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.
00:51:44 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[00:51:44] S1: Eight years. No. So super brutal. I I have to put it in very easy words. My first check came in from... So so everybody who knew me kind of started to put checks. All my peers, everybody I worked with. My first check came in from my friend, who's a CFO at babajob. He started by promising me a 5 lakh rupee check. And we used to do these walks post lunch in Bangalore, in Central Bangalore. And ended up investing about 20 lakh rupees in the first round. Wow. We're getting in close to becoming a millionaire in the next couple of months. So Sadh came in. He got in a few people. I I had met Anirudh Akshay Chaturvedi very randomly at an event. And I had introduced him to Vijay Shekhar around that time because he was looking for an intro. And we got in touch, and he randomly WhatsApp me one fine day, who's a pretty girl in your DP? I said, she's my girlfriend. I'm looking to get married to her in the next couple of days. And we had kind of built out a relationship of kind of being friends. And he said, okay, what's up? I said, I'm raising money right now. He's like, okay. Why don't we talk? And I remember him taking a decision in like two minutes and giving me a 60 lakh rupee check around that time. And he's like the owner of VRL, which is a 20,000 crore group in its overall since logistics media all of that. So lot of those conditions came like that and of course, so I remember I and I I've kept this for every round since I've kept this I've I've made an excel sheet and I do a pass fail kind of percentage. So I had reached out to 88 angel investors and about 22 invested.
00:53:22 · Anirudh A Damani
[00:53:22] S0: That's a pretty good hit rate. 25% is very high.
00:53:25 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[00:53:25] S1: That's a decent hit rate. And I remember this one time somebody called me to Bangalore to say, hey, I'll give you 5 lakh rupees. I went all the way to Bangalore, pitched for about three hours, went with this guy to to an Idly shop, had Idly, then he said, invest. And this was, like, came in after, like, some 10 to 12 predictions at a go. And everybody who had... And this is all coming from people who had kind of expected to the Dalaikai. Correct. When all these came in and I was so... You get into these phases. Right? And I always tell people who are reaching out to me now that, boss, entrepreneurship is like a lot of lows. It's 99 lows for every single up. So you've got to be ready for that. You've got to have a very, very hard skin. So I remember this is June 2017. I remember it so clearly. And as a as a self punishing measure of sorts, I kept walking in, like, very hot group. And I was like, I kept walking. Walking to a point where my nose started to bleed. And I had to kind of then rush to guy, put eyes and all of that. And then I was so disappointed that I was not able to kind of move forward in the round. At that point in time, had raised about some $35.40 lakh rupees sort of a corpus of 1.5 crores that we wanted to raise. 50 lakhs came in later. And that is when I went to a Starbucks, opened my laptop, and had an email from, who I kind of really wanted to raise money and Kashab signed up for 10 lakh without asking any questions. And I think that's when my luck turned in my angel round. As soon as Kashab came in because he was a prolific angel investor in the larger circle. Mean Kashab came in, I think a lot of people started to come in after him and that's when we kind of got closer around. I remember after we closed the first 1.5, there was a small news article in Economic Times. And Alok Mittal reached out to me via Kashab. Very interesting company I would like to invest. Can introduce me to the entrepreneur. And, Kashyap introduced me, and then I... Alok called me to Gurgaon, and I went to Alok's office. And Alok started to introduce himself in the first couple of minutes. Here, I'm Alok Patel. I've done this. And I told him, hey. You know what? I know everything about you. Sent you a LinkedIn request in 2012. So you can you can begin by accepting that, and then I can tell you about what we are doing.