a mission-driven culture. In a high-growth startup, speed is everything—but it can also break things. That’s where culture steps in.
A mission-driven culture is where everyone’s on the same page, rowing toward the same goal.
Mission = Magnet for Meaning:
A mission gives employees the why that makes their work feel like more than just a job. It connects people to a bigger purpose and keeps them fired up.
Your Mission is Your North Star:
When tough choices come knocking, a strong mission shows you the way. It’s your ultimate decision-making hack that keeps you focused on what truly matters.
Make it Real, Not Just a Slogan:
Missions work best when they’re part of the daily grind not just pretty words on a website.
Example:
Salesforce ties its mission (improving the state of the world) to real actions, like donating 1% of equity, products, and employee time to good causes.
Building Systems & Processes For Scale
Imagine this – your startup just secured funding, the market is excited, but internal chaos is stalling momentum. The product team is buried in feature requests, the marketing launch is delayed, and operations can’t keep up.
This happens in most fast-growing startups due to a lack of scalable systems and processes. Your job as a leader is to build key systems including –marketing to generate leads, sales to convert them, fulfilment to drive revenue, and admin to support everything.
Big-Picture Thinking To Build Systems:
Scaling is about seeing how every part of your business works together. Focus on the whole system, not just one part, so everything runs smoothly toward growth.
Use Visual Tools To Document Systems:
Flowcharts, maps, or dashboards help visualising where things are working and where they aren’t.
Tracking Performance Of Systems:
Go beyond superficial metrics, instead of counting how many sales calls were made, track how long it took to convert a customer. Focus on the right metrics and bake them into your systems.
Example:
A beautiful example of building scalable systems comes from OYO. They built a price updating system that adjusted the prices of 1 million rooms over 50 million times a day.
This data-driven approach ensured competitive pricing for customers while maximising revenue for hotel partners, proving that smart systems can handle massive complexity
Elevating Your Network Game
The best opportunities rarely show up on job boards. They’re passed along through trusted networks – former colleagues, startup peers, and leaders who’ve seen your work. This is why having your own high-quality network is non-negotiable.
Hacks to build your powerful network:
Give Before You Take:
Channel the spirit of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Help others before asking for favours –recommend someone for a role, share a valuable resource, or offer advice. Generosity pays dividends in trust.
Build Your Online Personal Brand:
Publish content that showcases your expertise. From LinkedIn posts to Twitter threads, valuable insights attract movers and shakers into your orbit.
Cold Email Like a Pro:
Don’t wait for introductions. Reach out directly to people you admire. A thoughtful email –personalised and value-packed –can turn strangers into mentors or allies.
Example:
In 2015, a young Gaurav Munjal, co-founder of Unacademy, walked into an Inc42 event with a vision and a pitch. Little did he know, that evening would change everything.
Across from him was Rajan Anandan, the then – Head of Google India and a legendary name in the startup ecosystem. Within five minutes, Gaurav secured Rajan as Unacademy's first angel investor. Five minutes – that’s all it took to transform a dream into a reality. How?
Because the right network isn’t just about access – it’s the magic of being in the right room, with the right people, at the right time. That’s the power of a high-quality network and community – it can open doors you never knew existed.
Building A Personal Brand Online
Think about it: Who gets tapped for promotions, high-stakes projects, or speaking gigs? It’s the ones with visibility, trust, and influence.
For better or worse, in today’s world, jo dikhta hai vo bikta hai.
3 core elements to build your personal brand:
Authenticity:
People crave realness, not polished facades. True connections begin when you’re authentic – which means showing up as your unfiltered self.
Consistency:
Whether it’s your online presence or the way you contribute at work, consistency ensures people know what to expect from you – and that trust grows over time.
Value Creation:
Your brand is only as strong as the impact you create. Use your expertise, your voice, and your story to provide outsized value to your audience.
Example:
Aviral Bhatnagar’s story shows how building a personal brand can fast-track success. After studying at IIT Bombay and IIM Ahmedabad, he made an unconventional choice – turning down consulting to join a startup VC firm. He helped build the firm while also launching ‘Life of a Junior VC’ newsletter on the side, which eventually grew into a 500,000-strong community.
This community helped him build trust, knowledge and network – and he leveraged it to launch a VC fund while having only 8 years of work experience where 15+ years of work ex is the norm.
A Strong Executive Presence
Charisma isn’t a gift reserved for a lucky few—it’s a skill anyone can develop. And at the heart of charisma lies executive presence: the art of commanding attention, inspiring confidence, and exuding authority through even the subtlest actions, like a firm handshake or a deliberate walk.
What Characterises Executive Presence?
GRAVITAS
Demonstrating EQ
Exuding confidence
Poise under pressure
Speaking truth to power
Radiating vision, charisma
Assertiveness
Excellent speaking skills
Ability to read an audience or situation
*percentage of senior executives surveyed who said this aspect was the core characteristic of executive presence
Judging what is appropriate & distinctive
Learn to listen:
We spend about 60% of our communication time listening, yet we are not good at it. Why? Because we listen to reply and not to understand.
Use the RASA technique (Receive > Appreciate > Summarise > Ask) to communicate effectively.
Use Your Words Wisely:
Robert Greene in his phenomenal book, “The 48 Laws of Power”, says powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
Learn to operate effectively under stress:
No one wants to see a leader who’s overwhelmed. People with good executive presence present themselves as calm, composed, well-prepared, and in control at all times.
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Methodical Decision-making
In a high-growth startup, every decision is high-stakes. Without a framework, you are more likely to make reactive decisions, creating inconsistent results.
Here are 3 hacks for making decisions that balance speed with precision while keeping them consistent:
First Principles Thinking:
You break a problem into its simplest parts, ask “why” at every step, and then build the solution from the ground up.
Second-Order Thinking:
Most people fail to think beyond the immediate result of an action – “If I do X Y will happen.”
Second-order thinking goes deeper: “If Y happens, what comes next? And after that?”. Think about the domino effect of your decisions.
Opportunity Cost:
Every decision you make means saying "no" to something else. So, you always pick what brings the biggest ROI instead of focusing on what’s urgent.
Pro Tip - Use the Eisenhower matrix.
Example:
In 2002, Elon Musk set out to send a rocket to Mars, but the $65 million price tag for a single rocket was a deal-breaker.
Instead of giving up, he asked, What is a rocket made of?
He broke it down into raw materials and found that they cost just 2% of the actual market price.
So he launched SpaceX where he built rockets from scratch. And the rest we know is history.
Thinking Like A Founder
Be The CEO of Your Work and treat every decision like it’s your own company on the line, irrespective of your title. Here’s a way to test this – “Would I proudly put my name on this work? Would I bet my reputation on it?”
If the answer is “No”, then you’re not acting as the CEO of your work.
3 hacks to conquer this:
80/20 Rule:
Focus on the few things that matter the most – the 20% of products that bring 80% of revenue, 20% of marketing that drives 80% of results, and 20% of decisions that deliver 80% of impact.
Proactive Problem-Solving:
Startups thrive on solutions, not excuses. Ask Yourself- What’s the biggest challenge my team or company might face in the next 6 months, and how can I address it now?
Aim For Moonshot Goals:
Playing it safe won’t take you far. Think big – plan for 10x or 100x growth to create real impact. Then, break that big vision into smaller, actionable steps.
Example:
In a world where 30-min delivery was a norm, Zepto’s founders asked a bold question – “What if we guarantee 10-minute delivery?”
To bring this vision to reality – they started small by launching hyperlocal warehouses in key neighbourhoods. Then used AI to predict what customers would need and where, and teamed up with local couriers to fulfil the orders.
The result? They redefined convenience and disrupted the grocery delivery game. Imagine if they had never asked that bold question.
Hacking Productivity With Digital Skills
Startups thrive on speed and efficiency. Relying on outdated, step-by-step methods slows growth and burns valuable resources.
To stay competitive, you need digital tools and skills that can automate, optimise, & streamline processes, giving you the bandwidth to focus on strategy & innovation.
Leveraging Gen AI:
From crafting engaging blog posts and analysing customer feedback to creating error-free PRDs and optimising ads on the fly, it tackles repetitive tasks at scale. Leverage it!
Business Process Automation:
Automation eliminates the "rinse and repeat" drudgery. For example, onboarding a new hire? Automation tools send personalised welcome emails, collect documents, book training slots and even set up system access – while your HR team focuses on hiring the next rockstar.
With no-code tools like Bubble, teams can spin up prototypes in hours instead of weeks. Marketing teams can create analytics dashboards, HR can design feedback systems, and operations can automate workflows – all without waiting on developers.
Building The Trust Quotient
Great teams aren’t built on rules or roles – they’re built on trust.
Trust is like a bridge – each side contributes equally to its strength. If you trust your team but fail to support them – or if they don’t trust you and miss deadlines – the bridge collapses, taking progress and morale down with it.
As Ritesh Malik, Founder of Innov8, rightly says:
In the future, the most influential leaders won’t have the highest IQ or EQ – they’ll have the highest Trust Quotient (TQ).
1 Let’s break it down with examples:
Reliability:
If you consistently deliver on your promises – like always providing feedback on time – your team knows they can count on you.
Intimacy:
Build safe spaces for communication. For instance, sharing your own challenges can encourage team members to speak up about theirs.
Credibility:
If your team sees you practicing what you preach – like staying late to fix a critical issue – they’ll trust your leadership.
Self-Interest:
Leaders who focus on the team’s success, not personal glory, create a culture of loyalty and respect.
As the world shifts from valuing credentials to prioritising credibility, TQ becomes the new currency of influence.
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