Aparna Pujar’s Interview on the Wonder Women Podcast: Part 1

The below is a transcript of the Wonder Women podcast, which can be found on YouTube here. Content has been edited for clarity.
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Monica Antoki

Hello everybody and welcome to our Wonder Women podcast, the main podcast for the businessmagazineforwomen.com.

In our podcasts, just like in our magazine, we’re focused on promoting women’s voices in business, technology, STEM, politics, sports, arts and culture. My name is Monica Antoki, I’m the founder of the businessmagazineforwomen.com and the host of today’s podcast.

Today we’re speaking with the CEO of Enfavr, Aparna Pujar, and we’ll be delving into the sharing economy and the helping economy and the reciprocity movements that’s going around. So Aparna, hi and welcome.

Aparna Pujar

Hi I’m happy to be here, very nice to have had this opportunity.

Monica Antoki

Absolutely, so let’s introduce you to our audience. Who is Aparna Pujar?

Aparna Pujar

I’m originally from India as as my name would have given away. I grew up and studied there and I have three siblings. I was always fascinated in tech as I was growing up and I eventually graduated as an electrical engineer. I later completed my master’s in computer science in the U.S. at Santa Clara University. I migrated to the U.S. 25 years ago and was fortunate to land in Silicon Valley. The internet at that time was just taking off and I got hooked. I love being in the thick and thin of all the action that has happened here and continues to happen. I also have two daughters. One of them is in college, and the other one is in high school. My husband also works in high tech and he is a human resource executive.

Monica Antoki

Prior to Enfavr you worked at eBay and Yahoo!, and you also have a women’s startup lab. Can you provide us with a background on that?

Aparna Pujar

As I mentioned before, my career actually grew with internet companies or internet-based companies. Yahoo! and eBay at the time where these iconic companies — even to this day they still are — and they had some of the most smartest people. I was glad to have had the opportunity to work with them. This is the generation that changed how we use internet today. I learned a lot and made some really good friends.

The women startup lab was different because I had decided to take on entrepreneurship and I knew I had to learn some basic skills about being an entrepreneur. Women startup lab was this fascinating accelerator that was designed to help women succeed as entrepreneurs. It was a perfect extension of the skill sets that I needed to have, especially with what I was trying to do in the next phase of my life.

Monica Antoki

So what made you switch from corporate to your own startup? What was the driving factor behind that?

Aparna Pujar

I am a product manager by trade and in Silicon Valley, the role of a product manager is to really go after untapped opportunities and find opportunities to build and create solutions. Being in the innovation capital of the world, you’re wired to think very differently. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, even on the projects I’ve worked on. I sort of had this “let’s do things in an innovative way” attitude. I loved problem solving and creating solutions. When my kids were younger, as a family we prioritized for the work-life balance so a corporate job was a perfect way in my mind to accomplish that. I was really happy to have gone through that experience.

Now that my daughters are grown up and they’re a little less dependent on me, I felt like the timing was right to take on entrepreneurship, which was and had always been my dream. The solid experience that I’ve had will certainly be handy and I’m very thankful for that.

Monica Antoki

It’s very surprising that you’re saying that it’s easier to be a parent in corporate America than an entrepreneur.

Aparna Pujar

The way I think about this is it’s a personal choice and even to some extent what your personal preferences are. Entrepreneurship is definitely much tougher than a corporate job. Now that I’ve gone through a year of being an entrepreneur, I realized that the buck stops at you and you are almost required to be involved in every aspect of running the company. Even though you hire some of the smartest people, people expect you to sort of guide them and give them the vision and drive the company to where you want it to go, so that does require a lot more mental involvement.
In the corporate world you’re working in a larger team, you have other people that are sort of your guiding forces or guiding factors and there is that sense of you know “I have someone to go to if I’m stuck somewhere, and there are people who can mentor me or guide me.” And within the corporate world, it’s much easier to reach out to people so to me it was less of a mental challenge than what it is in the entrepreneur world.

Monica Antoki

Plus you get to share a little bit of responsibility. Even though you’re not ultimately responsible, you’re not alone and you’re not the only one guiding the company or setting the goals, so yeah I understand. But it’s still surprising because a lot of women have a very hard time going back into the business world with children. It makes it a lot tougher when you have to take care of two children at home and still go back. It’s 8-5 or 9-5, it’s 45 hours a week, 50 hours a week, it’s not 80 hours a week that you put in as an entrepreneur. I would totally agree with you on that one as well.

So your startup — what is this about, why don’t you tell us a little more about it?

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Please see the next part of the interview here.