How was 2023 @ Prequate?
こだわり Kodawari YIR 2023
Is this what it feels like?
If there was one question we would ask ourselves in 2023 out of all the others, this would be it. However, after giving it some quiet thought, we came to the reason why we may have felt this way – it was all the ‘firsts’ that came in the last year.
In 2023, there were several firsts.
In our lives, at work and even in our personal lives.
A new office.
A new family.
An extension of vows.
A renewed sense of purpose.
Thinking back, why was it that we experienced so many firsts in a single year?
Answer:
In 2023, We embraced the new. We embraced the alternate view.
We entertained partnerships. We hired like the bellwethers do.
But, if you really ask those with the firm for more than a year, these weren’t the only reasons 2023 mattered.
In various instances through the years, we seldom questioned if what we were creating was too utopian. Maybe even overkill.
Did organizations really need their thinking challenged?
Is an operator mindset what is missing in professional services?
2023 was special because it gave us answers.
We received acknowledgement.
We received confirmation.
We received recognition.
We always knew that we were out to do something truly amazing. We just did not know yet as to how open they would be to ascribe a monetary value to it.
2023 changed all of us as the system slipped into overdrive.
Externally, 2023 was the year of Koyo (changing leaves of autumn).
Internally, 2023 was the year of Kodawari (the relentless pursuit of perfection).
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Like the years past, in true Prequate fashion, we bring you YIR 2023.
Essentially, a nut graph of 2023 @ Prequate.
Equal parts, Report Card + Harbinger + Thanksgiving + Bare-all
So, Let’s dive head in, starting first with the lessons we learned.
Delineating the Causation vs. Correlation fallacy
We believed that recruiting, after longish stints at the consulting elites, was the only sure-shot way to establish value when bringing someone on board. It seemed a little lazy, we admit, but we never spent a lot of time analyzing their potential to be amazing, irrespective of where they came from.
In 2023, some of the people who stood out were not necessarily those with a high number of years of experience at these elite alma maters. This proved that we were thinking about it all wrong.
In late 2023, we took that leap a little further. We started looking for people who had the right mix of skills and the right amount of intent.
Some of the people who have joined us in the last year are testament to how people can shine when they have the right intent and the right buy-in to the client’s goals and are provided with the right environment.
To summarize, great people build great organizations, not the other way around.
Recognizing the The Hot-Hand fallacy
In 2023, we were very fortunate. We had several discussions with organizations that wanted to partner with us—six of the largest organizations in their domains—to integrate their offerings.
We had fantastic conversations. We thought about the future like never before. We prophesied how both organizations would collaborate. We even shared a new reality together.
But in the end, we realized more about ourselves than anyone else.
We understood that what we do as an organization is a tad bit different. We have been contrarians to the traditional approach of ‘one-stop shop’, which is our strength but also our weakness. It gave us one critical thing: the immense power of being able to collaborate. But also threw up our biggest challenge, fundamental differences in how we operated.
For example, we run a super-tight ship. We build out processes for nearly everything. We sharply focus on the stuff that makes us unique and spend a little too much on sharpening and maintaining that. And add to that, we are impatient – like the entrepreneurs we work with.
A partnership of any kind would only work if both organizations would need to have that maturity to be able to appreciate these differences. The partnership we went the closest to that year turned out to not be a great match, despite the fantastic people involved. We ended up hitting hurdles thrown at us by these fundamental mismatches.
But fast forward to a year later, we are smarter, wiser, and a little bit more certain about what we want and, even more so, who we want.
Unhinging the Plan continuation bias
This was a bit more intricate.
The team had two engagements during the year that had ups and downs.
Even though we worked hard the entire time, obstacles appeared to keep getting in the way of our progress. Every time we did, it would leave everyone feeling unsatisfied. It caused us a tremendous anguish.
Everybody was fully on board.
We were confident in the client’s abilities.
We had even moved significantly beyond the defined scope.
But why did we fall short of providing them with the white-glove experience in which we take such great pride?
Even in the interim, we conjectured as to what went wrong on those two occasions that we failed.
We came to a grave realization.
We had made the cardinal error of thinking that our current style of delivery would continue to be what works always.
We were hired because of our ability to think creatively and apply ourselves in an independent way in each circumstance. We had failed to do that.
We had to find new ways and approaches but missed sensing the signals. For 2024, we have taken note and are now working harder than ever to fix.
Moving beyond the Law of the instrument fallacy
We have always had a very different approach to motivation at Prequate. We believed that immediate feedback was by itself a system. Someone did a great job? Let them know as close to immediately as you can. Immediate validation, simple. Recognition. A thank you. Or even an unexpected monetary reward at times.
We had somehow ended up getting confused that these actions were itself a system in themself. Which in hindsight, aren’t. We learnt this the hard way when more new people joined in groups in 2023.
The realization came from questions we ended up having to ask ourselves -
How does a team member evaluate their own personal progress?
If a team member doesn’t see a clear path that they can positively contribute towards, how can we be on the same page?
How does one recognize progress beyond a horizon of a few months, and factor for any recency bias?
We did not have a formal, commonly recognized & acknowledged path that we discussed and laid before us for the year.
This meant that someone who was having a down-time did not know how exactly how they would climb back up. Or even how someone could establish their value in the system. So, we decided that in April 2024, we plan to roll out our ‘A-game Policy’ to solve this.
fingers crossed
Eradicating any Survivorship bias internally
Since 2021, we began hiring for talent and not for need. What this switch-over meant is that we would be understaffed and overstaffed at different times of simply as a function of availability.
But considering the growth surge we were on, this also meant that those that came in, had to integrate really quickly into ‘the Prequate way’ of doing things. This would mean both unlearning, rapidly acquiring new technical skills and significant switches in approaches.
Each member would essentially have their own speeds of covering these areas – especially the unlearning. So, we would often face a series of troughs and peaks. Glimpses of promise followed by constraint mindset followed by knocking an engagement out of the ballpark followed by a lacklustre delivery.
We questioned ourself as to why that was.
We first felt that it was lack of effort at alignment on our path. We tried to fix that. Dint work.
Then we felt that it was a learning curve issue. We tried unquestionable patience. Dint work.
We only realized the problem in an exit interview, when pointed out to us. We had not given enough time for someone to grow into their role, because we evaluated them based on their past experience levels.
Any good induction program would have factored that and helped. We dint spend that time and we paid the price. In 2024, we decided to change that.
Once you have a clear picture of your priorities – that is your values, goals and high leverage activities, organize around them.
- Stephen Covey
Growing our breadth
We did a whoooole lot more
From 2022, we started to change our strategy quite drastically. We had sampled what we were uniquely able to do and decided to double down on it.
We became very careful in the work we picked up. Our guidelines in mid 2022:
What we learnt
The Good
The Bad
The decision costed us, but only in the short term.
In 2022, this focus meant we turned down opportunities that did not tick these boxes for us to proceed. Consequently, in 2022, while the average revenue per engagement went up by ~46%, we worked with 8% fewer clients.
But 2023 was a whole new year.
The number of clients engaged in 2023 went up by +53% vis-à-vis 2022, while maintaining average value.
Becoming world-class
We saw how word-of-mouth can be felt worldwide
If you have worked with us or know us on the inside, you know how important a goal this is for us. In 2022 & 2023, we began to feel the ripples of building a good reputation can even happen at the world stage, even if in a small silo. We mentioned that a growing number of clients we work with are situated outside India. In 2023, 78% of our revenue came from India, Middle East & Asia regions (down from 88% in 2022). A new champion emerged in Europe during 2023.
But, we still hadn’t changed much from a visibility POV
In 2023, the total number of times we were looked up went up by 110% in absolute terms, but India continued to dominate where people were looking us up from. In fact, during 2023, we spent less than 0.30% of total revenue on brand-building (which is less than 35% of what we spent the previous year). This probably explains why we did not broaden our reach.
In fact, we have back-tracked quite a bit here.
Our content consumed dropped in their visibility to the management level readership. We also put out much lesser thought leadership this year, so it was mostly our fault. This is something we realize we need to fix right away.
Less than 43% of our readership was management and above (down from 53% in 2022).
Stronger foundations
We made focused attempts to hire better
In 2022, one of the key lessons we learnt is that the quest for talent is a never-ending process. We need to keep looking for the next champion of our work and that takes time – especially since it takes 3-4 months even for the experienced few to get off the ground because of how unique the work is. Here are a few things we did differently since 2022 >
?Made the JDs as true to real life as possible
Our new job description (which we painstakingly make, you can download it here > Prequate Associate JD) is a 90-95% match to the work someone actually does at Prequate. This helped.
领英推荐
?Explained the whole process with complete visibility
We made a microsite which lays out the role in as much detail as possible at that stage > Roles, Process & Expectations. This helped reduce some back and forth and eliminated some false positives.
?Use technology as a tool to handle volume & eliminate bias
In 2023, we built out of our process completely using a series of chatbots. They are designed to provide complete transparency both ways. This is what we use > chatbots. But through a series of 40-50 questions over 3-4 stages, we are able to get a lot of insight in parallel as the process ran.
and being sought after by those who are good at their jobs is a great feeling to any founder.
In 2023, we had 4,000+ applications to join us as an associate from across the country. 94% of these held a professional degree or a masters’ degree and average work experience of 5+ years.
Stronger at the core
We took our commitment to build a world-class team to the next level
If you have followed us, you know one thing about us. We are firm believers in the diamond-shaped organization, i.e., to identify + drive high quality outcomes successfully, you need to be (1) an operator at heart, (2) focused on doing only what you are great at, (3) hire like a champ and (4) be as flat as an organization can be.
Here is a snapshot of our team as they were in Dec 2023.
while also sharing the growth
In 2023, we had another good year of appraisals reflecting the firm’s growth. The annual appraisals and an increase in the new joinee band, lead to an increase of 56% in avg. pay firmwide (~33% in 2022 & ~47% in 2021).
with the experiences of people who come from the best of the best.
In 2023, the new team members who joined us had on average 4.3 years of work experience (as compared to 3.9 years in 2022). We were also fortunate that they had great careers at some of the best organizations across the world before choosing to join Prequate.
New, New, New Home
We changed our home base to Jayanagar this year
We always had a sweet spot for Jayanagar. The natural tree cover. The wonderful wide streets. The silence.
In 2022, we made a switch. We moved to a new HQ.
A little away from the bustle of KH Road and into the very heart of Jayanagar.
You may have spotted us if you stay this side of town.
New New New Channel
We added a little video into our lives
Since 2017, we had always felt that we should be making our thought process more accessible. We knew that video was that levelling channel. But, like all things which don’t feel comfortable at first, video had been that thing we procrastinated over.
Finally, in 2023, we decided that we needed to be a little more experimentative.
Enter – ‘Unjargoned’.
A property which tries to explain the commonly used management accounting jargon in a simplistic format.
Here are a few of them for you to critique >
New New New Products
We made strides with our buy-side services
In 2023, we began working on our buy-side solutions as a stand-alone unit. We had been doing so much work over the years but had not spent the time to create a refined, industry-accepted product suite around it.
Welcome OCIO
Supercharged Outsourced Investments Offices
on-demand & hyper-flexible
Today, our clients can power their entire investments office by plugging us in to manage all their unlisted exposures using a highly operator driven approach. Our OCIO has been used by Angel Investors, PE funds, Corporate Development Arms and even a Sovereign Wealth Fund.?
In 2023, we were able to develop a fairly strong bunch of testimonials around the way we can seamlessly integrate with existing investment teams as well. A big hurdle surpassed, if you ask us!
New New New Milestones
New New New Mistakes
A few times we were in the press in 2023
Assisting Game Theory on its maiden institutional raise
Spearheading the acquisition of Matchday.AI
and about 20-25 more related mentions.
Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a take-off. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude.
Donald Trump
Itadakimasu to our supporters on the inside
Over the years, we have gotten an opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds who have joined us in our vision and taken it upon themselves to work towards a dream that we dream together. Beyond that, you have trusted us with your careers, for this we will be eternally grateful.
You may have all started off as people looking for work but you have given us so much more. We also found friends, teachers, companions, partners-in-crime and sometimes our solace.
Itadakimasu.
Buuuuuuuuttt…..
We have only just started – haven’t we?
This year is going to be even bigger.
What we are planning this year will be the biggest leap that we have done.
It will test us.
It will challenge us.
It will push us to our intellectual limits.
But at the end of it all, it will be monumental.
A chance to make something grander than there has existed.
An opportunity to do something crazy and a view from the ground floor.
But trust us when we tell you this, we would have no one other than you guys by our side.
Here's to 2024
Itadakimasu to our supporters on the other side
Since 2010, we have been blessed with one thing.
We have been fortunate to serendipitously meet you people.
Because you gave us one thing which is so special – a ringside & unrestricted view to your journeys as an entrepreneur.
We have shared so many phases with you all.
Beginnings.
Scaling.
Hiccups.
Panicked calls at 11PM.
Challenges.
Funding.
Successes.
And even exits!
You placed so much trust in us and allowed us into your businesses. You shared your goals and aspirations with us.
In many cases, you even let us lead your internal teams.
You have no idea what this means to us.
It has been an honour to share your goals and make them ours every so often. We can’t thank you enough.
Itadakimasu.
2023 was our best year yet.
It was a lot of work.
Some very important work. For some very great people.
In all, we ended 2023 with a ~2x leap over the previous year.
How?
We changed our paradigm.
We switched things around. We focused on rigorous improvement.
We studied efficiency with a microscope. We celebrated effectiveness.
But 2024 is the year we outdo again.
The year that -
We beat every precedent.
We surpass every milestone.
We surmount every boundary.
We achieve the greatness we have been building for.
2024 is going to be a magical year.
Until next year’s YIR or our next cup of coffee,
That Guy @ Prequate
PS: We are ~70% on our journey to contribute to 1,000+ businesses by FY 25.