Been Around The Block, Yet I Seek.
Before we verbalze, we usually concoct something that we are able to accept in our minds (rationalization and excuses) and then once this self-convincing is done, we sell this to the ones we’re dealing with.
Amol and I were with a leading captain of industry, and an authority on the Startup ecosystem, just this past Monday, and the discussion centred around the rather vexatious subject. We discussed Scale challenges, operational challenges, skill challenges. We also discussed specifics about how certain well-known Private Equity, Venture Capital firms were struggling, and were facing serious challenges in finding viable exits or the ability to cash out.
60 million? Back in the day, and I’m talking some 17-20 years ago, that was a lot of money, and all I could think of is the fee based income that would follow suit. Would it? How? Well 1.5% as a Syndication Fee was a tidy bit of pocket money.
The only real question that matters is the one that the CEO asks. “You seem to have done a lot in your life, is there anything you can’t do?”. Instinctively I knew that the answer to this question would be the clincher, and my answer is, “Rumi, the only thing I can’t do is Kiss Ass!”. Little expecting such a response, (you had to be there) there is a look of surprise all around.
This true telling, begins with me having been out of work for several months now, and I am getting rather desperate. Family to support, mouthis to feed. It was the bottom of the spiral caused by tech bubble that had gone bust, and jobs were not easy to come by. I literally sat each and every day and scoured every advertisement in various publications, and finding anything remotely suitable, I applied, crossed my fingers, my toes and pretty much everything that could be crossed, so much so that reading, and working long hours at the computer, did leave me blurry and cross-eyed at times.
Therefore, a decision was taken to parachute one of HSBC’s top generals (moi) into the heart of the action and take the battle to the HQ of Kanbay, Chicago.
