Meet Arvind Subramanian | Cofounder at Contour

We had the good fortune of connecting with Arvind Subramanian and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Arvind, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think risk is just the ratio of downside to upside. If the disadvantages significantly outweigh the advantages, it may not be worth it.

Historically, startups have been viewed as an inherently risky venture. Chances of failure are nearly 100%. But I’d argue that today, startups are less risky than working at a large company.

If you’re young, that nearly certain failure has little to no impact on your career. But the upside is multiple-fold. When starting a company, you meet like-minded ambitious people and learn so much. In many ways, you’re forced to level up your skills (e.g. if you didn’t know how to sell before, you certainly do now). And hey, if you swing for the fences, you’ve still got a shot at hitting a home run, no matter what the odds are.

This argument may be making a lot of presumptions about a person’s financial position and risk appetite. But startups are so mainstream now, guidance to start one has been democratized over the past decade. If there was ever a time to start one in history, it’s now.

What should our readers know about your business?
Contour is making it easy for websites to build and maintain UI tests for their product. Right now, this is a fairly manual and engineering intensive process. We built an AI-powered tool to streamline this process, and our product has grown more sophisticated with every piece of feedback.

The road to building this product wasn’t straightforward, and we went through a few iterations of the product to get it right for our users. At the end of the day, paying close attention to what users want is all that matters.

Contour is making end-to-end quality assurance accessible to every software company in the world. We’ve personally faced this problem, and we’re on a mission to make software testing accessible to everyone.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’d start with the tourist attractions of San Francisco: Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, a ferry across the Bay, and maybe Alcatraz.

Most of our time would be spent out in nature, since that’s what SF does best. We’d probably go to Muir Woods, Ocean Beach, Santa Cruz to surf, Henry Coe State Park to stargaze, and Twin Peaks for a great view of the city. One day would be dedicated to hiking Mt. Tamalpais.

For food, I’d probably hit up a different neighborhood each day: Chinatown, North Beach, etc.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Y Combinator (YC) is a startup accelerator that gave me the resources and support to help me and my cofounder start our business. YC’s community and network have been invaluable since we joined the program.

Website: arvindvs.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvind-subramanian/

Twitter: @arvind_subraman