00:42:59 · Akshay Chaturvedi, Anirudh A Damani
[00:42:59] S1: No. Thank you. [00:42:59] S0: But, you know, I I I do want to mention something, you know, you've... While all of this is going on, right, it's very interesting to keep reading your LinkedIn profile. By the way, you've got one of the longest... There should be an award for the longest LinkedIn profile available. [00:43:12] S1: Have cut it down, Anirudh. I, about 1.5 back, somebody gave the same not so sweet compliment and I had to cut it down. This is a trimmed down version. [00:43:21] S0: Oh, wow. But but, you know, what what I'm saying is that you've you've actually been involved in other activities, right? Because it's it's like, I, I maybe sometimes find myself guilty about the fact that I, I had so many more ideas to be more socially involved, right? In other causes. I might have written checks here and there, but I'm not really been able to essentially get involved, right? But you were part of the PM's, you know, Committee Form for the #India2022 Policy Building, right? And you did that in 2017 while you were building a startup, and you literally were at the start of building your startup, right? And you, I mean, how would you manage all of these things? I mean, are entrepreneurs out here listening to you, wondering like, you know, startup KPMG, committee, helping other people out, traveling, doing all of these other things. While building a... I mean, while building a startup almost 100 x in the last... I know that growth in the last three years.
00:44:20 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[00:44:20] S1: And so to be super honest, not as fancy as it looks. I spent all of three days in that month and then about another three or four days about couple of months later. What it gave me was access to a set of folks who I wouldn't have had access to otherwise. In that month, by the way. Correct. So I was thinking I was this guy, Anirudh, I hadn't grown up to essentially say that I already know where my round will come from, what this VC will come in and write my first check. So I was actually this guy a couple of years back who had to... Once an entrepreneur would finish his talk, I would... Or her talk, I would run up to them, tell them that, hey. I'm Akshay. Please take my business card. I am this small company. I'm trying to do this. I've I've done that about 100 times in my life, and I've not been tired. So this was a part of that to a very quick degree. And I got a chance to, I think, just meet a great set of people who, by spending all of 72 hours, who continue to be a great part of my life. I became great friends with Vishal, who's already a mentor to some degree. But we got close during this phase. And from 2017 to now, he's been a great mentor. I spent time with VSS who has continued to be a mentor and a lot of other folks as well. I would have never had access to somebody like Shreedhar Shoe without this event. But I was sitting next to him and Fernando Sama and Mr. And a bunch of these industry luminaries discussing random things. To me, random, but to them essentially very nation building. And I was trying... I was trying to contribute to the from my experiences of having largely run ISB for Anir as a director of the student board Yeah. And give those inputs. But I think for me, largely, it was about opening up my network around that time. And I did manage to get about 12 lakh rupees from that event, which contributed to 2 crores, eight rounds.
00:46:18 · Anirudh A Damani
[00:46:18] S0: And, you know, before I get into this funding conversation, I do want to take this question. It's a question from the audience. Jacob Matthew asked the question like, he said, loving the talk, quick question, talking about networking, what strategy did you use to build such a strong network especially during your early stages in the in your career?
00:46:36 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[00:46:36] S1: Interesting. Jacob, Jacob, leverage but interesting. But largely for the larger audience, Anirudh, the idea was that I think networking is a slightly negative word. I I would rather call this word building meaningful relationships. And the way you do that is by giving proof of your work. So I would always kind of... I would be fond of intros who... And and this is how I kind of gone out and done all my intros in the early years. Would do something for somebody for example if I'm writing an intro to you in my early years, I would say that hey Anirudh this is what is happening in other ventures. Why don't you look at I built out this thesis for these two spaces that you don't look at and do you think any of these thesis would be useful to you and I think these are these four entrepreneurs that you should just watch out for. That's how it kind of into a VC. If I was trying to get a job in a VC, right, or if I'm kind of trying to write to founder, a lot of people who work with me... In fact, Jacob wrote a very interesting email to me when he came into Leverage Edu. A lot of people who essentially work very closely with me even right now. These are people who essentially said, Akshay, I saw this performance marketing campaign, but I think this copy could have been better and this design could have been better or essentially came across somebody who's a counselor of yours. His pitch should have also included this ROI on what this person will get once essentially land abroad and things like that. So a lot of those ideas essentially come from the ability to essentially... A lot of good ideas come to, I would say, people like you or people essentially or people want to network with from the ground. And people on the ground who can essentially supply them with these good ideas, can essentially make themselves useful, who can essentially show that there's somebody worthy to connect with and make it extra effort, I think I think that is a great part. And so that is again a slightly more qualitative answer. A more objective answer is that you just go in and in and in and in and and just don't give up and you just be very persistent with the ability to essentially go out and introduce yourself as well.
00:48:38 · Akshay Chaturvedi
Because at the same time, you also would have to build out a hard skin because there are going be enough people as you reach out who are to tell you that hey, whatever X, Y, Z, why the hell are you reaching out to me? Why the hell are you bothering twice, thrice, four times? So I think the ability to also take a lot of Yeah. Hard skin building up. You you end up also... I I get this from a... I've got this from a lot of people in my early years who would say that, Akshay, you're building a so and so projection. Do not be bothered with that image to have a hard skin, to essentially just be kind of very, very obsessed with what you are building, At the same time being useful to people. I've also realized that the best things that have come into my life are those where I have just selflessly kind of sounds like a kind of thing when I say this. But just go about and help people without thinking what would come back. And life works in the most mysterious ways. You have the same person come back to you and make a connection to you with something absolutely random that completely changes your life and that moves you one level up. So I think those are some of the things that have worked very well for me.
00:49:46 · Anirudh A Damani
[00:49:46] S0: And I think it's, you put it really well. It's about, it really is about creating meaningful connections and by giving before you want things. Right? I mean we used to do this when we used to do door to door sales. Because it's called a gift to get. Right? First give before you want to ask, right? And just give. Give selflessly, don't think about, don't, don't worry about the result, right? Or don't, you know, don't don't get obsessed with what, what's going to happen, but just give. And I, I, I mean, and I, to, to be honest, if you're reaching out to a VC and you want a job with a VC, something I said for a very long time, write me a thesis and tell me where my blind spot is, right? And I might get offenced, you know, it may, it may be offensive to me, it may not, but truly, you know, if you look at, investing of what any, I mean, every industry has its own course, but investing is all about opinion, and you just, I mean, I, I literally could write a blog on what you just said, this is how you get a job with the VC, right? Put out your bloody opinion, right? Let me know, where am I blank for? And then the four guys I should be speaking to. But I don't want to talk about your funding journey because it's almost a page long in at least in my notes. So I might as well go through it. We, you know, you started out with an angel round, you know, you you had Arjun Mehta, Satish Kaul, you had Anand Sankeshwarar, Alok Mittal, Kashadura, Anand Dagose, Swati Desai, Swati obviously, Bhagwan's wife. You know, all these guys that put in money in 2017. Unfortunately, I ended up being the guy that, you know, has you in my anti portfolio. Right? But we also, you know, we also met under very interesting circumstances, right? We were trying to build something between an ISB and a US university, and we met with that intention. Correct. But like you said, you had a lot of these kind of nos to get to the yeses. What was it like getting your first round together? After, you know, you'd... By that time, you were eight years in the eight years in the startup ecosystem. Yeah. That's right, actually.