The $2 Trillion Retirement Crisis: How Niharika Shah’s Company Plans to Fix It

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Niharika Shah, founder and partner at 404 Harmony. They are a dynamic venture studio that focuses on the intersection of longevity and vitality. Their mission is to invest in and build transformative ideas that help people live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives. They give startups a strong foundation for growth by offering services like a co-founding approach, fractional operating model and access to an expert network. Now, Niharika has been recognized as one of the top 10 in wealth management in 2022, highlighting her impact in the financial sector.

She also contributes her knowledge as an external advisor at EY and as a board advisor plus adjunct professor at Rutgers Business School. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. Back to our guest today, founder of 404 Harmony, Niharika Shah. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Niharika Shah: Thank you, Anthony. It’s such a pleasure to be here and talk a little bit about my journey, what I’m up to and have a meaningful conversation.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s roll up our sleeves and get into it then, Naharika. You are an engineer turned marketer. You grew up in consulting and you were part of Cambridge Technology Partners. What drew you into consulting initially? How did that unfold?

Niharika Shah: What you’re looking for is looking for you. I think that is pretty much true of my entire career where I have taken risks and evolved and learned on the job as well. I think my foray into consulting was a little bit of happenstance.

I happened to get the job, but I think I really enjoyed it because as an individual, I love having conversations. I love solving problems. My superpower, if I can save it as one, is to connect things that other people can’t or won’t. It was a very powerful skill to bring to the consulting realm where you could listen, analyze, and very succinctly deliver meaningful ideas.

I think I was just wired that way. I think consulting was the right place to be for my skills to grow and mature and learn. The second thing, as I said, I’m an active learner. The idea of walking into an opportunity, a consulting opportunity, and really understanding the business, diagnosing what might be the challenges of the opportunities, and very quickly coming back with meaningful plans of roadmaps or ideas combined with financial implications was super exciting to me. One of the things that do come with consulting is, which you have to avoid, is the seagull effect. You land in poop all of the place and leave.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s the first time I’ve heard that one. I did begin to see some of that. As much as it was above my pay grade to make those decisions, but I think that was one of the other meaningful things I learned from consulting that informed my career going forward, is that I really wanted ownership of seeing something through its launch and maturation, which has affected and impacted a lot of my decisions as it relates to my career post-consulting. Is that what was behind the move from consulting into starting your own things? I’m looking at your resume here, and you’ve got stops at very notable companies along the way. We’ve mentioned Cambridge, there’s Toys R Us, there’s a long stint at Prudential, Tiffin EY. I have to imagine that as you’re making these moves, they’re coming with pay raises. You’re building a very nice and comfortable career. At some point, you decide to leave the comfort of that nest and go out on your own. What was behind that?

Niharika Shah: First, none of this was planned. I have two daughters who are now entering their own careers. I think especially in this day and age, to think you have a five or 10-year roadmap, I think they’re good north stars to have, but to be attached to the path to get there, I think, is self-defeating. One of the things that I’ve always reserved the right to is to adapt to the situation. I talk about there was IQ, there’s EQ, and I think in today’s world, we need AQ, which is adaptability quotient.

How quickly are you able to adapt to where the world is going and retool and reskill yourself? I think part of it was that, just being able to understand and not go with the flow per se, but go with where the momentum was. Having gone through a corporate career and left consulting primarily because for family reasons, the travel and so on, but the nine years at Prudential were amazing. Prior to that, my claim to fame was launching babies are us on Amazon when Amazon was just books. It was a tremendous experience for somebody so young to see that play out, learn from the good and the bad. I was able to bring that to my career post that.

At Prudential, and the reason I want to share that story is, I got to see big corporate function. While the heart is in the right place, action becomes a and my mandate, I remember my boss saying, going into his office and just saying, hey look, I’m going to go. I’m going to break some things along the way, but I’m going to go.

He was like, just go, just go. I think somebody like that at Prudential to come in and shake things up was very much probably the reason why I stayed for the nine years. I stayed for the reasons not why I joined. It was really a very amazing learning experience, especially from a leadership perspective. I was leading a large team with a very generous budget, which was very helpful. But two things dawned on me from that experience.

One is Prudential invests a lot in research. It was very clear to me that the financial ecosystem was letting the average person down. A lot has been done and money has been thrown, but really in terms of outcomes, we haven’t been that effective. This economy and generally makes it really expensive to be poor.

And that really hit my heart. The second thing, intellectually, being an engineer, I’m of the firm believe, and we’ve seen this happen. Disruption is going to come from the outside.

It’s going to come through tech. And I wanted to be part of it. Before going and launching my own thing, I actually joined Tiffin, which is a venture platform focused on wealth and asset management and learned tremendously about what it means to stand up a business from the ground up with the right sentiment at heart, with the right technology at heart, with the right people, which was just an amazing experience. We launched 13 businesses in less than three and a half years. I ran them, grew them, see them, but then it was time for me to say, okay.

Anthony Codispoti : 13 businesses all under the Tiffin umbrella?

Niharika Shah: Yes. And it was an amazing run. And again, Tiffin’s based out of Boulder, so their travel was becoming a little tough.

Anthony Codispoti : Because you’re East Coast, right? You’re in New Jersey?

Niharika Shah: I’m East Coast. I’m based in New York. And I also had, let’s talk about this. I had, even though my daughters were growing up and in high school, they didn’t need me as much.

It was now my parents, my mother that needed me and she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. So just, it wasn’t working. But I, again, it’s the outlook. I turned it into, okay, this is an opportunity for me to create something of my own. And that’s where 404 Harmony emerged. There were three things, Anthony, that sort of inform the core essence, the remit, the mandate of 404 Harmony. The first is that we want to stand up businesses that are truly creating value. There is no financial engineering. We’re building solid businesses from the ground up. So at the time that PE and VC money is needed, these businesses are sound with operational and financial rigor. To do that, we had to set up a very unique operating model.

We call it the fractional operating model. And if you look at, you know, how firms should be thinking about the future with AI and stuff like that, the traditional way was, here’s our people, how can we make them more productive with giving them technology and tools? We’ve taken a different approach.

We’re starting with digital labor. What can we do? What can we use? What can we build? So it’s not only what we build, but also how we build it, that is the core part of our platform. And then we wrap human potential and talent around it. It’s a very different way of building the firm. But you can do it that way to keep it.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s tech first and then figure out how do human beings interact with that tech to make it better?

Niharika Shah: Exactly. It’s the AI first approach, if you will, right? Which is, I mean, eventually, look, we’ll probably all be agent bosses, right? That’s going to be a new role. We’re going to have agents that are doing the work. We’re going to train them. We’re going to monitor them.

We’re yes, you’re absolutely right. We start with what can we build from a core technology perspective and then wrap human potential around it. Now, you do need human capacity to train these models and stuff like that. So don’t get me wrong. But it’s a very different way of looking and approaching how we build businesses. So what that does is keeps the burn rate down and optimizes speed to market and go to market as well.

So that was the second idea behind 404 Harmony. And the third, it’s all heart and soul, which is I wanted to work with people that I love and respect and have fun doing it, but also doing it for a higher cause and going back to what I was just saying about parents and general demography of the world, like longevity is staring us at our face. If you go back and look at the last 150 years and think about the greatest human accomplishment, one would say airplanes, one would say AI or chips or technology or penicillin or pasteurization of milk, but these all ladder up to one thing. We in the last 100 years had doubled lifespans. It’s hard to imagine that less than 100, 120 years ago, the average lifespan in this country was slightly higher, it was 51, but in other parts of the country, it was in the 30s, 40s.

And now look at us, we’re looking at average lifespans of 75 to 80, which is great. But I also subscribed to, I’m a huge fan of Dr. Gavande who sort of wrote this book, who did write this book called Being Mortal. And it was a call to action to the medical community to say, hey, look, we prolonged life, but we haven’t exactly prolonged living. And so that became our thesis,

Anthony Codispoti : which is- That’s a big part of what you want to do. You’re not just trying to extend life, okay, the average age is 80, 85, depending on the part of the world. Now we want to bump that by two years. You say, we want to make the quality of life better as you get older as well. Yes.

Niharika Shah: And what does that mean? Like if you ask yourself, ask your parents, what does that mean? It means being vital, being capable, having social relationships, having family, being able to function and be independent, and enjoy the years that you work so hard to enjoy. So that became our thesis to invest and build at the intersection of longevity and vitality, which from a business perspective, you can call the category age tech, but it sort of spans fintech, health tech, med tech, consumables, anything

Anthony Codispoti : that- How does fintech fit into this? I mean, I get sort of the age tech, like let’s improve the quality of life. Where does fintech fit in?

Niharika Shah: Well, what’s one of the biggest concerns that people have as they age, that they run out of money before they do, right? So financial security is inextricably linked to any kind of wellness. If you think about, of course, health is first and foremost on people’s minds, but what are the things that impact your health besides something that you might have from a disease or illness perspective? It is stress, anxiety over money. And so the sort of- In a person’s mind, we as an industry might separate financial wellness from health and wellness, but from an individual’s perspective, they’re so inextricably linked. You might have health issues, but if you haven’t planned for them financially, you’re not going to be able to manage the care and the cure that is needed and vice versa, right?

If you don’t have the health, what’s the point in having the money if you’re not able to enjoy it? So fintech, especially as we look, I think, again, let’s talk about fintech. The industry has done, I think, in the last 15, 20 years, if you go back from how we- and let’s talk about retirement, how we move from a defined contribution world, which you’re familiar with, I’m sorry, a defined benefit world to a defined contribution world. In the mid-70s, we put a lot of burden on the individual to start saving and planning for their retirement.

And we’ve, for the most part, failed them. The average account balances in 401k plans are not what they should be. People treat them sometimes as their checking account, where they withdraw money, which is brought with penalties and another detrimental impact.

So we, as an industry, I think over the last 15, 20 years have done a great job in helping people on the accumulation side. Now you automatically opt in into your 401k’s, but not so much on the decumulation side of things. So I think when it comes to- Decumulation? It’s how do you spend down the money that you’ve accumulated in your working years, right? So you, there’s accumulation, you sort of retire and the very definition of retirement is changing.

Anthony Codispoti : So, Nahrako, maybe what’s one of the, like, if we can maybe do, like, a specific portfolio company and talk about, like, something specific that they’re offering that helps with this?

Niharika Shah: Yeah, for sure. I’ll talk about the American Retirement Company. It is our marquee project has the potential to surely take a big bite out of the sort of $2 trillion retirement deficit that we’re looking at by 2045. And essentially the use case here is going back to human behavior just as an aside when as a potential and we were researching 20-somethings, it was easier for them to imagine a zombie apocalypse than it was to imagine their own retirement. It is so distant and so unknown that- and it’s not, you know, people imagining themselves old is not a fun thing to do.

So that was pretty insightful to me. So what Archie essentially does is takes the liquidity, if you do want to borrow money out of your 401k, the behavior today is to hit up your account, pay a penalty, and if you don’t pay it back, that account is liquidated, which is bad for the plan sponsor, which is your employer. It’s bad for the record keeper, and it’s bad obviously for the individual and their family, because now they have significantly impacted their retirement savings. So what we’re building at Archie is an alternative mechanism for us to provide liquidity to people who need to borrow out of their 401k while retaining a lot of the value and the accumulation in their current plan. So the plan sponsor benefits from a fiduciary perspective. The record keeper, of course, loves it because the assets stay in plan. And then for the participant, it’s meaningful as well.

Anthony Codispoti : So is this using the 401k as collateral for some kind of a more traditional loan so that they’re not incurring the penalties of withdrawing directly from the 401k?

Niharika Shah: I’m not going to give away the secret sauce, but it is a credit, a generative AI credit worthiness assessment that does involve the 401k, but it takes into a lot of other factors as well.

Anthony Codispoti : And is this something that is currently available in the market?

Niharika Shah: People can access it? We’re about 18 months from launch. We’ve taken a different view of, look, the way that we think about Archie is, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Tappan Zee Bridge. The Tappan Zee Bridge has been around for many years, was sort of weeding down to the nuts and bolts, but has tremendous amount of traffic connecting New York and New Jersey. They did in five years built this beautiful bridge that runs parallel to the old bridge. And nothing changed as far as the commuter was concerned.

The tolls remain the same. It was just a better experience. And it was faster, better, more optimal, more environmentally friendly, and all of that. And that’s exactly what we’re doing at Archie, which is just building a bridge. So there’s demand already. We don’t need to conjure up demand. There’s 40 years of pent up demand.

So do answer your question. The platform will be live in about 18 months, but we’re very confident that as soon as we get up and running, it’ll scale really fast simply because demand already exists.

Anthony Codispoti : Is there any thought, I don’t know if you want to share this yet, on what the actual rollout looks like? Is this, are you talking to sort of the 401k management companies? Are you talking to the employers? Are you going right to the employees who are already enrolled in a participating program?

Niharika Shah: All of them, actually. So we want to build this with strategic and by strategic here, I mean meaningful players on the record keeping side as well as on the wealth side. Because one of the other challenges that the financial industry has been looking to solve for a long time is how do we take employer participants, whether they’re in group benefits or time in benefits, and convert them into retail customers. So we think that is a very critical role for all players in the ecosystem to play, including RIAs, wealth managers, plan sponsors, record keepers, etc.

in this ecosystem that we’re standing up. So yes, we do have already access to about 30 million participants through the the strategic that have agreed to either invest or come on as the first set of customers.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, that’s exciting. That’s kind of what you were alluding to. Like once this is ready, you know, 18 months ish from now, you accept, you expect this to just kind of, you know, take off because you’ve got a lot of those partnerships in place that have access to so many folks who are going to want this service that you’re providing.

Yep. Can you maybe, is there something in sort of the like when I first heard you say age tech, I thought more like, I don’t know, supplements or like medical advancements that would help. Are there any companies in your portfolio currently that are focused kind of more on that side of things?

Niharika Shah: Yeah, we have, we have, I will say, two, but admittedly, we’re light. So our backgrounds in the network, we’re about 14 people strong plus our extended network, generally because of where we come from is strong on the financial services side. We are actively looking for a partner on the on the health and life sciences side to build out the next launch of our portfolio companies. In our first set, I would say there are two ideas, one in concept, which is a consumable, you’ll find this funny, that enhances sexual virility, if you will.

Anthony Codispoti : Very popular category.

Niharika Shah: Mixed with alcohol, it’s sort of the, you know, so that’s, that’s, that’s one idea we’re working on. It’s a fun project. And this is where some of my students from Rutgers who, who might be able to help, right?

So they’re helping with the formulation and stuff like that. It’s an exciting project. But the more advanced one, which is actually, which is actually launched is, is careful one. And careful one is my own personal owed, if you will, to, to aging. And what I went through in terms of setting up a secure, fast, reliable, responsible ecosystem for my mom in India, when she, when I moved her there, is what now I have brought in with automation.

And a lot of, obviously, I’m going to say this again, AI embedded in it, but it’s, it’s basically a long distance caregiving application. Where if you think about, you know, they’re about 40 million. And right now we’ve launched us in India, but I’ve already gotten queries from Mexico, from the UAE, because we’re all, we live in a globally distributed world. The diet, the Indian diaspora just use that as an example.

It’s about 40 million non resident Indians, right? Who are, and I look at my peers, people I went to school and college with my friends, family, we’re all dealing with the same situation with aging parents, not physically co-located with where we are. So careful one is a comprehensive sort of caregiving solution spanning medical, you know, CCTV, yoga, nutrition, financial, estate planning, social community, huge part of wellness, because when mobility is impacted, social engagement is impacted. So we’re looking at ways that we can use digital to bring a little more of that social engagement and fulfillment to our elderly loved ones.

Anthony Codispoti : And so this is something that’s already available in a couple of markets.

Niharika Shah: Yes, yes, careful one.net is live. Yes. Okay, interesting. It’s the beta release. We’re right now standing up about 20 families. And then in September, when we actually do our full launch, our goal is to obviously scale to multiple cities as well within India.

Anthony Codispoti : So I want to better understand, Nahrika, the co-founding approach that you take. And so help us understand, are you investing in very early stage companies and then kind of helping them along? Are you sort of incubating the ideas and then finding operating partners to kind of bring into the mix? And you sort of both push forward together? Or what does this look like?

Niharika Shah: Our co-founding or founding approach is actually flexible based on the quality of the idea. If we like the idea, we will find a way to work with the founder. In some cases, the ideas come from within the network. In some cases, the ideas would come from external sources like a founder looking to within, you know, just an idea on paper. And if we believe in the idea, the way that it works is, again, you know, with some god rails around it, but the founder retains majority of equity.

We coach them. That’s a big part of founder-led businesses. The CEOs, you know, could be young, not or immature in their leadership, don’t know how to stand up a company besides just building the tech. So there’s a whole track around CEO coaching and founder coaching that we have. In addition to that, we do invest.

Again, it depends on where how the founder is capitalized. But the beauty of our model is when we take a business on, we are hands-on operating partners, right? So we’ll jump in, we’ll take fractional roles, and we bring the power of our network to bear. So whether it’s our curated partners on the marketing, creative, engineering, ops, finance, we’ve got partners for all of that, as well as extended network, right? So what’s the other challenge besides once the product is ready is opening doors and especially enterprise doors, right?

Those are very, very hard to knock on and open. So that’s where the power of our network comes in. So we can see a founder all through their entire, at least initial, first three-year journey is pretty much where we’re committed to, right from bringing MVP. Our goal is to reduce MVP time, which on average is about eight months, depending for startups, especially in this space, down to about three to four months. Our burn rates are very, very low, given our fractional operating model and our partners. And then we just test and iterate. And we can, our goal is to see them through their subsequent round of funding, which usually happens to be a series A, at which point we either liquidate our position or we’ll stay on, depending on what the financials look like.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to go back to Care for One for a moment, because I understand this just recently launched in the Indian market. And you got to be there for that. Am I right? Tell me about that trip.

Niharika Shah: It was a very meaningful trip. And something, like I said, what you’re looking for is looking for you. I had wanted to launch Care for One earlier this year, but for a variety of reasons. I had other priorities. It happened to be my mother’s 80th birthday, which I was going down to India for. And it just, the two things aligned.

And I was delighted to have announced Care for One on my mother’s 80th birthday. Even the name, I should say this, 404 Harmony. There’s a story behind it.

There’s a lot of personal and romantic story behind it. And of course, the brand story is maybe harmonized business tech and people so that your business doesn’t become a 404. But I’ll tell you this, Anthony, 404 Harmony is my parents’ residential address in India. So this is all.

Anthony Codispoti : So it’s not a reference to a 404 page error on the internet?

Speaker 3: Well, that’s the brand story. The real story is that it’s my parents’ home address in India.

Anthony Codispoti : I love when there’s sort of those double meanings in crossovers like that. And I’ve heard you talk a bit, Naharika, about sort of the challenges earlier on in your career of requiring lots of travel, having a family. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the challenges of a professional woman kind of balancing this. How do I raise my family? How do I be there? And how do I also be here for a very demanding career?

Niharika Shah: Yeah. And look, there’s no book and I don’t think anybody solved it. The only thing I can talk about what’s worked for me and every day was brought different challenges. You can have it all just not in one day.

I think that’s the first thing. And the second is as you look, people talk about balancing. There is no such thing as balance. I think it’s prioritization. And if you take the three things of your family, yourself and your work, one rule that I lived by is one can’t lose all the time and one can’t win all the time. And so if I have a board meeting, I can’t go to my parents’ the PTA meeting, that’s okay. But if it happens three or four times, it’s not okay. Yeah, that’s kind of the thing.

The other thing I would say, it takes a village. I made the silly mistake when my first child was born saying, I got to do everything. Like, I had a nanny, but I got to do everything else, right? I got to always change the baby’s diapers.

I got to oversee the food. And it’s not possible. So how about much you can afford, outsource, take all the help you can. It takes a village. And so I learned a few hard knocks that way, but it helped. It also helps when you have a supporting partner. My children have always grown up with thinking of us as a parental unit. And they were like, if one of the parentals around, we’re okay.

But it does get silly sometimes. And this was when I decided to leave my consulting job, which I absolutely loved. My husband was in France, and I had to go to Dallas for a pitch. And my nanny wasn’t available or she was ill. I had to wake up the kids at four in the morning, drive to the airport, wait for my husband to land. He got in the car, and then I took the plane.

And I was sitting in the plane and I was like, this is no way to bring up children, and even for my own sanity. So that’s when you’ve got to recognize that something needs to change. And having that self-awareness, that something needs to change. Because people will not, and this is something that I even noticed when I was deciding to leave Tiffin for everything that was going on with my mom.

We as women, and I think as professionals do an incredibly good job of hiding what’s going on inside and pretending like everything’s okay. So in both instances, when I decided to leave the marketing agency and I decided to leave Tiffin, it wasn’t my co-workers or my bosses that were more shocked. It was my family that was very shocked. That we didn’t even know that this was going on inside of you. And so because we try to, I can do it all.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m strong, put up a good front.

Niharika Shah: And nobody wins in that case. So I think being honest with oneself in terms of something needs to change and weighing the options in terms of there is no best outcome.

That is the optimal outcome. And that varies depending on the context in your own situation. But I think just not constantly, but ever so often just sitting down and having a think about what you’re doing.

Is it fulfilling you? Because at the end of the day, I mean, you would agree. What matters? It’s people and relationships and the love that you have in your life and the love that you’re able to give back.

that is absolutely no compromise on that, right? So just sitting down and saying, am I living true to that has been helpful and helped me make those right decisions and navigate jobs. And I’ve turned down some amazing opportunities. There was one job that was based out of Columbus and I said, I can’t move. They said, don’t worry, we have a jet plane that leaves from Tito Borough Airport to Columbus every morning and you can just go in the 730 and come back at six. I was like, heck no. But it was an amazing opportunity, but no.

Speaker 3: So I’ve got younger boys, they’re nine and 11 and sometimes they ask me questions about my work and oh, why do you have to work today? Like we’re recording this in the middle of July and they’re on summer break and why do you have to go to work every day, dad? And I mostly kind of blow off their questions because I just think that they won’t understand the answers. But I suspect that if I were more open about the things that I am working on, the highs, the lows, the challenges, that’s probably gonna be helpful for them as they get older and find themselves starting their own career and they don’t feel so, I don’t know, maybe alone or isolated when they run into struggles. And cause they’re like, oh, they may, I’m thinking and tell me now because you’ve got daughters who are kind of in the early stages of their career now. Do you think it’s helpful for kids to be able to hear things like that from their parents so that when they get there, they don’t think that it’s just all rainbows and sunshine.

They’re like, oh yeah, I remember seeing my mom, I remember seeing my dad kind of have a hard time with things at times and that’s sort of part of the natural path.

Niharika Shah: Yeah, I mean, I would balance the venting with the teaching moment, right? I think, you know, kids are watching all the time and it was interesting because about three months ago, my daughter who’s about a year and a half into her job said, mom, now I realize how mad you must have gotten because the number of times I called you at work because now she gets it, right? But on the other hand, I think, and this is where, you know, whether it’s daughters or sons, I think they’re both fiercely independent and so terribly proud of the way that I’ve managed my career, I think so. I’ve been a really good resource to them, but I’ve also involved them, you know, and this is a much kudos to companies like Prudential where we had bring your child to work day and, you know, as an advertising marketing, so they could see some of the output. It was interesting, right?

Hey, that’s my TV commercial that’s just running. My mom did that, right? And there were times, and I tried, right? I was class mom, but when they were in elementary school and I was very clear, look, I can’t be there all the time, but, and I’ll do all the background work, right?

Give me the shopping, give me the collecting the money because my physical schedule is tough, but I can do some of the back end. So they understood that and they understood the rationale of why I was doing what I was doing, but I did try to, I didn’t completely disconnect, but again, I also understood boundaries because you can’t be everything all at one time. So that’s kind of the way that I managed it, but I would say, you know, especially my daughters, there were times that there were emergencies and I was, let’s say in a meeting and I couldn’t answer the phone and shit happens. But then they defaulted to, we had a whole call list in case of those.

Anthony Codispoti : The village call list, the village call list, the village that it takes to raise, yeah. Yes, yes. Neharika, tell us about your life philosophy of playing to win with a bad hand.

Niharika Shah: Well, first, I’m a card counter. So the analogy to cards is one that is very personal and unique to me.

Anthony Codispoti : So if I’m going to Vegas, I should buy you a seat on the airplane, okay.

Niharika Shah: I will say this, but this happened a long time ago, when I was walked out of a casino, so I don’t do that anymore. But I grew up playing bridge with my parents.

So that’s where the whole card counting thing came in. But look, I think you just have to assume that things will not go the way that you want them to go. There will be things that’ll come in your way.

There will be people that, you know, situations, et cetera, et cetera. I think if once you stipulate that and you get over it and you just say, okay, now I’m here and I’m here to win, and I don’t mean win in that ruthless, I’m going to push you out with my elbow kind of win. It is defining what it means to win, right. And for me, playing to win was working with great people, coming up with things that could impact other people. I want to be part of a million stories in this world, not just four or five stories. So that for me is winning, but also understanding that, you know, you’re going to get many tough blows and you’re going to, again, going back to adapt.

You’re going to have to adapt. And that’s what skillful card players do, is they look at what strengths they have, what weaknesses they have. They read the room, right? If you played poker or blackjack, it is analytical in terms of how you make the decisions to hey, hit or pass or stay or whatever. So I think that’s kind of been my philosophy. And again, a card player never walks away as opposed to, you know, some other careers where you’re only as smart as your last campaign or your last business. You’re playing the long game if you’re a true card player. And you’re playing it with all your strengths and weaknesses and everything else that’s thrown at you. But life again is law of big numbers, right?

This is my engineering mathematics done. This is showing up. But it is, you know, you believe in the law of large numbers and some of them will be good and some of them won’t be in your favor. But just keep going.

Anthony Codispoti : Whatever the hand is that you’re dealt, you’ve got to do your best job to play that hand.

Speaker 3: No way to walk away, no way to stay.

Anthony Codispoti : Who was the Kenny? Kenny Rogers. Yeah, great song. I’m going to have to go listen to that. You know, and it’s interesting whether you’re such a strong background in engineering in the Harka, don’t often see sort of this mix of, you know, engineering, marketing, and you really see yourself as a connector of people, ideas and technology. Is there a story you can tell where kind of this knack for connection led to some kind of a breakthrough in your work or for, you know, one of your portfolio companies?

Niharika Shah: Yeah, I’m thinking of an example. I’ll give you an example, which actually I had to shut down post COVID. But I’m a foodie at heart, and I’m a storyteller too. And I was looking at ways to bring this together and I was at an event, I was speaking at an all women’s event and I came across these amazing immigrant women who were a spiling chefs but didn’t know where to go.

And so the challenge thrown at me as advisor on the nonprofit board was, can we do something? You know, to create an income stream for these women. And the idea was to take heirloom recipes from each of these immigrant women and bottle them as sauces. And the actual brand was the woman herself and her story. So I had Sofrito, I had, you know, Vindaloo and some, you know, Peri peri sauce, et cetera, from all these different these women and was such a beautiful experience because I was able to create a platform for them to network together, to share their skills, create an income stream for them. And eventually each one of them actually took off and are now really good entrepreneurs on their own.

And I just shut the platform down during COVID because for a variety of reasons. But that was one example in which it was, it was because of my appreciation of food, my appreciation of the immigrant story, being a woman, having connections with nutritionists and biochemical scientists. And obviously also having the funding. And this is where something with Rutgers, the food and innovation program really helped. It’s bringing all of those pieces together to create something meaningful. I’m not sure if that was a good example, but.

Anthony Codispoti : I think it’s a great example. And I didn’t realize that you had kind of, you know, leveraged the relationships at Rutgers. And, you know, what did you say, biochemical scientists? Like how were they sort of playing a role in the food production?

Niharika Shah: Even though the products were organic, when you bottle something, it has to have a shelf life. It has to go through. So the formula, the recipe itself has to be adapted A for large volume, even if it was an artisanal batch, you’re still looking at, you know, 250 bottles in every batch. So the recipe has to adapt to that. And then the ingredients, while we wanted to stay all organic, all natural. And when you look at shelf stability, there are certain things related to pH level, et cetera, that you have to modify in the original recipe to make sure it’s shelf stable. So all of that has to be done with, you know, food cytos.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, that makes sense. You’ve talked earlier in our conversation, Harika, about the fractional model that you guys leverage and it works so well. Can you maybe speak to a specific example of that? And I’ve got one in mind, a custodia financial, where, and tell me if I’ve got these numbers right, because they seem unbelievable. You reduced operating costs by 73%. And you were able to complete a project for $220.

Niharika Shah: $220,000. $220,000, instead of the initial $500,000 proposal, sort of less than half. Yep. Details, please.

Niharika Shah: Yeah, it’s a fascinating relationship. Again, custodia financial operates in the retirement loan area. So Fintech aligns with our mission and a great sort of leadership team there. They came to us because they were at a pivot moment. And one of our partners was actually responsible for helping them figure out how to pivot their strategy.

We can talk a little bit more about what that pivot is, but which essentially required a whole new platform to be stood up in less than three months. And they were willing to pay, as you can see, a lot more than what we actually charged them. And this happened, A, because we understood the strategy, we were able to influence it. Our set of partners that we activated we have preferred rates with them, but we know exactly how to work with them.

So there was no wastage there. And then some of our network members actually took on fractional operating roles just to see the initial six to nine months until we got the first set of six customers for them. So all in all, I would say that that was a, for me, it was a hard moment, which was because we didn’t even go in planning these to be the outcomes. It’s when we look back and said, hey, this is what we were able to achieve, now let’s productize this offering, if you will. So yeah, it was an interesting learning experience, data point, but also like a proof point of where I think startups will go too, which is you’ll have 10, 15, maybe 20 people, companies achieve billion dollar valuations with AI and this fractional model and the desire to keep operating burn rates really low. I think this is the model for the future.

Anthony Codispoti : I’d like to explore something kind of along these lines. As you talked earlier about IQ, everybody’s familiar with, intelligent quotient, EQ, emotional quotient, and now something you’re calling AQ, the adaptability quotient. And I think this is something that is really coming to the forefront for a lot of people in their thought processes. Probably a lot for your daughters or people a little bit earlier, maybe just in college, coming out of college, trying to think like, what am I gonna do? Like the jobs that five years ago seemed like the primo jobs to be shooting for, now nobody’s hiring for. And people who have had those roles for a long time are losing their jobs. How do you kind of think of this in sort of a big picture way?

And I don’t know what coaching might you give to a parent like myself who’s got young kids that in the next several years are gonna be making choices for, that steer them towards their future careers and not really knowing kind of how the AI landscape is gonna unfold and what it means for job prospects.

Niharika Shah: Yeah, I mean, look, everybody’s grappling with this question. I would say, change is constant, its velocity is not. And I think what we’re all getting a little whiplashed and maybe shocked about or paralyzed is that velocity has picked up tremendously over the last five, 10 years and especially now, right? And we’re gonna, every day is something new. So I think just again, let’s stipulate that that’s the fact. Things are changing.

Anthony Codispoti : Change is a constant.

Niharika Shah: And the velocity is increasing, right? It’s accelerating that pace of change has increased, 10-fold, 100-fold and it’s only going to get faster and faster. So I think with that understanding, I do think the power of the human mind, and there are two thoughts to it, right? One thought is that we’re actually getting dumber. And this is not just because of tech. If you go back to Hindu mythology from thousands and thousands of years ago and what they were able to consume and document, blows anybody’s intellect today if we had to sit down and do it. I mean, go back 270 years, look at the American constitution. These people were 20, 25, 40 at most, right?

That came up with that masterful, peace and idea and concept of what America needed to be. So I think this idea of we’re all gonna get dumber. I think let’s just put that to the side.

It’s been happening for a while. I do think that as it relates to professions, it’s not very quickly, at least, that people are gonna get replaced by AI, but I think the people who don’t know how to use it will get replaced, right? So the advice that I would give is, again, going back to how we built for a fork, start with digital labor.

What is going to be there that is going to be available digitally? And then how can you yourself as human potential and creativity and intellectual prowess, how do you maximize that to the benefit or to an outcome? Technology for its own sake has no meaning. When technology is applied carefully, constructively, it can have outcome at scale. So I think there are certain careers that are gonna die.

I think coding as such, just pure writing lines of code, probably not gonna exist in a few years. Crazy. You know, marketing, my vertical is marketing, right? I grew up in the world of marketing and I’m actually leading a couple of discussions with two different advisory groups on the impact of AI and marketing and creative services. Huge, and I think if that industry doesn’t really contemplate their future in the world of AI, it’s going to suffer. We can deny it and push it on the corporate, but that is going to change tremendously. The sales process is going to change.

And it’s all for the better. There’s so much waste. I mean, I’ll give you an example, the asset management industry, it’s a $53 billion problem in terms of distributing products. And the answer is being, let’s make more products. There are more model portfolios than the ETFs today.

Who cares, right? And the model is very sales, wholesaler based. That needs to change so that that waste can be applied to something more productive. So I think there will obviously be opportunities and careers that people will look at, but that’s the beauty of it. I hope that we get to the point that we can all work five or six hours a day and enjoy life. And maybe that’s the best outcome we all get.

Anthony Codispoti : So you see that there’s a lot of upside to it. And obviously there’s going to be, anytime that there’s been sort of big technology changes, there have been people who, you know, they struggle sort of during that transition. And I think what’s most scary about this for people today is, and you hit on it, is that the pace of the change is so fast. We’ve never seen it this quickly. This happened this quickly before. And that’s kind of giving people that whiplash. Like I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to be. You might be somebody who’s later on in your career and you’ve been very good at what you’re doing. And now, yeah, those roles are getting eliminated.

You could be somebody very early on in your career or in college or high school and trying to figure out what’s next. And I think that’s where that AQ comes in, right? Being able to be adaptable. And I think anyways, sort of embracing the power of curiosity and getting really good at learning new things, getting really good at the skill of learning itself. Because I think that’s probably what sets you up best for success long term. Absolutely.

Niharika Shah: And I think it’s also not being tied to the path so much. I’ve seen some really brilliant 35 year olds saying, hey, look, we’ve got a whole generation of people. I mean, we talked about this 83 trillion wealth transfer that is sitting on the sidelines.

But if you sort of peel back the onion and look inside it, what is it? It’s about small businesses, right? With the folks who ran them coming to the age of retirement. That is a superb industry right now, small businesses, whatever they might be, is to go in and run them. Because either they do not have generational pass through or they don’t have people who want to run those businesses, but look at it purely from a portfolio perspective. Those are very, very interesting businesses to invest and run and grow a whole franchise. So you don’t have to be wedded to just the path that you’ve learned through college or your career.

I think that is another part of adaptability. What was I doing setting up a food business? But it was fun and interesting. And look, if COVID hadn’t happened, I think that business would have been a moderately successful one as a small business.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s shift gears, Naraka. Would like to hear about a serious challenge that you have overcome, whether it’s personal or professional. How did you get through that? What did you learn?

Niharika Shah: I think I’ve talked about my transition from Tiffin as I was dealing with my mother’s situation. So I won’t go there again. I’ll talk about something that it took me, it was humbling and it took me a while to get through it. It took me a while to process it. So this is during my career at Prudential. And there was a time that I let as the leader, I let my leadership team down. I was very disappointed in myself. Now, I won’t say it was entirely my fault, but I was the leader. It’s my fault. I have to take responsibility.

But it’s when you’re faced with circumstances like this, it’s what do you do and who are the people you call on? And coincidentally, I was going off on a 10 day vacation and I went to my boss and I said, look, I screwed up. And all I want you to do is to meet with my team.

And it’s not that I needed to tell him, maybe it would have gotten to him anyways, but I went to him and like Mia Kalpa, how will we got here? We’re here. But I want you to just do one thing for me, which is while I’m away, can you meet with my team and just tell me, have I lost the locker room? If I’ve lost the locker room, then I’m done. If I haven’t, then I’m willing to put in the work to make things right. And fortunately, when I, by the time I got back, my boss who has really been instrumental, I think in influencing how I grew up as a leader at Prudential said, you haven’t, they still respect you.

They don’t agree with some of the decisions you’ve made, but you haven’t lost the locker room. And I was like, okay, that’s it. I can put it in there. And it was, like I said, it was very humbling.

I had to walk in with a big pit in my stomach, like, go to each one of them and say, I’m sorry, I screwed up, I own it. Let’s move forward. How do we do that? And I think that was also appreciated.

And they still remain lifelong friends. But I didn’t dig in. I asked for feedback. I asked for help. I came to terms with it, because as an individual, as a professional, sometimes telling yourself the truth is the hardest thing to do. But I think I’m better for it. It was not easy. It took me about six months to win back the team. But I did. And I grew a few, lost a few hair and went gray a little bit, but it was all worth it. Because at the end of the day, I think there is still respect. And I continue to be friends with them.

Anthony Codispoti : So when you say you screwed up, obviously we’re not talking about you, brought in the wrong coffee or something. This was obviously a more significant kind of misstep. And to the point where you were concerned about, have I lost the team? Do they no longer respect me?

Is it just time for me to go? And that’s really hard. I have to imagine you’re in a position of leadership. You had these people’s respect. They came to you, you were guiding the team in the past on important decisions.

And now this thing happens. And it’s not easy to go within and be like, all right, this was on me, my fault. I messed this up. Let’s fix it together.

Let’s move forward. That’s not easy to do. Like kind of a natural human reaction is to have a reflex of being defensive and point fingers. And not my fault or just a tiny bit my fault.

Or it was really him or her or circumstances out of my control. So I mean, hats off to you for kind of being able to step into that, own that situation, talk with your boss, and then go and have those hard conversations with each one of those employees individually. Was there anyone else besides your boss at the time that was kind of really helpful in guiding you sort of through that difficult period?

Niharika Shah: I wouldn’t say guiding, but supporting. I think I did let my husband know what was going on. And more also telling him I need space. There was a time that I got into the pool and didn’t come out for eight hours. I just, I had to walk through it. And my family also, like the girls were big enough to know that there was something off with mom, but they let me be. And they let me be because I brought my husband into the fold and said, this is what’s going on. And he was just a good listening, non-judgmental sounding board. There were times that he was worried for my wellness and he was like, why are you doing this?

Just like, you could get another job if you just made a few phone calls. And I was like, no, I need to see this through. Maybe at the end of it, I will leave, but I need to make this right.

Anthony Codispoti : Can’t run from the problem. You gotta face it head on. You gotta fix it. And then you can make decisions about what it looks like going forward.

Niharika Shah: Exactly, because it’ll follow you somewhere or the other if you don’t fix it now, right? So, and I cared tremendously for these group of people for me to actually even think of doing that, right? Because for me, it all goes back to again, people and relationships. So I think he was very supportive through that journey. And thankfully, I’m blessed with few other career women who I’ve grown up with as well.

So I am very, I don’t hesitate in using that network when I need to. And I think it works the other way around. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. And whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing or whatever, when you need help, just ask. And I think people are just willing to help. I think what comes in the way is many people don’t ask for it. And somehow or the other, I’m shameless enough to always ask for help.

Anthony Codispoti : Good for you. What’s your superpower, Naharika?

Niharika Shah: The one that I already said. I think besides what I would say, the technical side of it, which is the systems thinking, right? We’re just connecting things that other people can’t or want. I would say now at this point, my superpower is that I’m not attached to the journey or the destination.

I’m attached to the people and the impact. It’s actually an adaptation of my favorite philosopher who happens to be Winnie the Pooh. And so Winnie the Pooh and Piglet are walking our forest and Winnie asks, actually it’s Piglet, but Winnie asks Piglet, like what’s more important?

Is it the journey or the destination? And Piglet turns to Winnie and says, no, you silly, it’s the company. And I think I’ve made that to be my superpower now, which is it is all about people and the quality of work and the fun that you have doing it and the impact that you will have. At the end of the day, how we get that and how much money we make and all of that is not so important to me.

Anthony Codispoti : I like that. I’ve never heard it put quite like that before. Maybe I should get back to reading more Winnie the Pooh because I’ve always thought, I mean, I think we’re naturally wired to, like it’s the destination, I’ve got this goal in mind I want to get there.

And we’re wired similarly. Once you hit that goal, what happens? You move the goal line, right?

Like you keep setting a new destination point. And so it’s like, well, let’s enjoy the journey along the way. But to your point, how are you really enjoying that journey? It’s not fun to walk it alone, right? It’s who you’re walking with as you make that traverse. So I like that. Winnie the Pooh wins again. How about a daily habit, routine, something that helps to start your day or keep you on track?

Niharika Shah: This doesn’t happen every day, but I want to, I aim to start my day and end the day with a smile on my face. And even if it is not, there is no reason or I’m not feeling that way, I force it because there is a chemical change that happens in your body when you force yourself to smile. And the way that I’ve done it is, there’s a principle called habit stacking. When you want to introduce a new habit, you stack it on to something that you already do.

So in the night, I know I put cream on my hands as women do, and eye cream and all of that. And that’s my reminder to smile. And in the morning, and this is my contract with my husband, whenever he’s around, he gives me coffee in bed.

And when I have that first sip of coffee, I smile to myself. It’s just I’ve stacked it that way. So I think that habit has really helped me. But otherwise, and you can see, I love puzzles and stuff like that. I cognitively, as much as people go out and work out fitness-wise, you’ve got to work your mind too, besides the work that we do every day. So I’m a big fan of doing crosswords and puzzles. So I carve out 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day to do my crosswords. So, you know, other puzzles. Love it.

Anthony Codispoti : Just one more question for you, Niharika. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, to everyone listening, just pause for just a moment, take a deep breath, and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app so you can continue to get more great conversations like we’ve had here today with Niharika Shah from 404 Harmony. I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you or follow your story, Niharika. What would that be?

Niharika Shah: Niharika at 404Harmony.com, or you can look for me on LinkedIn. Excellent.

Anthony Codispoti : We’ll include those links in the show notes for folks. So last question for you, Niharika. You and I reconnect one year from today, and you’re excited. You’re celebrating something. What’s that thing that you’re celebrating one year from today?

Niharika Shah: I’m celebrating the fact that we have impacted… more lives. And I’m gonna think about this for a moment in terms of numerical numbers. So let me play that back again. I would be really happy if there were two things. One is careful one has made caregiving the standard of care, the way that we provide it, the standard of care, and reduce the sort of the guilt and the burden on caregivers and families. I would be very happy saying that. The second thing I would say is, 404Harmony from our portfolio perspective has added on some more health-related businesses or startups in our portfolio. And the third would be that we have… And I say this in the most global citizen way, which is we’ve made a little more progress towards some of this nonsense that’s going on in this world, not happening anymore. We can all drink to that. Ms.

Anthony Codispoti : Niharika Shah from 404Harmony, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Niharika Shah: It’s been my pleasure, Anthony, and thank you so much for the conversation.

Anthony Codispoti : Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.