When joining a startup, don't ask what position, what role

1. When joining a startup, don't ask
what position, what role
In life and work, journeying outside
her "comfort zone" is Ruchi
Sanghvi's style

2. Contd..
• Paytm's newest board member, Ruchi Sanghvi,
needs no in troduction to hyper growth
companies.With a resume that boasts positions at
Facebook and Dropbox, Sanghvi is an old hand in
Silicon Valley. She is also quite familiar with the
exhausting grind that startups spawn.That was
the reason Sanghvi quit Dropbox, her last
company, late 2013. “I've been in the startup
world for over 10 years. It was all about working
247. I wanted to step back, gain perspective
about what was happening around me,“ she says,
speaking over the phone from the US.

3. Contd..
• Sanghvi has since then spent around six months travelling,
spending extended periods of time in Southeast Asia,
Vietnam, China, Bali, even passing through West Papua's
tropical rain forests. “It wasn't the most picturesque
destination. It really put me out of my comfort zone. But
that was the idea,“ she says, speaking of her jaunt to West
Papua.“There are still tribes out there that practise
cannibalism,“ she adds. Sanghvi carried cartons of rice,
cigarettes etc to use as payments for people to ferry them
around.
• She's also managed to pick up and hone a few hobbies
during her travel. “I picked up surfing during my time in
Bali, started practising yoga more religiously. And playing
tennis,“ she says.

4. Contd..
• On the work front, she's yet to decide what to do next. “If I
knew, I'd already be doing it. It's a trick question. I have
been quite fascinated with genomics though, brushing up
my understanding of the space, even applying to a few
companies. But it was difficult to find the right position
since I didn't have a background in molecular biology. I did
how ever end up investing in a couple of genomic
companies like Color,“ she says.
• Sanghvi's a risk taker. After graduating from Carnegie
Mellon University in 2004, she was on her way to New York
for a math modeling role at a derivatives trading firm. The
tiny cubicle sizes and 100-hour weeks, with little time for
much else, changed her mind. She decided to move West,
without a job in hand.

5. Contd..
• “It was difficult to quit without anything in hand,“ she says. “As a
student on a visa, if things h a d n't worke d , I wou ld have had to
come back.“
• Fortunately they did, landing her first at Oracle and then, Facebook
• Joining Facebook
• When Sanghvi went to Facebook for an interview in the summer of
2005, the social network's office was a makeshift one, above a
Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto, with wall to wall graffiti. A
blackboard at the entrance advertised vacancies for engineers.
Plenty of people were working around the space, many of them
students. It was difficult to tell who worked there and who didn't,
she recalls.But what was unmistakable was the sheer energy in the
room.

6. Contd..
• She reached the office around noon, the day of her inter view. Her
interviewers weren't in yet. When Mark Zuckerberg finally walked
in an hour later, he spoke to her for around an hour and a half. “He
(Mark) asked me questions like if you could just take two things
with you to Mount Everest, what would they be. He was tasked
with keeping me occupied,“ she says. Her actual interviewers
walked in only around 3 pm. The outcome of the interview resulted
in Sanghvi joining Facebook as its first female engineer, a tag that
has stuck. “I don't mind it (the tag), since there aren't many women
in the technology field to look up to for inspiration,“ she says. “But
yes, people tend to forget that I have had a career post that. I have
held many other profiles, from product development to VP of
operations to marketing and even recruitment.“

7. Contd..
• Founding Cove
• Sanghvi quit Facebook in 2010. Partly because, having
worked closely with the product, privacy and profiles
aspects in the initial phases, she found her passion
waning with its next iterations. And partly, because she
worried she was getting too old at 29 and that she may
not have the same drive or passion later on.
• “It felt like most startup founders in Silicon Valley were
in their twenties,“ she says. Sanghvi co-founded Cove in
early 2011, along with husband Aditya Agarwal.

8. Contd..
• The company was acquired by Dropbox just a year later and with
that, the duo too moved there. After joining Dropbox, Sanghvi
spoke with people across the organisation about the biggest
challenge facing the company. The answer and her subsequent
choice surprised all. It was recruiting. In many ways, this is a
defining lesson in her view for those working at startups. “When
you are joining a startup, don't ask for what position, what role,
what title. Be prepared to take on any role that helps the company
grow,“ she says.
• It is also her experience that prompts her to say that she would
never consider an MBA. “I think you learn best on the job,“ she
says. “Also, it depends on what you want out of the MBA. If it is to
found a company or hold an executive role, I've already done
that.After working with two hyper growth companies, I think
experience is the best teacher.“.

9. Parveen Kumar Chadha… THINK TANK
(Founder and C.E.O of Saxbee Consultants & Other-Mother
marketingandcommunicationconsultants.com)
Email :-saxbeeconsultants@gmail.com
Mobile No. +91-9818308353
Address:-First Floor G-20(A), Kirti Nagar, New Delhi India Postal Code-110015