I came to the US by a stroke of luck. In May of 2009, Battery Ventures hired me in Mumbai for their India practice. At the time, my life plan was straightforward: I was going to invest for a couple more years, learn about early stage startups by working at a Silicon Valley DNA firm, and then start a company in a year or two. As fate would have it, Battery had a change of plans regarding having a local office in Mumbai during the turbulence of the financial crisis, and asked me to move to the Bay Area and cover India from here for a couple of years before moving back. I’d never visited the US till then. So, with the excitement of the unknown, I first set foot on US soil in Sept 2009 with an H1B visa in hand. Little did I know at the time that my life was about to permanently change and I was arriving at the place I’d call home for the rest of my life.
This month marks 15 years for me in the US and Silicon Valley. In these 15 years, I went from being an India-focused associate at Battery to a GP at Lightspeed to finally kicking off my entrepreneurial journey with Audacious, once I got my green card ~5 years ago. And last week, my wife and I became US citizens.
It is not lost on me that I’m getting to live the immigrant’s dream. As I become an American citizen, many younger versions of me are arriving to the US to embark on their dream journeys. I hope they fall in love with America the way I did. I hope they have an even grander time than I’ve had. While it has been an incredible 15 years for me, I do remember well how naive I was about the amazing opportunity in front of me when I first arrived here. I remember well the feeling of being an outsider in many social settings. And I remember well being pleasantly surprised when I realized that in Silicon Valley, where you’re going matters way more than where you are today and where you’re coming from. Reflecting back, if I could meet my younger self on the day I first landed in San Francisco, here’s what I’d tell him about the immigrant’s dream ahead:
The first few years are going to be a grind on all fronts. You won’t have as much of a social/community support system as you had in your home country. You’ll make many social faux pas. Work-wise, everything you did before arriving here might be irrelevant; you’re building your reputation from scratch. You didn’t think you have an accent problem, but for this new country you’re embracing, you might and your overall communication skills might not be ready for a foreign country. It’s okay though. You also just got massively lucky. The US is where people make magic happen. Every dream you’ve had is more possible here and now. More possible than ever before for you. You got lucky. Make the most of it.
The network density of talent in the Bay Area is just off the charts. It’s unlike any other place. So, if I can give you just one sentence of advice, it would be to get started on getting to know the best people you can on various aspects of Silicon Valley style company building: the best engineers around you, the best product managers, the best sales leaders, the best VCs, and of course, the best founders you can find. Don’t overthink it. If you think someone is exceptional, find a way to meet them. Now, the reality is: that’s way easier said than done. How will you scout for them? Even if you can identify them, how do you get in front of them? Even if you get in front of them, what do you have to offer, for them to engage back in the conversation with you? With persistence, you’ll figure out good answers to these questions. But get going on this right away!
While Silicon Valley is where you’ll make your stand, once you've found your footing here, try to spend some time in New York City. If you’re ambitious, New York has a way of challenging you to think bigger.
One of the biggest mental shifts you need to internalize is that in Silicon Valley culture, failure doesn’t matter, only success matters. I know - it sounds completely impractical. The first time I heard it (in a commencement speech by Drew Houston), blew my mind too. What does that even mean? In a place of abundance like Silicon Valley, if you fail at something, you’ll always be able to get back on your feet and find some job. You’ll always get another chance. In most other places, there is a second chance but there is no third chance. Not so in Silicon Valley. So if you have unlimited chances, the only thing that matters is whether you made something amazing happen from one of those chances. Internalize the concept of asymmetric upside. Internalize the power law of outcomes.
You want something. Go get it. The US, and Silicon Valley in particular, is the place where a person's upside volatility is the highest in the world. Accordingly, all the mental frameworks you have about what you can or can’t do are redundant now. I wish someone had told me this as bluntly as possible right at the start of my US journey. Go after your dreams harder and faster. It’s all possible now. Of course, it’ll require substance. Am not suggesting flimsy, pie-in-the-sky ambition. But if you bring substantive execution, you can go harder and faster at your goals here than any other place in the world.
I realize there are many experiences of America. Not everyone is as fortunate as I have been in terms of the mentorship, the experiences, the friendships, and the serendipitous connections that got me to where I am today. But to me, the fact that there exists a country that prides itself as a nation of immigrants, where anyone can come from any walk of life, dream big, and push the boundaries of their own possibilities, where the most audacious ideas are not seen as stupid but simply audacious and worth trying, and where you’re viewed through the lens of what you made happen, rather than what you tried but failed at is one of the most optimistic things about our collective future. Talk to an immigrant about their experience of America, and nine times out of ten, you’ll hear some version of gratitude that this country exists. Nobody loves America more than its first-generation immigrants. I am no different. Grateful to call it my home! The land where every dream can come true!
