A Founder’s Journey to Creating Meme Magic
Dosa Debates with Paati
Vidya Madhavan’s Paati (grandmom) was a fierce and opinionated woman. Growing up in a joint family in Bombay (now Mumbai), in a typically cramped household, Vidya recognizes that many of her thoughts and values were shaped by her grandparents.
Sharply observant, Paati soaked up the street food scene while rapidly computing price differentials between homemade and vendor-sold dosas: “I can make this dosa for Rs 3. This guy is going to sell it to you for Rs 20.” Her entrepreneurial spirit showed up in other ways: in her frequent pondering about the monetary value of domestic tasks.
What Madhavan also absorbed were accompanying sighs, or the whiffs of despondence that might have characterized an era in which women were rarely permitted to monetize their talents.
Managing Director Dreams
The Bombay neighborhood she inhabited was dominated by two groups: Tamilians and Marwadis. Historical differences between these communities showed up in stark ways. Typically, the Tamilians occupied the salaried class, while the Marwadis ran businesses. The latter seemed flush with funds, with their kids flaunting an entitled ease that accompanies greater riches.
While playing cricket after school, Vidya couldn’t help but notice the contrast. Her Paati, always perceptive, would implore her to return home, cautioning against the allure of sports. She would note that her friends had familial businesses to inherit, but such prospects were not awaiting her.
As a Young Boundary Breaker
Street games were stratified in other ways. Girls played with toys while boys played cricket. But girls had other severe rules regarding attire. Each day demanded a specific dress code, complete with matching rubber hair bands and accessories. With her Mom working, Vidya often found herself dressed in whatever her mother could rustle together before scurrying out. Failure to comply with the dress code meant exclusion from the girls’ group, a punishment that left Vidya standing alone.
One Diwali, Vidya again found herself in a non-compliant outfit—in a white frock that was at odds with the day’s color code. In response, the other girls doused her with water.
Tired of being a pining outsider led Vidya towards the other group: the cricket-playing boys. When asking to join a game, she admitted to her lack of expertise but expressed her willingness to learn. Expectedly, she was rebuffed. She then noticed another child in the area, who was deaf and non-verbal. He too was ostracized like her.
Intent on changing the situation for both, Vidya proposed that they learn cricket together. With guidance from her grandfather on basic techniques, they began thwacking balls. Gaining some dexterity, Vidya and her companion approached the boys again. Met with disbelief, Vidya insisted on a trial ball. To everyone’s surprise, she hit a boundary.
From that day on, she earned the sobriquet “the trial ball player”. And continued playing with the boys, ramping up her batting skills to the point she was appointed captain. Even so, at tournaments with opposing teams, she often had to stand her ground. While fielding derisive comments from opponents: “Yeh tho ladki kho lekar aa gaye.”
Triumphing On and Off the Field
Madhavan harbored dreams of excelling in cricket to the point of breaking into the Indian men’s team. Her mother said this wasn’t going to happen. Vidya found she wasn’t as enamoured by women’s cricket. After all, she wanted to make it “big”.
Her withdrawal from cricket sparked off an unexpected backlash. Every evening, many folks had started stepping into their balconies, just to watch the sole girl whipping the boys. Disappointed neighbors approached her parents and grandparents, pleading for her return.
Later at an inter-school science exhibition, her team won first place. When Vidya walked up to receive the Science prize, some kid yelled excitedly from the audience: “Cricket waali Didi.”
She returned to playing cricket much later, while pursuing an MBA at Stanford. Despite the challenges of COVID, it was a source of joy for Madhavan and her husband. Vidya took particular delight in making British players frantically run around the field with deft drives and reverse sweeps.
Quest for A Playful Vocation
Despite relinquishing her cricket dreams, Vidya was keen on finding a vocation that would bring her the same joy that cricket brought to Sachin Tendulkar. This desire stemmed from her observation that while Tendulkar spent countless hours practicing, it was still a form of play for him, a notion she hoped to recreate in her own career.
She recalls a TV show from her childhood involving the character Richie Rich and his ingenious inventor, Professor Keenbean, who crafted various gadgets for him. This narrative, along with her interest in science and technology, seeded a desire to create impactful technology someday.
Setting her sights high, she investigated the lives of Jamshedji Tata and Dhirubhai Ambani – both immense business builders, no doubt, but not engineers. With a childlike optimism, she imagined herself surpassing the achievements of these giants by garnering engineering knowhow to construct superior factories or businesses.
Thriving Amidst New Challenges
Admitted to BITS Pilani, Madhavan experienced a newfound sense of freedom at college. She was among a small minority of women, who comprised only 100 out of 800 students; and one of four in mechanical engineering.
Emerging from a government-aided school where her classmates had been the kids of autorickshaw drivers or vegetable vendors, she found herself challenged by peers from more privileged educational environments. Yet, she thrived in the competitive setting, auditioning for music clubs and honing her writing skills. She admits she read her first complete book at college – Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal.
Thereafter, she set up ambitious reading goals, bent on slaying the works of the famously opaque Shashi Tharoor and Salman Rushdie. Jotting down new words in journals, by the end of her slog, she won an essay writing competition organized by the United Nations.
Developing a passion for economics, she opted for elective courses in the subject. She vividly recalls enrolling in a banking and financial markets elective, despite warnings from the professor and a fellow student. An undeterred Vidya topped the class.
While at BITs, Vidya also co-founded a company called “Let’s Sing”. The thrust was to create a platform where winners of reality music shows and other expert musicians could train younger children. Despite securing 15 musician trainers, the venture failed to gain traction. But Madhavan’s appetite for entrepreneurship had been whetted.
Learning Excellence at McKinsey
Joining McKinsey with a wide-eyed enthusiasm, she quickly gleaned the complexities of the corporate world. Working with diverse clients and internal teams exposed her to a plethora of working styles and incentive structures. She also imbibed the consulting firm’s high standards of excellence, which continue to influence her expectations at Schmooze.
At McKinsey, one of her clients was a startup. Compared with established companies, she was struck by the team’s agility and rapid pace of execution. In the meanwhile, around her she watched friends signing up to Jio. She was itching to sign on to the buzzy startup world.
Chess Moves at 1mg
Motivated by the morphing landscape in sectors like healthcare and education, she saw 1mg as an opportunity to explore a domain ripe for disruption. Hired to lead growth, she helped establish and expand a private-label chain of labs.
Despite setbacks such as the last-minute withdrawal of a landlord and the Zika virus outbreak, Vidya remained resolute in ensuring the successful launch of the labs. Today the company has six such labs around the country, and conducts thousands of tests.
Rather than viewing strategy as a static document, she likens it to a game of chess, where each move must be adapted based on the changing circumstances. As she puts it: “You make a move, and then the world makes another move, and you have to react to that.”
Gaining Lessons at Stanford
Soon after, when Vidya found herself at the Stanford Business School, she couldn’t be more grateful. She reflects on how serendipitous it felt to embark on her venture, Schmooze, at the palm-lined campus that had birthed technology titans. Stanford also accorded Vidya with ample time for introspection, a rare luxury in the whirlwind of startup beginnings.
Once she was cold-called by a Professor to role-play firing someone, a role that, ironically enough, she had performed for real, that very morning. Combining hands-on doing with academic takeaways, made the lessons stickier.
Winning Hearts with Meme Magic
Schmooze was powered by an idea that emerged from Vidya’s exploration of AI-based image processing. Intrigued by the ubiquity of memes among millennials and younger generations, Madhavan recognized their sway on culture. Despite not being a fervent memer herself, she sought to capitalize on a spiraling trend.
Her Stanford thesis centered around memes, charting the evolution from text-based platforms of the past to image-centric platforms like Instagram. If voice calls had been displaced by text, even DMs were now displaced by snarky reels and captioned pics.
In the meanwhile, being privy to classmates’ dating experiences, Vidya observed a recurring theme among women: many expressed dissatisfaction with dates, describing them as dull and dry. Curious to uncover what would make a date compelling, she engaged in conversations with women, discovering that they valued a good sense of humor and shared laughter. Reflecting on her own relationship with her husband, Madhavan recalled how their connection blossomed through humor, exchanging countless emails filled with jokey banter.
Recognizing the gap between female desire and the mechanics of real-world dating, Vidya conceived of Schmooze. Memes, with their universal appeal and diverse themes, could serve as a powerful tool for connection. By categorizing memes by topics such as politics, dark humor, sarcasm, history, Bollywood and math, Schmooze fosters connections grounded in shared interests and humor.
Of Matches Made in Memes
When they launched, the response was immediate and overwhelming: Schmooze went viral, with women expressing their dissatisfaction with existing platforms like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, which they found focused on hookups or lacked zing. Schmooze quickly wove itself into the consciousness of American daters, so much so that it featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
As the app gained traction, Vidya received feedback from users who had started dating. They shared stories of how Schmooze’s AI highlighted common quirks that no other dating app had ever brought to their attention. Like: “You both like to chill on weekends, geek out on crosswords, and joke about annoying relatives.”
On entering the platform, users select preferred topics, similar to how one might navigate content on YouTube or other media platforms. Schmooze employs an algorithm that balances exploration and exploitation, showcasing content aligned with users’ stated preferences while also introducing them to new topics.
Moreover, the team actively monitors the diversity of memes available on the platform. A dedicated team member regularly assesses the mix of memes to ensure representation across interests and demographics. “We are looking for a vibe match, we are not selecting someone on the basis of just how he or she looks.”
In a world with thousands of potential partners, narrowing down the options can be thorny. Despite the platform’s attempts to facilitate an elusive chemistry, it cannot fully address the deeper aspects of a relationship, which often become apparent only through offline interactions. Madhavan emphasizes that there is no substitute for face-to-face interactions, where individuals can assess compatibility on other factors.
Wooing Indian Daters
In India, women exhibit caution when it comes to using dating apps. On Schmooze’s India launch, there was a striking presence of over 30% women. Remarkably, this ratio surpasses that of any other similar product on the market by two to two and a half times.
At first, Schmooze was only available in six regions – Bombay, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Pune. Within the first hundred days, the app grew faster than Bumble had, despite the latter having been endorsed by a celebrity like Priyanka Chopra. Since then, Schmooze has expanded to other regions with high demand.
Vidya believes that true excellence lies in the last few percentage points of effort, a philosophy she applies to her work and observes in individuals like Virat Kohli. She read somewhere that Virat Kohli is the first person to show up for training and the last one to leave. She too believes in striving for that elusive last mile, from 95% to 100%. As she connects hearts, one meme at a time, she plays to win, scoring boundaries in a game much trickier than cricket: love.
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