How spending time on personal fitness, helped me survive a hard time building Capillary? Some pointers on what worked for me personally and for the team to reduce burnout! Running, Yoga, Meditation! Deck from my talk at Unpluggd Winter Edition 2015; www.nextbigwhat.com/unpluggd/

1. WHY STAY FIT?
Unpluggd Winter Edition 2015, Dec 12th
Aneesh Reddy
@AneeshBReddy
Co-Founder, Capillary

2. 12/12/2015 2
 IIT KGP, 06; Cofounder & CEO @ Capillary
 Couch potato till 2013
 Never ran more than 0.5 km / No yoga / meditation
 Done a few treks earlier
 Luckily in the last 18 months
 10 half marathons
 Oxfam 100km trail walk
 Back to trekking again
 Spend 2-3 hours a week at the gym or on yoga
 Long runs or a meditation session on weekends
 Attempting my first full marathon @ Mumbai in Jan
QUICK INTRO

3. Major FocusOmni-channel customer engagement and commerce solution suite
Enterprise SaaS focus in Asia and GCC region
At the intersection of Cloud, Digital, Mobile, Social and Big Data
Global Expertise
12/12/2015
ABOUT CAPILLARY
RAISED $80 MILLION+
IN FUNDING TILL
DATE ($60mn in last
18 months)
Ruaha
What We Do
Funding
Acquisitions
and
Investments

4. Enterprise Customers
Stores powered
Countries, through 10 offices
Shoppers on Platform
Employees Worldwide
of startup ups and downs
WHERE WE ARE KEY CUSTOMERS
200+
20,000+
30+
150
Million
600+
7 Years

5. THE TERRIFIC START: 2009 TO 2012
12/12/2015 5
Capillary was started in 2008
by 3 founders (+Krishna
Mehra +Ajay Modani)
 Released our First product and
Acquired first Customer after 5
months.
 $1.5mn in angel funding over 3
rounds over 3 years - $500k each
- 17 angel investors
 $2mn in ARR - $100K Annual
burn; 120 member team;
 Revenue Split: 90% India /
10% SEA; 4 folks outside India
 Growth was 300% YoY
2008
2009
Dec 2011
Raised a $16mn Series A from
Sequoia, NVP, Qualcomm – Jan
2012
Got married Feb 2012
2012

6. 12/12/2015 6
THE SPRINT THAT WENT WRONG: 2012+2013
 Scaled to 400 people across 10 countries
 Offices in US, UK, Singapore, Middle East, Australia, HK, South Africa
 35 folks internationally, Founders in India (Ajay), US (KK), Jet Plane(me)
 Massive loss of focus -> slow down of growth
 Burning ~$1mn a month! 4 months of cash in bank!
 5 years now as a company – massive amounts of burn out
 More than half of the early rock stars are in burn out mode
 One of my cofounders had burnt out and wanted to move on
 I went from 75kgs in Jan 2012 to 90kgs in Dec 2013

7. 12/12/2015 7
PERSONAL JOURNEY TOWARDS FITNESS: The START
10k steps a day Intake of atleast 1200 calories a day
Investing in yourself has a terrific positive reinforcement loop

8. PERSPIRATION: Early 2014
 String of exits in all teams - some due to burnout, some due to bad times!
 One of the cofounder moves out
 Nearly out of cash!
 No option but to pull out of a few markets… Do you do that before a fundraise?
 Needed something to keep me sane and
prevent the spiral of doom!
 Started replacing my morning walk with a run
(1km, 2km, 5km on a weekend)
 Positive reinforcement
12/12/2015 8

9. 12/12/2015 9
 Hit the market with 2 months of cash in bank
 Got 2 term sheet from inbound investors in 3-4 weeks; Survived to tell
the story
 Took a lot of hard calls: Shut markets, product lines, refocused on
developing markets
 Another co-founder moves out
 Long runs on weekends (12 km - 20 km) @ Cubbon Park
 I couldn’t find time on weekdays ………. Best start to a weekend
 Small running group in office
 Signed up for the Bengaluru Full Marathon
Building the Tempo back: SERIES B/HARD CALLS

10. 12/12/2015 10
WHAT PROBABLY WORKED FOR ME?
 Running was probably my meditation
 An average 2 hours weekend run where you
are yourself in your world – no distractions
 Where you are by yourself – no distractions
 An outsider/ dispassionate view of things
super close to you
 Good book: Running with the mind of
Meditation
 When you are positive, your team will be
positive!

11. 12/12/2015 11
Does CEO Fitness matter?
Marathon running CEO’s delivered 8%
better results in the years they ran a
marathon than the market controlling for
other factors (S&P 500 companies)
*Does CEO Fitness matter? Peter Limbach &
Florian Sonnenburg, Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology

12. 12/12/2015 12
 There are 20 half marathoners
in the company today (5% of
the company)
 Running is a big culture - All
the main folks run - Burn out
problem solved!
 Run even on travel now –
Great way to see a city
RUNNING AS A CULTURE
[RUNS END RUNNING DOESN’T]

13. 12/12/2015 13
Whats next?
 Two founders gone – what should
you do next?
 Prepare the company for an exit?
Build more?
 How do you break through? Can
this ever be a sizeable play? Few
sizeable enterprise software
product plays in India?

14. 12/12/2015 14
 My wife is a big yoga enthusiast
 2 week yoga holiday in Rishikesh – Dec end
 Longest holiday in 9 years!
 A great book for company: Good to Great!
 Rishikesh Yogapeeth – Beginners course!
 Liked Yoga.
 For the first time in my life probably meditated!
 Making peace with yourself!
A NEW BEGINNING: RISHIKESH & YOGA

15. 12/12/2015 15
 Decide to build more!
 Multi product SaaS company is the only way to hit $100mn revenues in
Asia in a shorter timeframe!
 Go out and acquire products which fit the current customer base and
sales team comfort!
 Sign a term sheet with MartJack to acquire them in Feb
 Decide to raise a Series C - $40mn+
 Fund the acquisition
 Next 24 months - build a large Asia focused sales team; multi product play
 Liquidity for old employees / founders
A NEW YEAR AND A NEW START

16. 12/12/2015 16
 Large fundraise
 No PE has invested in a India/ Asia focused SaaS play
 Not riding a consumer wave!
 Very few understand SaaS – a lot of time spent educating investors
 No GMV to speak of, just good margins :)
 Discounts don’t work for our customers, real value does :|
 35 investors pitched to in 10 weeks – Didn’t get a banker
 Need my daily dose of sanity – start hitting the Gym or Yoga 3 to 4 days a
week
 Get to 2 terms sheets finally – Decide to go with Warburg Pincus
FUNDRAISE: A tough head stand!

17. 12/12/2015 17
 Do a long trek or a reading-holiday - once an year
– Its very important that you take time away from the action to think
 I take a long weekend Yoga Retreat every quarter now
– Shreyas (Tumkur road) is a good yoga retreat near Bangalore
 Invest in yourself and your team
– A long run/ cycling trip on weekends – a terrific start to a weekend
– 3 to 4 days in a week – hit the gym, workout, go for a run
– Investing 6 - 8 hours per week for a healthy body and mind will go a long way for
your startup and you
– Start a weekend running / cycling group or yoga / Zumba sessions in office
QUICK TIPS

18. 12/12/2015 18
 No email, social media, browser on my phone
 Restrict snacking of news/ information - FB/ Twitter etc to 30 mins in the
evening
 Avoid the laptop/ mail for the first 60 - 90 minutes of the day
Some Small personal experiments!

19. 12/12/2015 19
HARUKI MURAKAMI ON RUNNING
“In long-distance running the
only opponent you have to beat
is yourself, the way you used to
be”

20. 12/12/2015 20
Aneesh Reddy
aneesh@capillarytech.com
Twitter: @AneeshBReddy
Slideshare: www.slideshare.net/aneesh.boddu
www.capillarytech.com
See you at Cubbon Park @6:30AM tomorrow 