Its a new car!

I was asked by someone a few weeks back, how does it feel post a merger and I was struggling then to pen it down. I still struggle in writing this, but just a few very initial thoughts of how things changed for me personally.

Nice / Premium offices do help!

Considering our business is of workspaces, I was always looking at the best deal possible. Coming to the new office setup, I have realised that sometimes it is worth paying those extra few bucks. While our team is still flexibly using multiple spaces, I now feel the difference between a good office and a premium office setup. It just boosts the morale. It makes you want to come to work again. You have bigger discussion areas / informal sitting spaces, you have a big board room, you book meeting rooms by the calendar, you get beans coffee instead of powdered coffee. ;)

Interestingly, this opportunity has been right in front of us since the last 6 months in our business as well - Premium centres with great experience though launched very recent, are contributing 50% of the overall business already.

You are willing to pay a 30%+ premium for the extra facilities that might just increase your efficiency by 5% extra

Infinite more mails yet you can see the light to the end of the tunnel- elusive + possible Zero inbox! 

I was never at a "Zero" unread mails earlier and I am even further away from it now. We have different referral programs for different businesses, different feedbacks / updates from different businesses. So many mails to check + reply and I continue to struggle with it. But here we have, some of the business leaders who handle 10x my business size and yet are at 0 unread mails inbox everyday. These folks are decisive. They do not procrastinate and leave it for later. They see an action item, see the decision to be made and make it. 24 hours turnaround is not a function of position, it is a function of a person's capability.

Have to learn this - work on this (still as a young entrepreneur I would like to believe - a long path ahead).

A company to a vertical

I am still working my ass off. I am still spending the same amount of hours on my business as I was earlier, but there is this constant desire to contribute to the company (can also be classified as a fear of missing something). You just moved on from handling the company to a company where you handle one of its businesses, you cannot know everything (feels strange to be in that position to be honest). You get to meet so many more experienced individuals here (on the positive side, we bring the average age down), you want to be able to work with them more regularly That burning desire to learn from every business / individual and contribute everywhere can be very humbling (you are just one cog in the wheel and you have so many people sitting besides you from whom you can learn) and very distracting (Bring a change everywhere leaving you with no room to think for your core business) at the same time. Knowing where to draw the line, will be a key question.

Hiring is just a function of the economic cycle

Whether you build a 1M$ company or a 1B$ company, hiring the tech team is always a challenge (not a function of scale). You like someone, he/she would always have multiple offers and counters. After a certain point, the numbers in the market just stopped making sense (at least for a lot of businesses). In the Indian ecosystem, that point was breached 1.5-2 years. For many (including me), this wave of decreasing valuations / controlled times seems like a blessing in disguise. This will impact many of our friends, some amazing entrepreneurs unfortunately, but hey, we might be finally able to hire talent faster and at reasonable price considering lesser competition. It feels good to be on the "safer side" of the downturn for once (in a profitable company / company with enough runway).

The bigger question for the larger ecosystem though is considering the high price points - have we just made a lot of folks unemployable? If winter is here, and they end up losing their jobs, will they take pay cuts or who will pay the same amount?

You are still pitching, albeit a bit easier?

I honestly thought I would not have to make any more pitch decks. That belief shattered very fast. You are not pitching to investors, but you are still pitching to internal stakeholders. Wanting more bandwidth, more money for your business. We were stuck in a Covid19 cycle that made our company numbers look like a wave (but we survived!). Last 6 - 8 months we have grown decently, but you now start to think can you go bigger considering you have a larger brand name backing you.

It is quite the reverse actually: We, as entrepreneurs, always value the VCs more than a corporate (For our cap table / board). However our clients, Indian SMEs / corporates / MNCs value the name of the bigger Indian company more than the name of the VCs. You can feel the change in how they work with you / want to work with you.

The good part is that they (your stakeholders / partners) do not expect you to just burn money for the partnership now!

Conclusion

When I was in the VC domain before, I was always told, we as founders are the drivers of a car with the investors as a passenger. Whenever we would close a a fundraise, we got extra fuel to drive the car faster. However, I think MnAs differ quite a bit. Spend a month and you realise:  "Hey, you are not in the same car more. It's a new car!"  If there are synergies + culture matches up, you might just have landed yourself in a Ferrari; The hope is that you are just a slightly more experienced driver who is hopefully going to cause less accidents now. :)