NIKHIL KAMATH SAYS GIVING FEELS MORE 'INTOXICATING' THAN EARNING, BUT BILL GATES REVEALS HOW TO NAVIGATE BETWEEN THE TWO

In a recent podcast chat, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates discussed what truly drives them, money, power, validation, or the joy of giving.

Nikhil Kamath opened up about how his motivations have changed over time.

“When people ask me what drives me… my go-to answer used to be luck, which was never the truth,” he said. “In the beginning, I think it was just money. I feel like I didn't have money… my conditioning, my years growing up, looking at the people around me with money, they looked happy.”

But as life moved on, so did his reasons. “Money transitioned into relatively more power, jealousy, insecurity, seeking validation, different drivers for different parts of my life,” Kamath explained.

“Can I be motivated by both: earning and giving?”

Kamath is now part of Gates' Giving Pledge. “I might feel altruistic… like there is no point to more. But at other times, I will go back to the very relative nature of things, and competition kicks in, and I want more.”

He asked Gates directly, “Can I be motivated by different things at different points of time? I might also want to make money, but I might also want to give away money.”

Bill Gates: “Even giving away money can be very egotistical”

Gates gave a thoughtful reply, “Even giving away money can be very egotistical… there is a high. You can never do anything that's totally pure.”

He referred to Ted Turner’s comment about the Forbes list, saying people often hesitate to give because they want to stay ranked high. “If it's really deeply moral, then a little bit you think, oh, people will praise that. And so, is it ego or not?”

Gates added that even when giving is partly driven by ego, the outcome matters. “The work we’ve done with vaccines… whether that was my ego or not, it’s a real thing that happened.”

Kamath: “It is almost more intoxicating than a capitalistic pursuit”

Kamath agreed, saying giving itself brings a different kind of excitement. “I don't feel altruistic. I feel like even when you quietly do something good in terms of giving away money… it is almost more intoxicating than a capitalistic pursuit, which is making money.”

But switching between the two highs is tricky. “Now, I don’t know which high is more appealing to me at which point of time. How do you switch between the two?”

Gates: “Philanthropy isn’t quite as competitive”

Gates said the world of giving is a little calmer than the business world. “Philanthropy isn’t quite as competitive,” he noted. “Creating a company… it's pretty stark… when we did Microsoft Office, quite a few companies in that space… they went away.”

In his younger days, Gates said fear also pushed him. “I think I'm pretty good at this… but have I just made that up? Will I be revealed that I didn’t do a good job?”

He recalled how obsessed he was with Microsoft’s survival, “It would bother me that the other leaders didn’t think our survival was at risk. I was always coming up with… ‘we have to worry about this.’ It was my whole life.”

But leaving Microsoft changed that. “Moving to the foundation made my life a little bit more sane,” he said. “I wasn’t always conjuring up the… ‘it could all completely blow up.’”