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 . . . .
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