At Peak XV, I help drive our US investing efforts. I believe in the "zero, not out" mindset. In the sport of cricket, it indicates when a batter is about to face the first ball. That's how I strive to approach my life: a Day 0 mentality - optimism + intensity. 

Peak XV’s first office in SF was a small room in Startup HQ on 2nd street. Now we have a big, shiny office, and have made many important investments in the Bay Area. It’s a reminder that you can just do things. 

I grew up in India. My journey to the US was made possible by a scholarship from industrialist Ratan Tata, for which I am eternally grateful. 

​I’ve been lucky to work at some important companies like Y Combinator, Blackstone, Spark Capital (as an investor) and AppDynamics / Cisco (as an operator). At Y Combinator, I worked closely with Garry Tan and led seed to growth investing. After working with so many special YC companies, I felt I became an LLM for startups. 

I also started two companies (Finvest: Robinhood for bonds, and Wolfia: Glean for security teams). While they didn’t work out the way I hoped, I learnt a lot and importantly, internalized that it’s hard to work on easy problems and easy to work on hard problems. 

As an investor, I constantly strive to dream of the upside case and be an avid listener. Venture capital is a power-law game: it’s a business of exceptions, not the rules.

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