Nitin Pachisia: 09:16
Yeah. I mean, I was hosting an LPFP breakfast last week, a series of breakfasts that I do in small groups. And we were exactly talking about this, like the weekend before was Father’s Day weekend. And so it was, you know, taking inspiration from our fathers. And we’re talking about our childhood experiences.
And this is what I, you know, my reflection was what I took away from that phase. hard work or work ethic in general. I got to build. That gives me the confidence that I can outwork and outcompete anybody. The one thing that is fully in my control is effort.
And I, I learned, just became a habit to put 100% effort in things that I believe will make a difference. So, you know, later on in life when it came time to choose what job I take, the thinking was very clear. I wasn’t concerned by the discomfort or the effort involved. I took the job that gave me the best opportunity to learn to grow as a person and financially. When it came time to then find a way to, you know, leave India and go somewhere else.
I had the courage and the confidence that I could do it because of what I learned. And so and that’s persisted with me throughout like, even, you know, as you were mentioning earlier, taking the risk without having a visa status to start a business in the US. Like if I, if I did not have the experiences that I did, I don’t know if I would have had that courage and confidence to take the steps I did.
John Corcoran: 11:15
Took, because anything is better than that. What you went through, you know, my, my business partner and I partially connected because his grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. His grandfather at one point was literally in concentration camps, eventually escaping. And there’s this story that we heard about these people that survived the Holocaust, that went into the woods and were literally eating sticks, like, that’s what they had to eat for a period of time, and it might seem a little bit weird or twisted, but sometimes we’ll talk about like, you know, in the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, like, well, at least we’re not eating sticks, right? You know, but I think sometimes we kind of capture that from our ancestors.
By the way, I didn’t complete that story, but my grandfather was a B-17 pilot in World War two, was flying over Germany, dropping bombs. So we like to think that his grandfather, my grandfather, was fighting the same virtuous fight. One from the sky, one from the ground, you know. But it’s so great to be able to draw from that inspiration, to draw from the example of earlier generations. So I just can’t, you know, I can’t imagine what this was like for you.
You’re 15, 16 years old, you lose your brother, you basically lose your father because he sinks into it sounds basically like depression, you know, a deep funk, and you have to take over the family business in order to put food on the table for the family. And you also are going to school and eventually go to college. I mean, just no wonder the only thing that you could naturally do is suppress that pain, that trauma, until later in life. You can deal with it when you have a chance.
Nitin Pachisia: 12:48
Yeah. It was truly a coping mechanism. Just focus on the action needed. There’s fortunately now, you know, the compounding effects of all we do culminated to a point where I, I had the support of therapists and coaches who’ve helped me understand why, why my reactions are the way they are. And instead of dealing with those, those reactions as good or bad or or creating the feeling of shame or guilt, it’s just accepting this is happening because I now know what led to it.
Right. And if I want to break the cycle, if I want to break the cycle on something, I now have the, you know, the awareness to be able to do that. Yeah. I wouldn’t wish for those kinds of experiences of having to survive in jungles, eating sticks or having to do what I did. Yeah, but everybody’s got that.
Everybody’s dealt a hand and has to deal with things that are beyond their control. I think the true character forming happens from just what you do in that moment. Some people rise up, some people crash. I’m very fortunate that because of reasons I don’t know, I was able to rise up on that occasion. And since then, whenever there’s been an opportunity. But I’ve also crashed. I’m putting this out in the ether. If you want to kill me, you gotta. You gotta drown me. Because I couldn’t learn how to swim.
And you know, that’s what I’ve tried three times. And there’s some fear in me that doesn’t let me let me do it. And so it’s not that I figured everything out that I tried. There are, there are things, things that I, that I couldn’t.
John Corcoran: 14:50
So I do have the guy for you, a friend of ours who is a, who is a lifelong swimmer, who would have gone to the Olympics in 1980, but it was the year that we boycotted because of the USSR back then. And he has actually his passion is helping adults to learn to swim. And he did it with a past nanny of ours. So I might have to introduce you afterwards.
Nitin Pachisia: 15:14
To email you.
John Corcoran: 15:14
Yeah. He also has a beautiful pool overlooking the bay, so that doesn’t make it too bad either. All right. So I want to ask you about how you go through this trauma and then at some point you decide to come to America to pursue coming to America. Now that just that must have been emotionally very fraught for you to leave family behind? What was that like?
Nitin Pachisia: 15:38
Not at all. It was actually.
John Corcoran: 15:40
Or not thought about it?
Nitin Pachisia: 15:41
Not at all. It was purely. It was purely motivational. It was purely opportunity driven. So what happened was as soon as I finished my undergrad and the CPA equivalent in India called CA, I decided that I’ve seen what’s in India, and I somewhere had the realization that I will not achieve my full potential if I stay in that ecosystem. This was also, I think, supported by the fact that we’re in this time frame 2000. This was the year 2001.
John Corcoran: 16:16
So was it before nine over 11?
Nitin Pachisia: 16:20
It was just before nine over 11.
John Corcoran: 16:22
Okay. Because there was a whole crackdown against immigration after nine. Exactly. Yeah.
Nitin Pachisia: 16:26
But I finished high school in 97, 97 to or 97 to 2000, 2001 was undergrad and finishing CA in those years between 95 and that time, we had started seeing Western TV come into India through cable. And so there was this awareness that there’s a world outside of India that I don’t know what could be, but it sounds really cool. So I need to experience that because that may be the unlock I need. So that became the inspiration to look for a job that will give me the opportunity to travel and work in those environments. So I took the 41st job offer, passed on the first 40 because they were desk jobs and I.
I desperately needed a job, right? I was running this, this small business to just survive. And that was with AB, which allowed me for three years to travel three weeks in one location. So about four weeks a month I was traveling, and every three weeks I was at a new place learning new work cultures, new people, cultures. That became the opening to see.
There’s a lot more to learn, a lot more to experience. And that led to meeting someone at Deloitte who then pursued me to join Deloitte, and that became the path to come to the US. So a couple things that kind of clicked in was openness to taking the risk of experiencing the unknown and also openness to seeing change as opportunity. Right. So, as this was happening, I was purely evaluating these things as here’s an opportunity to get further ahead, here’s an opportunity to do something new. Partially, it was that my emotional reactions got really suppressed because at 15 when I had to deal with my death, it was truly like shutting down that emotion.
John Corcoran: 18:34
Yeah.
Nitin Pachisia: 18:35
Tangent or emotional aspect of me. So those decisions were very rational, thought out opportunistic decisions.
John Corcoran: 18:46
That kind of answers what question I was going to ask because, I mean, turning down 40 job offers. It must have been over a period of time, right? Like they don’t all come in the same week. But there must have been you must have been questioning yourself or your family must have been questioning, like, why do you keep on turning down these job offers just to like you’re trying to get something perfect. You’re never going to get a diamond in the rough. I mean, that you must have just closed yourself off emotionally from it, because otherwise you’d be like, I need to take one of these to get myself out of the workshop.
Nitin Pachisia: 19:14
Right. Absolutely. It was, I think, the clarity that I would prefer a job that gives me a chance to travel and experience what? I don’t know that clarity was helpful in waiting three months to get the exact job that I wanted. Yeah.
And ABB, the company that I took the job with, made me an offer about one month into the process, but they were offering me a different job, a different position. It took me two and a half more months to convince the CFO to give me the one job that I wanted. It was the guiding light that was that clarity of I want more. I want more than what’s obvious and right in front of me.
John Corcoran: 20:00
Well, that sounds especially relevant to what you do now, advising startup founders on having that clarity, having that guiding light and remaining really committed to it. I want to ask you about your jump into entrepreneurship, because then you take another job, you’re working full time, a day job, and you also start a software company on the side. So talk a little bit about the balance between those. You’re a recent immigrant to the United States. You’re working a full time job and you have a startup also in the evening. That must have been a lot to balance. And rather, it was in the e-commerce space in 2012, which is still pretty early days for e-commerce.
Nitin Pachisia: 20:39
Yeah, it was fascinating. I mean, I came to the US in 2005 and, you know, things were booming. Right. I was in Silicon Valley, Deloitte office startups were taking off around us all the time. And there was out of my five years at Deloitte, four years working, four and a half years working with startups on growth management.
And that was also a product of entrepreneurship, which was in the first six months. What I realized is consulting, risk consulting or strategic consulting at big companies is a cover your ass consulting model. It wasn’t giving me the joy that I wanted. And so I started a practice within Deloitte with a partner who was convinced that there’s an opportunity with startups, except the old the traditional Deloitte model wouldn’t work. And so we created a new product offering, and it just took off with startups, which became my way of learning how startups truly function on the inside.
And got to meet Osman Rashid, who was the founder of Chegg. Because Chegg was one of my clients, when Osman started his next company, he asked me if I would join him and help him with finance and strategy. And the best way to learn how to build a startup is to do it with someone who’s doing it a second time. So I did that for two and a half years, and it was while I was at no. The idea was working with two friends and this idea clicked on e-commerce taking off.
I am buying my wife and I, we were buying most of the stuff online, except she would ask me to go to Macy’s or Nordstrom or Sephora. When she wanted to buy cosmetics or beauty products. And I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, but for me, it was kind of a boring experience of standing around while she goes around, goes up and tries all this stuff. And so that experience became the inspiration for if we can buy everything else online, why not these products? What is missing?
Yeah, it turned out that experience of the product itself, the taste, smell, how it feels on the skin color. Those play a big role in the buying decision. So. So that’s why I started that e-commerce company and learned what is the problem in getting the product experience at home. Right.
And so I started building that while I was working. And the tipping point was when we had three paying brands. So we, you know, we started working on how we are going to run this? The goal was the day. We have three contracts, three brands that want to pay us to create this experience, we should quit our jobs and go full time because that was our conviction validation.
My two co-founders were US citizens and I was still on H-1B visa. So when that time came for us to go full time, I asked the lawyers, I’m ready to go full time at my company. And, you know, dozens of immigration lawyers said, no, you can’t do that. They can’t.
John Corcoran: 23:56
Do.
Nitin Pachisia: 23:56
It. You know, the 2012 version of H-1B and immigration readiness for H-1Bs was a little bit harsher than it is today. It’s fortunate that things have improved. But I think that persistence I think that you just pointed out, like waiting for the 41st job offer to click, I think it was that persistence that helped to not give up and keep knocking on doors to find like there must be some way. So many people have built companies, so many immigrants who came here as students have built great companies.
So it should be possible. And in doing that, I found one one pathway that worked for me. Specifically, it allowed me to not work a day job and be able to stay in the country. But I couldn’t officially, I couldn’t be an employee of my startup, so I had to do it as I’m just volunteering my time, obviously an imperfect solution. And as I kept trying to figure out that thing, the idea for man, I, you know, there’s so much talent that’s locked in around these visas at big companies and in academia is if there could be a way to unlock this talent, there would be so many more companies built.
There would be so much more, so many more problems that this talent would solve. Because I talked to so many founders, they were all very clear. They’re staying at these companies or in academia just because of their visa status.
John Corcoran: 25:35
Yeah. Yeah.
Nitin Pachisia: 25:37
It’s a truly painful form of disguised unemployment.
John Corcoran: 25:42
And also I have to say, you know, it’s not beneficial to our country. We’ve got people like yourself that are ready. It’s just about shifting where they spend their time. They’re already in the country. Right. You know, I mean, why wouldn’t we encourage that kind of entrepreneurship, that kind of risk taking? That’s what this country is all about.
Nitin Pachisia: 26:02
Yeah, a very simple equation. If you have 100,000 people that are currently working jobs and they would go start their companies by giving them a pathway to start their company, you instantly created 100,000 jobs.
John Corcoran: 26:14
Yeah.
Nitin Pachisia: 26:15
Right. Because they would vacate their jobs. They’re going to go start companies and give themselves a job. And now some other 100,000 people can take those jobs.
John Corcoran: 26:22
Well, and frankly, probably create a lot more jobs because these are very driven, very motivated individuals who they’re, you know, many of them, like they’re going to make it work if it kills them in the process. Right?
Nitin Pachisia: 26:34
I’m just saying within a second you’ve created 100,000 and now the multiplier effect kicks in. Right? Right. Right. I think the Kauffman Foundation had this study of every immigrant entrepreneur who starts a business, creates 3.5 jobs per person.
And this includes, you know, on average someone starts a sole proprietorship business, and then someone starts a company like Google that hires 60,000 people, right? So you obviously average it out. But the job creation potential from that, which is why I think it’s the poorest form of disguised unemployment. But at the individual level, it is truly taking away agency from some of the most, most ambitious people who’ve already taken a big risk. They’ve shown you that they’re capable of taking risks.
They’ve shown you that they’re capable of doing exceptional things. And when you look at the big picture, there’s 7 billion people who live outside the US, right? About 1 million to 2 million a year come into the US. And now you can do the math of how competitive that situation is.
John Corcoran: 27:52
Yeah. To do it’s only the most driven, the most hard charging, the most motivated, the most incredible people. I mean, literally, I think part of why I was so excited to interview you on this podcast is because I’ve enjoyed my conversations with immigrant entrepreneurs on this show, probably more than any other category of type of entrepreneur, because of all these reasons.
Nitin Pachisia: 28:17
And add to that new perspectives, when you’ve experienced so many different ways of looking at the world, you come into a new, new situation. You’re not just applying, oh, this is how things have always been. You’re bringing a new perspective. And there’s a reason why immigrant entrepreneurs have been so successful. Not only because they went to great schools and they’re great engineers and drive up the world view.
And being able to apply different forms of thinking into current situations. It just creates a difference, you know, when you change your vantage point, for example, it creates a new solution. And so yeah, I think all the ingredients are obviously there. So, you know, as I, as I went deeper into it and part of how big the potential could be to unlock this talent. It was obvious that the software opportunity that I was working on would solve some things.
But the agency that I can bring to entrepreneurs who I can help start businesses by doing what we do at Unshackled is making true human level impact and then global impact. So that became the way to start Unshackled. And 11 years later, I’m really proud that instead of writing a medium post and criticizing how everything that doesn’t work, I took the step of let’s figure it out with the existing infrastructure, what can we do at the business level? Because, you know, I don’t know anything about politics. I don’t know how to go in and influence people to change policies. And so far in 12 years, not much has changed. but business solutions can be implemented to work within whatever the current policy environment is. And that is what entrepreneurs do, right?
John Corcoran: 30:23
And what was that like in the early days? You mentioned in circa 2014 when you’re starting this up, you said the immigration rules were actually even more restrictive than they are today. So you go around to raise money from people on this premise. What was the reaction like when you started telling people you want to focus on shackled, focused on immigrant entrepreneurs?
Nitin Pachisia: 30:44
Oh, there was clear excitement, like anyone who had been through the journey themselves or had worked with someone, which most entrepreneurs have hired foreign born talent or people who co-founded companies with immigrants? The excitement was clear. Obviously, my partner and I were coming from an operating experience. We didn’t have a history of building large companies or having worked in VC. So we raised a proof of concept fund to prove that we can learn the trade of VC.
And the solution that we’re offering will be accepted by entrepreneurs. We raised that proof of concept fund from people who had built VC firms or had been angel investors for years, because we wanted to learn from their experience. We wanted to learn how to be an investor. What are we looking for? And so since then, I think, you know, a great achievement for us has been we have surrounded ourselves with really smart people who are passionate about enabling entrepreneurs, and we continue to do that.
Our LPs have been massively supportive. You know, the largest families in the US like to stay private, but they are the builders of the largest tech companies, healthcare Our finance company. Retail company. And so having the support and backing of very large family offices, as well as individuals who’ve succeeded in their own ways as operators and entrepreneurs, not only gave us the confidence and the support, but also gave us access to their knowledge, their networks, their influence. And so now, a decade into it, we were very motivated to continue to, to raise more funds, continue to do what we’re doing. Just seeing the progress of our portfolio, like this model works.
John Corcoran: 32:45
And tell us about some of those companies in your portfolio. I know one is a coconut farmer turned software entrepreneur. That sounds incredible.
Nitin Pachisia: 32:54
Yeah. And you should meet him. And you will appreciate just how amazing of a human being Keshav is. You know, we met him when he was 19 years old, I think. He grew up on coconut farms, taught himself how to solve Rubik’s Cubes and became world Rubik’s Cube champion.
Use that as the way to to move himself forward, join an international school, and then take a one way ticket to San Francisco. It was and lived in San Francisco on hackathon winnings basically. Then I decided to start a company within a couple of months. Reached out to about 100 investors. Three of them replied and we were the ones who invested. And we’re.
John Corcoran: 33:48
And he’s 19 years old, having made it to the US and starting a company. That’s incredible. And I was 19. I don’t know what I was doing, but it certainly wasn’t that.
Nitin Pachisia: 33:58
Well when you when you, when you meet him, you will see that in his 19 years he’s put to tremendous use. He’s learned. He’s learned 40 years worth of life experience in those 19 years. And just as one of the most dynamic personalities you will come across. But that’s an example of, again, unlocking talent.
Yeah. Right. Like if it would be a shame if he is in that situation, if he doesn’t find a solution and has to go back to India or go somewhere else to start his company, I don’t know. It’s all hypothetical on how successful his company is or isn’t in that case, but the one thing that is not a hypothetical is he wouldn’t make that decision if he had the agency to start the company where he wanted to start it.
John Corcoran: 34:52
And there’s no question that there’s unbelievable opportunity here in the United States. Right. That’s exactly the largest economy and so forth. I want to ask you about it. So lots of investors decide to focus on a segment.
But what we’re talking about here is it sounds like you focus more on a personality type. Is that your full rubric? Is that what you use to filter to decide whether to make an investment? Not looking at industry.
Nitin Pachisia: 35:16
We don’t have to, you know, one of the one of the learnings we had was investing in industries or obvious things is easy. So therefore anyone can do it. If as a new investor, we’re coming in. The stage at which we are most effective is when a founder has done some initial work and is committed or convinced that they should now quit their job, academia, anything else so they’re spending their time on and dedicate 100% of their time to building this company, which usually happens very, very early in the company’s life. Right.
John Corcoran: 35:56
You’re doing, we should explain to everyone listening. You’re doing Pre-seed investments, which is like the earliest of the early.
Nitin Pachisia: 36:03
Correct and even within precedence. We’re doing the earliest form of precedence when friends and family invest. This is before there’s a product, before there’s any revenue, there’s customer discovery and some amazing people obsessed with solving something. Right. And so what became our what became our philosophy on investing is if we find people that are obsessed about either a solution or a problem or an opportunity and have the right skills to do it, are curious to learn what they don’t know, are self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses, have a high opportunity cost because people with high opportunity costs will not settle for small things.
That kind of creates an environment of people who will create large companies. They will just push themselves. You know, velocity comes from that obsession and impatience. And that’s kind of the key with venture scale companies is when you find something, you want to go at it as fast as possible. So we’ve really, over the years learned the archetype that is the most successful in our world.
That doesn’t mean we just stick to that one archetype. We also stay curious about how many personalities can be successful. There could be a very quiet researcher type expert who speaks only a few words. But those.
John Corcoran: 37:42
Listening to.
Nitin Pachisia: 37:43
Those words.
John Corcoran: 37:43
I was listening to Sam Altman of OpenAI do an interview yesterday and very soft spoken guy. You know, I think if you didn’t know who he was and you’re listening to this podcast, you might be like, well, this isn’t that impressive, you know, but one of the most impressive entrepreneurs out there working today.
Nitin Pachisia: 37:59
Exactly right. So we kind of try to go beyond the package. Of like whether they are a particular ethnicity, gender or speak in a certain way or not. I’ve met VCs who say that if a founder is not talking fast, they’re probably not a great founder. Like, okay, great.
That’s a signal that you like to follow. And, you know, we like to stay open to other signals as well. So anyways, coming back to your question, I think our archetype is a visionary who’s an expert, a technical expert in their domain and therefore has the capability to execute on it. But then that’s kind of the base layer. Then the other characteristics of obsession, velocity, curiosity, coachability, self-awareness, all of those start playing a role and the judgment that we’re making is, is there enough here that gives us the confidence that this could become a large company builder in the future?
Right there. Not one right now. Signals are not clear, which is why we have an unfair advantage in seeing the potential. And so that’s how we’ve found most of the founders today who are, you know, VCs backing them and have after our investment of 200,000 others have invested 20 million, 40 million, 60,000,000in those companies. Yeah. Is because we focused on the signals that give us indicators of potential versus waiting for signals of execution. And then and then anyone can do it.
John Corcoran: 39:42
Right? Right. Yeah. So interesting. I know we’re almost out of time. Do you have time for two more questions? Sure. Excellent. Okay, cool. I want to ask you about what has it been like for you to experience this backlash against immigrants over the last 8 or 9 years?
Just kind of to go through it after having, you know, come to this country after having, you know, built this investment fund with the thesis that you built, have after having surrounded yourself with empowering immigrant entrepreneurs, what has been like for you?
Nitin Pachisia: 40:20
I think three, three emotions that kind of pull in very different directions are the most alive. There’s anxiety from the unknown, anxiety from attacks on the very basic tenets of what makes America America. When I chose to, I was born in India. I didn’t have a choice in that situation, but then I had a choice for where I would make my home. And I chose America because of all the things that America stands for.
And a lot of what I personally feel as anxiety really comes from attacks on those core values at personal level and business level. The second part, the second emotion that’s very alive is resilience. And that, I think kind of goes. I have seen much worse situations and even the worst things that we hear of today going on in the US are still better than a lot of the other stuff that I’ve seen. So I want this to stop. I want America to go back to being the healthier environment that it was. And I have a lot of resilience. And that resilience gives me the faith that it will get better. And then the third emotion is hope and belief that we’re going to be fine.
John Corcoran: 41:54
I love that positivity. Love that positivity. All right. Well we’ll we’ll we’ll almost let you break on that. But I’m going to ask my last question, which is my gratitude question.
I’m a big fan of expressing gratitude. I think you just expressed it. But I love it when the guests, you know, point out someone from their journey: a peer, a contemporary friend, an LP, a mentor, anyone that you would want to acknowledge and just thank them for what they’ve done for you.
Nitin Pachisia: 42:25
The list is so long, the few names that I will explicitly share. But first of all, I’m grateful to the American immigration system. I’m here because the system works right. And I know in the, in the, in the moment. And it’s easy to criticize everything that’s wrong, but it’s still the best system in the world.
Millions of us are here because the system works. There’s room to improve. But I have a lot of gratitude for America as a country and the immigration system. I’m grateful to Osman for giving me the opportunity to come and work with him at no. And that was a big, you know, leap of faith that he was taking, because I had no prior controllership experience that he brought me into. And I got to work with him.
John Corcoran: 43:18
He believed in you.
Nitin Pachisia: 43:19
Exactly.
John Corcoran: 43:21
And
Nitin Pachisia: 43:22
You know, everybody needs someone who believes in you. And, you know, my partner at Deloitte, Farah, who gave me the opportunity to start the practice for startups and we’re now really close family, family, friends. A lot of gratitude for her, a lot of gratitude for our investors, in our funds over all these years who, you know, took a bet on two guys with no prior investing experience and wanted to see us build and have supported us. Gratitude for great founders who choose to work with us, right? They have options.
They can raise money from a lot of other people. They choose to work with us for their belief and their trust that we would be great partners to them. And then obviously my, my, my partners, my family. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve lived, I’m living in this world of gratitude. More awareness of how happy that gratitude makes me.
John Corcoran: 44:28
Yeah. That’s great. Nitin, this has been such an interesting interview. Thank you for your time. Where can people go to learn more about you and learn more about Unshackled ventures?
Nitin Pachisia: 44:38
Unshackledvc.com is our website. And you know one thing that is important? When we started unshackled, we knew that new immigrant founders will not always find warm intros to VCs. So we’ve had, from the time we started, an open link on our website where anyone can come and share their pitch, share their information with us. So if you go to the top right corner, you’ll see the pitch link.
That’s the easiest way to get in touch with me and the entire investment team. Every pitch that is sent will get a response. That’s our commitment and continues to be our commitment. And outside of that, obviously I’m reachable on LinkedIn where most of my business interactions are how we met.
John Corcoran: 45:27
Excellent. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much for your time.
Nitin Pachisia: 45:31
Thank you.
Outro: 45:34
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.