Ajay Agarwal, Partner @ Bain Capital Ventures
Ajay Agarwal is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, where he focuses on seed and Series A software investing. Ajay’s portfolio includes investments in leading SaaS companies like Gainsight (acquired by Vista Equity), Clari, and SendGrid (IPO and then acquired by Twilio). Prior to BCV, Ajay led Product and Sales as an early employee at Trilogy, an enterprise software pioneer, where he grew annual revenue from $1M to $300M.
In this episode we spoke with Ajay about the following:
How the entrepreneurial journey of creating something from nothing is analogous to the immigrant experience
The parallels between his experience delivering newspapers while growing up in Pittsburgh and his early career in enterprise sales
Startups as a vehicle for rekindling the American Dream through more equal opportunity
You can listen to his episode below on Apple, or wherever else you get to your podcasts.
The lessons he learned from the Bhagavad Gita
There’s a book called the Bhagavad Gita, which is essentially the philosophical underpinning of Hinduism. Whether you’re Hindu or not, a lot of the ideas are captured and represented in a lot of religions. They spoke about ideas on having duty for the journey that you’re on, to not worry too much, and not to be too focused on the end outcomes of your actions, but embracing the journey itself.
The lessons I learned from when my parents read those stories to me boiled down to trying to find something I loved doing and do it not with an end outcome in mind, but just because you enjoy doing it. That’s been a simple guidepost for me in terms of the various choices I’ve made in my personal and professional life.
Pursuing a role in sales coming from the South Asian community
I would certainly say in the South Asian community, for whatever reason, being in sales is looked down upon relative to being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. Yet, it is such an important life skill. You know, sales are not even the right word for it. I think the right word for it is building relationships. It’s about creating human connection, and through that relationship, you can hopefully understand a bit about what their hopes and dreams are.
You can understand how you can help them be successful, whether personally or professionally. And to the extent you can line up your product or service in a way that helps them be successful, you’ve helped out another human being. Ideally, you’ve made a human connection, and on the way, made some money. Human connection is at the heart of sales. How to sell and create win-win situations for your customers and your company gives me a lot of satisfaction.
The parallels between startups and the immigrant experience
I think my parents came {to the United States] because of the belief that you can get what you want if you work hard. You know, no one cares in a startup where you’re from, no one cares what you did before, and no one cares what your last name is. They care about what your impact is. To me, that’s very powerful. This mentality is what created Silicon Valley. People from all over the world come here because it doesn’t matter where you’re from; it’s what you’re building that matters. I think that’s very parallel to the immigrant experience in so many ways.
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Until next time,
Jay and Angie