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.