Borko Kovacevic: Serbia Childhood to Singapore, 17 Years at Microsoft & Podcast Founder Poddster - E480

Borko Kovacevic, Cofounder of Poddster, and Jeremy Au discussed:

1. Serbia Childhood to Singapore: Borko reflected on his childhood in Serbia during the 1980s and 1990s, witnessing both Yugoslavia's prosperity and the hardships of the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. Economic instability and rising crime taught him street smarts and resilience, values he now aims to instill in his children, who are growing up in Singapore’s safety. He stressed the importance of teaching gratitude and perseverance despite their comfort, helping them appreciate hard work and innovation. Borko contrasted his challenging upbringing with his children’s blessings, focusing on how to nurture their development without fostering complacency.

2. 17 Years at Microsoft: Borko recounted his Microsoft career, which began in the early 2000s in Serbia as one of the first employees in the post-war region. He described the culture shock of transitioning from a formal corporate environment—where suits and daily shaving were required—to Microsoft’s casual jeans-and-t-shirt culture. Over the years, Borko worked across Europe, including Munich, before settling in Singapore. He witnessed key leadership transitions, such as Bill Gates stepping down and Steve Ballmer taking over, which shaped the company’s evolving culture. Mentorship played a crucial role in helping him navigate these changes. After receiving tenure crystals at the five, ten, and fifteen-year marks, Borko chose to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations instead of waiting for the twenty-year crystal.

3. Podcast Founder Poddster: Borko discussed founding Poddster, a podcasting studio business born from conversations with his co-founder, a UX and MVP expert who saw a market gap for fully equipped podcasting spaces. Starting with one studio in Dubai, Podster grew to 12 studio sets in Dubai and 4 in Singapore. The rise of video podcasting and short-form content, driven by platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, has fueled its success. He also highlighted the importance of scalability and the development of Podyx, a SaaS platform to streamline operations for Poddster and other studios worldwide.

Jeremy and Borko also discussed how his early career influenced his leadership style, the potential of AI to automate and enhance podcast production, and the future of content creation.

Visit poddster.com to start your content creation journey! Use code brave20 for 20% off your first recording.

(01:48) Jeremy Au:

Hey, reallyy excited to be here interviewing your story, Borko.

(01:52) Borko Kovacevic:

Thanks. Thanks a lot. Happy to be here.

(01:54) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. So, I think we also get to be part of your startup in the sense of this beautiful venue here for this recording. I think I've done one other recording with Adrian. So it was a happy customer of yours. And what's interesting, of course, is your founder's story about setting this up. So, could you introduce yourself real quick?

(02:11) Borko Kovacevic:

Okay. My name is Borko Kovacevic, and I'm the Founder of Poddster now. I've spent a lifetime in big tech, so I was in Microsoft for most of my, my career. And I'm originally from Serbia, Eastern Europe.

I was touring the world with Microsoft, so I lived a bit in Germany, Munich. I was in Singapore. I came 10 years ago. And I did a lot of different roles in Microsoft over my time. I came here with my family 10 years ago. We had a nine month old when we came to Singapore. So he grew up here and then the second one was born here. So pretty much kids are as Singaporean as it gets when it comes to their own lived experience.

(02:51) Jeremy Au:

Wow, amazing. So what was it like growing up in Serbia?

(02:54) Borko Kovacevic:

I grew up well, there are two decades of me growing up, like the first decade was the 80s, right, I'm not that young anymore, it, it, it gives up my age. So the, during 80s Yugoslavia was a, a communist country, but it was fairly serene, like there were prosperity, people were generally happy. It kind of reminds me when I read, I read Lee Kuan Yew's book and it kind of reminds me of what, although Singapore was never communist per se, socialist, but it was this kind of, labor movements and, people who are generally working for the country. Like there was lots of pride in people being there for the country.

As I said, like Labor Day, huge thing where people get together, they celebrate the country, they celebrate workers, like it was led by the workers. So eighties, well, I was young, so I didn't care much about what's going on anywhere else other in my toy box. So eighties was, was okay. It was in a super rich country. It wasn't uh, but it was just a nice, nice childhood. Then the nineties were a bit more tougher. because nineties was the breakup of Yugoslavia, where basically I was in Serbia. Still, we have lots of friends in Croatia, in Bosnia, in Slovenia, like, and the country got torn apart.

and in certain parts of the country, things were okay, but most parts of the country were there was a civil war. And that's the first, like, the early 90s, the Bosnian War, which didn't affect me personally so much other than the, the whole environment getting a lot more,

a lot darker, like, crime rates and just the safety, right? Because when the country's in a war, even if you're not in the middle of it, like the economic sanctions, everything that happened was just deteriorating the country. And then end of the 90s where the country was bombed during the Kosovo War. That was that was, that was pretty tough. Like, And, and I think during the nineties, you know, I always, when people ask me, like, how do you, how do you get street smart? You look like you're a street smart person. I was like, by spending time on the street, that's how you get street smart. You can't read a book and get street smart. So I think the nineties were tough and there were lots of bad stuff, but then you learn a lot through being pushed through that.

And it taught me. I always think about my kids as they grow up in a perfect land, like they grow up in an environment which is so safe and so perfect that, you know, how do you expose your kids to an environment which is harsh enough to build them and get that street smarts and that thinking of innovation, disruption like that, that mindset that keeps them alive constantly, but at the same time keep them safe so they didn't break their heads and something even worse. So I think it's a constant struggle. I didn't have a choice. I was just there and my parents were, they did an amazing job in keeping me alive, but I would say childhood was, it was a great country. At some point it started to get rough and then after I signed up for college and started studying, then things got better again and that exposed me to Microsoft and to other companies. And yeah, it was rough and tumbled.

(05:55) Jeremy Au:

What was it like signing up to join Microsoft because that was a long time ago in the relatively earlier days of Microsoft? Well, do you remember the employee pitch they gave you?

(06:04) Borko Kovacevic:

I was so it's funny enough, like I was one of the the first few in the office and the way they recruited me is they came after us even at the university. One thing that Microsoft did really well when I was at the university is they had these academic programs and they went after college students and they had competitions. There's there's still a competition called Imagine Cup. It's one where I participated with my friends. We were the second team in the country, almost won the first team to go to the world finals. So that's how I got exposed to Microsoft. Also got exposed to my wife like that because we were in the same team for Imagine Cup. So that's how I met her. And So it was, it was that early exposure. But then when I graduated, I I got another job in a very large local conglomerate being more like a CTO for the company, still very connected to Microsoft through implementing things like Microsoft Dynamics. I was Microsoft certified DBA and new SQL server, playing with Windows server at the time back then the desktop was all Windows XP. In most cases, service back to for those that remember the days. And after that, I got approached by Microsoft because I was first known by them. I was already in a year in as a client, working mostly on the, I would say the server side off the Microsoft's business. And my first role was to run the server business in the country, which wasn't that big. The country had 10 employees, so I was employee number 10 or number nine, but it was a small subsidiary for Microsoft, a part of a bigger region in that part of the world. So it was, for me, it was a no brainer because joining Microsoft was since college days was something that was wow, it's one of the first big tech companies that entered Serbia post wars, and they offered lots of great programs for students. They were a good company right to work for. Back then, Google wasn't a thing. Amazon wasn't a thing. Facebook didn't exist. So I think Microsoft was a name that you'd want to join. And so it wasn't a big dilemma, but I did not expect to stay that long.

(08:14) Jeremy Au:

We're definitely going to get into that, which is that, you joined, do you remember what was it like in that first, like month that you were there? What were you like, where you were like talking around your mentors? What was that first month like at Microsoft?

(08:26) Borko Kovacevic:

Yeah, that's a, that's a funny question. Like, I used to work for a company before Microsoft that had this code of conduct, which was the, the, the owner, local owner, but very, very sharp guy. He had this idea of everyone needs to be dressed in a suit, carrying themselves professionally like it was almost like you're working in a bank actually bank was a part of the conglomerate but it was a much bigger conglomerate in the country. So you had very high respect for your superiors. There was even this unspoken rule that you don't get into an elevator if a senior is in an elevator. So if they are in the elevator, you would need you're supposed to nod and just let the elevator pass because they're supposed to go alone and of course the dress code, clean shaved. So I remember once, I shaved in the evening because I came back late from a dinner or something. So I was like, let me just shave so I can sleep a bit longer in the morning. And in the morning when I showed up, my, my superior was like, why didn't you shave? And I was like, I did shave. And she's like, nope, that's not clean shave. I was like, well, I shaved last night. And there's like, go home, get a shave, come back.

So like every morning, clean shave, well, properly dressed and all this. So I joined Microsoft, and Microsoft's, everyone's in jeans and t shirts. And like at that point of time, I think these companies, they wanted to run away from being IBM and IBM was like the, the blue shirts and everything, they started getting a lot more casual. So I, naturally, I started thinking how to blend in. But I was still, because of such a long tenure, like a year for me. It was the first year I started working. I was in pants, shirt, jacket, and I showed up at work and one of the colleagues like, no one forgot to tell you that Friday is a no tie day? And then everybody around me was like, totally casual.

And I was the only one. I didn't have a tie, but I was in a jacket, in a suit. So I think there was a bit of a culture shock when I came in and I was also trying to find my footing because it was different than the companies I worked for or worked in, global company, American company, like different style.

And I was trying to see who do I get some help from? People that were more senior and you could see, especially in the country back then, that Microsoft has started, Oracle was starting like some of these companies have just because the country has opened up. So companies started open up, you could see a bit of an

elitist behavior as in like, the big tech was starting to separate from how you work for a local company, like your, you work for a oil and gas, or you work for like something that's not big tech. So I was trying to figure out how do I be a part of this? Like they, they were already there and lots of Americans headquarters was in Germany, in Munich, so lots of Germans as well. So my first exposure to a large number of foreign bosses and supervisors. And it was low key anxious all the time. But after a while you pick up things and you start to blend in and the rest is history.

(11:24) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. And, you know, you said you didn't expect to stay as long as you did, which was 17 years, so how did that come about?

(11:32) Borko Kovacevic:

I had no idea staying that long. Like I was just like, okay, let's see what happens. Maybe I go somewhere else. My plan was at some point to, think about moving out of the country and moving somewhere else because I've personally truly believed that people who haven't had an experience to travel somewhere and work somewhere else other than their own home country, to get that exposure to multiculturalism, get an experience of landing somewhere else, which is not their home environment. So they do get to learn a lot faster than people who are just staying in their own country and within the maybe same company. So I always wanted to travel and move somewhere, but I had no idea it's going to be that long. So I first got my first international assignment was in that regional headquarters based out of Munich.

I wasn't living there per se, because the countries and the regional span was all the way from like Austria and Poland, on Slovenia on the west to like Kazakhstan on the east and like almost like going into the Central Asia. So it was a really big region including some smaller markets like Malta, Cyprus. So my job was traveling around. I had 12, 13 countries. I was traveling most of the time and then every week we had regular meetings in Munich. So my job was to travel.

And then when my first son was born, I was looking at my life and I was like, do I really want to travel around central Europe all the time or can I settle somewhere, which led me to move from central Europe to singapore and Singapore was a stable, large market. I landed in the Singapore team and then did, my background was always, so I'm a tech person, but my background was somewhere in the middle of tech and business, like trying to explain tech to business people and productize tech in a easier way to understand. So after Central Europe, I landed as a COO of the Singapore Microsoft business.

After that, shortly took over as an MD for a while, and then I ran the startup and venture business for Microsoft for about a year plus before I left. So it was more like moving from one region to another and moving from one job to another. So I almost saw four or five, six different types of businesses within Microsoft. And I also saw multiple versions of Microsoft because I joined my first year. In my first year, we, there was a big celebration for Bill Gates leaving as the CEO, CEO and Ballmer took over.

So then the Ballmer era and then the Satya era. So it was like literally different Microsofts. So the, the Gates Microsoft was different than the Balmer Microsoft, was different than the Satya Microsoft. So you kind of go through different company culture and then intersected by different roles and different regions and different people.

So I was fortunate that I got that type of exposure, which is not staying for 17 years in the same job with same people like that. That wasn't the case.

(14:28) Jeremy Au:

Wow. Amazing. And still made a decision to leave and eventually build a new company. So what was going through your mind? And, you know, your kids are older, you're married to your wife, you're in Singapore.

(14:40) Borko Kovacevic:

I always wanted to start something to be an entrepreneur, but you know how it goes. You start something you start to work. You're like, Okay, I'm gonna work for Microsoft because you learn a lot like the paycheck was good. So you're in your 20s. So you start and I was, I wanted to see if there is a room for me to start something on the side. Like when I was back home, I wanted to build like a chain of coffee shops

or like I wanted to do something, but you get sucked in. And if you work for Microsoft, not only that it's borderline, not okay for you to do other stuff, but even if you could, and some people do get approvals to run, they call it moonlighting. Like you can do consulting jobs or you can do things, assuming you get the approvals. It's hard. Like you are sucked into so much, so many things. And I was committed to Microsoft. I was really like I was,

waking up in the morning, going to bed thinking, how do we meet quota? How do we make customers happy? How do we like I was obsessed with making my Microsoft and my team successful, which makes it very hard to do five other things, right? So I'm just that kind of person. If I'm doing something I'm all in, I can't do six things at the same time. So that meant that I needed to delay the decision to start something.

So it was always there, that itch that was there. And at some point I started looking at if there are any startups I can invest in. Is there anything I can do? that would just make it easier for me to, to experience something else. But as I said, like investing in something and then cheering from the behind the fence, go, go. That wasn't my thing because I knew that you're only,

you're only scratching your itch, but you're not a hundred percent in it. So when an opportunity came and I was, as I said, I was running the business for startups and ventures for Microsoft. I got exposed to a lot of founders, a lot of VCs I had an opportunity to join a good friend and what's now a co-founder of of Poddster. And I was thinking hard, like, okay, you have bills to pay. You have like, you're in your forties, which means your liabilities are much higher than when you're in twenties. In the twenties, you can sleep in a studio, one bedroom apartment. You have no kids, no school to pay for like zero. In the forties, it's different. Like you have lots of bills to pay. So I was like, am I ready to leave? Got the support of my wife. She's working. So she's the breadwinner in the house. And it was good, like even for kids, like kids were always like, we had this, when we came here, my wife didn't work.

So, my kids growing up, they were always like, okay, dad works mom is working, but she's sometimes she works. Sometimes she doesn't work, right? So I was really depending on her roles and her commitment to her jobs at the time So we kind of turned that around so I go get now dad doesn't work and mom is helping the family. She's the EP holder and that's not an EP holder in Singapore So we made that shift, talked as a family. Are we okay with this? Because it was a sacrifice in a way, like your lifestyle needs to change. I just like a couple of months ago, I talked on another podcast. People are like, how do you survive leaving a corporate job, well paid corporate job, and just, well, your lifestyles, lifestyle changes, right?

You try to adjust and you lower your cost and the vacations are not, As expensive anymore, they need to be less expensive. You find ways to cut costs everywhere you you can, but that allowed me an opportunity to build something off my own, which is what I wanted. So I joined my co founder. We've established the first setup, which was in Dubai.

It started growing really great. And I was super happy to see something that was, ideated and originated from just a talk to become something that's like really growing into by becoming a thing. And it was a no brainer for me if I should go jump into this versus maybe join another company or staying with Microsoft for another 15 years or 10 years or retire in Microsoft like, the question was for how long? I got Microsoft gives you these crystals when you complete a certain tenure. So I had the five year old crystal, 10 year crystal, 15 year crystal. Then I was like, do I really need a bigger one, 20 year? And then I saw people who were 25 and the crystal is like this big.

So I was like, how, how big do I want to go? And, and at that point I was like, okay, I think Microsoft has given me a great life for myself or my family, moved me to Singapore. I had lots of great experiences, but that was the probably the time where I, where I felt it's the right time to move. Yeah. And do something that I, just build something that I felt has an opportunity to to offer me what I always wanted. And, one of these things which they say when you, before you die, like you always think about things like, what if,

and that was one of the things where I was like, what if I have decided to do something of my own before I'm in my sixties, not that it's too late. I've seen people do stuff at six in their sixties, but the more I wait, the likelihood goes down. So I wanted to just pull the trigger and say, let's just go and build this. And yeah.

(19:40) Jeremy Au:

And what's interesting is that you said that the idea came out of that talk and discussion. How did that product market fit? Did the idea come about?

(19:49) Borko Kovacevic:

So we, I mean, when Poddster started, it wasn't fancy market research done by McKinsey or anybody that said that this is a market gap, you should go after this.

It was, my co founder at the time, we had no idea Poddster was going to start, but we were chatting. He a founder or a entrepreneur. I was in corporate. So I complained to him about corporate life. He complains to me about being an entrepreneur. So there's always like the grass is greener on the other side, but there's always a pain associated with what you're doing. So he's like, How do I get more customers? Like I, I'm, I've, I'm a, I'm one guy like what do you do in Microsoft? I was like, we have an army of salespeople. We just send them and they go crazy. And he's like, well, I'm the only one. And I go to conferences and I try to sell to people. And I realize everyone I'm pitching what I do ends up pitching me back because it's all the salespeople that get together on a conference. There's no buyers there.

So we were chatting how he can break into, he wasn't in podcasting back then he was doing UX design, product, product MVPs, things like that. So, I sent him this Ted talk, a guy that was talking about serendipitous moments on how you get to meet someone that gets to shape your life and and how you can do it over a podcast. So I told him like, why don't you. Start your own podcast and you invite people that you'd like to sell to, but don't sell them anything. The moment you start selling, you lose them because you lose credibility. So just invite people and talk about them. Don't talk about yourself. Like talk about them.

They'll naturally share things that they do. And then you will bond over a podcast. And what happens then is they ask you, what do you do? Like, are you just the podcaster or you have, And then you can, you can tell me, well, I'm in, cancer research and I have this great company and I work for, and then I get more into knowing you. Right. So you tell me about yourself and that's how we exchange information. And naturally, next time I need a UX person, I'm going to be like, yeah, that guy that I saw 20 more times because you, you, you see your podcast after it's out. So you always see the same, the same person when people share the podcast, you see the host.

And you will keep on remembering that's the UX guy that I, that I got an interview from. So people started approaching him for his services, but more interestingly, they started asking him if they can use his room for a podcast. And then he was like, why are they all asking me for a room? Like, there must be more spaces that offer this. And we realized that in Dubai back then, there wasn't much. Like there was a, we work room somewhere. There was something else like, and it wasn't turnkey. It wasn't, you show up, somebody gets, someone gets the work done. You leave and you get the footage. Like that wasn't there. So he started renting out the small office just to see.

It paid off the rent of the office within like a week. And then we were talking like, can we make something bigger here? Can we do something that's, that's, that's bigger than a room? And that started being like the, one and then an extra one and an extra one. In Dubai, we have 12 spaces now. And then Singapore came about and then Singapore is now four spaces within this one location.

So it really was like, As you said, product market fit, there's, there was seem, there seems to be a demand. And, and we were fortunate that video podcasting, video content creation. Was taking over from pure audio. So there was a nice moment in time where people started discovering and YouTube went hard on shorts and they went hard on video podcasting versus just Spotify.

And now you can see even Spotify is now in video as well. So that there was a shift that helped us to create this kind of a great space with great community and extended to Singapore. And it was just a very natural scale.

(23:34) Jeremy Au:

What are some myths or misconceptions about the podcast or in this case, the infrastructure around a podcast space from your perspective?

(23:42) Borko Kovacevic:

Misconceptions. I would say most people and now this changes depends on the geography where you're in. Like in Dubai two years ago, it was also audio podcasting. And and then in Singapore, I can see now since we opened in March that when I mentioned podcast people, people think of Spotify, audio, long form.

That's, that's what podcasting is. But what we've learned is that educating the market on this, opportunity to sit in a room. Now you and I are talking for 45 minutes an hour. If we're just using the microphones and we're only audio. We're missing out on an opportunity to create lots of short form content for Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, whatever, and then drive the traffic to our long form content. And to a certain extent, you don't even need long form content to be successful in what you do.

In Singapore, here in Poddster, now we have from VCs and startups to people selling their services as consultants to, really big names in content creation, but as well as like leadership roles CEO of DBS, like Piyush Gupta. We had Jacqueline Poe from EDB. We had like lots of people who come to create some kind of content, being a guest or a host on some conversation. And it doesn't need to be a podcast in the traditional sense, as long as it's a conversational video format.

(25:00) Borko Kovacevic:

So misconceptions would be, I don't run a podcast, full stop, or I do audio only, and I can do it in my home because I have a USB microphone and that's enough. I think what people are missing, and I'm not necessarily promoting Poddster. I'm promoting this form of content creation. You can do it at home. You can use Riverside, a great tool to remote interview your guests. Formats are or ways on delivering it are up to you, but a misconception would be, I don't need this type of content.

I have a website or I have an event I'm attending, or if you're not on social media, you're missing out on huge opportunity to be discovered by your clients, by your employees, by your, like you're, you're missing out. And that's why every episode that we used to do when it's like first party. Poddster content or when we advise clients is record this session and chop it up in 10, 15 different bits where you can get smaller cuts, which are one minute or a minute and a half each. And that's what's going to drive your traffic. So I would say misconception is about long form, short form, which platforms to use and what podcasting is.

(26:10) Jeremy Au:

Hmm. I think what's interesting is that as you build up this space, you know there's a certain amount of business approach that you're thinking about this, right? So you're thinking about in some ways, renting out a space. I think could be the most primal version of what your friend did. That was the genesis of that. And also there's this value added services. So how do you think about that business model of Poddster?

(26:29) Borko Kovacevic:

Well, I think there is a growing demand for things like this and and it's a fairly new industry. And the reason why I say this is I was never big on saying we are the best in the world and we are the most successful in the world.

But we've really, really looked hard to find spaces and places and businesses which are excelling in this, we call it retail podcasting industry, which rents the space, offers turnkey end to end service. I've just came back five days ago from San Francisco, LA, Las Vegas. We have been there, met dozens of studios. I can clearly say that apart from like Spotify, Audible, Netflix, like the big studios, which are more approaching this market on like record record label basis, like they attract content creators and they sponsor the, all the work so that they can share IP and content, there is nothing for retail, for prosumer and consumer and business content creators, which are just willing to pay for a service. I don't want you to own my IP. I don't even want you to own my my, my footage. Like you don't own it. You're just a data custodian. You're a service provider. I own everything that doesn't exist in me in media space, because most of the service providers want to own content, in which case, companies, especially large companies, even VC startups, they might not be up for the game. So,

(27:49) Borko Kovacevic:

So for us, we are fortunate that at the same time, when we started Poddster, we were looking for the solution, the tool to run our operations in our business. And because we couldn't find anything, there was Calendly, there was Google drives and Dropbox for file sharing, we went ahead and build our own. So we run Poddster runs on our own tool which is called Podyx. So through Podyx, when we extended Podyx to all the studios in the world, we SaaSed it, like created the SaaS platform out of it. And suddenly we have like 50, 60 studios, which are using it to run their operations. So in LA, Boston, Vegas, we've met a few.

And we can say that the way this industry is being developed guarantees almost another few years off of this being like a viable solution for content creators. What's going to happen when AI comes? Can we have virtual backgrounds? Can we have Sora generate our own videos? Who knows? Maybe, probably. But for now, we've seen other studios. They are expanding. They're growing. The places we've seen in Vegas have interviewed Elon Musk and Alex Ramosi and Mel Robbins and Tony Robbins and like all these other folks who are popular in the states.

In Dubai, we had great content creators and celebrities coming over as well. So this space definitely has room to grow. And what we're hoping to do is like build that community of global studio owners, which will share learnings. We're probably ahead of most. But as I said, our aspirations are not to be Adam Neumann of podcasting to build 100 studios.

And like we work, we are focusing on the key markets where we can make a difference. And then the rest is going to be just enabling the studio owners across the world through technology, community, learning, sharing and so on.

(29:41) Jeremy Au:

Wow. Amazing. On that note, could you share about a personal story of a time that you've been brave?

(29:47) Borko Kovacevic:

Okay. There is lots of moments where I could say I've done something that's courageous and that's the right thing to do. But I would, I would probably pick one thing, which is, even though I was just, what? 18, 17, 18 years old, but back home when the, my country was, was bombed, right? And when things were grim, I think I attribute this not only to myself, but to everyone in the world today that's suffering in this way or another, either their country's being bombed or they're in a war with someone else. So there's something going on. The courageous nature of just humans to persevere and to push through and to not get crippled by it like so, and and and the courageous thing is moving past and accepting that you know we've learned through our hardship and we've had bad moments but that should not taint us for life. I probably created, a few years after this insatiable, optimistic, positive attitude that keeps on fueling me to this day. But you could always, if you're a victimize yourself and you always think of yourself as like, Oh, we went through all this, we're crippled for life, it's very easy to sentence yourself to a life of being a victim. And that decision to switch on that, that, that click in your head and say I'm not going to succumb to whatever feelings I have towards, hardship or the life I led as a 15 year old. I think that's, that's a brave thing that many people that have certain disabilities that have certain issues in their life that were victims of whatever happened in their childhood, they tend to overcome it and they come even stronger. So that's, that's what I would attribute my courageousness to this.

(31:31) Jeremy Au:

How do you try to showcase that courage in the context of your family?

(31:36) Borko Kovacevic:

It's mostly with my kids. What I'm trying to do with them is to help them understand when they do things, why they're doing it, and what's the driver of their behaviors and understand the implications of their behavior.

And then as we go through that, I'm trying to instill some learnings that I have through this hardship on how they should be more grateful for what they have. I think today in the world of social media in the world of, I would say, convenience, like everything is convenient. You call Grab and Gojek with one click. You call, your food arrives. Your pay bills with your phone there's a lot of and I know this is Singapore and probably other countries which are well developed.

There's a lot of other countries which are not, but I would say the world as a whole is not getting worse. It's getting better. Even though we think there's doom and gloom and nuclear war coming and all this, if you look at like 50 years back and now world is getting better. But the danger of that is as we go through more convenient and better times, We risk being, first grateful for what we have.

We, we are getting too complacent because complacency doesn't create innovators, top performers, people who are generally pushing the society forward. It creates people who are more too comfortable. And that's what I'm trying to instill in my kids is like, how do you How do you get better at things that you do, having like little progress over time without necessarily me pushing you in some crazy hardship, which, when they say, oh, this person was a plane crash survivor or a car crash survivor or near death experience, and after they went through that, they suddenly changed and they've created something amazing.

How do you get that great without suffering hardship, Like that's what, what I'm trying to get to with my kids and trying to understand, help them understand that the life they have should not be for granted.

(33:31) Jeremy Au:

Thank you so much for sharing. On that note, I'd love to summarize the three big takeaways I got from this conversation.

First of all, thank you so much for sharing about your time growing up in Serbia, about what you learned from your childhood experience and what it means to be courageous in terms of the human spirit and also how you want to instill that as values for your children and family.

Secondly, thanks for sharing about getting those crystals at Microsoft and making a decision about not getting a bigger crystal for staying longer. I thought it was fascinating to hear about what was it like to hear in your first month and the culture shock about shaving and wearing a suit and all those things to eventually making a decision that, Hey, there was still a spirit in you that wanted to build something of your own.

Lastly, thanks so much for sharing about Poddster, about how the product market fit, the ideation came about and also how you've taken an expanded it, grown it, iterate on it and build a business model around it.

So on that note, thank you so much for sharing.

(34:21) Borko Kovacevic:

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure, great conversation. And kudos for having so many episodes and great podcasts. Like, I'm humbled to be here.