Ashish Toshniwal: How to Succeed In Silicon Valley

Ashish Toshniwal is the CEO and co-founder of Y Media Labs (YML). YML is an award-winning digital product and design agency, which Ashish and his cofounder Sumit Mehra originally bootstrapped and built from the ground up. Focusing on work culture and innovation, they’ve created a place where people can not only do their work but their life’s work.

Under Ashish’s leadership, YML has grown to nearly 400 strong, with six locations around the world, and over 30 Fortune 500 clients, including Apple, The Home Depot, Facebook, and State Farm.

This Episode’s Heavy-hitter’s:

Ashish’s approach to his career was more about becoming a part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, rather than having an ultra-specific role in mind. By physically relocating closer to the action, he theorized he was “increasing his chance of serendipity” which turned out to be correct.

Ashish and his cofounder Sumit actually grew up two miles away from one another in Kolkata, India without ever meeting each other. They actually met for the first time at Purdue University.

Together, they started YML in 2009 at the bottom of the financial crisis. After a few years of seeking funding unsuccessfully, they decided to bite the bullet and bootstrap the business themselves.

Steve Jobs actually reached out to Ashish when he was developing an app called Montessorium. The note said "I love what you are doing. Thank you. Let me know if we can help." It was at a time when Steve would download almost every app on the App Store, and the note gave Ashish a ton of inspiration to keep building his business.

Back in a meeting in 2018, Ashish was called out to look around, and in a room of 40 employees, there was only one woman. This started a focused effort for the years to come, where they focused on DE&I and built their way up to 40% of women at the company and counting.

For more on Ashish and YML, please visit https://yml.co

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