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Interview with Nadine Karadag, COO and co-founder of Valeo Wellbeing and board member of the INCO Group

What do a corporate career, working in a family business, and founding a startup have in common? Surprisingly, more than you might think! Nadine Karadag’s journey is a fascinating blend of these diverse environments, and in this episode she reflects on how her approach to leadership and innovation has varied in each setting.

Nadine began her career in finance, excelling at Dubai’s NASDAQ and quickly climbing the corporate ladder. However, she soon pivoted to join her family’s engineering business, eager to apply her corporate knowledge in a new setting. After completing her MBA, she returned to the financial sector, fulfilling a dream by working at a private equity investment firm.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted significant health accessibility challenges, sparking Nadine’s entrepreneurial spirit. In 2021, she co-founded Valeo Wellbeing with her venture partner, Sundeep Sahni. Valeo Wellbeing offers holistic healthcare solutions, diagnostics, medication, supplements, consultations, and medical history all through a user-friendly app. 

Nadine Karadag
Nadine Karadag, COO and co-founder of Valeo Wellbeing and board member of the INCO Group

In this episode, Nadine Karadag, COO and co-founder of Valeo Wellbeing and board member of the INCO Group, shares her remarkable journey from corporate success to family business and, finally, to launching a tech startup. She discusses how the lessons from each phase of her career shaped her trajectory, the challenges and rewards of founding a tech firm today, and the importance of fostering a culture of innovation for business survival.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Starting and building a business requires tremendous sacrifice. Success takes drive, purpose, and considerable investment of personal resources. Every founder is on a mission and must genuinely believe in their purpose and actions, though the experience can be extremely rewarding. It is essential to be compassionate towards yourself and understand the challenges you face as you climb the mountain.
  • Having worked in her family’s business, Nadine gained insight into the dynamics that sustain family firms. Protecting the company is of the utmost importance for such enterprises, often leading to strategic role assignments and the pursuit of opportunities that align closely with business goals. As a result, Nadine appreciated the freedom to make, and consequently learn from, mistakes in her startup – something that is much less welcome in a family business environment.
  • Nadine discovered that founding a tech startup was a humbling experience. She grappled with an industry in constant flux and technology prone to rapid changes. Nadine found that curiosity and asking numerous questions are vital to sustaining the ongoing learning needed to keep the business adapting to evolving goals. When mistakes are made, learn from them and quickly move on.
  • Nadine’s startup team is a wonderful source of inspiration and satisfaction for her. She has learned the importance of leading by example and how to appreciate her team’s progress and growth, both personally and professionally. Nadine believes they are all on a learning journey together, and her team’s path is as winding as hers, emphasising the value of collaboration in their startup journey.

Transcript:

Ramia: Welcome to another episode of Women in Family Business. I am very, very happy to welcome my guest, Nadine Karadag, who is also a very long term friend of mine. Full disclosure. So this conversation is going to go very deep and very intimate, right, Nadine? Like we’re going to share it all. We’re going to lay it all out on the table. So welcome to the podcast.

Nadine Karadag: You always manage to do that, so I’m sure we will.

Ramia: Nadine, I think one of the reasons why this is such a privilege for me to do today, to have this conversation with you, is because over the last 15 years of this work, it’s been such a privilege to meet so many women who are just amazing and women who, you know, you watch them go through all of these different stages of their careers and with their family businesses and without. And it’s always very impressive to see like, you know, the many different decisions women face and the many different responsibilities that they’re faced with and then how they deal with them. And I think your story is particularly interesting because I got to watch you in so many different stages of your career. And I got to see how you did it with so much grace and so much humor. But I think today what we’d love to dive into with you is like you actually describing to us sort of like your experience in these different stages of your career, like you’ve literally gone from and are still involved, like, you know, from being in the family business, which I know you’re still supporting very actively, um, towards like being in a totally corporate setting in finance, then to today’s role that you have, which is so exciting, co-founder of Valeo Wellness, uh, tech startup. And, and we’re just, we’re just really interested, I think all of us to understand first of all, how did that career progression occur? Like what kind of like, you know, what made you decide to switch and change at different moments? And then we’d love to explore a little bit more about like, you know, sort of the lessons you drew from each one of those stages of your career.

Nadine Karadag: So you know when someone writes their CV and you know, they go to a job interview and they make it sound like I have planned all this process and this is my career growth. We all know that like, we never write our CV beforehand. It’s what life brings to us. So I do think every one person of us lives through that experience, but I would say just trust that because most of the time it’s what we should be going through.

So to take you through my trajectory, when I first graduated in finance, I joined the stock market. So I was working in Nasdaq, Dubai, DFM. So it was a very government corporate. It was my first job. And honestly, your first job, you are, I mean, I was a bit of a geek. The geek in me just was soaking all the information.

I think you have two sets of verticals of learnings. One vertical is more the skills. So I was learning really what does an IPO mean? How does a company go to an IPO? And the other one is I was just learning what are the dynamics of a company. Now you’re the most junior there, so nobody really cares about you, but you can see everything. So you can, you know, I had different type of managers, each one’s leadership style, I learned from each one.

I think each one became a mentor eventually. So that was my first stage. And I think in that one, you just have to grasp. You need to be like a sponge and take everything. And you’re a bit of like a lizard. You’re all this lizard that goes to somebody and becomes another color. Like you don’t know yourself yet. You don’t know what type of leader you wanna be. You don’t know. So you start copying things, which is a way of also learning what you truly are, I think.

So I did that, then went to do my MBA in INSEAD. I think, you know, an MBA in INSEAD, I did that almost 12 years ago. But I think 12 years ago, MBAs might have been more popular than now. I’m not very sure now how popular MBAs are. You know, after doing a startup, I think the best MBA is a startup. But I think doing the… MBA gave me so much foundation on first the network of people, and foundation of what the world can offer, what people can offer, and what you can actually create. I mean, it’s like, it gives you this vision that’s much bigger than what you think, which I think is invaluable.

And also made me meet my co-founder in Valeo, which is again, invaluable, you know, Sandip, yeah, he’s a dear friend and my co-founder in Valeo. Then after the family business. So the family business was a corporate setting. I was young, I would say, you know, I was uh, 23, 24.

And the family business is, I always say, it’s a different animal. It’s a different standard of working. It’s a different dynamic, especially if you are from the family. Because you’re not only dealing with the dynamic of the just normal work structure, we’re also dealing with the dynamic of family dynamics. If I was working directly with my dad, and I was working with employees he’s worked with for many years, and it was a new industry. So if you look at again, the verticals, the skills, construction, totally new industry for me. I didn’t understand this. What I learned was cashflow management, 100%. I think when you work in construction in the UAE, you get a thick skin in cashflow management because nobody pays on time.

And I’m very grateful for that experience because it has helped me so much in my startup experience. Other skills that I learned is definitely looking at things as a leader. So you start getting, because when you are not in the family business, you are working in a corporate, it’s a more narrow vision. You have a narrow vision. When you work in the family business, you do have access to the higher vision, especially if you have a close relationship with your father and he shares with you what he’s thinking, his strategy. I mean, for me, it was such an eye-opener of how things are run, because you start looking at really from a perspective of a high level. How do you, you need to pay salaries, you need to pay your suppliers. You need to, you know, make your bankers happy, make sure your books are good. You need to have a strong pipeline. You need to have, you know, so as a leader, you can’t think, your only problem is not sales. All of it is your problem. And I think that’s what I learned skill wise. Inventory management is another one. Construction inventory can kill you if you can’t manage it well. In terms of leadership, so I learned a lot from my dad and I’m very grateful for it. And funnily enough, a couple of days ago, I told him like a lot of, a lot of who I am as a startup founder is very much lessons that I learned from him. And it’s a lot of like focus, you need to be focused. And you need to be definitely a bit obsessed with your business. Like you need to be thinking of it at all times.

Ramia: But Nadine, that’s really nice of you to say to him actually in a way, right? So many years later, you get to tell him that. I was going to say, I was going to say, he must have been just like a best gift ever. And a real I told you so moment for him. But maybe just before continuing towards the latter part of your career in Valeo, I do think that’s very interesting, right? So obviously.

Nadine Karadag: It took me many years, yeah, he was surprised, I have to say. Yeah, he’s like… Yeah.

Ramia: There’s this cliche that tells us we eventually turn into our parents, which like, God forbid, right, like sometimes in some cases. But I think it. Well, I hope my mind don’t either when I just said, God forbid. But like, I think it’s really it’s really interesting, though, like that. There is this element of like actually suddenly understanding like further on, you know, why they did the things that they did in a certain way. So I just I just love to understand this a little bit more, like, you know, what particular things suddenly made sense to you from your, from your behavior, from your dad’s behavior that at the time might’ve irritated you, might’ve like annoyed you, might’ve been like, you know, this is not professional or this is not how it should be, et cetera. So like what particular things sort of like, um, did you suddenly get it like a real understanding for like, oh, that’s why actually that’s why he, he did it the way he did?

Nadine Karadag: Yeah, I mean, they’re very funny things too, so I’ll tell you some of the funny and some of the serious things. But like one of the funny is like, he put me first in archiving, you know. For me, it was like, I’m sorry, I have an MBA from one of the best MBA schools and you’re making me do archiving. What is this? It made me go through the history of the company, the documentation, and he’s very obsessive about archiving, how you need to organize the documentation. Those times it was also maybe hard copy and now soft copy. This is one thing, for example, I’m very particular of how all the documents are organized in each department. But it just makes work easier, basically. Especially when you’re building from zero, you know, because you come to a point you’re at 10. If you hadn’t set up the structure, you know, then at 10, it’s very hard to set it up.

Another one was inventory. We manage inventory, I manage inventory in my new business. And he was very obsessive about how the inventory needs to be well organized. How you need to respect the product. Like this is all money sitting, right? You need to respect it. You need to control it well. For me, it was like, okay, you know, it’s not perfectly done in like a, you know, careful way, but it makes a difference because then people are more disciplined and people respect the products more and follow the processes.

And other things as like, I think from the leader that he is, when to be strict, when not to be always fair. And very, very important to keep a good connection with all team members from all levels. So he like, he had, let’s say, laborers that had his mobile number directly that have been with him 30 years that can call him and he would spend time with them on the phone. For me, at that time, it’s like, oh, where’s the hierarchy structure? Why can they call you? But now, I understand. The work happens in the ground, so people should feel that they can call you.

Ramia: You eventually left the family business then to pursue again, like more corporate avenue in finance before you started Valeo. Tell us about, I guess, like that sort of like transition then again, because then you’d spend time in the family business for a long time. You got used to working with your dad. You got used to working with, like, you know, sort of like as a, as I guess also future owner perspective, etc. So it’s a very different mindset, right? Like to go to work, being part of the owning family, being part of that kind of thing.

Um, and then you went back into the corporate setting. So what was the biggest shock to your system when you went back in there and like, what were the things that, you know, you missed and didn’t miss, I guess, like in relation to the family business as well?

Nadine Karadag: I then joined Growthgate, a private equity company that raised around $200 million. Very grateful for that experience too. The reason I left is I didn’t want to run the day-to-day business of a construction company and I thought I was not the right person to run.

I think what’s very important in family business is that the family needs to protect the business. So I knew and my dad eventually also understood that I am not the right person to run the day to day. So what we did, I worked two years with a GM who is still our GM, Mr. Saar Khan, who I also respect very much, and work together for him to, you know, slowly take care of the day to day and I took more of a board structure, board position.

In the private equity, I would say, I mean, I love finance. That’s been my dream since university. I wanted to join a private equity firm. So I would say it was like a dream for me. I love companies. I love analyzing them. I love balance sheet income statements. I love strategies. So for me, it was like a dream come true. I loved it. We had eight different portfolio companies. Each company had a different strategy. So this is the skills vertical, what I learned. I learned deal structuring. I mean, I would say, you know, Kareem or Radha or Heisama, you know, the ways they…

structured deals in terms of either buying or selling companies. I’ve never seen that before. So learning that as a skill was amazing. Um, and then from a like soft skill leadership, in finance, it’s, it’s a much more different leadership because the teams are much smaller. You’re not, you know, running a construction company with 5,000 people. You’re running like you’re 10 people in the team, but everyone highly educated, highly disciplined and, uh, you know, so it’s a different type of leadership. So it was much more, I would say, content oriented. So we would read the FT all the time, we would debate the economy. We would talk about different companies, about strategies, about macro strategies of different industries. It was very, very interesting. But the way you lead that is much more like hands off, I would say. And it was more of just 10 people working well together and managing from a, you know, board level company. So it’s, you don’t get your hands dirty, but I, I do think that there’s so much value in what private equity firms do and how they look at companies, but it’s not operational.

Ramia: You must have in that case, operationally, you must have missed it at some point because then at some point you decided to leave that very, very big and successful career in private equity and you went on and you stripped it all down into this beautiful idea that is Valeo that we’re gonna learn a little bit more about right now. And so what made you take that plunge at a moment where you could have been very comfortable just moving along in this space and becoming very senior in the private equity space and gaining influence there? So what made you, I guess, like leave that comfort and sort of like go for a very uncertain, the very uncertain environments of a startup company?

Nadine Karadag: So I think definitely when you have a father who’s a founder you have a bit of a bug in your blood, you know. So I really did want to get my hands dirty and Valeo is something very personal to me, is a problem I want to solve in this world that is related to health. For personal reasons, health has always been, hospitals, clinics have always been part of my life. And it’s always, you know, my question was that, why is it hard? It’s already hard when you’re dealing with a health issue. But then you have to deal with long waiting lines, booking a doctor, getting the documentation, finding the right doctor, going back and forth to hospitals, clinics, for blood tests, for example. It was something that I truly, truly thought needs fixing. And I think COVID was a wake up call. A human being by themselves you know, have a wake up call when they have a health scare. And I think COVID was like a health care, you know, global level. So, so I knew the opportunity was there if this is what I want to do.

And the same time I was, you know, Sandeep, I met him during my NCA years, he was a good friend. And we were just, you know, talking of the idea, why don’t we launch something together? So we would have breakfast Thursday, 8 AM. I think for a couple of months we had it. And we would just talk about ideas. It was more on a friendship basis to meet, but then we would talk about ideas. And he got COVID, he got COVID really bad. He was in the ICU. So I introduced him to my wellbeing coach, Jamie Richards, who really helped him recover. And Jamie helped me a lot in my health to recover. So we decided to launch Valeo and co-founded it, Sandeep and I, and also Jamie is one of the founding teams.

Ramia: Amazing. So it was like a gradual exploration, so it could fit into your personal passion of solving this problem of accessibility when it comes to intervention, but also prevention of health issues through technology. And value has since gone from strength to strength.

And you continue to being very successful in solving a very important problem. I think it’s so interesting that you described it as almost like a bug in your blood, right? Like, I think it’s it is a little bit that I don’t think every generation in a family business necessarily has it or every member of the next generation has it. But I think to some of us, it happens. The fact that we have entrepreneurial parents or like we’re part of a business legacy sort of like really influences our perception of how we’d like to solve problems in the world, right? So when you started out though, when you then really took that plunge and said, okay, I’m really gonna do this, it would be really interesting to understand Nadine, what are the main things that I guess you learned about yourself in the first couple of years of Valeo, where you were either surprised positively by your own skill sets and what everything that you’ve learned so far, how it helped you, but also like where did you hit your limits in the first instance that you maybe didn’t expect to?

Nadine Karadag: When you’re in a roller coaster of a startup, you don’t really have time to reflect. And now we’re two years and a half down the line. And I think, maybe the last three months, I felt like a bit more comfortable to be able to reflect.

And I am honestly very proud of what the team has built and its teamwork. And you know, you forget that like all this hard work that you, your team and your co-founder are putting are creating something because you’re living it day by day. Then you wake up one day, you’re like, oh my, yeah, you know, we’ve actually built something. It is actually helping people. We are actually making people feel better. So it’s been a humbling experience.

So I would say, you know, starting your own businesses for me has been one of the hardest experiences on a career and personal growth. So like on a personal growth, I’ve always been a bit, I would say, out of the, you know, very ambitious. I like to push myself in terms of personal growth. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. But this experience has, you know, has been constantly being in an uncomfortable situation.

I don’t want to sugarcoat it, it’s hard. So you really need to believe in what you’re building. You really need to believe it. Because you will sacrifice a lot. Be it from social, it becomes your last priority. Because you are on a mission to build something. So I would say, you know, every founder needs to go with that mindset. That you are on a mission to build something and you will need to sacrifice a lot of yourself, a lot of family time, a lot of personal time. But it is an extremely, extremely rewarding and enjoyable experience. Extremely.

Ramia: Do you think, like, you know, like from, obviously from one founder to another, I always wonder what makes it actually addictive in a way, because like, I do think I agree with you. What makes us willing to make sacrifices here that we might not be willing to make in other walks of life or other career choices? What makes you endure that level of pressure and stress? I mean, do you really think maybe it is this element of like it’s mine? It’s the ownership aspect of it, or is it because in a way you’ve been so allowed to shape the purpose of it and the direction of it that it feels just more meaningful than anything else that you’ve done so far?

Nadine Karadag: I think the purpose for me is very important. I live with my heart and with a purpose, be it my personal or my career. So, the purpose of value is very, very personal to me. I think this is one of the things that drives me. Another is my co-founder. I think this is very important. I would not do this adventure without a co-founder and my co-founder Sandeep and I, I think one of the beauties of this experience is us running it together. He’s the CEO, I’m the COO. It’s been such an enjoyable experience. We complement each other. So he’s the person that we can speak to each other in terms of strategy or any kind of worries we have or any kind of big decisions we need to make. So that’s been invaluable too. And third, the team. I can see somebody that came as a picker and packer and right now is handling my Amazon sales, you know, talking to suppliers and shouting in English. They couldn’t speak English before. For me, it’s like, I love it. I shout at them every other day, but it’s so good. It’s so good. Seeing, you know, people grow. Yeah, it’s there’s so much purpose to it. You’re really like creating something. And then you said something about the addiction because so just to give you a bit of a background on Sandeep, this is his third startup and he’s had, I mean, he’s had more startups, but third main ones and he’s had already two unicorns. So he’s done the whole startup world, tech world, and you know, he has the bug. And I told him like a year down the line, I’m like, I can’t believe you gave me this addiction. I can’t believe you put me through this because there’s no other way back, but it’s tough.

Ramia: I’m really interested in this, Nadine, this idea of like, you know, what is tacit leadership and what is explicit leadership in this kind of situation that you’re in right now? Because I found it so interesting that you talked about this example, your dad putting you into the archive. And he didn’t tell you why he was doing that. You understood later why he did that, right? Because he didn’t tell you. For me, it’s like that I call that tacit leadership. And I feel like the family business setting tends to be full of that. Like full of hidden messages, like that.

And sometimes other family members, I don’t think that they know what they’re doing. They don’t maybe do it intentionally, but like they just think it’s best. And that’s why they do it. So as this tacit leadership of pulling you in and sort of like familiarizing you and making you successful. But when you’re at the top of your own company, you need to figure it out by yourself. So like in terms of like, how do you think today when it comes to your team and when it comes to your stakeholders, like, you know, into what kind of a leader do you feel like you’re evolving? Are you someone who is explicit about like what you care about as a leader or have you taken on some of your father’s indirect like you know methods as well where you feel like you know I’m doing it more by placing people into situations or like I’m doing it more by creating opportunities or I’m doing it more by leading by example for instance. I’d love to know more about how you’ve what you’ve taken on in terms of a style I guess today.

Nadine Karadag:  You always have to lead by example, always. This is a clear thing.

In everything, um, you know, being a startup founder has been very humbling, very humbling. I mean, the amount of favors you need to ask. It’s been very difficult, difficult personally for me, skill-wise, because, and this is the first time I actually say it, because it was my first tech company. So if you look at each career growth I did, the industry even changes.

Not only my role changes, but the industry changes. So it was my first healthcare, it was my first tech. It was my first time I was a founder. So, it took me some time to be kind to myself and understand that like this is a hard, you know, you’re climbing this, this is your mountain now. And you need to be kind to yourself when you’re climbing it, because it’s difficult. So you know what, two years and a half, you learn a lot, you have to be curious, you have to ask a lot of questions. And I was very honest with the team sometimes that like we’re doing this together, we’re learning together. So you really need a team that understands that like I’m not going to give them a straight trajectory. I’m going to tell them, this is the goal, but how are we going to get there? We’re going to find it out together. And I enjoy that. I enjoy that we debate and negotiate a lot with the team. Like they know there’s no one way of doing something.

And I mean, I think two other things that I appreciate a lot is in startups is you have clear goals, clear KPIs, clear outcomes, because you don’t have time to waste, not even a day you can’t waste. And every three months you have a different company, you really have a different company every three months. So you need to be evolving all the time, changing your goals, evolving, learning, changing your goals, evolving, learning. And, you know, it’s very humbling.

I really, again, say it’s a very humbling experience. And one thing that I’ve learned from Sandeep, my co-founder, is this mindset of like, fail fast and move on. Like, you don’t incorporate, you analyze a lot, you strategize, you ask so many opinions and then you agree on something and then you do it. No, in startup, like you need a strong heart and Sandeep taught me that. Stop thinking, do it. It doesn’t work. We move on. Like you will never know until you execute it. And for me, I come from somebody, my leadership structure that I understood is very, I like to know things. I like to see everything before going into something. In startup, you might enter things that are that you have no idea if like when you’re walking, you’re gonna step and the floor is there or not. But you need to trust it. And then you say, if I’m gonna fall, it’s fine. I’ll just fall and then get up.

Ramia: I think it’s also, it’s nice to have someone who comes from a different background to counterbalance, maybe the fact that you were obviously born into a, you were born into a legacy where I think as a second gen or like almost third gen, like you’ve sort of like, you’re of course also very much into like preserving what’s already been built, whereas the startup, startup setting required you to be very different in terms of like, yeah, it required you to, as you said, like, you know, making mistakes is something in the family business, as we know, is not always very welcome. It’s like everyone is everyone’s trying to prevent you from making mistakes from day one, basically, and you’re not allowed to make mistakes in many, in many cases. And I think it’s interesting to have that turn of the coin for you today. Similarly, like I’m kind of interested in directionality for you. Nadine, and this is, of course, like, you know, the topic of sort of like leadership, but also leadership that enables innovation, which nowadays like in every sector that you’ve touched, like everywhere, like just enabling a culture of innovation for any organization, any size, is the key ingredient to survival. And I think we’ve seen this now and things are moving so fast at the moment. And I think it’s interesting because you actually founded a company that wouldn’t have been possible probably even 10, 15 years ago. You’re basing it on technology that wouldn’t have been there. But I’m interested in directionality because in the family business, when you come in as a next gen, your ability to innovate depends on how convincing you can be to the top, right? Like, or how convincing you can be to the family, et cetera. So you might see the, you might see the possibility, you might carry the innovation in you, but the directionality is basically usually bottom up. Like, you know, you’re trying to, to push things through that, you know, you’re seeing, maybe others are not. Then you have that peer encounter in the private equity where like, you know, you’re more at eye level with your colleagues, et cetera. And so innovation was more of a debate discussion more out of like, you know, you’re talking to equals, et cetera. But now you’re in a position where technically, you know, you get to call the shots, right? Like, so you get to, you get to decide what innovation looks like at Valeo. You get to decide like, you know, how you enable it in your team. So I just love to understand like sort of like what you’ve taken from each one of those experiences and like, and how you today enable innovation in your, in your company, like in your, in your team, or if it’s something that you very much hold that sort of like founder level and sort of like it’s you and Sandeep deciding like you know what what’s new etc and like how you look at it today.

Nadine Karadag: What is beautiful about startup and I think each corporate needs to have it in their blood is every day is a problem solving day. I mean, with us, with Valeo, we were bringing a new concept, number one. So we weren’t, you know, it wasn’t like a concept that was in the region. So I’ve always told the team that, you know, we’re not reinventing the wheel. We are inventing the first thing. So it’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay not to come up with ideas and try. You know, so every day we’re problem solving, every day we’re finding solutions, every day is an innovation, from my picker and packer to our CTO every day.

And this also comes I think, you know, we have Sandeep, but we also have other team members, from previous startups, it’s this culture they have, right? Every problem can be solved. And the first way to solve it is tech. I have a lot of respect for tech now that I’ve been in it for three years, because the first way they want to solve something is through tech and it’s always innovative. There’s nothing not solvable. There is nothing that you can’t improve. Every person needs to come up every day with new ideas. They try it. And then the idea is you also try it. So you have an idea, try it. If you can convince team members to try it with you, do it. If it succeeds, bravo. We implemented to the whole company.

Ramia: I’m really curious at this stage of your career, like you know where you are, you know, you’ve accumulated all of this experience, you are where you are with your startup. Do you think about the future of your career at this moment in time? Do you think about like, you know, consciously, what will be the next chapter? Is there an intentional goal that you’re pursuing? Or is it much more about survival of the fittest in the moment at this stage when you’re still at that startup stage?

Nadine Karadag: Sandeep and I started Valeo based on a true purpose, uh, actual personal purpose of solving, you know, making health convenient. So right now I can only see all the problems we still need to solve and build.

But as I said, every three months is a new company. So, um, I don’t know right now. I’m very much in the present moment in the present moment in terms of, you know, what are the problems we need to solve today? What’s our vision for the future? How can we grow? What do we need to build? Who do I need to become? And because like I said, every three month, it’s different company. Every three months, you need a different leader.

Who do I need to become? What’s the leader that value needs today? How can I become that? Am I that? So I have a business coach. I think this is one of the best things I did. I um, She helps me and she helped me a lot in terms of setting some foundations. Because you have to evolve as a leader at all times. But right now, right now, I’m only living in the moment.

Ramia: Well, I’ve seen you live in the moment several times over the years and I’m looking forward to see what this particular moment is going to yield in the years to come. Nadine, thank you so much for taking the time. Life will bring it. Let’s see and let’s look forward to it like as another exciting chapter in your most exciting career. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast with us today.

Nadine Karadag: Life will bring it. Let’s see. Ramia, thank you. I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you so much.

Ramia: Thank you.