What I learnt from a year at a VC firm
Reflecting on challenges and successes in my first year at Accel India
I completed my first year at Accel India last week.
I joined the firm as the first wave of the pandemic waned, was working when the second wave crashed into us, and am starting my second year when a new variant threatens to upend the world again.
It has been a year I wanted at work, if I’m being honest. I needed wins, it had been some time. And I had a couple this year. This is something of a personal thing, really. I’ve known this about myself for a while: I’m a confidence player, and the better I feel about things, the better I perform.
And this year, I felt good.
There are two reasons for this.
One, that I’m enjoying the work I’m doing, and two, I enjoy working with the people I work with.
Let me start with the people first.
Organisations are made by people. It’s at times easy to forget that, especially in a remote world, where people are pixels on a screen, abstractions. But seldom did I feel that this year, even though I didn’t meet many of my colleagues until recently. Accel has an undue advantage, of course, in that it has an ability to recruit the best by wont of brand and reach, but that doesn’t explain why it has the kindest, most wholesome people I have worked with.
Now culture is a hard thing to explain, but I’ll try to do that the way I know best, by stories.
When I joined Accel, there was something that was communicated to me very early, and it stuck with me, both the message and the intent. I was told that every founder we meet should have our full attention, that they should leave the meeting with a positive feeling about Accel. If we had had a long day, or are not ready for that meeting, the clear directive was to cancel the meeting and not waste the founder’s time. We had to be founder first, always.
Inspiring, yes?
But this sort of high language is easy. It’s the actual work that’s tough.
Except I saw it happen.
Here’s Abhinav Chaturvedi, Partner at Accel, writing about edtech startup SplashLearn:
I met Arpit (co-founder of SplashLearn) in Gurgaon. I was surprised to know that they have actually been bootstrapped and are, in fact, profitable. Even though they weren’t looking at investment then, we both kept the conversation going. By the time the Accel investment happened, it was almost the end of 2017.
But there was a problem: It took longer than expected to close the transaction because of structural issues, and during this time, the company grew at a rapid pace. Revenue had doubled, the team was growing, and they moved to a much bigger office. The valuation we had agreed on in the term sheet didn’t really hold.
At Accel, we did not want the founders to feel like they were being taken advantage of, and decided to invest more money while keeping the same ownership, thereby increasing the valuation of the company. I remember how surprised the founders were when we told Arpit this.
I can’t share a lot of details, but this is not the only time something like this has happened, even in just the one year I’ve been here.
This is me writing about Kausshal Dugarr’s specialty tea startup Teabox:
In 2018, Teabox had a catastrophic fire in their facility. They lost almost 80% of their tea. In the tea country of Siliguri, where their facility was, the firefighters can get to you only after 4 hours. There was no loss of life, but Teabox was in dire straits. It was a near-death moment, in Kausshal’s words. He had no idea whether they would survive. On the way to the facility to assess the damage, he messaged Prashant about what had happened.
Prashant’s immediate response, as he recalled, was: Kausshal, we are behind you. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on what you need to do.
Accel immediately doubled down and helped Teabox raise a quick round. Teabox’s other investors rallied around them too, led by Accel.
I actually didn’t include this in the first draft of this essay. Kausshal insisted I put it in there.
Surprising as it may seem for many, this is how Accel thinks, how we in the non-investing functions are encouraged to think. This also explains the brand and what it stands for, and what makes the place a joy to work in.
This attitude of trust and respect came to my own rescue too.
In the middle of the year, just after the second wave, I found myself struggling because I had bitten off more than I could chew. I was working on Accel’s content, PR, programs like Atoms and the community initiative Seed To Scale, investment announcements, PR from portfolio companies, the list kept getting bigger and bigger. I stressed myself out trying to do all of it, and did not communicate that I was feeling overwhelmed.
When it did get to the point when I had to talk to my manager about it, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, was surprised. Why hadn’t I told him? I didn’t know. I should have.
And this is one of the biggest lessons of the year for me, communication. I’m an experienced hand and usually know what I’m doing, but sometimes the pressure gets to you. I presume my thought process was: 'I’ve been hired to figure all these things out, I just have to'.
Don’t do this. Ask for help, seek advice.
When it became clear just how much was on my plate, Prayank stepped in and helped me think through all of it, made me a plan I could follow, and generally helped me get to the clarity and rhythm I needed. This was the turning point. I took it from there and delivered my biggest win of the year: The media + PR storm for the Atoms launch.
Siddharth Ram, my colleague, has also been someone I have been able to lean on at work. And he has helped me navigate and perform better every step of the way.
Now, to the work I’m doing. There were a couple of brand challenges that needed solving when I joined, this was sort-of the brief. The other was making sure Accel stood out in the content it produced for the ecosystem.
I think we have made progress on both these counts, and I’m delighted with that.
Are there challenges? Yes. For one, I’m setting up processes for a lot of the things I’ve been in charge of, I’m trying to see how we can systematise our thinking so we can innovate further. This needs a different mindset, and I’m getting there slowly.
I’m happy about this too.
There’s a lot to be thankful for as we all end the year, and this was an attempt to look back and mark a notch at work, track forward movement, understand how much territory has been crossed and how much is still left.
As Rashi Shukla, Accel’s VP of People Practice, told me last week, "Sometimes we forget to treat ourselves with empathy."
I encourage you to do that.
Figure out where you were at the beginning of the year, remember the second wave and what it did to us, and pat yourself on the back for how far you have come. Feel good about yourself, perhaps tell a colleague how much their work meant to you.
And in January, start again.