Scott McGrew I was shocked. I mean, I came up with the right answer immediately. I was shocked. The grown adults of both genders were just flummoxed by the question.
Anshu Agarwal Exactly. And, you know, I, I have a lot of hope because both my kids just passed with flying kites. Okay.
Scott McGrew I’m Scott McGrew. Welcome to Sand Hill Road.
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Scott McGrew Attention on this week’s guest used to prowl airports with a microphone.
Anshu Agarwal I used to go to airports to collect speech data because we wanted noisy environments, so we would record people in the airports, in their lounges and waiting rooms and gates.
Scott McGrew And so you would sit at the bar, you would sit in the waiting room or whatnot, and just run your eyes.
Anshu Agarwal Ask the people, give them gift cards and say, you know, can we borrow your speech?
Scott McGrew And so you would just we you just record what it is they happen to be speaking to a friend. No, no, no. You had a script.
Anshu Agarwal That you we would we’d want something to be said which could fall in our dataset, particularly this.
Scott McGrew Week on Sand Hill Road and Shoe. Agarwal, currently general partner at Converge Ventures. Before that five time startup success and before that a top thinker in computer speech recognition. Do you use things that recognize speech today? Siri and Echo and whatnot?
Anshu Agarwal I do. Yeah. Yeah. And I am driving. I actually use.
Scott McGrew Tell me, what do you think of it?
Anshu Agarwal It’s. It’s gonna. It’s come a long way. Okay. And it doesn’t get my text messages, right? Oh, always. So I’m always correcting my driving. And sometimes I just say, you know what? I. And I stop, Alright? I send the text. So, you know, there there is improvements to be made still, but it is a lot more natural to hear. So the synthesis has actually taken just very is very evolved.
Scott McGrew And when you do it you must have a little bit of pride like, Hey, I had a lot to do with it actually.
Anshu Agarwal I have a lot of pride because I am I my son, who is a who studies computer science. He came across my thesis. It was a Aggarwal on the thesis paper, and Agarwal being so common, he sends it to me. He’s texted me and says, Mom, is that you? And I’m like, Yeah, it is me. Because it had my adviser’s name and everything. And it kind of I got the like the professional respect from him is you talk about pride. I think that was my proudest moment that my papers still being relevant.
Scott McGrew That’s that’s you are a brand new venture partner at Converge. I mean, new, new.
Anshu Agarwal Very new, very new.
Scott McGrew Tell me about your first day.
Anshu Agarwal My first day? Uneventful.
Scott McGrew Good.
Anshu Agarwal You know, I can’t say anything particular about first day because kind of I was gearing towards it and I have been evaluating companies for a long time. I have been an angel investor. So nothing, nothing in particular. The only thing that I would say different was here, I’m setting up my own day, okay? Whereas in an operational role, somebody is actually setting up your day because you have meetings thrown on your calendar, you have your team and you have you have customer meetings already scheduled by the sales team. You have an analyst meeting that has been that’s on your calendar. You have somebody telling you that, you know, these are the main points that you will need to cover. That aspect is gone. It’s like, yeah, it becomes I think it’s a little bit more lonely a job that then the other one that I had.
Scott McGrew But it’s good to be queen.
Anshu Agarwal It’s absolutely good typically.
Scott McGrew So Converge was not in Silicon Valley before, if I understand that right?
Anshu Agarwal That is correct.
Scott McGrew What in the world kind of venture capital firm isn’t in Silicon Valley?
Anshu Agarwal Very good question. So it started in Boston, and because the two partners, they are Boston based and there is there are a lot of companies and, you know, Boston used to be a center for startups. Sure. Prior to Silicon Valley. So and there’s MIT innovation, there’s Harvard. So the two of the two founding partners, they were they had a lot of deals coming out of there in the domains that we invest. They invested in middle in Silicon Valley. So they invested in my previous company in Bella, and they were opportunistic about the companies that came from here. So they had a syndicate over here and they invested, but they didn’t have boots on the ground. At some point in time they would have built the team on the ground. But it was it’s it’s an early stage fund, an early stage investing venture firm. So it was kind of fine. But when the opportunity came around, I had left my company and they were always thinking of, you know, setting up in Silicon Valley. This was there’s always the right time to start. So this was the right think.
Scott McGrew And I think these days we’re a little less place bound, right? I mean, it used to be that, you know, the Office of the Startup was in Palo Alto and the venture capital firm was literally on Sand Hill Road. And now the venture, the startup may be three or four different people in three or four different locations. It doesn’t matter the way it used to.
Anshu Agarwal Absolutely. I think that’s the one big change I found when I was raising money. I could do maximum two meetings in a day because you go to San Francisco for one meeting and in go to Sand Hill or you do two to meetings or three meetings in San. COVID changed everything. You could raise 20, 30, 40, 50 million on Zoom. And you don’t have to be in-person. Not all founders have to fly in. The founder can be in Timbuktu and still take the meeting. All that changed. So as a VC, you could be anywhere to your good. Now you don’t have to meet the founder, but if you want to meet the founders, it’s always possible to meet the founders, too. But it is. It was deliberate. They did not have an office here because they they did not want to grow it. It’s an ultimate apprenticeship sports here. And you and it is a team sport. So you want to find the right partners who have the who who are who you can actually bond and team with. And so when I when the opportunity came, I mean, I wasn’t I wasn’t thinking of being a venture. Joining a venture firm. It just happened to be that when they reached out to me and said, you know, we want you to be a general partner in our firm. I have to think whether I want to I want to do this or not, okay? Because I wasn’t thinking about it, but it was the right opportunity. It was they they they put a lot of value in me joining the team. We. I compliment them. I bring I. I mean, Silicon Valley boots on the ground. I say I meet the founders over here in person and I have the opportunity to do that. That is a different kind of deal flow. Also, you’ll get more Silicon Valley deals. So there’s a lot of a lot of things that came together. And so, you know, it was the right thing for me to do. It was the right thing for them to grow like that.
Scott McGrew And and the flipside of that is you’ve been part of, what, five or six very successful companies and that have been taken over and with excellent exits. Are you going to miss that?
Anshu Agarwal Yes, I have been part of five startup journeys and I’ve enjoyed every I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been through ups and downs, cyclical nature of businesses. So I learned a lot in in the downs and executed in UPS. So and I’ve been fortunate that they all had great exits. Am I going to miss that? It’s a great question. In the last six weeks or so, I haven’t. The things that I didn’t like about operational role, it just is kind of not there in the venture, which is, you know, and being part of the large startup, a large companies, it’s always is more pressure in terms of there is bureaucracy, there is a lot of things that happen and I’ve never enjoyed it.
Scott McGrew Right now, HP, HP and Juniper are some of the ones that have taken over companies that you have created or or helped create. You had little startups that became much bigger part. A Much bigger.
Anshu Agarwal That is right, Yes. Yes. It was.
Scott McGrew Frustrating.
Anshu Agarwal Yeah. So 300 when I joined HP, it was 300,000 people. You know, you’re really nobody in the company when you joined in venture. That’s not the case. The thing that I really like about Venture is you get to meet so many smart people because you know, when you are doing your own company, you meet smart people, but you meet smart people in your domain. Here you had the breadth. You may not have the depth. You absolutely will not have the depth, but the breadth. It’s so exciting. It keeps you so young. It keeps you and you meet so many smart people. Obviously, you’re not going to find everybody, but you meet so many and you get inspired, motivated for actually helping them out and seeing them grow. It’s like you are you are vicariously living your operational experience through others. Although, you know, as a I would be the first one to say as an investor, you should know your role really well. You know when to step back and to help. And that’s because I’ve been on the other side. So I would never do that. Even though I’ve been operational for so long, I would never, never, ever say, But you get to live it through them. And that’s exciting.
Scott McGrew I heard somebody I’m not a grandparent yet, but I’ve heard somebody describe it as being a grandparent. Right. You have all the joy of raising a child. But when you’re when you’re finished for the day, you just hand it back.
Anshu Agarwal You know, actually, that’s a great analogy. I’m going to borrow that because it is it is very much like that. And as I said, operational role is exciting, is definitely exciting. But there are aspects of it that I always dread. I I’d never enjoyed and those are absolutely missing and completely missing. And that’s a good.
Scott McGrew You know, sometimes I am I am reluctant to bring up women in venture. Because when I sit down with male venture capitalists, we don’t talk, generally speaking, about being men. But that said, as I was doing my research on you, you bring it up often. You once said the time when we stop talking about this topic is the time when I would say enough has been done. The fact that we’re still talking about it states that it’s not enough. When you raised money for startups, you said, quote, It became apparent to me that the rules weren’t the same for men and women CEOs. The questions I was asked were all figuring out if I was as dedicated as other Silicon Valley CEOs who were men.
Anshu Agarwal Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So just some history about me. I was the only woman engineer in my class, in my engineering class. I, I didn’t feel there were challenges in being a lot. Being alone. It’s lonely. There are challenges. But I don’t. I didn’t see the biases. Okay. I think I started observing the biases when I rose to the leadership roles as as a regular engineering team researcher. It really didn’t matter. Okay? But when I rose to the leadership positions, I did see a lot of unconscious biases. And some of the biggest supporters have been men. But because I have not had the fortune of working for a woman leader myself, but I’ve had all my leaders and I but what I felt was that the women were held to a different standard. And I mean, I say this to that and some people say women are not assertive in the leadership roles and all that. But when a woman is being assertive, it’s considered arrogance. And when a man is being assertive, it’s called confidence. Okay. So that’s the different standard that that women are measured against at times. And then what I also found was I’ve been leading product teams. I’ve been leading marketing teams. I’ve been an executive for the startups. And that role was still okay. Okay. Women leaders. Okay, fine. Great. Yeah, there is a little different standard. We got to prove ourselves more. We got to we got to be we have to see. We have to make sure that you know, that you know, we’re not when we’re not feeling we are not being seen as different. Okay. We got we have to make sure. But when as a CEO and and the founder, it was a different it was a different standard. And that and a lot of them said, you know what, women leaders are great for marketing h.r. And business to consumer companies, whether it’s fashion or clothing and all that. I mean that that that’s the very stereotypical studio type being a woman leader, but cloud cloud company. A woman leader as a cloud company. And then, I mean, when I was raising money in the valley. Okay, I have been in the valley for God knows how many years. I am raising money in the valley. I’m being asked questions, you know, how old are your children? Our men asked that question. Oh, how old are your children? And, you know, sometimes you feel okay. You know, that’s being a very friendly question. Okay.
Scott McGrew That’s sure. I mean, sometimes I ask about people’s kids because I don’t just like talking about their kids.
Anshu Agarwal It’s a very friendly question. So, you know, you answer a you answer. Yeah, my my son is in college. My daughter’s completed. Oh, that’s great. Now you can spend time running.
Scott McGrew Oh, don’t say that.
Anshu Agarwal So then you realize, you know, the question wasn’t benign. No, the question had a motive. And that is the that’s the different standard. I see women. Was this men leader? I have experienced it myself. And it’s it’s probably unconscious bias. Okay. And, you know, there there are a lot of like exercises during the International Women’s Day time. There are like mind based did an exercise where where the question of so many people you know who it’s an excellent exercise.
Scott McGrew You know I will I will get their permission and I’ll let the viewer listen to it.
Narrator from Mindspace video As part of an experiment to explore the human mind. We asked 22 people to solve the same riddle and recorded their responses. Feel free to participate. Also, are you ready?
Second narrator Um. The riddle. A father is about to bring his son to a job interview, applying for a position at a large stockbroker’s company in the city just as they arrive at the company’s parking lot. The son’s phone rings. He looks at his father. Who? Says, Go ahead, answer it. The caller is the trading company’s CEO who says, Good luck, son. You’ve got this. The sun ends the call and once again looks at his father, who is still next to him in that car. How is this possible?
Various test participants You get a call from the CEO.
Various test participants But it says, Good luck, son. But he was next to him. So it’s not the father. I think it was probably an audio recording of his father.
Various test participants Maybe he made it a demo tape.
Various test participants Like it’s like he has two fathers.
Various test participants This is a hard one. Maybe it’s a word joke. Like it’s the grandfather of the son.
Scott McGrew I was shocked. I mean, I came up with the right answer immediately. I was shocked. The grown adults of both genders were just flummoxed by the question.
Anshu Agarwal Exactly. And, you know, I. I have a lot of hope because both my kids just passed with flying colors. Okay. And I’m like, you know.
Scott McGrew Well, their mom was the CEO.
Anshu Agarwal But I don’t think it’s just my my kids. I have I showed it to so many of that generation, everybody. I can’t even think of anybody who didn’t. Yes. So I have so much hope that this is all going to go well. You know.
Scott McGrew I give you an example from my own life. I’ve been in the television business for, I don’t know, 35 years. And one of the you know, every once in a while as a reporter in a small town, you’re assigned to go out and, hey, there’s an astronaut coming to the school or whatever. And so you do that or they’re speaking at a luncheon or whatever, Go, go cover that. And Sally Ride, who was a phenomenal person and an incredible leader, would as the years went by, I watched her tell young girls that they, too, could be astronauts. And after a while, I got the sense that the girls thought themselves well, duh. Yeah. You know, my mom is an airline pilot and or, you know, my mom is a is a famous surgeon or my mom is the, you know, mayor. And it was good feeling, right? Yeah. Is that, you know, when young women start to say, well, of course, I could be an astronaut.
Anshu Agarwal Yeah. Yeah. But why wait pointing it out? So that’s why I say when you stop talking about it, that’s when it’s not it not an issue. The point that we still talk about it, it’s because it is. And, you know, that experiment quite literally proved it.
Scott McGrew It really did. Have you have you done your first deal yet?
Anshu Agarwal I have.
Scott McGrew Tell me about.
Anshu Agarwal I sorry, I can’t talk about that. But because they are still in stealth, we do pre-seed seed and.
Scott McGrew But you’re excited by it?
Anshu Agarwal I’m very excited about it. Yes. Because it is in it. It is in, I would say more of a digital meets physical. And I so it’s a combination of the two focus areas that we have and it’s exciting because it’s disruptive. So I believe the, you know, the companies that do well, the the kind of companies is do well. One is disruptive. They are disrupting something that’s been happening long time ago, and the other one is creating new category. New categories are tremendously hard to create. So we see them a couple of times, but they’re not often. But disruption is one. And you know, how much disruption they’re doing is what actually constitutes a success of the company. So I’m very excited about it because this it is in where it’s kind of disrupting a vertical and by the new new technologies. And I did my first deal almost right after joining.
Scott McGrew And shoe Agarwal long time Silicon Valley leader brand new general partner at Converge our thanks to workspace provider Mindspace who gave us permission to use the audio of their riddle about the CEO.
Narrator from Mindspace video It’s his mother!
Various test participants Oh, that’s.
Various test participants Oh, that’s so stupid. Yes, of course.
Various test participants Oh, you’re.
Various test participants I should have thought of that. Yes.
Various test participants And it’s so weird because I’m a CEO and I’m a woman. I want to be a CEO. Why didn’t I think about that?
Scott McGrew Sandhill Road is produced by Sean Myers under the leadership of Sara Bueno and Stephanie Rooney 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 Tor.com.