asanwal

Didn't consider this for many reasons:

1. Most importantly, we didn’t have the talent internally to do that. Running the biz requires a set of generalist biz skills and the company was comprised of specialists. They could tell me about issues in their domain but business requires skills across many domains. And running a biz of this size in a location as challenging as Nasik/Sinnar requires someone being the top dog as decision by consensus wouldn't work (rarely does).

2. Capital availability / accessibility - The team just wouldn't have had it. Indian credit and debt markets would not be available.

3. Non-traditional structure would have required a lot of education - Even if capital was somehow available (0% chance), this would have been an exercise in 'herding cats' and wasn't something I had time for. I was running a business here in the USA plus had a wife and 2 young kids. My work hours were already insane just operating the businesses. I was optimizing for a simple, clean deal for many reasons and a co-op would have been an amount of 'brain damage' I wasn't game for especially given factors above.

--

Finally, I'll say that I don't think this would have been feasible in India at the scale and location we were at for one other intangible and cultural reason.

And that is because the employee to owner mentality transition would be non-trivial to impossible. The gulf is just too big. The reality is that reimagining yourself as a founder or owner requires a different mindset. There is no 'leaving the office' especially at the scale of Atlas (small/mid-sized). You're always on call to some extent and all problems seek you out (or you have to go find them). This is not the kind of responsibility and weight most people want at the end of the day.

Gotcha and thanks.

I just started getting a few texts from friends saying 'your post is on HN' and was confused. Prob been 10 years since anything I wrote has been on here so was an unexpected surprise especially as the comments are almost all quite nice (didn't expect that :)

Thanks. Dad was a specialist on the engineering/science side. He learned and grinded enough over time to become quite dangerous on the business stuff.

I guess he'd be what some folks would call T-shaped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills

Unfortunately, didn’t have the talent internally to do that.

Running the biz required a set of generalist biz skills and the company was mostly specialists.

I set this blog up 24 hours ago and just started moving old writings to it and still have another 200ish to go.

So the honest answer is I don’t know.

Tbh, getting on HN today was completely unexpected.

I believe you can subscribe via email for updates. And hopefully I’ll figure out the RSS thing soon as well. Thanks

Hi,

Having founded and run CB Insights certainly helped mostly cuz I had some sense of where to focus.

In this case, we had product-market fit to use a tech term. My dad's product was great.

And so I didn't need to worry about that. If I had to worry about that, this probably doesn't unfold as it did.

That meant I just had to worry about 2 things:

1. Making sure we were buying raw materials at rates that allowed us to sell the product profitably 2. 'Ringing the register' aka making sales. And that ultimately is not intellectually hard but just requires effort, i.e. researching, calling, emailing, etc.

Thank you.

I don't think there is an Indian social contract but having been born and brought up here in the USA, I'd be talking out of my a$$ on that topic :)

This was maybe more of an implied or expected contract I had with my dad and mom who built the business and by extension the Atlas team.

Job hopping is quite common in India, but that's probably more common in larger cities. In a tier 2 city like where my dad's business was, there are limited options for a plant engineer for example, and as far as I can tell, the skills they have in a fine chemicals plant may not be immediately transferable to a plastics manufacturer.

And finally, many were with my dad for 10+ years so probably some amount of comfort in knowing the domain, the job, the boss, etc.

Author here

1. He died suddenly so would have been a good thing to explore and do with time. It certainly would have made my life easier :)

2. Building a business that is small to medium-sized with no brand recogntion in a tier 2 city in India doesn't afford you access to tier 1 talent. India's talent and talent preferences are incredibly different than the USA.

Hi - author here.

This is a big question tbh and the lack of a succession plan is a function of many things:

1. This was my dad's baby. He loved the engineering and the science of it and so the idea of retiring from it was difficult for him to conceive. Doing that also requires thinking about one's mortality which I also believe was difficult for him.

2. This was a small market business in a tier 2 city in India. Attracting talent that could take it over was challenging. And myself and my siblings having been born and brought up in the States and being utterly clueless about the engineering/science of the company made us a non-starter.

3. As others have pointed out, he was thinking about succession/exit because he knew it was required for the biz to live on and grow. But life unfortunately had other plans and he was taken away from us unexpectedly.

There are definitely lots of could haves, should haves, would haves, etc I've thought about afterwards, but this was clearly one of those "play the cards you're dealt" kind of situations.

Thanks for reading.

The analysis largely holds tbh even if the ARR is higher. At some point, euphoric private market valuations don't hold when there are public comps (of which there are many for Airtable)

And the company if you compare to those public comps is still worth a fraction of its last valuation although to their credit is probably is worth more than its total equity funding.

I'm happy to update the analysis if someone has verifiable revenue figures - else I have to use the figures that have been leaked or given to the press historically.

Downturns cure prosperity-induced blindness very quickly.

Love this idea. And congrats Alex - CB Insights Mafia!

Things that I think folks (aka me) would find interesting:

1. Impressions/views on tech markets (what they're entering, their views on growth of markets, etc)

2. Views on competition esp if they talk isht

3. Quotes with data. Because some of these products by tech cos are opaque with stats, if execs drop a figure about growth, that's valuable.

4. Over time, it'd be cool if you could see what products execs talk about in their public comments as that might give an indication of what they're focused on. Suspect they might not talk a lot about specific products so perhaps wishful thinking.

IMO, personally, I think quotes on politics are boring mainly cuz that doesn't give insight into the biz and cuz politics is already everywhere.

Enjoying the emails so far and look forward to seeing where Oversaid goes

Congrats again.

Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson - amazing book about US criminal justice system. Read it.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt - a management novel. Oddly engrossing and educational at the same time

The Everything Store by Brad Stone - about Amazon's history, culture, businesses

(None of these books was written in 2018. I just read them in 2018)

Would you say you have a specialization or are you more of a generalist?

Bigger orgs often tend to want specialists while early stage cos love generalists who can do a bit of everything.

Also, scale invites challenges that someone in companies of < 20 will not have encountered.

Hard to know without more specifics but sometimes comes down to the “different wars need different generals” mantra.

We do at CB Insights (and we are hiring)

More proof that if you lose money on every transaction, you can't make it up in volume.

The on-demand valet parking space has been a great place to lose money. Zirx pivoted, Caarbon failed and now this acqui-hire of Luxe which was somehow valued at $157M in its last round.[1]

Other companies in the space haven't raised in a while including Ubo of China and ValetAnywhere.

[1] source: CB Insights