Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Indy Guha
I don’t want to overly intellectualize my childhood, but I do think it pretty profoundly shaped who I am. I would say there’s value to not being in the center.
Scott McGrew
I’m Scott McGrew. Welcome to Sand Hill Road, Indraneel Guha would prefer you call him Indy.
Indy Guha
I haven’t been single in many years but I try to introduce myself in a bar and have somebody say like what your name is internet which is the most San Francisco bar response ever right but anyway in the was easier handle
Scott McGrew
now it is pretty cool considering you got Indiana Jones I mean ND Is it pretty cool now
Indy Guha
pretty much all these associations I’m good with, right like, you know, if you’re hearing it, it could be you know, famous fictional archaeologist can be racecars free form Association, right. Oh, and or like, pick your favorite lesser known musician? That’s true. They’re all good options. I was away
Scott McGrew
into that band before anyone else was into it. Totally. Yes. Now you like the Indiana Jones you you have been around the world. I mean, you have lived in England and Saudi Arabia and India and the United States.
Indy Guha
Yeah. I also lived in Texas for a part of my childhood, which is certainly a different country.
Scott McGrew
San Francisco So true. So I’ll get to the United States in a minute. But tell me about the other places, particularly Saudi Arabia. What? What do I need to know about living in Saudi Arabia?
Indy Guha
Well, there are probably better guests to ask this question to I was in Saudi Arabia from the time I was two. So the time I was six, so I can give you the toddler version of what you need to know. I’d say the two call outs would be if you’re not accustomed to your mother wearing a head job, which everybody all women have to wear when they’re outside the home. As a two year old, a shadowy figure in black walking around with your family is quite shocking.
Scott McGrew
I think every kid has done that right where they followed the wrong pair of jeans, you know, in the mall and then looked up so you’re not my dad. Yeah,
Indy Guha
that would happen with it, I guess. So I, I don’t think that what happened to me but I could see how that comes about. I think, you know, in hindsight, there was this constant sense of being a second class citizen. It’s little things like so we used to go to learn swimming at this public pool. And they had a separate pool for Saudi nationals and for foreign nationals. They, which is sort of a bizarre concept in and of itself. And then the Saudi national pool, the things that stick when you’re, let’s call this now five years old, the Saudi national pool had like water slides and all sorts of cool stuff. The foreign national pool was a very nice pool and big size, whatever, but like no frills, right? dashboard lanes, lane markers, you’re good to go. So I think I think that’s probably what what sticks in me or sticks with me after the fact. The other interesting thing with Saudi is, at least in Riyadh, the big city. Everybody lives in their own enclave right? It doesn’t matter what the definition of the Enclave is the most typical version would be whatever your, whatever country you came from, because Saudi Arabia, at least in the 80s, I think this is still true imports all of their skilled labor. And so you show up and then you basically live in an apartment complex. It’s all Americans working in Saudi. And it’s just like a series of gated communities, which is a really odd concept when you think about it in the US context, though.
Scott McGrew
You have family still in India?
Indy Guha
Yes. All my extended families in Calcutta in the East city, this unfortunately best known for Mother Teresa and other unfortunate manifestations of poverty.
Scott McGrew
When were you in India? Well,
Indy Guha
I went there I moved back there when I was eight, and I finished middle school and high school there before coming back to Philly for college.
Scott McGrew
What do I need to know about living in India
Indy Guha
there are many India’s This is even more True now than it was in the 90s, when India first started kind of opening up its economy. I always tell friends, you know, if you’re going to travel in India, there’s a version of that country you can experience for $2,000 a day. And there’s a version of the country you can experience for $1 a day and pretty much every price point in between. So in many ways, somewhat like the US, it’s very hard to painted with one brush stroke, right? My parents are classic immigrants in that they moved across oceans to sort of chase opportunity. I think, unfortunately, that was married by with some pretty terrible financial savvy. And, unfortunately, in my dad’s case, probably overdeveloped ego. So, side effects of those two things was essentially we move to really kind of in startup terms low
Unknown Speaker
burn rate.
Indy Guha
You know, he took a couple of left turns professionally that put some financial hardship on the on the family, moving back to India, where we had extended family to kind of help out was a way to manage through that. So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say, life in the Bay Area as an executive tech company. All of this was not exactly or the fancy schools I was privileged enough to attend. Were not things I could have predicted as a as a middle school or high schooler.
Scott McGrew
That must be a bit jarring to now be, you know, a comfortable investor and an executive in a high tech firm growing up in a in a family in which there was a lot of uncertainty.
Indy Guha
I think I’ve been able to make my peace with the jarring part of it. I think I did have to work through that a bit. But in the earlier stages of my career, I had Is all of this real? Can all of this be taken away? That kind of thing. When you’ve experienced loss as a kid, it sort of stays with you in a lot of subtle ways. At this point, I think I’ve been able to move past that and it comes back to some of the things we talked about earlier, right. If you see in the negative side effects of overdeveloped ego, is a really easy way to keep your own ego in check. And it goes back to that learning mindset of I will always be a sponge for information. And I think that’s that’s served me well in a lot of different ways.
Scott McGrew
Bain Capital ventures recognized in these outsider looking in skill, tapping him to build its West Coast operation. Remember, Bain is an East Coast company until recent years shut out of the true action in California. Ben takes a bet on you making you the youngest partner in the company’s history. And then as you launch their Palo Alto office,
Indy Guha
that’s right. So, back in 2011, as I was finishing up Business School, it feels like an Eon ago relative to venture capital industry history, right. We’re in the SoftBank and vision fund era now. There was no real track record of East Coast venture firm successfully penetrating the West Coast. That was clear to everybody that the West Coast was the dominant hub for venture backed activity in the US about 50% of the dollars. At the time for Bain, I think 6% of our portfolio was in California. And so they kind of picked a group of folks that were excited to take on that challenge. And I had to figure out how to be relevant to this ecosystem, right? no shortage of excellent. Like, you know, iconic venture firms here in the Bay Area. And so kind of that 2011 to 2015 period was a lot of hard yards, building credibility building a network, showing people which how you could support their business showing founders how you can support their businesses. And over that period, the West Coast grew to be 40%. It’s now closer to 50% of Baynes activity. And so I became a partner there back in 2015. Having kind of helped build that engine. And that was, that was really cool. Anytime you’re building something new, I think there’s a lot of satisfaction to that.
Scott McGrew
As you’re introducing Bain to the west coast, you’re back in that situation of being sort of the outside kid looking in again.
Indy Guha
Yeah, I think that’s fair. It didn’t help that 2012 was when Mitt Romney was running for president and was a not positively viewed by most of the Bay Area. But I I guess there’s no such thing as bad press right? I think the way we were able to get through that is, you know, what can you offer to whatever social construct you’re in. And the thing that Bain is uniquely good at, and I was able to kind of build programs and process around that is access to the fortune 5000, right access east of the one on one. There’s a bunch of reasons for that. Bain is not just a venture capital firm, they have a private equity firm that owns a lot of household name companies. And so there’s a really interesting way to bring that to the surface of founders in the Bay Area to say, hey, as you scale your business, you’re going to need access to the fortune 5000 for customers for partnerships, whatever. Let’s make that programmatic. And that gave us an excuse to reach out to anybody here in Silicon Valley.
Scott McGrew
What was your biggest success at Bain?
Indy Guha
You know, it’s it’s very hard to, I guess pick a favorite child, but maybe we’ll we’ll focus on a company that I think is having a big impact in its industry. I love the series A in a company called right WRIK, headquartered here in downtown San Jose. They’re in the kind of task management and work management space. And back when we invested, it was a 40 person company, kind of three ish million in revenue. They’re about to cross 1000 people and are kind of in that pre IPO scale. The reason I like celebrating that one is they’ve done all of this on a total of maybe 50 million in capital that they’ve actually used or good worked through to grow the business, which I think is a is a wonderful story to remind the value of in the era of everything that’s happening with we work and Uber and this period of access. however you want to call that this was a company that always valued steak over sizzle. They always built a long term business, they always looked inward for what their customers wanted. What the market demanded, as opposed to what buzzword are investors going to care about and how do I artificially juice my numbers they always build for the long haul. And so I think for that they they married a special mention,
Scott McGrew
and they’re signified and anti fraud company in Baynes portfolio.
Indy Guha
I think the big opportunity in kind of the macro lens with that initially took me to signified as an investor. I invested in the company led the series c round before getting really excited about it and joining full time about a year and a half later. But signified is emblematic of where I think a lot of software will go, which is, first and foremost. leverage the data exhaust that already exists to automate and drive efficiency in any process you can think of,
Scott McGrew
in signified case that’s looking at consumer behavior to separate the honest buyers from the fraudulent
Indy Guha
knowing the good guys and gals intelligently ahead of the fact means you don’t have to do kludgy things like ask for two factor authentication when somebody’s trying to buy socks.
Scott McGrew
That’s really this is a customer you’ve seen before. who always pays for it sucks.
Indy Guha
Yeah, exactly. Like this person is good for the sock money. Don’t worry about it. But it’s it’s crazy, you know, because we sit on the checkout flows are so many merchants, we are this really interesting index of human aspiration right all of the things people want to buy on the internet, which is everything from socks to literally gold bars. And so we have to figure out how to help that full range of merchants. Basket size $25 through to basket size $30,000. luxury watches would be another example of some of the more pricey things we have to make decisions on.
Scott McGrew
Now to remind you, Andy has lived in India and Saudi Arabia and England.
Indy Guha
I don’t want to overly intellectualize my childhood, but I do think it pretty profoundly shaped who I am. I would say there’s value to not being in the center of the crowd. Because it gives you a little bit of perspective and a streak of ended And thinking this kind of impactful in all settings. And, you know, when you move around a lot as a kid, you’re constantly figuring out different social dynamics, different cultural norms. You never quite fit in some people describe this as being a sort of a third culture kid. And that’s okay. Right? Because not at the risk of sounding a little bit negative, it means you always have something to prove, which is sort of a good outlook on the world. It It means you always have a learning mindset or a growth mindset, which can be exhausting at times, but most of the time is very rewarding and it you know, it makes you try new things and be very open to that and kind of be able to look for the underpinnings of any social group or any senate situation which generally comes in handy.
Scott McGrew
Andy is an outside But really, he’s also an insider American High finance, Harvard Business School venture capital, which leads to the question, What part of outsider mentality is worth keeping? and What part do you shed? What part do you keep? and What part do you let go? It’s an excellent question that I didn’t think to ask that voice you hear is my producer Sean Myers?
Sean Myers
Then you land it you can you
go to Harvard business.
You couldn’t end up much more inside than those three in a row. But my question is really, what part of that outsider mentality is worth keeping? And what part of it do you shed as you go through the process? And having been here for now that sounds like seven years, maybe some amount of years? You start to be an insider more and more again, what What part do you keep with you and what part Have you been willing to let go?
Indy Guha
That’s a powerful question. I think about that for a minute. That’s good. That’s totally fair. I think for me, it’s been never taking conventional wisdom to be binding and to be correct. That’s another example of one of those personality traits that can be pretty damn exhausting. Because when somebody, when you get the expert opinion on X, you just don’t accept it at face value, you feel this compulsive need to validate it. In fact, check it a little bit, and at least form a quick and dirty version of your own view.
Sean Myers
That
Indy Guha
is something I don’t ever want to lose, because that’s how you avoid kind of the in group mentality of Oh, this is how it should be done because this is how it has always been done. And when you really started to think about it As an investor, it was helpful to keeping me grounded when this cycle of excess really started to pick up steam. Hey, do the business fundamentals of extra y actually makes sense? Can you really scale a negative gross margin business? Some of those types of questions just it allows you to listen to that spider sense when it goes off as an operator, and I’m still fully figuring out how to express this. A lot of times when you step into a company, there’s some level of tribal knowledge around we tried x and it didn’t work and we tried why and it didn’t work and therefore this other thing is never going to work. And the combination of learning mindset and questioning default wisdom allows you to say it’s great that it didn’t work. Why didn’t work like let’s actually unpack. It wasn’t like anytime you run an experiment, you’re not just testing one thing you’ve, you’re actually locking in six things that are bundled into the same experiment. So which of those six caused the failure? And if we wanted to test it again, what would you What would you change? And I think that allows you to pull in a lot of other folks into a conversation and just really bring a lot more ideas to the table. I realized that all sounds very Kumbaya, I don’t know how to how to tell that story better. But it is a pretty fundamental belief for me and kind of how I move through the world.
Scott McGrew
Indiegogo hub of signified and Bain venture capital. For more interviews with Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs, check me out on TV at press here. That’s Sunday mornings on NBC Bay Area and everywhere in the world on iTunes and at press here TV com Sand Hill Road is produced by Sean Myers executive produced by Sarah bueno. And Stephanie Adrouny.
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