Sharing a few unconventional lessons we learned working with Shailendra Singh, our investor/mentor. He is the MD of Sequoia India and is the only Indian VC to be featured in the list of top 100 VCs in the world.
1. “Did he say No?” Usually, when I meet investors or potential partners, I follow up immediately and then 3-4 times more and then move on if I don’t hear anything positive. Shailendra turned this on its head by suggesting to not move on until I hear something negative. Whenever I said the person doesn’t seem interested, Shailendra will say “Did he say No? If not, you can’t give up”.
2. “Take one day at a time.” Voonik has gone through a lot of tough phases. We have been on the verge of giving up multiple times. Shailendra narrated how he dealt with a personal tragedy by taking one day at a time. Among VCs asking for 5-year business plans, he asked us to think just about the next day. That has helped us immensely when we could not see how the next month/year was going to turn out.
3. “I have seen too many companies succeed after being at the brink of shut down for us to give up”. Another message that kept us going during tough times. The main lesson is that even great companies had tough times and such times are not indicative of the potential of the company.
4. “You will be surprised how elastic teams are.” We did the same mistake which every startup makes in its growth phase - Over-Hiring. When Shailendra first mentioned about how same speed and efficiency can be done with one-tenth of the team size, I thought he was joking. But I am genuinely surprised about how true this is. I have even seen one person doing some task (with a lot of tech tools, of course) that required 25 people at some point.
5. “It’s AND. Not OR.” While I read this concept in Jim Collins’ books, I didn’t internalize it until I saw how Shailendra used this principle. Profit AND Growth. Great Customer Experience AND Great Margins. Great Control AND Lean Operations. It’s possible to do both and we have seen it first-hand at Voonik.