Naren is probably one of the earliest VCs in India’s startup ecosystem. He co-founded Nexus Venture Partners in 2006. He has also been mentoring early-stage entrepreneurs and supporting them as an Angel investor since 1990.

With investments in over 200+ companies in India and the US, Nexus Venture Partners have some of the most notable startups in their portfolio – Postman, Rapido, and Unacademy among others.

In this podcast, Naren shares his experience of investing in early-stage product startups for over three decades.

Notes –

01:16 – His journey from moving to the US being an IIT Gold Medalist

02:10 – Lessons from his first venture – Integrated Systems Inc.

05:45 – Starting Nexus Venture Partners and deciding upon sectors it won’t invest

14:25 – Building a cross border teams

18:50 – Uniqueness among entrepreneurs and growth journey of portfolio companies

24:52 – Being an early-stage investor and also being consistent through the follow-up rounds

29:25 – What are the metrics of success upon which early-stage founders and VCs should focus?

35:13 – At what stage do things like – go-to-market, building stronger organization & sales, become a part of board-meeting discussions?

Read the full transcript here:

Siddhartha 0:27

Today I have with me Naren Gupta, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Nexus Venture Partners. Welcome Naren to the podcast.

 

Naren 0.36

Thank you, Siddhartha, thank you for having me.

 

Siddhartha 0.39

Naren, you are a legend in the venture capital world, you know, you need no introduction. But you know, for our listeners, I would love to know your journey, you know, as an entrepreneur right from the old days when you moved to the US being a gold medalist IIT and then you came to the US for your MS and PhD, and you built companies in the US, taken them public. And now you are guiding entrepreneurs, would love to go into detail from your mouth itself.

 

Naren 1.12

Yeah, so I came to the US in a long time back 69. And I have always been very curious. So my goal for coming to the US was to do masters and ultimately PhDs where you can really be free to discover new things and get into potentially invent things. A lot of that requires curiosity and trying out many, many possibilities, and then hopefully getting to some reasonable answer. So I came to Caltech and then I came to, transferred to Stanford, only because that area I wanted to work in was not very broad at Caltech. Both are great places. And I’m very fortunate that I got a fellowship at both places, so I didn’t have to pay for my studies. And I always sort of, you know, I took a job after that. And then, in 1980, I started this company, Integrated Systems. And I really did not know. But I was doing honestly at that time. But what I quickly learned over the next two or three years was two things. First thing is that people want solutions to their problems. Nobody is interested in buying technology. And what they want is a product, a high-quality product that works all the time, that solves their problem and doesn’t really increase the amount of work that they need to do. And the second thing I learned was that even with a great product, you need to couple that with good marketing and customer support. So there are many other lessons I learned in the 80s is that it is important it is necessary to address customer needs, and then fully support the customer through the journey with your product. The sale is just a transaction, the customer relationship, and how you work with customer a is a process and the process is almost as important, perhaps more important than the transaction. And I started the company really to have it last a lifetime. I had no intention of really selling the company or taking it public and so on. But you know, you stay adaptive. And in 1989 1990, it became clear that going public was very valuable for us because of cheap access to capital access, a lot of access to capital at a reasonable price. So we went public in 1990 and I stayed on a CEO till 1995. And basically, at 1995, I was one of the very early entrepreneurs, certainly one of the earliest entrepreneurs of Indian descent. I think I was the first Indian CEO to take a company public in the tech space in the US. And a lot of people started approaching me at that time to say, Hey, you know, can you answer a question? Do you want to start a company or have already started a company? So my introduction to venture capital or investments was really accidental, I would call it I really had no plans to do it. And, and, but the opportunities seemed good. So I would meet lots of entrepreneurs every maybe a hundred plus. And then sometimes once in a while, I would make investments in companies. So 90-95 to 2005 or so. That’s what I did. And things worked out great for me. 20 some investments I made, 23 or 24 yes. Four companies went public and the number of companies got sold and made a good outcome And at that time, I had also made an investment in a company in India, started by two young, IIT Bombay graduates. And that company did very well, they were a product company, I pushed them to be a product company, and one of the earliest product companies and then about five, six years later, they got acquired. And I told those guys that you know, you shouldn’t sell the company and you’re profitable and everything else. But their view was that they sell the company they get enough money to really live a life of their own, you know, nothing to worry about anymore. And what happens was that I, I came to the realization that if we had venture, real venture funds in India, but I would have done is to find a partial exit for these founders. So they could go on and build a big company. Of course, I don’t have that luxury. So that’s why I got interested in venture in India. In 2005 2006, I made a number of trips to India, met hundreds of companies, essentially to talk with them, but the challenges were, what their opportunities but and so on. And there, I met Sandeep Singhal and Suvir Sujan. And somewhere in the 2006 timeframe, we decided to, to say, Hey, this is an opportunity very early to launch a venture fund in India. And basically, Siddhartha the two things that I’m very proud of in our launch was, we basically met companies together. And we had a meeting of minds, the three of us on what we will do, but even Second thing, most importantly, a meeting of the minds on what we will not do. I would say, even for startups, the key thing in life is to understand when you should not be doing and we said we will not invest in cross border services company, we want to invest in real estate you want to those days invest in manufacturing, there are about 20 areas we came up red there, we will not invest. But a variety of reasons could be regulations could be, you know, opportunities was in the past and in the future. And basically, so we said, Hey, you know, we will create a product culture in India. We will fund product companies in India as well as Indian Consumer Services plays that are driven primarily by technology. And that’s sort of how we came into being

Siddhartha 7.34

That’s a wonderful journey, Naren, which I think very few entrepreneurs are able to realize on both sides, and Nexus is one of the most reputable names in India, especially I think, if anyone wants to start say, enterprise company in India, you have built such a great brand, that Nexus is the first one they approach.

Naren 7.55

I hope so and I hope we provide them value, you know, that justifies their reason of approaching us first.

 

Siddhartha 8:04

So, how did you build this brand for enterprise companies which are targeting enterprise or in software product space? What was the thesis?

 

Naren 8:15

Yeah, I think that you have to think about technology in general. And enterprise technology in particular is that the technology really does not follow any political boundaries. You know, iPhone works in India, just as it works in the US. It is kind of it’s not so much social norms as ease of use and capabilities and dependability that drive technology. So what we were able to do early on was bring US norms, US approach to building companies, our understanding of the market technology market in the West. I mixed that with the Indian talent and Indian’s capability to get things done. Indians are very good, very good, very entrepreneurial at getting things done. And I think it said the marriage of the two and sticking to it over time that I would say, helps us provide the right guidance, the right value to startups. Now, I mean, we know we funded Dimdim, one of the earliest funding companies, we funded them about three months after the fund was founded within three months. And it was a precursor to Zoom. And the same thing happened with Dimdim also, by the way, they had great technology. But ultimately, the founders wanted to sell the company because they could be kind of well settled in their personal lives. And an idea but I think it worked out great for them and great for us. So, I think you have to look at technology from a very global perspective. You cannot say I’m building the best video conferencing company for India or in India, because the best video conferencing company in India needs to be the best global video conferencing company. So I think China is a bit different. But China also has had the problem of not creating any globally competitive companies. degree of course, they’ve created large consumer companies, but in a protected market. So I think our view was that we need to hold every enterprise company coming out of India to global standards. And I think we push for that and I think we did a very good job. And it’s not that we are holding the entrepreneurs feet to the fire. We are also holding our feet to the fire and saying we need to provide value. We need to provide guidance, we need to provide honest guidance, even if it is contrary in the short term to Nexus interest. So the companies can be globally competitive. And the companies can be long-lasting.

 

Siddhartha 11:09

But you started very early on when this enterprise-product companies, the wave didn’t even start in India, right? Today we see that but in 2006 2007, there was not. Indians were always known for their tech talent, primarily because of, you know, the hard work they put in and the amount of emphasis on education in India, but they were never good global CEOs or global marketing or sales VPS in India, how did you build that kind of talent in your companies?

 

Naren 11:45

Well, I think a lot of marketing comes from exposure. I think that Indians are smart and the reason they did not have marketing talent were two things. They were not exposed to global consumers because consumers help you define what the product needs to be. And they were not exposed to global marketing practices. There are two different things you didn’t know you didn’t have the customers to talk with. And you didn’t have professionals in the marketing space to talk with. And I think we made those connections possible. We would invite those companies and just hang around the valley. I mean, people say, but I need to have five appointments in a day. No, just go and meet some, you know, people, your friend at Google, and ask them questions and ask them to connect to other people. So I think that’s kind of where it started. Starting these things is hard. I would say that, but Indians are very entrepreneurial, I mean, they feel at home and even if they have never been to the US and Silicon Valley after about a week as if they really belong here. Another thing, I think, I would say is that it is a point in time in the US, where people of Indian origin were getting high-level roles in tech companies. If you go back 20 years, they really were not many even VP candidates, roles in tech companies, people of Indian descent. So I think we also leveraged those people and say, Hey, you know, you need to help our company, it is based in India, because what happens in India impacts, you know, over a billion people, or could impact over a billion people. So I think we kind of leverage all of these sources. And, again, this process didn’t happen overnight. I mean, we hope we’re getting better every day. It was pretty hard early on. We also took the view that companies need to be the product first. You’ve got to have a high-quality product, just marketing a bad product, you know, is not going to get you very far. It will bring you some customers. Absolutely. But it won’t get you very far. So I think that’s also helped us bringing that kind of culture in enterprise startups.

 

Siddhartha 14:18

And then I think it was over a period of time that you built a cross border team, you Jishnu and Abhishek in US. And Sandeep, Suvir, Samir, and the rest of the team in India.

 

Naren 14:34

Yeah

 

Siddhartha 14:35

Both the perspectives of consumers and market sitting across two very different countries.

 

Naren 14:43

Running two offices or multiple offices, and we have a 3, for a venture fund is always hard unless you have a very high level of trust. Because you need to build trust not through meetings, but by you know, water cooler talk, so to speak. You know, random discussions, and we spend enough time that we have a very high level of trust among our team members. So, I think this is a good approach and this is the reason we don’t have to ask them kind of more details or question his judgment and decisions. I mean, of course, we question the markets and stuff like that. But, I think that is what has helped us do that, I think Accel and Sequoia have advantages to do enterprise technology in India. You’re going to need a very powerful US presence. And it has taken us a while. Jishnu joined us 12 years ago and you know, Abhishek has joined us more recently, five years ago. So we have a really value system culture within Nexus to grow people from within and you know, one would argue not just Indian VC firm, but global firms, Jishnu is certainly one of the best enterprise investors anywhere. If you look at the kind of companies he’s working with Postman, H2O.ai, Dhruva, you just name it, you know, Headspin.

 

Siddhartha 16:30

That’s a very unique perspective, Naren. It took you time to build that over a period of time and congratulations, you know, we are seeing the results now. Three of your enterprise companies have turned you know, a billion-dollar in valuation this year, and all are based on the basis of their revenue. Yeah, around financing.

 

Naren 16:53

That’s right. All are really solid companies generating revenue, Postman is already profitable and Dhruva is very large in size, you know, triple-digit revenue growing strongly, very strong customer base. So, absolutely and you will see many more in the next 12 months, number of companies coming along, you know, very strongly, you know, in our portfolio.

 

Siddhartha 17:22

H2o.ai another one of them, which is in the pipeline, you know.

 

Naren 17:27

It’s very large in size, you know, Rencha, you probably saw that we might have seen that it got acquired. Last week, we announced that acquisition this week, this weekend. I mean, between 500 million to a billion-dollar valuation, certainly, I would say, we wish they were not acquired right now. I think even a bigger company. But you know, those entrepreneurs are exceptional and we are so happy. Yeah. Of course it’s a massive return for us. But also incredible outcome for the founders. We are happy from that front. But certainly, you know, we want to build, build large companies, and, you know, observe we funded a year and a half back. I mean, he’s just a very unique person. So, I think, you know, in many ways, we are attracted to these unique, you know, extraordinary leaders. And, you know, to a certain extent, they are attracted to us as well. So, you will not be surprised about is that, you know, we are very proud to say that then entrepreneurs who have had positive exits start next company, in every case they come to us first say he would like you to fund my company. Because my past experience was so positive. And you know, that’s symbiotic relationship we have with the entrepreneur that makes us who we are. So yeah, we have a lot of good things going. But I would say no shortage of challenges either.

 

Siddhartha 19:23

And then the third company, which went billion-dollar.

 

Naren 19:25

On one hand, as you said, our evaluation is based on revenue, not you know, something else. But honestly, we don’t actually focus on revenue. So, revenue is a result of everything we do. We focus on creating good products and that can sell live markets and building great teams. And the revenue happens and you know, sometimes the growth is not a straight line either because you can reach a plateau and then you, you know, kind of rejigger your products and you kind of go from there. The venture capitalists need to understand that growth is not going to be a straight line, you need to really fully evaluate. And that a rejigging of the products needed that might take six months or a year, and the growth might be slower over a period of time. But that’s okay. It’s better to get the product right than to go sell, sell, sell the product that really is not, you know, in tune with the times. And I think a lot of venture capitalists don’t really understand that they’re very financially top-down driven. We are very bottoms up, driven and we have seen a number of times, that growth came to a halt, and then we, you know, fixed what we needed to be fixed and started growing hundred percent, you know, again, so you need that sort of immaturity as well.

 

Siddhartha 20:56

And you’re very unique, you know, also in how you invest you come very early. And let’s say with a with an early check, and then try to back companies throughout the series A, Series B round even lead those rounds.

 

Naren 21:10

Yeah. Right.

 

Siddhartha 21:11

So, I believe the Nexus, although, in most of your companies, you would own 20 25% by the town, the later series D round, but you also deploy a lot of capital, like with conviction in every round, you don’t wait for your entrepreneur to say go find a lead and we’ll do pro-rata.

 

Naren 21:31

Yeah, it’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely. And maybe I can just make two points about it. First of all, we are very protective of the entrepreneurs’ time. And oftentimes we feel we’re at a critical point in the company and going out in the market and spending time raising funding which is time consuming and it should be. People are putting their hard-earned money behind you, is not a good use of time. So, we often say, hey, here is our offer, it’s reasonable, probably not the highest, certainly not the lowest. And you may want to consider, you know, taking our offer. Advantage of our doing an internal round is, you know, obviously we have decent ownership. So we don’t have to worry about minimum check size or anything like that minimum ownership size. So the company wants to raise $5 million, they’re doing, you know, four or $5 million in revenue. It’s just easy for them to raise internals, because, you know, there’s really no constraints, except the valuation. So I think we kind of do that maybe do that oftentimes. But the way we tell entrepreneurs is that they need to do their job, and the money will be there and we’ll do our job. We are not going to fund companies that continue to fund companies that either doesn’t have the right product or can’t come up with the right product. So I think all of us need to do our part and They need to do their part, we need to do our part. And when that sort of resonates, you know, when does it happen, we don’t want them to worry about, hey, even if I do a good job, what would happen to funding or what will happen to next year, will they literally take advantage of me or whatever. So I think that, again, the trust we have with entrepreneurs is probably better than most funds. I mean, we really act like a team, not on opposite sides of the table, of course, we need to get the product done right and stuff like that. But you know, it is added to their benefit. The second thing I would say also is that the key to success in venture funds is to not throw good money after bad. I mean, if things are not working, we just need to call it a day. And it’s not a reflection on the enterpreneur, it is just a reflection on how things are going. And maybe start all over again. The same team maybe or, you know, same company, but I think on other hand also doubled down our successes, you know, that said, that’s a pretty, pretty important part of our venture capital, not keep feeding your weaklings, or the fix the weaklings before you feed them, but, you know, try to leverage their successes into even bigger successes.

 

Siddhartha 24:27

We have even those examples, you know, where companies like Bolo, which were in consumer space, which was not working out. You’ve put money in Newton schools or the next venture of the founder.

 

Naren 24:42

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because they’re great founders. Great people. And, you know, I think they did build a good product. But I think our thesis and their thesis about how that will play in the market, we didn’t realize some of the potential issues. We are super excited about Newton Schools. I mean, yes, it really could be a game-changing company and be run by an exceptional group of people. So, why not, you know, at least the same company that’s, you know, basically changed the name. So, but, you know, I mean, diverting, at the right time, not too early, because, you know, everything has challenges, but also willing to take that extra step, you know, is pretty important. I think they will do very well, the Newton schools, they have pretty good traction right now. Okay. I think, I talked to them, maybe six weeks back, or eight weeks back, something like that.

 

Siddhartha 25:47

Naren, earlier in the podcast, you mentioned that in your meetings with especially board meetings and entrepreneurs, from your portfolio you don’t discuss sales number or month on month growth. You are focused on the process. So, can you share, you know, some of those questions? Or how do you run those meetings like?

 

Naren 26:09

Well, I think in a very early stage, of course, we care about revenue and growth and so on as the company becomes larger in size. So for example, one thing we are going to track early on, is a churn, you know, people who have bought your product, what is their experience with the product? Are they after using the product? Are they dropping our product or dropping us off certain features in the product? Because that focuses your mind a lot more. We would also for example, are big fans, even in enterprise products of things like net promoter score? Are our customers recommending other their friends to use the product and you can say that is the multiplicative effect Right. I mean, if every customer of yours recommends you know, five other customers. I think we have had a lot of situations where we have one of our customers talking in some cocktail parties or whatever, in some social ghetto he had been using this product is great. And Postman was an example of that. You don’t do any marketing. And that is to me an ultimate kind of a source of success. So rather than measuring revenue two years ago, which is close to zero anyway, or very small, I think looking at net promoter score and things of that nature, how people are using the capabilities and what are they asking for, when customers asked you for things is often a sign that they care about the product. I mean, when customers that being difficult, often, well, some customers are difficult for the heck of it. But oftentimes, they deeply care about the product, so don’t shoo them away. You want to give customers you know, that’s when we go deeper. Anyway. If you don’t agree with them, you don’t have to agree with them, but you have to hear them out. So I think that’s the kind of thing. I mean, early on a company small whether you get half a million dollars in revenue or a million dollars or even a couple o,f what is the difference? We are trying to build companies with 100 billion dollars revenue going into a billion dollars in revenue. But the NPS score of 80 versus 40, or 20 is a dramatic leading indicator of what might happen longer term.

 

Siddhartha 28:29

So, a lot of focus, as you said, in early stages, you know, on NPS score on referenceability, how many customers referring other customers, how is the churn?

 

Naren 28:42

Yeah, even an enterprise area very much, you know, how much do we have to push the product, how much of it is being adopted by the customer? How much effort are we having to put together customer going, things of that nature? You know, we had a company many years ago. Gluster We invest in the company and it was clear the product was not really it was good technology, but not a good product. So we told the founder that we are okay if we stop selling the product for that, and then maybe 20 or 30 customers, maybe half a million dollars in revenues. And our recommendation is we stop selling the product, you don’t want any more revenue, and take the next eight or nine months to fix the product, or however long it takes. And one of the goals was that the customer should be able to get value out of the product in less than four hours. I would say less than a day. Because the way the product was, it required some installation and tuning it to two weeks. And people don’t have two weeks, they move on to something else. And then once we came back to the market, our cost of selling was lower. Our momentum was higher, and we had much happier customers. So why would you not take eight or nine months and ultimately we sold the company to Red Hat, but why would you not take this approach versus continuing to push, push a product that really wasn’t getting, you know, a kind of somewhat automatic traction?

 

Siddhartha 30:09

Very interesting, Naren, your take on, you know, giving entrepreneurs time and not really caring, you know, them to increase sales to X number for the next round could happen at y which could give up bump in the paper valuation at which you came in.

 

Naren 30:26

Right, right, right. Absolutely. That’s probably the worst thing and you know, VCs do is try to design the company for the next round of financing versus long term, you know, 10 years success. Smart people, smart investors figure out what is kind of company they want to invest in. So I think that’s the biggest mistake venture capitalists make, in our opinion in guiding companies, preparing them for the next round rather than long term success.

 

Siddhartha 31:02

Do the questions or the board meetings change that drastically when the company reaches a growth stage?

 

Naren 31:09

They do. They change actually quite significantly, and there is two kinds of a point at which they change. The first point happens when the company starts generating steady-state revenue. And steady-state revenue I mean is you are not getting one or two customers a quarter you’re getting 10 or 20. There is some predictability to revenue you know, it’s not a few big deals become and you can make the number so I think what happens at that point is there is a discussion around go-to-market and how to really, you know, build a stronger organization in sales and marketing and what features are the ones that should really be, you know, further developed to help them marketing and salespeople. So that’s kind of one I would say a point at board meetings change shape. The second point with the board meetings change very dramatically is when the company has built out a full team. Because then your role as a board member becomes very different because you are really helping people rather than helping define the product or the sales process, you know what I mean? Basically, the team is there, you’re helping them, you know, maybe you’re making more connections with potential customers, maybe you’re helping them you know, recruit people or whatever you’re happy with could be the people all the time, but it becomes a very different kind of a board discussion. And I’m gonna kind of put them as like discrete changes, but they are kind of like a continuum.

 

Siddhartha 32:52

And Naren, you know, you have seen a journey, you know, mentoring companies, build company, taking to public, you know? So, what did meaningful life meant to you as a founder?

 

Naren 33:06

Just building products that customers love. I never ever thought when I started the company in 1980 that it will ever be public, but It will be large. I just wanted to build products that customers love and customers life is improved. They’re able to do things they could never do before. I mean, it’s like a kind of a journey of discovery. Again, you can see how do you build products that customers are gonna love, it’s changed their lives, it’s like just on a constant quest for finding this kind of a golden key, you can call it. Not golden because of its value but because it solves a mystery. You’re wanting to solve a mystery, I guess is the way to put it. It’s a mystery, but customers really want how you address their need, how do you solve their problem? How do you make it like better for them? And what a joy? Right? I mean, to be able to do that. So, I think that maybe is what kept me going, you know, I was never happy because I never fully understood this mysterious space.

 

Siddhartha 34:23

So, you were driven by curiosity about customers problems and what could delight them?

 

Naren 34:28

Right, right, exactly. Exactly. What are they looking for? What should they be looking for? How do you do things that can’t be done today? I mean, isn’t that a beautiful journey to be on, you know, forget about, of course, you know, we always grew and we were very profitable. I mean, somebody needs to watch the store, of course, but you know, I had a, you know, a VP of finance CFO very early on and it just took care of everything. So when I built the company, I never did anything administrative. I was just, you know, getting an agenda. so to speak, you know, having fun every day trying to figure out what’s going on talking to customers, trying to ask them questions, you know, understanding what they are looking for why they’re looking for, what they’re looking for, you know, so, I mean, I would say it’s a tremendous, tremendous journey. You know, it’s quite, quite remarkable how things can work out.

 

Siddhartha 35:22

You expect a founder to do the salesy role also, right, be the chief salesperson, well, were you not that person who was pushing your product down to the customers?

 

Naren 35:33

Yeah, absolutely. That I would say CEO, the chief sales officer, you know, I mean, not chief revenue officer, you have to differentiate the two a little bit because I was always talking to customers and giving them kind of a reason to invest with us buy our products. I was not really a salesperson, you know, I mean, I was not a chief revenue officer without any closing these internal negotiating the pricing and so on. In the beginning, I did that, because we didn’t have any salesperson I was a salesperson. And but you know, that was not the role I had that was the role of the sale, but I would really be open to customers all the time and talking about given their vision of why they should invest with us why we as a partner should be a partner of choice. And it was more than about the products, about our visions, it’s about what we would be doing today. But even more importantly, what they should be expecting us to do a year from now or five years from now or 10 years from now. So yeah, absolutely. A CEO who got it and you know, you’re selling every day anyway, you’re including employees, you’re selling them why they should, you know, give next five years of their life to your company versus you know, any anybody else. I mean, it’s a competitive world out there, right? And so, you’re selling every day to your employees and you want to do it in an honest, open, ethical, make them and makes them feel good, you know, we didn’t promise, I will tell you that we have no kind of illusions about our knowing all the answers far from it. Far from it in tech, there are more things we don’t know that we do know. But one thing we will tell you is that if we say something, we absolutely truly believe that to be the case. And if you ask us a question. And we don’t know the answer. We are not ashamed to say we don’t know the answer. You will know from us that when we are giving you advice. I think a lot of the people feel compelled to give answers to questions that they don’t know the answer. I think you can go and say hey, I will go and find out for you. To me, the two things that drive Nexus and should drive your organization is the organization culture and an environment of trust.

 

And I think, you know, a lot of the companies I see that have startups in India as well, that don’t have either, and I think that’s the kind of company the Nexus would make a really bad partner. We can live in a bad product, but we can’t live in a bad culture or environment of no trust.

 

Siddhartha 38:42

So two things, which you can take consistently mentioned in the podcast regarding Nexus and the people you work with and portfolio companies is, you know, have a culture of high trust with each other. And second is being extremely genuine. You don’t pretend to look good, or be pretend to look mature as an investor because the entrepreneur expects you to know the answers.

 

Naren 39:08

Yeah. It’s really a pleasure to talk with you, Siddhartha, You ask very inquisitive questions and questions, I think can be really beneficial for the startup community.

 

Siddhartha 39:17

Thank you, Naren. Thank you so much. You know, it’s been my honor completely to have you on the podcast.

 

Naren 39:24

Yeah, I appreciate your time. And yeah, I hope you know, that’s we build a bigger and better India. That is probably my biggest dream right now. And I think you, all of us, entrepreneurs, the community can make it happen. And I think we could not be had lived a better life. If we are able to even play the smallest role in making that happen.

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

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