Payal Kadakia (ClassPass) - Bringing Your Whole Self to Your Venture [ETL Looks Back]

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Payal Kadakia's 2022 conversation feels as relevant as ever, highlighting the enduring importance of authenticity in strong leadership. In this episode, the founder of ClassPass and the Sa Dance Company shares how integrating her full identity—as both a dancer and a business leader—was crucial to her success. Kadakia discusses the importance of listening to your calling, making values-driven decisions, and resisting the pressure to conform to conventional paths. Her insights on aligning passion with purpose, overcoming failure, and redefining success make this episode a must-listen for anyone aiming to build something meaningful while staying true to themselves.

The episode first aired on February 16, 2022

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who you are defines how you build. This is the Entrepreneural Thought Leaders series.
0:10.8	Brought to you by Stanford E-Corner. I am Ravi Balani, a lecture in the management,
0:17.1	science and engineering department at Stanford University, and the director of Alchemist, an accelerator for enterprise startups. And I'd like to welcome you today to the
0:24.6	entrepreneurial thought leader series presented by STVP, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program,
0:29.8	which is the Entrepreneurship Center in the School of Engineering at Stanford and Basis,
0:33.9	the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students. Today, I am delighted to welcome
0:39.5	Pyle Kadokia to ETL. Pyle is a first generation, Indian American growing up in New Jersey.
0:48.0	She went on from New Jersey to go get a bachelor's degree in management science from MIT.
0:53.7	Don't hold that against her.
0:55.1	And then she went on to be a consultant at Bain, worked in strategy at Warner, and also was the
1:00.6	founder of her own dance company, the SAW dance company, prior to co-founding ClassPass as its
1:05.8	CEO and then chairman.
1:07.7	Class Pass is the world's largest healthcare club aggregator and the leading app for all
1:12.5	things, fitness, wellness, and beauty. Class Pass was one of the first startups to hit
1:17.3	Unicorn status, a billion dollar valuation in this decade, and then was acquired in October
1:23.7	of last year. Pyle is also the author of a new book launching, I believe, next week,
1:29.1	called Life Pass, Drop Your Limits, Rise to Your Potential. And really, this book is a calling card,
1:36.7	no pun intended. It's an invitation to your calling. So with that, please join me in giving a
1:41.2	virtual welcome to Pyle Kadakia. Welcome, Pyle. Hi, how are you? How's
1:45.3	everyone doing? Thank you for having me. It is great to have you. And so, Pile, I really think that your
1:51.1	story is going to resonate deeply with certainly a lot of the Stanford community that's here in attendance,
1:56.3	but also just the broader entrepreneurial community. And I want to start out just by acknowledging that there
	...

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