Pramod Dabir is the Co-founder, CEO, and Partner at West Agile Labs, a premier web and mobile design and development company. Some of its notable clients include Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, and the Ritz Carlton. Pramod also manages Open Door Partners, an investment fund that’s helping democratize private investing.
With over a decade of experience in the industry, Pramod is able to do what he loves: build businesses and create value. He is also an accomplished tennis player who has won a national championship and competed in the main draw of the US Open.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Pramod Dabir discusses his early entrepreneurial ventures
- What was it like working at Goldman Sachs during the economic meltdown?
- How Pramod simplified his business model to grow West Agile Labs
- The secret to managing a global team
- How did Pramod get into the laundromat and daycare businesses?
- Pramod talks about what Open Doors Partners does
In this episode…
Pramod Dabir has exhibited an entrepreneurial spirit since a young age, launching ventures such as a grocery delivery website and an In-N-Out burger fundraiser. Since then, he’s built many more businesses and continues to invest in others to help them scale. What lessons does Pramod take with him from this extensive experience?
Since the early days, Pramod has learned how to simplify his business model. His approach to solving community pain points is much more streamlined and straightforward, which helps his businesses get off the ground quickly. With offices in the US, India, and Poland, he’s also learned how to manage global teams and stay on top of each project. Tune in to hear what Pramod says about scaling a business — no matter the industry!
In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, John Corcoran sits down with Pramod Dabir, Co-founder, CEO, and Partner at West Agile Labs. Pramod talks about some of his early entrepreneurial startups, how he made it through the economic meltdown, strategies for simplifying business models, and the secrets to managing a global team.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- EO San Francisco
- EO Accelerator
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Pramod Dabir on LinkedIn
- West Agile Labs
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 0:13
Alright, welcome everyone. John Corcoran. Here I am the co host of this show. And for those who of you who have not heard this show before, you can check out our archives, we got some great interviews with smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs of all kinds of companies. And my background, I’m also the co founder of Rise25, where I help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. And this is part of our EO San Francisco series, profiling interesting entrepreneurs around the bay area who are building engaging, interesting companies. And my guest here today is Pramod Dabir. And he is the co founder and CEO of West Agile Labs, got a number of different companies actually, including makes sense technologies, which is interesting. It’s a SaaS company in the laundromat space. He’s also got an investment fund as well, he’s got a background as an investor. And so we’ll talk all about his background and history as an entrepreneur. And of course, if you’re interested in EO San Francisco, learning more about this amazing community of founders and entrepreneurs and CEOs around the Bay Area, you can go to EOSF.org and learn all about what we do and membership options for you. Alright, Pramod it’s a it’s great having you here and I’m excited to dive into your your background, your history. First of all, I’d love to ask people about how they got into entrepreneurship, whether they were doing lemonade stands as a candidate and things along those lines. You kind of like me actually bicoastal, you born in Virginia, I was born in Washington, DC, ended up in California, I ended up in Los Angeles, you end up in the bay area. But you said that as a kid, you were thinking about grocery delivery at a young age is a pre web van. For those of you who know the name web van that was kind of like early, early days of grocery delivery the.com era didn’t work out. But you were like, maybe 15 years ahead of your time, if you’re thinking about grocery delivery early as a kid.
Pramod Dabir 2:09
Yeah, no, thanks for having me. Yes, that’s right, I, you know, I would have come up with all all different ideas. And when I was a kid, things that were much, much bigger than what I could I could build or handle when I was when I was younger, but but it was always fun thinking about ways to make things more efficient, or more streamline leverage technology, you know, sort of building building out a website for grocery delivery, when I was when I was a kid and got into kind of coding websites, young. And so it was a lot of fun. I mean, it’s a lot of fun kind of thinking about these things. And that’s what I’d say, as I’ve gotten older, constantly thinking about different ideas and opportunities to jump into and get involved in.
John Corcoran 2:50
And you would go out you have a business club, you’re a part of and you bought in and out burgers, and then brought them down and sold them to as a fundraiser, I guess.
Pramod Dabir 2:58
Yeah, that’s right. So like, you know, different ways to make money and arbitrage and, you know, figuring out how to how to, you know, have some quick wins when it comes to those types of things. And so we had a business club that we were raising money for. And, you know, one of the things that if you’re raising money, you’re allowed to actually sell some stuff, you know, on on school, on school grounds, you know, assuming it’s within, within reason. And so we had an idea to go out and just buy a bunch of in and out burgers, and then basically, you know, arbitrage that and sell it for Shermer more and raised a bunch of money at school and it was the it was pretty cool. It was a it was it was a lot of fun.
John Corcoran 3:32
That’s cool. Now you end up going to University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, studying electrical engineering you got there in part because of tennis, you were really into competitive tennis, in high school. But that school is got an amazing history and background in engineering. In history of the internet, can you talk a little bit about what it was like being there?
Pramod Dabir 3:55
Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, the program there is excellent, the school is a lot of fun. It’s fun being a what I’ve talked about as being a big state school, which was you know, just a lot of people and sports and you know, it was it was, you know, really, really exciting. But then you kind of have this, like, you know, this engineering programme, which is, you know, top five in the country that you’re in and kind of nerding out when it comes to a lot of that stuff. So it was it was just a really cool experience all around. And yeah, I was lucky enough to play tennis there as well. So kind of got the athlete experience and kind of the way they you know, they treated, you know, athletes there as well, which was a lot of fun. So, it was just a cool opportunity and, and a lot of history there a lot a lot of incredible entrepreneurs and folks that have built amazing things, you know, coming from those programmes, and you see all the buildings there with all the names of different people. So it’s just, it was fun. It was a lot of fun. I had I had some of the best the best four years of my life there. It was, it was it was amazing.
John Corcoran 4:51
And correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Marc Andreessen who invented one of the first web browsers one of the most claimed venture capitalists and the history of Silicon Valley
Pramod Dabir 5:04
started from there. Is that correct? Yep. Yep, he’s a U of I grad. That’s right. Yeah.
John Corcoran 5:09
Well talk to me a little about you, you end up going into working for Goldman Sachs. It turns out you were there during the whole real estate meltdown, the economic meltdown. 06 07 08 is when you were there, what was that experience? Like?
Pramod Dabir 5:25
It was wild. Yeah, the first year is when I was there, no, six. I mean, it was it was so busy. And we there’s so many deals that were happening IPOs sales, businesses, everything, I was working 100 hours a week, for a year, a little over a year, just non stop. And it was tough. I mean, like, I, like I missed my sister’s high school graduation. And she lived, you know, 45 minutes away, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t make it down because I was stuck on a deal. You know, just stuff like that. It was It was wild. And then the whole kind of meltdown happened and you know, shortly after I like, it was like there was almost like nothing to do you know, and the the folks that it’s a Goldman they have a two year analyst programme, which was as a part of and, and the first year, they actually called it what they called it an accelerated one year programme, essentially, making it making a two year program, a one year programme, and they were basically laying people off. And it was, it was, it was pretty nuts, but an incredible experience. Regardless, I, I got to really work on a lot of different projects that helped me, you know, from a financial perspective and financial minded thinking, just really get there, which was, which was a which was, which is cool, right? Because
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