$13 Billion CEO Thinks Most People Shouldn't Start A Company

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

October 1, 2026

Duration

1h 15m

Channel

Luba Yudasina

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Today I walk with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly. Shishir co-founded Coda and sold it to Grammarly, built skippable ads at YouTube into a product that went from $0 to $1 billion in 18 months, and sits on the boards of Spotify and Walmart, and now he runs a company with over $700 million in revenue. He talks about why most people should not start a company, and why he gave up ownership of Coda without any startup pride. We get into:

• Why the right startup idea should feel like a curse, and why he tells students not to keep a list of startup ideas

• The misspelled Vinod Khosla email that made $500,000 land in his account and moved his company to Silicon Valley in a week

• Joining YouTube when it lost money on every single view, and board meetings with Eric Schmidt about shutting it down

• The skip button every salesperson said would kill revenue, and how it went from $0 to $1 billion in 18 months

• Selling Coda to Grammarly, and why he needs a sense of purpose more than a sense of ownership so much more! 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Trailer (01:07) Shishir Mehrotra, CEO, Superhuman (01:32) Making the Lego robotics world championships four times with his daughters (08:59) His dad only paid for majors where the books are 50 years old (12:18) Why most people should not start a company (14:47) The Vinod Khosla email that moved $500,000 in one afternoon (20:15) Joining YouTube when it lost money on every view (25:50) Board meetings with Eric Schmidt about shutting YouTube down (35:20) The skip button that went from $0 to $1B in 18 months (40:30) Susan Wojcicki and the 55/45 creator revenue split (45:54) Sketching Coda on a notepad by his bed (53:52) Why he sold Coda to Grammarly (59:30) Purpose over ownership and zero startup pride (1:01:45) The bundling theory he built with Daniel Ek at Spotify (1:04:49) Superhuman's AI agents and 60% of auto-drafted emails sent (1:09:37) Why AI will make teams bigger (1:15:32) Outro Follow Shishir LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishirmehrotra/ X: https://x.com/shishirmehrotra Follow Luba Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeoflubaa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yudasinal/ X: https://x.com/LubaYudasina

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Shishir Mehrotra

  guest

  Tech executive and founder (Coda; former YouTube product leader), and CEO of Grammarly.

• Luba Yudasina

  host

  Podcast/interview host and creator of the Luba Yudasina channel.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Luba Yudasina, featuring Shishir Mehrotra and Luba Yudasina, $13 Billion CEO Thinks Most People Shouldn't Start A Company explores Shishir Mehrotra on obsession-led startups, ecosystems, and AI agents Shishir Mehrotra argues most people shouldn’t start companies unless they’re deeply obsessed with a specific idea, because starting from scratch is often the hardest way to bring something into the world.