Deepak Sindwani – Co Founder of Wavecrest Growth Partners

Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey. Julian Castelli 00:00:27 today I am very excited to welcome Deepak Simone. Deepak is the co-founder and managing partner of Wave Crest Partners. He focuses on helping founder led capital efficient B2B software companies to grow and scale. Deepak has been in the investing business for a long time. He was a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, in their growth equity group and also in venture capital at Comcast Ventures. Welcome, Deepak. Deepak Sindwani 00:00:55 Hey, Joy. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Excited to, you know, Chad and and and hopefully, hopefully I have something smart to say. Julian Castelli 00:01:06 Well, you always do. We’ve had a lot of these conversations over the years. And when I started this podcast, I had you in mind as someone to, to to talk to and hear your story. Julian Castelli 00:01:16 You and I got to know each other when you were at Bain and up in Boston. And, I recall you being a very, very smart investor, very vertically driven. We were in a travel tech business at the time, and you had done a lot of work in that space. And, and, you know, we were talking about potential deals. But, you know, I also considered you an industry expert that I enjoyed speaking with. And, I also I was was excited when you called me one day and said you were starting your own firm, and that became Wave Crest Partners. So tell me a little bit about that founding journey and your path to starting your own growth equity firm. Deepak Sindwani 00:01:51 Sure. So as you mentioned, and I’ll just add a little bit to it. You know, I started out of undergrad briefly as an investment banker, was quickly reformed from that, started my own software company. So I always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial itch, but did it at exactly the wrong time during what I call bubble window now, and kind of the 99 2000 era. Deepak Sindwani 00:02:13 got more into the operating side, came back after that didn’t work, in product management and marketing and business development for a few years, both growth companies and one larger company, and so saw some ups and downs and then was lucky enough to get into the venture business in 2003 at Comcast, as you mentioned, joined Bain Capital in 2009. And then, you know, as you mentioned, you know, what I learned in my journey, which I’m excited to cover today, is I thought that Silicon Valley venture was the only way to invest in tech. And I went out and lived for two years in Silicon Valley. I joined a firm that did a lot of investing in Silicon Valley and then what I came to realize was there was a different form of investing called growth equity. And, you know, it’s a different level of risk. But it’s also, I think, a different approach to working with founders. And so I learned that through investing in a founder led business across from the Coors Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado, in 2006 while I was at at Comcast. Deepak Sindwani 00:03:21 And that changed my life. And, and that caused me to pivot to Bain. And so I did a lot of growth equity at Bain with non Silicon Valley companies and exclusively focused on non Silicon Valley companies, because we had an office there that focused there. And you know what I discovered was kind of a gap in the market. you know at the lower end of the market businesses that are what I call more in the expansion stage, you know, 5 to 10 million, 5 to 15 million of are, as I like to say, they’ve got something that’s working product market fit. Maybe they have one product instead of multiple products. And what they want to do is scale that. And, and so they need more help than I think just someone who deploys capital and shows up to board meetings, they want somebody who can they can be real sounding board on issues in particularly the go to market arena, sales, marketing success, analytics. And so that’s that was the impetus for starting Wave Crest out of Bain. Deepak Sindwani 00:04:24 Obviously, Bain is a great firm. I learned a ton, worked with really smart people. and obviously we met there, but I felt like if you know, one, I had the itch to do something entrepreneurial again and to felt like there was a gap in the market for, you know, companies that wanted less than, you know, 20 million of capital and, but wanted a, a partner to help them grow. So that’s why we name the firm Wave Crest Growth Partners and started hung a shingle as in many, many of your. Julian Castelli 00:04:55 Yeah. That’s your entrepreneurial journey. So you you, you probably, have your own story of the struggle. Right. And it was it was easy just people gave you money and said, invest it for us. Deepak Sindwani 00:05:04 What’s interesting is, you know, we we are entrepreneurs ourselves and so have a lot of respect for founders who go through the struggle. And we went through struggle in the first three years of our business, including one founder departing, departing, which I know has happened in some of your founder situations. Deepak Sindwani 00:05:23 And it happened to us. we also, you know what what’s interesting about starting an investment business versus technology companies. And certainly I’m not saying it’s at all any harder or easier. It’s just different is in an investment business, if you don’t have capital, you’ve got nothing to do. Right. And so a big part of the game is, you know, pitching like an entrepreneur goes and pitches investors or pitches friends or pitches customers. And in our case, we have to pitch. You know, either wealthy individuals or institutions like universities or foundations or pensions and, you know, but in the case of, of of investment funds, you know, you need to get ten or more of those investors to align in order to, you know, get past your existence risk. Julian Castelli 00:06:13 And so that was your existential starting point, your cold start problem. Right. Exactly. What was your what was your first round and how long did it take you to raise it? Your first fundraising? Deepak Sindwani 00:06:23 It took us so what’s what’s it what’s really interesting is and this was a learning for us as well that you go through in the journey is we we started and said, okay, we should go raise some capital. Deepak Sindwani 00:06:35 But then very quickly, from my past at Bain, I had been building a relationship with an entrepreneur in the commercial real estate technology space and his company. He wanted to, bring in some growth capital and bring in some help to continue to grow his business. He was around, you know, 8 or 9 million of RR. And so so, you know, we started early January 2016. By March, you know, we were already really talking to him, this gentleman named David Osborne, who’s a phenomenal individual about how to help him before we had capital. Julian Castelli 00:07:13 And that could be helpful. Right. Because you’ve got a deal on the sideline or even do an SPV for that deal or something. Deepak Sindwani 00:07:20 Yeah. So that’s exactly right. It was it was, you know, it was like the first customer that some of your founders. Julian Castelli 00:07:24 Have found in customer. Right. Deepak Sindwani 00:07:26 You learn it was our first, first investment. So we ended up really liking this business and and going hard after it and convincing the founder that we brought a different approach than other investors that he had met in the market. Deepak Sindwani 00:07:41 And we gave him a term sheet. And so part of our our story, if it was, you know, all founders have to be audacious. We were being audacious through. Julian Castelli 00:07:51 Did you have the capital behind that term sheet. Deepak Sindwani 00:07:53 We that’s the secret right? We did, we did. And so very stressful time as I’m sure all founders go through. And you promise something to a customer and then you got to go build it. That’s right. It was very similar. And so in June of 16 we signed a term sheet with him. And then we went and we of course had, a sense of what we would do. Like most founders, we weren’t the only. Julian Castelli 00:08:18 Of course, but we but you didn’t have it signed yet. You had to. Deepak Sindwani 00:08:22 Go do it. Julian Castelli 00:08:22 So, you know, it’s like the like like the, the not as a vaporware, but when you show a presentation or a figma or something of what you’re going to build on a in a piece of software. Right, exactly, exactly. Deepak Sindwani 00:08:33 So it’s the wireframe becoming the frame. Julian Castelli 00:08:35 That’s it. Deepak Sindwani 00:08:36 And so we went out and raised capital and invested in David’s company. And, you know, it was like the, the, the, the Genesis story. And so from our perspective. Julian Castelli 00:08:49 You did you close that deal before you raised your funds. So yeah. So we purpose vehicle. Deepak Sindwani 00:08:53 Yeah. We raised, as you said, a special vehicle. We raised a little over 26 million. We had some friends co-invest with us in that, from other funds that we knew just from being in the business. And, in September of 2016, we closed. And, you know, to your point, and this founders will understand this when you get that 0 to 1 and you get that first customer and it proves that there’s a value prop and a use case, then the next customer and the next customer are easier, right? I mean, they’re all hard, but it’s. Julian Castelli 00:09:26 The cold start problem. You have to start with something. Deepak Sindwani 00:09:29 Exactly. Deepak Sindwani 00:09:29 And so the ability for us to kind of get moving and have motion created more interest in us. I mean, obviously my partner and I had background in investing for 12, 15 years each, but to the institutional investment community where nobody’s yeah, they don’t care that you previously had Bain on your resume. And so, when we had building engines completed, they said, wow, you guys, you know, one, I like the company. And two, it shows that you guys can win and that you know what you’re doing. Right? So it gave validating as it does in your founders when they launch, you know, they land a big customer. Julian Castelli 00:10:07 That that really is very similar to a founding story of a tech company. So you can relate with your, your partners and portfolio company founders and CEOs. So, so from that starting point, in 2016 is now 2024, it was you. And by both at the time with, with with no fund and no companies, you got this first company, you know, you know during the process. Julian Castelli 00:10:30 And now tell us where you are today. From a size standpoint. Deepak Sindwani 00:10:34 I have a lot more gray hair, but, and a lot less hair, but, you know, the. Yeah. So we’ve gone from the two of us to 15 people now, we raised fund one at 145 million, invested another 100 million alongside of it. It took us two and a half years to raise the capital. So. To to point you raised. I mean, these things are never linear. They’re never up into the right. There’s always the stop and start and the side you go sideways for a few months. Julian Castelli 00:11:05 And that is something I’m sure every one of your portfolio companies can relate to. Yeah. Deepak Sindwani 00:11:09 And look I think that and I’ll talk about it. We gain I mean we had we had both been operators for short periods of time, three or 4 or 5 years prior to, you know, being investors. And in my partner’s case, after being an investor. And so EQ and humility are things that we developed through that. Deepak Sindwani 00:11:29 And then we went through it ourselves. Right. And staring into the abyss and wondering, you know, if we have a business. And so we try to bring that humility to the table with our with the entrepreneurs we are fortunate enough to partner with. But, you know, now we’re, you know, 15 people. We we we have about 600 million under management. We’re halfway through investing one, two. And so, you know, obviously a big difference in how many you wake up when you feel grateful. And, you know, obviously I try to do that. Julian Castelli 00:12:02 How many companies have you invested in now? Deepak Sindwani 00:12:04 We’ve invested in 14 companies. We’ve also one thing I’ll talk about on this podcast, we we’ve acquired, you know, 22, 23 companies into those 14 companies as well, which can be an alternate strategy, additional strategy for growth for founders. Julian Castelli 00:12:21 And so that’s that’s after you’ve made the initial investment, you’ve helped those founders grow through M&A. Exactly. So let’s definitely talk about that too. Deepak Sindwani 00:12:31 There market opportunity really. Julian Castelli 00:12:32 Yeah. That’s awesome. And your growth equity. So you’re you’re in between venture capital and private equity in a category called growth equity. Why don’t you help us define that. Deepak Sindwani 00:12:45 Yeah. So look many of your founders will build software companies and never raise capital. And that’s a great approach. Many of your founders will. Build companies and raise venture capital where the the approach. And having been a venture capitalist myself, you know, 10 or 15 years ago is very is different because it’s a riskier proposition to the venture capitalist. If you sit in their shoes because they’re backing these founders with zero revenue or a million of. Julian Castelli 00:13:17 Revenue, very early stage, part of the risk curve, right. Deepak Sindwani 00:13:21 And so in order to make the business work for them, they need to invest in lots of company. If they invest in three companies and they’re all early stage and they all don’t unfortunately work, then they they won’t have a business. And so from their perspective, they typically invest in 25 plus companies in a fund. Deepak Sindwani 00:13:42 as a result, they usually can’t spend a lot of time with those companies because they have eight, ten, 15 companies each that they are responsible for. But what they’re really trying to help figure out is which of these companies can be my Google can be my. Julian Castelli 00:13:57 Work, breakouts. Deepak Sindwani 00:13:59 Can be my Domo. And, you know, so that’s the model of venture capital. And I did that for, you know, 6 or 7 years. And then, you know, this company in Golden, Colorado invested in that was a little bit later stage business. So what the founder ended up doing was bootstrapping, raising a little bit of friends and family money along the way, but effectively building a company the old fashioned way through blood, sweat and tears and taking profits and investing it in more people and more technology. And so what growth equity says is or the principle of growth equity is your business is already existing and it’s growing, but maybe it’s undercapitalized and that, you know, you could land, grab the customers faster. Deepak Sindwani 00:14:43 You could you could invest in more products. You want to go faster. You want to improve your management team. You want to accelerate. And so our capital is less risky because there’s already a business. But it’s still focused on growth. Yes. And so that’s why it’s called growth. Equity is a little bit later stage. It doesn’t suit every founder because some founders, you know, in a large horizontal market should raise venture capital or some founders. It’s your point may be like the founder of MailChimp, you know, may want to bootstrap his way all the way to a multibillion dollar exit. Right. And so but for the founder who says, I’ve put five, seven, ten years into this, I’ve gotten it to 5 or 10 of IRR. It’s working. I would love to have someone who can help me, hopefully see around corners. But in addition, I’d love some personal diversification. Take some chips off the table, and I’d also like to double down on my growth. It’s a good solution. Deepak Sindwani 00:15:43 And you know, so it’s really a partnership model working with the founders. Julian Castelli 00:15:47 And what size of a company do they get into your range and your target. Target sweet spot. Speaker 4 00:15:55 Yeah. Deepak Sindwani 00:15:55 5 to 20 of our is where we typically invest usually more in the 5 to 12 range. So as I mentioned early growth expansion product market fits there. You have. Julian Castelli 00:16:06 Yeah they’ve they’ve got you know call it $8 million that they’ve gotten. Enough customers and enough traction to be able to to really understand the value proposition of their business. They’ve got some brand reputation in the space, and now it’s about going from that eight to 10 to 30 and that next stage. That’s exactly. Deepak Sindwani 00:16:26 Right. Yeah. We view kind of 0 to 5 as the hardest part of a founder’s journey. And you know every every part’s hard. But you know going 0 to 5 figuring out a value prop that you can sell to multiple the same value prop you can sell to multiple customers in a repeatable motion is really, really, really hard. Deepak Sindwani 00:16:47 And, you know, the founders should get paid for taking that risk, right. And in, you know, and so after you’ve gotten to that stage, then the, the the problems become different problems of growth, you know, how do I hire a sale? How do I take go from three sales reps to 15 reps? How do I have a Legion machine and a content marketing machine that works? How do I have customer success that is scalable in some cases international? How do I, you know, my pricing model? Every software, you know, sorry, not every time. Nine out of 10 or 99 out of 100 software companies that are 5 to 10 million of revenue, the pricing model they’re using probably isn’t the one that will get them to 50 million. So there’s these. Julian Castelli 00:17:32 Strategic. It is not. They’ve got to do something different. What got you here won’t get you there. Deepak Sindwani 00:17:36 Exactly. So there’s these strategic decisions on the go to market side that are really important as you go from 5 or 10 to 25 or 50. Deepak Sindwani 00:17:44 And so that’s what we specialize in. That’s what we love doing day in and day out. That’s where we have specialists on our team who all they do is work with the portfolio companies on those key decisions. Yeah. Julian Castelli 00:17:55 Talked about talked about your value added. You obviously are providing capital. You mentioned that you can provide the M&A playbook and capabilities. But but how do you what do you bring to to really help the business on that journey from operating operations or advisory standpoint? Deepak Sindwani 00:18:11 Yeah. Look, I mean, I don’t won’t go as far as to say, you know, capital is commodity, but it’s table stakes. And the real value is, as I like to tell entrepreneurs, the scars on my back shouldn’t be the scars on yours. And so it’s really the having built 30 companies from 5 to 50 or 5 to 25 or 5 to 100, there’s just a lot of learnings. Right. And and same thing that you have, Julian, from being a multi-time CEO. And so, you know, our hope is to package up those learnings into, you know, digestible, points of value where we can help the next generation of entrepreneurs. Deepak Sindwani 00:18:55 And so we’ve done that with something called the Wave Crest operating platform, which is five different pillars of value, which include best practices for sales, marketing, customer success, pricing, analytics, people who can help on the journey, you know, cohorts like you’ve done with growth elevated, but of CEOs that are on the journey from 5 to 50. and, you know, functional experts at Talent Network to help them grow the business with execs. And so the goal of Wave Crest is not to take the keys or take the steering wheel. The founders and the CEOs drive the business. It’s to really surround the company with value so that they have access to whatever knowledge and resources. In addition, we have two people full time who who are, you know, go to market SAS experts that work with the portfolio companies day in and day out on whatever they need. If that product pricing, if that’s customer success, it’s really at the strategic level, helping them think through the org design, helping them think through Tam expansion. Deepak Sindwani 00:20:01 I mean, we have multiple different projects we do across different companies. Julian Castelli 00:20:06 That’s awesome. you know, that that that is really value added to have that capability and that expertise. Is there a story or an example of a company that you want to you can maybe share with us, you know, show us how that works? Deepak Sindwani 00:20:20 Yeah, I’ll talk about this company. I have the logo on today. It’s named impel, used to be called Spin Car. And that also speaks to one of the things that happened to these companies. They go from 5 to 50 things changed your market changes. And so Spin Car was is founded by two very talented young gentleman in Syracuse, New York of all places. So we invest in it’s far. Julian Castelli 00:20:43 From Silicon Valley. Yeah, we. Deepak Sindwani 00:20:44 Invest in places that oftentimes people didn’t even know tech companies existed there. Yeah. Which is the beauty of the world we live in today, where you can, with AWS and Azure, do a lot and from a lot of different places. Deepak Sindwani 00:20:57 But, you know, they had built, you know, actually gone through their own, you know, pivots and tribulations before we we invested in 2018 and they were a, augmented reality. Digital merchandising solution, for the automotive vertical. So helping consumer helping. Auto dealerships and auto OEMs to, improve their customer experience online through the ability to, for example, go look at a car without going to the dealership, okay. Seeing the vehicle inside and out, which is something that all of us have done. You know, you go and you inspect where the scratches, particularly if you’re buying used. And one of the things, you know, obviously you can’t fully replicate sitting in the seat and seeing how it feels, but you can do a lot and save a lot of time. Right. And so, you know, trying to really bring a e-commerce experience to an industry that really didn’t have e-commerce five years ago. and so that’s what they were. And around that, they had built a data product as well, because they collected a lot of data around consumer interests and features and safety and the other things that consumers cared about. Deepak Sindwani 00:22:12 So they were 8 or 9 million of RR growing really fast. They had seed investors who, you know, really, you know, they had a couple of strategic offers on the table to buy the company. But the two founders, who were 30 years old, said, you know what? Like, this is so much fun and I see so much runway ahead of us that I’d rather continue to grow the business. But they had investors who were happy with some of the offers on the table. Yeah, okay. And provided an alternate solution that said, you know, we’ll we’ll buy out your investors. We’ll, we’ll give you, you know, 5 million of fresh capital on the balance sheet. And we’ll give each of you guys a little bit of, of a little bit of liquidity for, you know, the hard work you’ve done over the last 5 or 6 years. And so it was a packaged solution and it has worked great. I mean, the company grew rapidly after that. But then, you know, we hit Covid and you know, all the brick and mortar stores like dealerships were shut down. Deepak Sindwani 00:23:15 Right? And, you know, we had, as I’m sure, lots of founders who started their companies pre-COVID, you know, crisis moments of, you know, churn went up and, you know, no one knew digital marketing of vehicles when no one’s buying vehicles. And so and, you know, merchandising still matters. And actually, what happened was Covid ended up initially being a massive headwind, but then actually being a real tailwind because consumers said, I don’t want to use public transport anymore. I want a car. I can be alone. Julian Castelli 00:23:47 Prices really shot through the roof all of a sudden. Deepak Sindwani 00:23:49 Exactly. And then and then with the supply chain issues that happened after that in 21 and 22, the, you know, inventory became an issue and pricing actually went up. So but the point is, we went through, some tough times with churn. We had to, you know, make some cost cut cuts, including, unfortunately, some heads and we had the belt tighten. And, you know, the business, you know, was growing over 50% a year pre 2020 that year I think grew you know between 10 and 20%. Deepak Sindwani 00:24:23 So you know we had a this moment of you know did we miss the window. What happened. You know is the market going to recover. Luckily it did you know but but that’s part of the benefit of, you know, these are two, you know, very smart young guys. And hopefully we were a good partner to them through that and helping them with the advice and the budgeting and lots of other things that we were doing around customer, you know, saving customers and customer retention. And, and now then the next thing that that happened was in 21, we had the opportunity to acquire, a conversational AI business. And, what we realized was as part of the digital merchandising process that the these are considered purchases, you spend 20, 40,000 whatever on a vehicle. You don’t just buy it like you would something on Amazon, you know, in five seconds. And so the ability to do conversational AI makes a ton of sense. The ability to have 7 or 10 touchpoints with a shopper in multiple channels. Deepak Sindwani 00:25:34 Right. And so, you know, we did a small acquisition of a product tech company that actually was based in Eastern Europe, and had some initial US traction, enfolded it into our product and actually use that to broaden the vision and the Tam of our company and our and added another product to sell to the same customers, which was extremely lucrative from a lifetime value perspective. So we ended up changing the name of the company over the next couple of years from Spin Car, which, which? You know, it’s more of a merchandising and kind of viewership, value prop to impel, which actually in the Webster’s Dictionary means to drive forward. And so, you know, the whole vision of the company changed the trajectory changed, the Tam changed. And so, you know, now the company fast forward, that was. Julian Castelli 00:26:30 That acquisition, a key part of that that yes uptick. Deepak Sindwani 00:26:34 Took us in, made the product a lot more mission critical. You know, it’s hard when as as your founders know, when you use AI and you see the good things that can unlock to kind of do away with it, and the customers actually like it too. Deepak Sindwani 00:26:51 And if it can, you know, automate tasks and in, you know, in this case, chasing the customers and making sure that they want to buy your Jeep Cherokee or your Land Rover. yeah. There’s it’s a great use case. And so it made the product. Julian Castelli 00:27:06 Is very manual. Deepak Sindwani 00:27:07 And yeah, having. Julian Castelli 00:27:11 A used car recently and I’d say, you know, I probably responded to eight and only three could continue the dialogue enough to keep me engaged. Five. Fell through the cracks. Yeah. Speaker 4 00:27:21 It’s almost your. Deepak Sindwani 00:27:23 Point is and this goes for probably every industry. If you’re not using AI for repetitive tasks and you’re not using the benefits of automation, you’re going to lose to your competitors who are. And so to your point, you know, human beings are, you know, and with all the media we consume and all of the things on our phone every day, we have short term memory. Yeah. Julian Castelli 00:27:48 So it’s the attention span. That’s where that’s where competing for. Right. Deepak Sindwani 00:27:52 Three days ago we forgot what we saw. Deepak Sindwani 00:27:54 Yeah. And so you know it’s important to stay in front of anyways you know the business is now closing in on 100 million of RR. Julian Castelli 00:28:02 Oh my gosh. Wow. Deepak Sindwani 00:28:03 And so you know and all all, all kind of credit goes to the founders and the management team and it’s been a wonderful journey. We ended up along the way. Another solution where we can help founders, you know, for years in the founders and we looked at each other and said, we love working with each other, but we’ve helped the company and they’ve helped, you know, obviously they grew the company from seven or 8 or 9 when we invested to 50 and they said, you know, we should probably diversify risk a little bit at this stage. Julian Castelli 00:28:34 Their personal risk and their investments. So you help them take some more money off the table. Deepak Sindwani 00:28:38 So we brought in a great investor that we knew well did for a minority of the company. They took some more chips off the table. And you know we said but let’s keep growing. Deepak Sindwani 00:28:50 And you know, that was at 50 and now we’re closing in on 100. We have another acquisition we’re working on. And so anyways, there’s my point is journey can oftentimes include lots of different twists and turns, but some very accretive ones. Julian Castelli 00:29:05 Oh that’s a great story. The founders managed to get a partner that could help them grow ten or more, but they also managed to take some some chips off the table and diversify their risk. And it sounds like you guys built a great partnership. Deepak Sindwani 00:29:19 Yeah. That’s what honestly, it’s really about partnership. I mean, you know, the most fun and rewarding part of what I do as the quote unquote coach is, work with founders and, you know, their success. It makes me so happy, you know, and it’s it’s, you know, everyone. Everyone gets excited about different things. When I see founders kind of realizing their dreams or taking however many trips off the table or, you know, the company growing in size. We started the company was, I don’t know, 60 people now or over 300. Deepak Sindwani 00:29:55 I mean, those are just great, you know, milestones. Julian Castelli 00:29:58 Yeah, that’s that’s got to be really rewarding. Well, that’s a great story. And that, that sounds like the growth equity journey and did it did a great job of explaining how Wave Crest could partner with companies to do that. So that’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. before we wrap up, you know, for for our listeners who are out there and they want to get on a journey like that, any good books that you’ve read recently or a podcast that you’d recommend? Deepak Sindwani 00:30:23 So while it is Silicon Valley, because I, you know, I do feel like it’s like the political discourse, you always need to learn about what how different people view similar markets of the world. Right. And so if you’re on the left, you should listen to the right. If you’re if you know you’re on in growth equity, you should listen to venture. So one of my favorite podcasts I listened to every week is the All In podcast. Deepak Sindwani 00:30:46 that’s. Julian Castelli 00:30:46 A good one. Deepak Sindwani 00:30:47 For Silicon Valley guys talking about business. And, you know, it’s folks sitting in San Francisco who have a certain point of view, but they’re extremely smart and articulate. And so I always learn whether I agree or disagree, I learn. Yeah. So I think that’s a good one. on the the light lighter side, one that I really enjoy is is called, smart lists, which is a, which is a comedian, a comedic one. It’s basically three guys. You probably know Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and and, I forget the third guy’s name, who are personal friends, and they interview athletes and celebrities and political figures. And it’s funny, you know, you get to see the personal side of, you know, people like Amy Schumer and, and other people they bring on. And then on the book side, you know, I, I, I’m someone who’s always kind of, you know, you reevaluating my own priorities in life and how I spend time and do I spend, you know, and so, you know, a few one that I love is, you know, I’m reading Charlie Munger’s Almanac right now. Deepak Sindwani 00:31:56 I mean, as you know. Julian Castelli 00:31:58 One of the titans of. Deepak Sindwani 00:31:59 The titans of the investing world, but it’s less about the almanac is less about investing and more about just philosophy on life and how you think about, you know, making decisions and being decisive and doing doing your research and, you know, clearing, clearing out the clutter. I love, you know, I love people who are candid and plainspoken. And, you know, he’s a kind of personal hero of someone who just told you like it was right and, and obviously lived a great life to 99 and did a lot of things. So, you know, and another one on my personal journey I’d recommend is one called Die with Zero, which is a really interesting book, kind of flips on its head what all of our friends at Merrill Lynch would tell us around how to save and invest your money. And it’s really around, enriching your life with experiences as early in your life as you can. Julian Castelli 00:33:01 Oh, I love that. Deepak Sindwani 00:33:02 Those like capital compound those experiences, compound your life. Deepak Sindwani 00:33:07 And so it’s a great book that was written by a very successful guy who’s and it was an energy trader. And, but its whole philosophy is, you know. Julian Castelli 00:33:16 Don’t don’t save up and wait and then like. Speaker 4 00:33:19 Don’t wait till you’re. Deepak Sindwani 00:33:19 65 to do the things you want. Do it now. Julian Castelli 00:33:22 I love that. Well, that’s a great, great message to end on. Deepak, where can people find you in Wave Crest? Deepak Sindwani 00:33:29 Yeah. Look, if anyone love to have conversations with your listeners, wave crest growth. Com is the website. Deepak at Crest growth comm is the email. certainly they can come through you as well. And obviously looking forward to doing a lot with you with these companies as well. Julian Castelli 00:33:49 Absolutely. And come, come join us at the Growth Elevated Summit next year. Look forward to that. This is great. Speaker 4 00:33:55 I could stay away. Deepak Sindwani 00:33:55 From Park City. I mean, it’s such a you live in such a great place. Julian Castelli 00:34:00 Well that is a that is a definite advantage and we’d love to host you. Julian Castelli 00:34:03 So look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for joining us this morning. And this was a great talk. Deepak Sindwani 00:34:08 Thank you for having me. Speaker 1 00:34:11 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey.