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! 

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.

What Finance Geeks Don’t Know About Getting a New Job (and pretty much most idiot college kids)

I try to tell my little brothers all the time that the key to getting a job is to network and follow-up with people.  Most type-A college kids who go into Investment Banking and Consulting go through their campus recruiting programs and are thus completely clueless when they are [forced to / choose] to leave the profession.  Getting a job is NOT about going to online job postings (in my experience) - - it is about networking heavily and doing it in an efficient and organized manner.

 

Get your address book out and start contacting your friends and family for help.  The first thing to do is blast email / call your friends and family and let people know that you are looking for a job in the field and that any contacts they could provide would be helpful.  You can and should contact specific people who you know will be more helpful (i.e. your parents because they are obligated to).

 

Now as the contacts start rolling in, remember that the the most important aspect of the approach is that you are not contacting these people to ask for jobs.  It is always better to approach them by asking for advice or an introduction to others in the field you are interested in.  I prefer doing this initially with an email and establishing some sort of common ground.  The idea is to collect information and synthesize it to help you in later discussions. 

 

As you talk to more people your knowledge of the area you are pursuing will grow.  Not only will you then start building better repoire with your contacts by demonstrating knowledge, but you will also be able to narrow the focus on the specific area or company you want to work with as well as the specific people that your contact can help you reach out to.