- Punit Soni worked at Google, Motorola and as the chief product officer at Flipkart in India.
- He couldn’t shake the desire to build a company of his own and launched a health tech startup.
- Sonit said life as a founder can be lonely and has extremes, but feels his work is meaningful.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Punit Soni, the CEO of Suki, an AI voice solution for healthcare professionals valued at $295 million. Business Insider has verified Soni’s employment with documents. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Born to a nuclear scientist father and a psychologist mother in Mumbai, my early life was steeped in academia.
I got a degree in engineering at the National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra in 1998 and a master’s in electrical engineering at the University of Wyoming in 1998.
I worked as a quality assurance engineer in semiconductors before pursuing an MBA at The Wharton School in 2007. After my MBA, I considered private equity or consulting, but Silicon Valley’s siren call brought me back to tech.
My career in Big Tech
In June 2007, I applied to Google as a product manager. At Google, I spearheaded Google+ Games and mobile initiatives. I helped grow the mobile team and launched features like Mobile Hangouts and Instant Upload. Over those five years, I learned about scaling products and seeing failure as an opportunity.
I left Google in August 2012 for an executive role at Motorola as VP of product management. While at Motorola, I gained insight into the e-commerce market in India, which prompted me to eventually leave and move to Bangalore. I began my role as chief product officer at Flipkart in India’s tech hub.
After a decade in the Bay Area, I felt like all the roles at the time were the same, and I wanted to exercise a different part of my brain. Being in India and adjusting to a different workforce was an interesting challenge.
At Flipkart, I was responsible for all product initiatives and helped scale the company. I left in 2016, and Flipkart was acquired by Walmart in 2018.
I couldn’t ignore the entrepreneurial itch
After working at tech giants and successful startups, the entrepreneurial itch I’d had since my early days in Silicon Valley could no longer be ignored.
While at Motorola, I was trying to build Moto X, which had its first always-on voice interface. Building this software made me aware that voice was going to be the default for most devices. At that time, conversations around the artificial intelligence were just starting, but these insights helped me develop my company Suki.
I wanted to build something that made healthcare tech assistive and invisible, so doctors could focus on patients.
Many of my former Google colleagues who were leaving the company were going into education or healthcare. I saw healthcare as an area where I could make an impact. I came up with the idea for Suki and started building the foundational elements while in India.
My family was sick and tired of me complaining about starting something new and encouraged me to leave Big Tech to do it myself.
It was a big shift going from employee to founder
I left Flipkart in 2016 and returned to the States to spend the next six months settling down.
We moved houses, and I had to adjust to a new area and new schools for my kids. I was lucky enough to have saved resources that helped me launch Suki, so I didn’t have to change too much of my lifestyle. I was also mentally prepared, knowing that there were not going to be that many incoming resources or revenue at the start of a new business venture.
Becoming a founder impacts your emotional and mental health. For the first few years, I worked off fumes and juggled many hats. No day was the same. Whereas in Big Tech, I had more of an established work routine.
At Google and Flipkart, I was a senior executive with many people reporting to me, but at Suki, I had to start from the bottom to reassess the skills I was good at and learn new ones to help move the company forward.
The best part of starting my own company is the pride I feel in building something that has a real impact. Over 350 healthcare systems are using Suki to help doctors focus on patient care.
I also really value the control and autonomy I have now compared to my prior careers in Big Tech. I want to create a drama-free environment at Suki with no internal political hierarchies. I care about our combined collective success. I want Suki to be a workplace where we give each other feedback and improve each other’s work.
Financially, I didn’t have any dramatic changes moving from being an employee to a founder because I always maintained a middle-class lifestyle. However, it’s still uncomfortable building something because you have to use more money than you’re making.
Life as a CEO has extremes
Some days being a CEO is empowering, while others are exhausting and frustrating. It can feel like you’re on a treadmill that never stops.
Entrepreneurship is also lonely, and early on, I had to face failures and overcome them. I was a poor CEO for the first two or three years because I couldn’t manage my emotional state.
I’ve made every founder mistake because of my challenges with regulating my emotions. I’ve had countless sleepless nights, lost my temper, let go of people, people have let go of me, and even lost friendships. The key lesson I learned was how to react to these situations constructively while moving forward.
I’ve learned that a good CEO knows how to channel their energy, learn relationship management, and invest in the right operations and people. One of my major challenges was finding the right people. My advice is to hire candidates who are better than you in every area.
People romanticize startup life. Building a company is not a financial or professional decision — it’s a romantic one. You need to love your idea and have the emotional intelligence and energy to see it through.
Ironically, I don’t wish entrepreneurship on anybody. It’s a risky financial decision to leave a stable job. But I love what I’m doing most days. The idea of building something meaningful from the ground up was incredibly important to me.
