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.

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!

The Private Equity Scene in India - I know I said I would leave . . . .

I know what you’re thinking . . . Private Equity in a developing country. It’s what many bankers aspire to do. I was trying to leave the world of finance and I got stuck right back in the mix. Boy, are you wrong. It has been a wonderful two years. At the beginning, I was the only non-Partner which meant that I got to have a direct hand in building the firm. At some points they gave me almost too much responsibility! The environment is very very different from Investment banking. For one thing, you are not focused on getting a deal done, instead you are focused on the long term viability of a Company. I would say that now, two years later, I spend over 75% of my time on Portfolio companies. That means that we are directly, on a daily basis, involved with the Companies that we represent. My job was not to manipulate numbers, but to help the Company implement operational improvements or help them get new customers (usually by calling up a senior partner to get an introduction) or even, and unfortunately, managing crises. More importantly, I got to boss my own bosses around a bit! I have learned a lot about the Indian business environment and the challenges growing businesses face. I would imagine that this experience is very different from Private Equity in the U.S. because there are less buyouts, almost no leverage, and you are typically dealing with companies that are not used to intense financial scrutiny and governance. It is always a battle yet the rewards are much greater. So I’ve enjoyed my time, learned a lot, and met some excellent people- But it’s time to leave!

Leaving the Corporate - Part Deux; or, How to Leave Private Equity

After a two year hiatus I’m back! My initial dream of escaping the corporate didn’t happen according to plan. The “telecom services” startup actually got started but I did something unfortunately a lot more corporate at the same time. We launched iJunxion (add link) 6 months ago with an initial conference calling service for Companies in India. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite leave the corporate like I was expecting – I ventured into something quite “Corporate” – Private Equity.

 

So, I guess you’re asking what happened? Well in January 2007 I got a call from a former boss at Merrill (where I worked for all of 3 months, or was it 6, I can’t remember) as well as some other partners of a Private Equity firm that was just starting in India. In the U.S. I had worked on a bunch of deals in the Telecom Tower space and these new PE hotshots were looking at doing a deal in the space in India. They had no Associates or junior level help of any kind so they asked me to help them out for a few weeks by building a model and starting to execute a transaction in the space. Little did I know that this “project” is one I am still working on and has led to a few transactions in the space. I guess I got sucked into the buy-side and have been with the firm (to be named later when my link won’t be the only one – as we just put the web-site up).

 

Now, though, I am doing it again! I am leaving to try to start my own business, or at least figure out what is important to me (besides cash money!).

 

[UPDATE: Our website is up! I was/am working for New Silk Route Growth Capital]