Harsimran Julka · · 5 min readA rare insight into how Sequoia makes startup investment calls
(From left to right): Shailendra Singh, Sequoia Capital India MD with David Corbin, director for content strategy at Tech in Asia Singapore 2016.
Shailendra Singh, managing director at Sequoia Capital, has seen the rise and fall of many companies during his decade long tenure at the India arm of the world’s top investing firm.
Having led investments across India and southeast Asia in companies such as Go-Jek, Just Dial, Mu Sigma, Freecharge, Practo, and Tokopedia, Shailendra is one of the top go-to guys for startups in the region for entrepreneurs.
At Tech in Asia Singapore 2016, he talked to David Corbin, director of content strategy at Tech in Asia, on the qualities that excite him in great founders and companies:
My daily job is to back underdogs
“My daily job is to build companies alongside founders. I work alongside founders and go through the ups and downs of company building,” he said.
That’s what he has been doing for the last 10 years, playing a big part in making Sequoia’s portfolio the VC success story that most investors desire.
“Thus, in my body there are more scars and broken bones [due to the harshness of the process] than you can ever imagine.”
“My job is to back the underdog to beat the big incumbent in any sector. That’s what I do for a living.”
Willing to live with failures
“We actually started investing in southeast Asia about four years ago. We came to these markets via our Indian companies who spread into the region,” Shailendra said.
The champion VC said it was not completely an analytical decision to move into the SE Asian markets.
“If it were so, then it would have been very easy for us to look at past data which had no proven exits and not enter the SE Asian market.”
“We take good calculated risks and are willing to live with failures. We were just willing to believe more.”
“It’s the same mindset with which people become founders. Company data is a very small part of decision making process,” he said.
Investing for us is a sensory process
“Every decision to invest obviously goes up the ladder – first to the India investment committee, and then on a weekly basis at our weekly meeting with our offices in the Bay Area,” Shailendra explained.
The ‘founder’s DNA’ is important
Founders should not oversell
Not worried about winter
‘We love to be contrarian to markets’
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