Summer Camp has Begun – Maintaining the schedule without committing to another person is tough!

Instead of diving right into a new venture (although I am thinking about what to do constantly) I have set up a “summer camp” of sorts for myself for the next month.  The PLAN (and i stress plan for reasons I will explain below) is as follows:

- Conversational Hindi classes – three times a week for one hour

- Yoga classes – twice a week in the morning for one hour

- Cooking classes – 2-3 times a week for 1-1.5 hours

- Sailing classes – 2 times a week for 2-3 hours

- Bridge classes – 3 times a week for 1 hour

 

Only the Hindi and Yoga classes are actually paid for, fully scheduled classes.  Cooking “class” is with our home cook, sailing classes is regular sailing with a “tindel” on-board who does not speak a work of English and bridge classes are, as of now, non-existent (though I am spending time reading and learning online).  It has not been for a lack of trying though!

 

I am afraid that without having a set, committed, schedule with a teacher that i have paid for, it will be tough to maintain my motivation.  Having that monetary pressure plus feeling of responsibility to another person makes it more likely that I will learn.  Take bridge, for example – I started by scheduling an hour of time for myself at home.  First lesson was easy but with all the distractions I have on my computer it is easy to slip. 

 

If any of you have any other ideas of how to keep myself motivated please do let me know!

End of an Era: My Last Day at NSR – It has been a pleasure!

Forgive me, I have been trying to send out an email to everyone outside of NSR informing them of my new contact info but unfortunately the NSR server won’t let me send out so many emails at once.  More importantly (for me) stupid Facebook won’t let me export the email addresses or at least send a mass fb message to all my friends.  What a pain.  Regardless below is the email I sent to NSR – I believe it has the right touch of humor and good will to maintain my bridges with them going forward.  Look for an email from me with my new contacts as soon as I figure out a solution.

 

Dear All,

As my tenure at NSR comes to an end I have had the chance to reflect on the my past 2 years here; I am proud of the firm and how much progress we have made.  I remember my initial few months with the firm in early 2007 when we had offices in the Hilton towers and were doing everything from looking for deals to designing offices (and in my case, buying the coffee machine – thank you very much!).  Since then we have made significant progress in becoming a world-class private equity firm and have some of the smartest investing professionals in India.  We have also established some great investment screening and monitoring processes (which we always strive to improve).  Most importantly, we have developed great personal and professional relationships with all of our colleagues (from Mumbai to NYC to Dubai; from founding partners to Assistants). 

 

I think I am a better person for having worked with you all both because I grew my professional skill set and because I have made some great friends.  I will really miss this place and I hope that I get the chance to work together again with some of you in the future (I envision a future where I can boss Harsha and Nithin around!). 

It is unclear what my plans are for the future but I intend to do a little bit of “soul searching” and obviously have some fun (re: bridge classes!) before I figure out what the next step is.  Importantly, I plan to remain in India where I feel the maximum amount of opportunity lies.

 

I plan to keep in touch with all of you and insist that you be nice when I call you to ask for advice, introductions or most importantly cash! 

Crayon Physics Deluxe and the Art of NOT Being Embarrassed by Childish Things

I know this is going to sound very nerdy . . . . . over the last two weeks as I have finished transitioning my projects on to other colleagues I have found myself with some free-time.  I was thinking about how much fun Lego and those Meccano / Erector sets were when I was a kid so I started searching for similar games / toys I could play on my computer.  I quickly found a piece of software that Lego released but unfortunately it isn’t as fun online as it is in real life. 

 

So that got me thinking . . . what is it about these “engineering” and “construction” toys that I like.  So, as a natural electrical or mechanical engineer (which I'm not which is why this is so nerdy), I started doing searches for PC games with good “physics engines.”  As expected, Line Rider, a game we have all seen at one point (I hope!) came up fairly high on the search rankings.  Two great games, though, also came up.  The World of Goo and Crayon Physics Deluxe.  They are absolutely stunning games and are even more phenomenal when played on a tablet PC.

 

The World of Goo is like a Meccano set where you have to build structures made of “goo” across bridges and fire-pits, etc to get them to the other side, as it were.  There are a lot of twists and turns a long the way that change the properties of the “goo balls” which make it fun, also the graphics are quite good.  If you play this game at work and nobody knows what it is, people will definitely think you are doing something NSFW just due to the name. 

 

Crayon physics deluxe basically makes you draw structures (lines, levers, pulleys, etc) that help in moving one crayon drawn ball towards a crayon drawn star.  You win each level by hitting the star with the ball.  The items you draw follow the laws of gravity and that is what makes the game fun.  The word “crayon” in the name of the name of the game should serve as a warning that the game looks like a piece of construction paper with crayon drawings on it.  It is basic, it looks childish, but it is amazing.

 

Waiting in the Mumbai airport waiting to go to Dubai for an NSR offsite, I whipped out my tablet laptop and told my colleagues to check out CPD (what I call Crayon Physics Deluxe – I know, don’t say it).  Now at first they were extremely skeptical  and chided me on my childishness and nerdiness (when I explained how I found the game).  Since they couldn’t go anywhere I had them watch me play a level.  They were a bit skeptical but still saw how I could find it fun.  When I put the tablet pen in their hands and told them to play they were absolutely addicted!  It was so funny to see three grown men fighting and whining over who got to play the next level.  I’ve beaten the entire game and the entire Analyst / Associate pool is not far behind me. 

 

So that brings me to the moral of this story.  Childishness is good?  Well, I'm not sure what the moral is but hey, once you figure it out, tell me!

Reflecting on Two Years at New Silk Route

I was the first Junior hire my NSR made and, as such, have seen the firm grow from a startup where hierarchy structures and decision making processes weren’t defined to an institution with defined processes and what I would call a “loose hierarchy.”  Over the past weekend, I went to Dubai with NSR for one of our bi-yearly off-sites where we, as a firm, reflected on our development as a firm, discussed and debated our portfolio companies, and made decisions on how to move forward as a firm and with our portfolio companies.  The time also gave me a chance to reflect over my own development over the past two years. 

 

Interestingly, I realized that I enjoyed my first year at NSR a bit more then my second year.  Being the only junior team member among five India partners (now four) and four “founding” partners put me in a very important position where my time and decisions were very valuable.  My initial decisions helped to create our current processes and team; my visibility to the senior team was very high.  This, I think, made me feel very important and valuable – that feeling decreased somewhat my second year. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, my second year at NSR was great and I truly enjoyed it – just not as much as my first year.  As our processes became more defined and our team grew bigger, my visibility decreased and thus I felt less important to the firm.  This is natural since we hired some phenomenal senior associates who have much more experience at running processes, doing analyses and managing teams.  I have learned a lot from them but the trust and interaction with the senior team increasingly flowed through the senior associates because they were smarter and more responsible!

 

The lesson,I think, is to convince them to elect me as a Partner!  For now, I’ll just keep exploring what types of jobs / industries I could enjoy.  My sense is that I am more suited for that “startup” type of environment.

Going all “John Galt” on Obama

Robert Tracinski (a fellow University of Chicago Graduate) the editor of The Intellectual Activist, an Objectivist web publication, points out that the mainstream media in the U.S. has started using some of Ayn Rand’s “Objectivist” language to describe the heavy increase in government scope since Obama came into power in the U.S.  John Galt is one of the main characters in Atlas Shrugged (see my earlier post) who leaves the system and goes on strike – against a centrally planned government, of course.  I bet if Ayn Rand were still around she would see an easy path from Obama’s “Big Government” to Stalin’s centrally planned economy.  And we all know what happened to Stalin’s regime! 

 

One of my good friends hates Ayn Rand and the philosophy of Objectivism.  He hilariously points out that Ayn Rand is “the sort of person who a smarmy Florida patent attorney quotes to justify his obscene living.”  That aside, Obama has re-energized a large portion of the American population (and global population too) who did not believe, or were just tired of, the political system.  His youth and ability to speak have persuaded people that there is an actual vision for the future; something which is tangible.  The die has been cast as to whether the future will turn out the way he wants!

Transitioning out of the Corporate – My last Month with New Silk Route

This is my last month as a full-time employee at New Silk Route (“NSR”).  I am very excited and scared to leave the firm – I was the first junior guy they hired and really feel like I have had a significant impact in how the firm has grown.  I am sad to leave this small team of people that I respect and continue to learn from on a daily basis but I understand that I need the “threat” of zero-income to motivate me to make money in some other way! 

 

Leaving a small, tight-knit, firm like NSR is tough.  There are no formalized transition processes as I am the first non-Partner to leave the firm.  As I transition my portfolio company responsibilities to my colleagues, I have learned the value of my knowledge-base and contact-base within the firm, with our portfolio companies and with the universe of service companies we work with on a daily basis (auditors, bankers, consultants, etc).  I wish I had done this type of exercise before – it has helped me to understand how valuable I am to my peers and bosses.  Don’t get me wrong, my colleagues will be able to manage easily without me but there will be at least a few months of a learning curve to get up to speed.  Additionally, my motivation to work and quality of work since I decided to leave has waned a bit so the threshold to meet will be lower.

 

So what will I miss?  I will miss working with some very smart people on a daily basis (both Partners and Non-Partners).  The junior pool of people in India are not only my colleagues but also my friends.  I will see them after work and on the weekends after I leave but I won’t have the benefit of interacting with them on an informal basis during the workday.  I have also realized that I will miss being in the “flow” of business information – seeing new companies, talking to entrepreneurs and VIPs, etc.  A few friends of mine and I are working on a way to maintain this “flow” of information but I will talk about that in a future post . . . .

 

Keep coming back for more!