Founders Everywhere: Vivek Karna
Vivek Karna is the co-founder and CEO of Zivy, a bespoke personalized copilot to help managers become more productive.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Ping, notification, pop-up, ring! This constant barrage has become the norm for many workers, and with all the tools that help us with different tasks and communication, it’s easy to get distracted. Managers have it especially hard because they’re not only responsible for their own work, but also their team’s performance. Zivy is a new tool designed for managers to cut through the noise by highlighting the most important messages first. They’re helping teams go from chaos to clarity - one message at a time. They recently announced their $1.2M pre-seed round and came out of private beta with a successful launch on Product Hunt, where they finished #1 for the day and and #1 for the week in Productivity.
Co-founders Vivek Karna and Prashanth YV met while working together at Razorpay and the idea for Zivy came from the experiences they had when transitioning from individual contributors (ICs) to managers. They faced many challenges managing people, projects, and stakeholders. Observing similar struggles among peers, they saw the need for a tool focused on improving manager productivity. Vivek was originally an engineer, then became a product manager at various startups leading large product teams, before becoming a founder. He shares more about his journey and building Zivy.
What’s Zivy’s vision?
Our vision is to help people be more productive, reduce anxiety, and focus on impactful work. We want to create a sense of calm and clarity, which is often lost when juggling too many tasks or tools. Everything, from our UI to the way we structure the tool, is built with this idea of helping busy managers stay focused, calm, and productive.
Why the name Zivy?
Zivy means happiness and liveliness in various languages in Europe, reflecting the vibe we want our product to convey. Prashanth came up with it, and it perfectly fits our vision.
Why is Zivy going to win?
We’re targeting a niche group to start: managers, specifically engineering managers, which is a space we know very well. We’re focusing on managers of individual contributors (ICs) because they experience the most pain transitioning into their new role. While managers of managers often have more support, IC managers are caught between team demands and higher-ups, which can make the job overwhelming. While other tools like Slack AI are built for broad audiences, our advantage is in creating a purpose-built tool that deeply understands the specific needs of this user base. We prioritize delivering value to managers by offering a tailored experience rather than trying to cater to every use case.
What’s on the Zivy roadmap going forward?
One of the next big features will be more integrations, starting with Gmail, GSuite, Jira. This will help provide better context and prioritize tasks even more effectively. We’ve also had requests to add collaboration features, like task delegation and tracking progress within teams, which we’re exploring as part of our future plans.
Any favorite books?
I’m passionate about philosophy and psychology. Right now, I’m reading Human Givens by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell, which dives into clear thinking and how the mind works. This knowledge is helpful, not just personally, but also for navigating the challenges of a startup.
Any advice for other founders?
I’m someone who takes a lot of risks. I live by the idea that you have one life, and if you have the privilege to take risks, you should. I would also say to focus on the problem you’re solving and whether your product truly helps people. Initially, I was overly focused on hitting milestones and selling, but I’ve learned that understanding your customers’ real needs is much more important.
Fun Facts:
I love trekking and have been to Mount Everest Base Camp. I’m also really into meditation and practice Vipassana, which has been incredibly helpful in managing stress and staying focused.
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