Elliot Moss
That was Nina Simone with I’m Going Back Home. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Priya Lakhani OBE, Founder and CEO of Century Tech, a company creating AI powered learning tools to transform education. Having left her career as a barrister to build the UK’s first fresh Indian sauce company, Masala Masala, based on her mum’s traditional recipe, Priya’s sauces were on Waitrose shelves in less than a year after launch and the company’s philanthropic arm went on to provide over three million meals and thousands of vaccines to the underprivileged in India and Africa. Shocked to learn that nearly 20% of UK children are underperforming in school, Priya turned her attention to how new technologies could help shake up education. In 2013 she launched Century Tech. Their vision for every teacher and learner to have access to intelligent tools that help them succeed. Century uses AI and neuroscience to understand each student’s individual strengths, weaknesses and behaviours and tailors their learning and assessments accordingly. It’s now used by teachers and students around the world with improvements in outcomes and reduced teacher workload. I’ll be talking to Priya in a few minutes about all of this. And the music in today’s Jazz Shapers comes from B B King, Professor Longhair, Esperanza Spalding and here’s Archie Bell and The Drells with Strategy.
Archie Bell and The Drells with Strategy. Priya Lakhani is my Business Shaper, as I billed earlier. Hello firstly. It’s very good to have you.
Priya Lakhani
Hi.
Elliot Moss
It’s very good to have you. I know that you think I say this to everyone that I finally get to come on the programme that I’ve been looking to get you for a while. I have because your name has come up many, many times. Partly because you seem slight polymathic and unusual. The lawyer that was then also an entrepreneur, that’s into education, that’s kind of into AI.
Priya Lakhani
That’s kinda weird.
Elliot Moss
It’s kinda weird that the, that you…
Priya Lakhani
The kind of mad. Is she crazy and chaotic?
Elliot Moss
…you have also, yeah, crazy, chaotic but also kind of likes the idea of being a journalist as well. So, who are you and how did we get here? How in 2023?
Priya Lakhani
I really liked your intro, so can we stick with that for now?
Elliot Moss
It’s great isn’t it, you can package someone up and go look how glossy and simple it is and of course life is not a straight line.
Priya Lakhani
No, it’s not.
Elliot Moss
And when you were little, when you were younger, was Priya going to become an entrepreneur?
Priya Lakhani
No. Probably. I don’t know. I think the thing is, when I was little, I just didn’t know what I wanted. I was really naïve; I think that’s probably the best way of describing me.
Elliot Moss
Naïve or young? You’re being hard on yourself.
Priya Lakhani
No, no, no. Really naïve. No, I’m telling you that now. I think, my husband says that to me, he says but in a nice way, he said thank goodness you were naïve. I think I didn’t realise actually how challenging and how difficult the world actually is, I think I was sort of brought up with, so Indian, East African Indian culture, parents who very typically from that culture, very, very focussed on education, very focussed…
Elliot Moss
First generation here for you?
Priya Lakhani
I’m first generation, so born and bred in Manchester, well in Hale in Cheshire, so my husband says stop saying you’re from Manchester because you’re not. And so…
Elliot Moss
You’re from the posh bit.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, you’re from the Manchester United Footballer area and but really brought up in, and I would say sort of a very wrapped up in cottonwool way, which is quite typical actually for females from that culture and so, you know, things, things were supposed to be a bit like a Disney film I suppose and then you get out into the real world and you, you know you just realise actually that there’s lots of challenge but fortunately I’ve been brought up also in a very entrepreneurial environment, so my father is an entrepreneur and I’ve seen them have to persevere through challenges in business, in life, in general. I’ve heard the stories about when family members were thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin, I’ve you know lived with that so, you know all of these things shape us and but yes, I don’t, I don’t. I think as a child I mean basically being told by my teachers that I wasn’t very smart and I was never going to be a barrister because I’m female from an ethnic minority and not smart enough to go to Oxbridge, so that kid actually wasn’t sure what she’d be. They popped in my traits into the, do you remember at school they had those computers…
Elliot Moss
The terrible battery test.
Priya Lakhani
…in the librarian.
Elliot Moss
I was going to be a landscape gardener, according to the test that I did which was really accurate.
Priya Lakhani
Yes, so they put me in the test, yes, they put me in this, typed up this stuff in the library, I remember being at the library and then she sort of spat out the results and gave them to me and I had to go home and tell my East African Indian parents who were like, “You know, you must become a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant, yes” and I had to tell them that actually I’m going to be a plumber or a librarian and so, you know my dad didn’t take to that too well, just because that’s not what their expectations were and so, you know, yeah, that kid, no I think if you’d said barrister then run a company in the FMCG sector and then AI, I think I would have just looked at you and just thought you were mad.
Elliot Moss
You talked about that kid and I’ve got four kids and I have conversations with some of them now, three teenagers, and one of them happened to say you know, I’m not that kid I was when I was ten or eleven, I’ve kind of reinvented myself. I’m like well you haven’t, you’re, I think you’re the same person, you may have just worked out what you want to do. Did you though reinvent? Do you now look at your life and go, “I kind of got it sorted here?”
Priya Lakhani
Not really, I think when I look and reflect on the journey, my values are the same and I think that’s what really matters. I think what you are doing and you know what path you choose, those things can change and actually I think being adaptable and being agile is essential, particularly as the world is advancing, technology is advancing, we’ve got all sorts of areas that are being disrupted but what is consistently the same are the values and that’s really important because it was actually a very young age, when I was around six years old, I remember spending lots of time on these long holidays in parts of East Africa, so this was in Nairobi in Kenya, and I really didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t like the fact that you know your term time in Hale in Cheshire and then holidays in a large home where you have servants who live in servant quarters, that just felt incredibly wrong and so that, that mission that I decided for myself at a very young age that I wanted to try and do something to have a positive impact on the world and help those that were less privileged than myself because I was very spoiled growing up, in like the nicest possible way but my parents you know provided everything for me and that set of values and that mission, you know always trying to act with kindness, always try and do the right thing, I mean that’s, some of us will slip up sometimes but just having those sets of values is what, is what creates you and then yes, if you want to see yourself as reinventing yourself then maybe that’s the healthy way to look at it but I think you’ll generally find that people stay very, very core to the values that they decide for themselves at a young age.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper, Priya Lakhani. We’re going to talk a bit more about values and then specifically how that has led her to do the various things that she has done and create the various things that she has done. Time for some more music right now. B.B. King, The Crusaders, Better Not Look Down.
Better Not Look Down, B.B. King and The Crusaders. I am with Priya Lakhani, she is the Founder and CEO of Century Tech, they’re the people that are applying AI and neuroscience to transforming education, which we’re going to come onto but I want to just track back a little bit. Your values that you talked about, you referenced a couple and then you talked about mission quite quickly, you talked about kindness and I think you said very early on you were, sounds like you were six when you said this isn’t right, you were inculcated with that sense of justice. My thesis about most people that become lawyers and I talk about this a lot in the day job as it were, is that there is a burning sense of social justice in most people that become lawyers at some point. Is that true for you then? Is that where that that went?
Priya Lakhani
It was literally a straight line between how do you change the world, equity and justice. Oh, that’s what a lawyer does. I like the one who wears the wig and the gown. Looks a bit like a cape in the wind.
Elliot Moss
That’s the barrister by the way, in case you didn’t know, those people are the barristers. Of course you do know that but if not, so you had a mini pupillage, you went down that route but very quickly went into the world of journalism and again, not by chance because if you’re a person that is very interested in the, in the news, then it’s probably likely that you are going to end up in it in some form.
Priya Lakhani
I didn’t know it would, yeah, I mean I didn’t know it would be. I sort of, actually, you know when I was a kid, I really said to my parents, I actually also like the media a lot but that wasn’t a wise choice to the, to the very traditional parents who sort of liked the doctors, lawyers and accountants but when I said barrister, they were incredibly very, very happy with that. My school said there’s no way that she’ll do that and then obviously we persevered and…
Elliot Moss
Did that make you more belligerent though, to say excuse me, don’t tell me what I can’t or can do?
Priya Lakhani
I didn’t fight for my education, my dad did. So he would call the school, he would argue with them. I was incredibly embarrassed and I think we’ve all got to be honest is, when we’re kids, we don’t think oh wow, my dad’s shouting at my Head Teacher, we just think oh my goodness, this is terrible and I’m mortified but when I reflect on that, that was one of the first examples where I saw somebody fighting for something, they were fighting to challenge the status quo because it’s not just about fighting the Head Teacher, it’s fighting this idea that in the ‘90s, barristers were white men who went to Oxbridge and so that has really had an impact on me later in life. Richard Harpin, who is the founder of HomeServe, who is one of my heroes in business, said to me when I was running the food company that I went onto found, he said “No + no + no + no + no + no + time = a yes” and it is, it perfectly encapsulates perseverance and the idea of you know when you receive the no’s, when the naysayers come at you and the naysayers are really interesting because I’ve met them when I was becoming a barrister, I met them when I was running a food company, you know, how can you possibly get a supply chain together, how could you possibly get into supermarkets, I certainly met them when I was trying to raise money for Century and I did lots of pitches to VCs and investors and I don’t how many I’ve met but how on earth can you create an AI company, you’re not a former Google engineer from One, you know I remember being yelled at in Cambridge, “Go home and stop wasting everyone’s time.” I remember all of these naysayers are not just “oh look, I’m not going to invest in you and I don’t know how you’re going to do but best of luck”, it’s generally “no, you’re not going to succeed and here are all the reasons that I think why” and I think that an early, very early experience of seeing my father challenge the status quo and saying you know “I don’t care if she’s not a white male who’s going to Oxbridge, this is what she wants to do and you will open up that path for her”, really taught me, in practice, the idea of perseverance and for an entrepreneur that is gold dust because you will always hit challenges, you will always be in a situation where you are facing some sort of adversity or you know there’s a no or that sale needs to go through or you can’t reach that customer or you can’t get the investment or whatever, you know the growth rate’s not as high as you wanted it to be and it's all about finding and adapting approach and that perseverance that gets you through.
Elliot Moss
But how in all of that and I can see because again, all you need to do is look back and go well, I did get Masala Masala going, I did become a barrister actually and I have gone and raised some money, so whoever was rude to me, thank you very much, take your rudeness elsewhere. But there must be an emotional hit. There just is, I mean all of us have had a no and you go, if you’re not in the mood, you’re feeling like you’re punched in the stomach so how do you, if you are continuously feeling like that, how do you kind of keep going, no, no, I’m going to carry on persevering because perseverance, it sounds like a great bumper sticker but the truth behind is there’s a person.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, it does, I mean look when I was thinking about Century Tech and I was forming the idea, I remember writing on a piece of paper in pencil in the top corner at 2 in the morning, “I am in over my head” because I was looking at other companies in the US and you know everyone had a sort of PhD or a Masters from MIT, I wasn’t even smart enough to get into an MIT when I was younger, so I was thinking am I absolutely crazy but I don’t know you sort of get up in the morning the next day and be a bit like that energiser bunny and just keep on going but the reason really why is because as you meet people who will say no, you do meet people who you know spur you on and wish you on, so I’ve got some of the most wonderful and incredible supportive investors who are on my cap table, who did invest in me, they did say yes and so it’s very, very easy to sit and think of the naysayers. Some of them actually no and they give you pretty good feedback and advice and you’ve got to be really honest with yourself and not drink your own Kool-Aid and go home and think actually, what can I learn from that? But when I wasn’t winning with venture capital, you know, and I really thought why is this not working and I did look at diversity stats in the end and I thought right okay and then I’ll say you know you do have the moments obviously, if someone gives you a hotel key card in the Charlotte Stret Hotel in your sixth meeting and says “I’ve got a room for us upstairs” or you have various moments like that, then it’s a little bit undeniable what’s going on, so I just changed approach and actually I went to high net worth investors, I use the SEIS EIS brilliant scheme that we have in the UK, I raise from family offices, and then I found an area where I could go and raise investment from and then as you succeed, you’re sort of proving it to yourself even though you might not be sitting there on some you know big armchair having a moment thinking oh look, you know, there are positive moments but those people do keep you going and the biggest reason and it really is the biggest reason and I hear this from all of my founder friends, is it’s the passion for the project, you know I will die trying to get this technology in front of all students, whether they are 5 years old to 95 years old because I fundamentally believe and I know from the data, it works and so I think for me it’s how could I not, you know I’d be mortified at the thought of I’m going to give up over a random person say no that’s not going to work or being a bit sceptical. In my mind, it’s like well you haven’t looked at the data, you haven’t heard what the market has to say and you don’t fundamentally understand it. Now if that’s my job not communicating it properly, then that’s my fault.
Elliot Moss
That’s a different thing.
Priya Lakhani
Then that’s my fault and I should learn from that but that’s what keeps you going and you know and there are investors who are fantastic and who support you in the right way, who ensure that you know they may have a board seat, they may not, but if you reach out to the right people and you surround yourself with the right energy then you know, nothing, you’re unstoppable and that’s what we need our innovators to be.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my guest today, it’s Priya Lakhani, she’ll be back in a couple of minutes and she’s the founder and CEO of Century Tech, AI and neuroscience equals better way of educating around the world. Right now though, we’re going to hear a clip from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions, they can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Tom Grogan, CEO of MDRxTech, the digital transformation business, talks about Web 3.0, the next iteration of the internet, apparently, and what businesses and individuals need to be thinking about when formulating their Web3 strategies and pursuing valuable, impactful projects.
All our former Business Shapers await you on the Jazz Shapers podcast and indeed you can delight in this very programme again if you pop the words ‘Jazz” and “Shapers’ – that wasn’t too complicated – into your podcast platform of choice or if you’ve got a smart speaker, be nice to it, of course, and do ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you will find a taster of our recent shows. But back to today, it’s Priya Lakhani OBE, Founder and CEO of Century Tech, a company creating AI powered learning tools.
So, from Masala Masala, which sounds like quite an adventure.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, you could say that.
Elliot Moss
I mean, you know, it’s a bit, there’s a theme though in my head brewing which is, I’ve got a good idea, I don’t really care if I know about food, I’ll learn.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, that’s exactly it.
Elliot Moss
I’ve got a good idea about education, I do care about education but I don’t really know about AI, artificial intelligence…
Priya Lakhani
I’ll learn. Two years of Degrees.
Elliot Moss
I think there was a, you were robbed and then you want to learn about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, you want to learn about how you fix it, you sort of zoom in and you go deep very quickly.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, I read every single journal that relates to PTSD because I wanted to get better and I didn’t know how to get better and everyone kept doing sort of things like CBT and it wasn’t working and then once, it was actually a psychiatrist who was very, very clever who spent a bit of time with me and said “You know, the way that you work is that you’re an engineer” and obviously nobody had said that to me ever before in my life and I said what do you mean, I don’t understand and he said “You like to know how things work” and he said “so, why don’t you go and research PTSD”, there’s not much on it at the time and so I read, I sat in the British Library and I read every single medical journal on PTSD and how it works and the relationship in the brain between the hippocampus and the amygdala and what was happening and then was able to then go out on the streets and be normal in the way that I wanted to be again but I learned a lot about neuroscience and actually that was serendipity in a sense because it kinda came in handy.
Elliot Moss
Kind of but I think not because you’re, well you’re drawn to it. Yes, but then this confluence of things, the neuroscience plus the AI plus this burning desire to make education better. We now arrive at the time when you go 2013, hello, I’m going to create this business and I’m not an engineer but you are an engineer and there you go… Do you remember those books when we were, I don’t know if you’re old enough but they were How Things Work, they were literally hardbacks…
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, I do, yeah, I loved those.
Elliot Moss
Before internet, they were there and I’m, I like to read and try to understand.
Priya Lakhani
I like How Things Work, I love learning, I think that’s the thing, I LOVE learning.
Elliot Moss
I love learning but I wasn’t great with osmosis, I’ve got to be honest and my children still take the mick and go “Dad, you can’t exactly define osmosis” but anyway, that’s a different point. In 2013, you set this thing up, there was a five year gestation period, as I read between then and actually charging people for the thing that you created.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, that’s right.
Elliot Moss
Are you a patient person, Priya?
Priya Lakhani
No. Definitely not.
Elliot Moss
So what in those, what were, you know, just…
Priya Lakhani
You have to get it right. No, so you have to do it right. So I had the idea, then I had to… so firstly, I was like how does this stuff work so I went away for two years and learned how AI works, you know, and I got a bit hooked okay, so the point is I go down rabbit holes, so if I decide I like something then that’s it, I want to know everything about it. So I was on you know courses online, back doing calculus and it was kind of ridiculous like trying to work out how to build a neural network and I was like here this is how it, these are the neuroscientific theories that are really relevant when it comes to learning, let’s mash the whole thing together. There was a massive problem. And the problem was, I thought right here’s this platform that we need to build, this technology, but where’s the data that then trains, that trains the algorithms and there wasn’t any, so imagine all the data in school, it’s in an exercise book that’s just been recycled, they get thrown away every year.
Elliot Moss
So how did you get it out and put it into a large language model?
Priya Lakhani
Well that’s it, so you can’t, so you can’t and what you… yeah, so it’s not a large language model, so we’ve actually built a telemetry system and it’s a non-generative…
Elliot Moss
What did you call that again?
Priya Lakhani
Telemetry. So, we’re tracking movements and we have this sort of transform… it is a supervised machine learning but it’s a non-generative artificial intelligence. But how do you do that anyway and the point is that you need all the data, so we actually needed to first build the platform which we released in 2015, then from 2015 to 2018 we had it in schools but it just had subject content, the key is that the architecture of the system was able to track the movements and essentially that data was stored and then we had to clean that, you have to train it and then you have to build your AI essentially. So you don’t get AI overnight, it doesn't just turn up and this is one of the biggest I think misconceptions and there’s lots of start ups where you know they say they’ve got AI and I think we’ve got to all be better consumers of AI and say well you know how does that work, what are the inputs, where are the inputs from and when you start asking those questions then you can start leaning into really important questions such as bias and discrimination with different technologies, so essentially we had to basically build a system that could store the data, collect the data and then build proprietary AI that learns how the brain learns. That went live in 2018 and…
Elliot Moss
But while you’re doing all of that, just to put this in context, you’re building a business, there are humans around and you’re saying I need to smash together these different disciplines and you’ve got to raise money to go…
Priya Lakhani
Oh yeah, every year.
Elliot Moss
…to go do these things and you’ve got to retain your sanity because, and so just in a nutshell before we go to Professor Longhair, appropriately, how did you manage to do all of that because one thing is technical and it’s your engineery kind of view of the world and going deep but the other things are incredibly practical, they’re the things that go along with building a business or did you just not think about it?
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, I don’t really, didn’t really break it down like that, it just, entrepreneurs just, just figure out what they’ve got to do and go and do it and if you’re not sure about something, you ask for a lot of help, you do the research, you find it, I mean being a barrister helps, you find the answer and you just go ahead and you learn and you adapt approach and you learn from your mistakes, you, I mean I enjoy it, the thing is I actually genuinely thrive on it, I don’t think of it as a job, I don’t think I’m going to work, I’m like you know this is what we’re doing, we’re building this, so you put all the pieces together, the biggest question, the most important question to us, I think, in both journeys, was I called the teachers and the head teachers and I said tell me the day that if I turn this off you’ll start crying and that’s literally word for word what I asked them and they said okay, and I thought because if you’re not going to cry when I turn this thing off then I haven’t achieved true product market fit and then it’s going to be really hard to raise money because this thing actually is not going to become essential and it’s not actually changing lives. In 2018 we turned on the recommendation engine, they called me and said, “please don’t ever turn this off” and that was the day that we started having schools subscribe to it and that was the day that we started to grow and it’s been an adventure ever since but you know don’t forget and this isn’t me, this is the team, like we come up with the idea…
Elliot Moss
Of course, but I love the way you articulate the question, the positive of the question, which is when I start crying, then you know you’ve got something brilliant. Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper, it’s Priya Lakhani and she CEO and founder of Century Tech. But here is the Professor, as promised, not that kind of professor, he’s Professor Longhair, Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Professor Longhair, Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Priya Lakhani is my Business Shaper. We’ve been talking about sort of technology, the engineer inside you and then building this business. Your husband now works in this business.
Priya Lakhani
He does.
Elliot Moss
What’s that like?
Priya Lakhani
Great.
Elliot Moss
Is it though? Is that you say to you know, was it?
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, yeah. No, genuinely, I mean if I’m going to work with someone where I put my, the last decade of my life into it and you just want to trust someone implicitly with the fact that they’re going to work as hard, whatever is needed, whatever it takes to make it work then why would I want to work with anyone else? And he’s also brilliant.
Elliot Moss
And the skillset? I mean, as I say, the skillset, so what’s he brilliant at that you’re not brilliant at?
Priya Lakhani
So he does sort of the CFO, COO, you know I will throw a lot of balls in the air and I will go out there on product, I will you know ensure that we are really pushing the boundaries on the engineering front, on all of that and then on running the business, you know making sure that the operations are absolutely in place, on all of that sort of nitty-gritty stuff, you know he’s absolutely brilliant and so I think what we have to do is play to our strengths and what I’m able to do because of him and the entire team at Century, to be fair, we have top talent at the company, is I’m able to play to my strengths, they’re all able to play to theirs and it just, it works absolutely brilliantly, I couldn’t be more proud.
Elliot Moss
Is your, sounds like…
Priya Lakhani
I do love my team, I’m sorry, I’d go to the end of the earth and back for anyone of them, they are just, I do, I’m in love with all of them, what can I say.
Elliot Moss
No, no, it was lovely.
Priya Lakhani
In a totally professional manner.
Elliot Moss
Of course, well except for your husband of course, which I hope is both professional and…
Priya Lakhani
Well actually at work it is in a totally professional manner because we just separate that, I don’t know how we do it but we do.
Elliot Moss
You do, it works. But the fire and energy on top of the intellect is quite a heady cocktail.
Priya Lakhani
I wouldn’t say the intellect.
Elliot Moss
Well no but the intellect is, but seriously Priya because there’s one thing having lots of energy and good intentions but where do you sit on the it’s fine having passion but actually still going to need some brain power because what you’re doing is relatively complicated even if you’re not…
Priya Lakhani
No, I don’t think so.
Elliot Moss
Really?
Priya Lakhani
Honestly, if I could do this, anyone can. So if anyone’s got an idea and it’s complex, you know research it, find out everything about it, make sure you’re just not one of those mind management BSs, you know you’ve got to really understand it, take your time and then apply it and go for it, I don’t think it takes that much really.
Elliot Moss
If it’s, okay, but then just to challenge it, if it’s that easy and what you just said, why aren’t there…?
Priya Lakhani
Because it’s not, it’s not easy, it’s not the same so I think that’s the process and that’s why I’d say you’re being very kind with all these lovely descriptions and you know I just don’t think that of myself, I just think there are lots of entrepreneurs. What’s not easy about it is that entrepreneurs basically flit between two feelings at all times and that euphoria and terror, right, there’s not sort of middle ground and that’s not easy, you know, you have to be able to deal with that, it’s that perseverance side of things as well that we’ve already talking about and the resilience to be able to climb the mountains you know when you have to and that could take any form right, it could be the business challengers but actually it could be a pandemic, right, it could be lockdowns, it could be macroeconomic environment that we’ve had to deal with in the last year, there are all sorts of things, so that’s what makes it not easy but as I said, you know, for me I just love it, I don’t know what else to tell you other than I’m passionate about it and…
Elliot Moss
No, I get it.
Priya Lakhani
…I want to see the end day, there’s nothing clever about that, it’s just it’s the way it is.
Elliot Moss
And I’ll stop with the compliments now, fine, we haven’t quite finished but in my final conversation with you, I’m going to go…
Priya Lakhani
You’re lucky I don’t go red.
Elliot Moss
You’re lucky you don’t go red. It’s fine. Stay with me for that final conversation with Priya Lakhani and we’ve also got some Esperanza Spalding, that’s coming up in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Esperanza Spalding with I Adore You. It’s Priya Lakhani, she’s my Business Shaper today, CEO and Founder of Century Tech. You talked about a lot of stuff and it’s brilliant, if anyone’s either in it or they’re thinking about doing it then I think they’ve had a bit of a…
Priya Lakhani
Don’t get in your own way.
Elliot Moss
Don’t get in your own way, well this is what I was going to say, do two quick questions before we go to your song choice. How do you stop people getting in their own way? What do you say to them?
Priya Lakhani
I just say don’t get in your own way. I told you, I’m not that clever.
Elliot Moss
Just like that, just stop do… What stops it?
Priya Lakhani
No, I think that’s what we do, I think we come up with lots of reasons to stall ourselves, I think a lot of people, so for example it doesn’t have to be about running a business, it could be you know people who get offered amazing board seats or advisory roles, they suffer from imposter syndrome and that’s really, really common and I think you’ve just got to understand that look, everyone feels that way but everyone contributes, everyone has their unique experiences, you know you add value in your own personal way, your perspective is important and it’s just sort of trying to tell yourself that enough times and then when…
Elliot Moss
There’s not great magic to it other than that, it’s like don’t, if you hear…
Priya Lakhani
Self-confidence really.
Elliot Moss
If you hear that voice, that voice is just, it’s just a voice of insecurity, it’s not real.
Priya Lakhani
Yeah, exactly.
Elliot Moss
And the second question I have and we talked a lot about where you’re going and your mission and you started with your values, that sense of North Star, if you look forward five years from now, is that North Star still going to be shining brightly?
Priya Lakhani
Of course it will because it’s the only thing that matters. Because the North Star is not necessarily just one thing, it could be your values or it could be this mission to transform education, right, so I’ve got that but it’s also the values, it’s how you do that, you know anyone can go on a journey, right, but the point is that how you go on that journey and how you take people with you on the journey, how you treat people, all of that is really, really important and so, and so until yeah the day that I’m not here, I will be on that journey in that direction because it’s the right thing to do and that’s what I teach my own children that that is what is important in life, we live one life, it’s short right, and so we have to live it in the way in which you personally see at best and for me I just want to ensure that you can look in the mirror every day, you know, you’re doing the right thing, you’re trying to be kind, be helpful and want to change the world in even a small, tiny little way and move the dial even a little tiny, tiny way, in a positive way and if that’s my contribution and I may fail at it but if I try then well that’s the best thing that I can do and the best way to spend my time.
Elliot Moss
It’s been great talking to you, thank you, thank you for your time today, I’ve really enjoyed it. Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Priya Lakhani
So, my song choice I know is a common song choice but the reason I’m choosing it is because every time I hear it, I realise I needed to hear it and actually, I think that will make sense from the conversation that we have. So my song choice is, I’m relying on good old Louis and it’s What a Wonderful World.
Elliot Moss
That was Louis Armstrong with What a Wonderful World, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Priya Lakhani. She talked about the importance of having a North Star, of having values that stick to as you navigate your own journey. She talked about the critical, critical foundation of having passion for the project, people see the passion, they feel the passion, it’s what they buy. And finally, I love this equation from her, No + no + no + no + time = yes. What a great way of thinking about being a founder.
You can hear my conversation with Priya all over again whenever you would like to as a podcast, just search Jazz Shapers or you can ask your smart speaker to play Jazz Shapers. Alternatively, if you are up with the larks, you can catch this programme again Monday morning just before the Jazz FM Breakfast at 5.00am.
We are back next Saturday for a very special Jazz Shapers Encore. We welcome back a past Business Shaper, John the Lord Bird MBE, Founder and Editor in Chief of the Big Issue Group, the international street paper and social enterprise. Up next after the news at 10.00, it’s Nigel Williams, great music comes with interviews and live sessions too. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
You can hear our conversation with Priya all over again whenever you want, as a podcast, just search Jazz Shapers or you can ask your smart speaker to play Jazz Shapers. We are back next Saturday for a very special Jazz Shapers Encore. We welcome back a past Business Shaper, John the Lord Bird MBE, Founder and Editor in Chief of the Big Issue Group, the international street paper and social enterprise. The Jazz FM Breakfast is up next with Nigel Williams. Have a great one and I’ll see you on Saturday.
On this Saturday’s Jazz Shapers, I am joined by the Founder and CEO of Century Tech, a company creating AI powered learning tools to transform education. Priya Lakhani OBE is my guest. I am Elliot Moss and I’ll have more of that alongside the music of the shapers of jazz, soul and blues this weekend.
On this Saturday’s Jazz Shapers we heard from Priya Lakhani OBE, Founder and CEO of Century Tech, a company creating AI powered learning tools to transform education. That programme is now available for you to listen to again as a podcast and through your smart speaker, just search or ask for Jazz Shapers or you can hear it again nice and early Monday morning, 5.00am.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Priya Lakhani OBE, Founder and CEO of Century Tech, a company creating AI powered learning tools to transform education.