<div> <p>Do you need an original idea to start a company? Do you need to be a consumer of your category? Do you need the "right" co-founders?<br>Manish Taneja was none of those things. He grew up in Faridabad a self-described "frog of his own well." He went to IIT and "felt very small." He became a banker, then an investor, then started a beauty company with two other male engineers, with no female co-founder, and no personal stake in the category. He still built Purplle into one of India's largest beauty platforms.<br>In this episode of Unstarted, Avnish Bajaj and Manish sit down to work through the questions that every founder without a clear edge asks themselves:</p><p>1. Do you need an original idea, or is it okay to be a "copycat entrepreneur"?  When VCs tell you your team is missing something </p><p>2. Do you fix the weakness or back your strength? – How do you find a wedge in a category where everyone else has more money, more experience, and more insider knowledge? </p><p>3. What do you do when your ego won't let you leave — and is that the thing keeping you in the game? </p><p>4. How do you build responsibly without losing your edge?</p><p>Manish's answer to all of it, in the end, comes down to two lines: back your strengths, and build responsibly. This conversation is about how he got there.</p><p>Chapters</p><p>00:00 The $100 million mistake<br>01:55 Faridabad, the frog in the well<br>03:03 Feeling small at IIT, and the speech that changed everything<br>05:31 Lehman, Avendus, and the long apprenticeship<br>08:52 "I was the original copycat entrepreneur"<br>12:58 The feedback from Matrix: no woman co-founder<br>14:54 Why beauty, and why now<br>17:52 Dabau early: the rosemary water playbook<br>22:00 How Purplle won Kerala (and met the priests)<br>26:02 The internal compass, and saying no to Thrasios<br>28:53 Why your ego won't let you leave<br>30:36 Why he built in Bombay<br>33:17 The IPO question<br>35:49 Build responsibly</p></div>