Lessons from the BharatPe Fiasco
The BharatPe / Ashneer Grover fiasco is lurid, and I don’t usually write about such stuff here, but I made an exception since this offers us valuable lessons. As you read this, focus on the underlying lessons we can learn, rather than on the specific people involved:
First, aggression: quite a few businesspeople in India rely on intimidation as a tool to get what they want:
Or send emails threatening to “staple someone to the fucking wall and burn them alive”.
Such people are no better than:
Many toxic people are smarter than this: they use superficially polite language, so there’s no smoking gun to record and post on Youtube. If someone calls you a “fucking asshole”, you can tell someone “He called me a fucking asshole”, and the listener will agree that this person is unprofessional. So smart but toxic people use courteous language, but their character and attitude are still damaging: They’re always blaming others. They create an environment of negativity around them. People are always made to feel inadequate and stressed. Be wary of such people, and recognise them for being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It will take you time to recognise their true nature, but when you do, walk away, and don’t let them convince 1 you to change your mind.
Have a baseline level of professionalism that you follow and expect from others, and walk away from people who don’t follow that, just as companies reject candidates who fall below a hiring bar.
We should all behave in a way that enhances the trust and credibility others have in us. When we begin working with someone, we have a baseline level of credibility in their eyes. This is like a bank balance that gets enhanced when we behave in a way that builds trust, and depletes when we don’t. Many people neglect this bank balance. They’re focused on extracting as much as possible today, and forget about tomorrow. Like an auto driver who cheats you out of 20 bucks knowing that you’ll realise it but it will be too late by then.
Second, know-it-all: some leaders don’t take other people’s input into account, either because they, perhaps subconsciously, have a know-it-all mentality: they think they’re on top of everything, they’ve planned everything, and people just have to follow what the leader is saying and it will work out. They don’t entertain the possibility that they’re wrong. Others have trust issues and don’t let the people they’ve hired deliver the outcomes they’ve been hired to deliver. To be clear, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, and this post is not written from a superiority complex.
Third, startup equity is a tilted playing field: the newly appointed CEO of BharatPe, and perhaps others, received equity with a 2-year vesting period, while most others had a 4-year vesting, as Ashneer points out in his interview 2. Latecomers jumping the line and getting better terms is a “fuck you” to loyal people who’ve stuck with the startup from earlier days, at risk to themselves. Given the tilted playing field, value equity at 0. Whatever remuneration you’re expecting, expect it all in the form of cash. Equity can be extra, if the company wants to give you, but not in lieu of cash. In other words, if you think you’re worth 30 lpa, look for 30 lpa in cash, plus some equity, optionally, not 25 + 5.
Fourth, everyone makes demands from the founder: employees (even CxOs), investors, customers, consultants. This is often too much pressure on one person and isn’t fair to them, at a human level. One founder died at 32 from a heart attack. But that’s how the world is, so the only option if you don’t want unreasonable pressure on yourself is to not start a startup.
Fifth, having a boss: some people start a startup to not have a boss, but if you accept investment, investors become your bosses. And some of them are mind-bogglingly incompetent, like demanding that a startup downsize from 25 to 7 while producing the same results. That’s like saying, “I want to buy the same amount of petrol for ₹100 as I can for ₹200.” I’m not saying all investors are incompetent, of course.
Sixth, people problems are everywhere: every company has them, and they’re harder to solve than technical problems. I can think of one person who, if asked for an opinion of me, will give you a negative opinion, and vice-versa. If I could go back in time, I’d have handled the situation differently, and hopefully prevented the break-up, but it’s not reversible now that it has happened. An insightful friend says that successful companies are not ones that don’t have people problems, but ones that were able to make progress despite.
Seventh, transparency: Ashneer Grover, for all his faults, is transparent about his criticisms of the other side. While some of us may judge public criticisms as unprofessional, it’s globally optimal: the world would be better off if everyone did it, because there were fewer secrets. Some dirty things that happen will no longer, with the spotlight of public scrutiny. And each of us will be able to make our own judgment of which individuals and companies we want to work with. And I don’t mean that in a judgmental sense: a company may be right for one person but not for another, and each of these people should be able to work with companies they’re aligned with.
Eighth, investors share accountability for problems in BharatPe, since investors tend to, at best, ignore unethical behavior and a bad company culture. At worst, they encourage this. As long as they’re benefiting. When their calculus indicates that they’re no longer benefiting, they’ll immediately switch gears and blame founders.
One investor told me about a startup who misled the investor into investing. I was listening, thinking the investor will be angry, but his next sentence was: “This is good because if they cheat me, they’ll cheat customers and succeed.”
Ninth, don’t work with a brilliant jerk. It may be tempting in the short term, to get results, but you’ll soon be in his firing line.
Tenth, Ashneer Grover points out that his successes at BharatPe have been ignored. This is unfortunately a fact of life: we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and people will give a higher weightage to the latter. Identify and fix your weaknesses, but not to the extent of diluting your strengths.
Eleventh is dispute resolution: Disputes are unavoidable at work, and we need to resolve them in a spirit of trust by sitting down with the other person, putting our cards on the table, and asking if we understood the situation correctly. We should understand what’s going through their mind. Only after all this should we make a decision. Unfortunately, many people demonstrate a negative attitude of jumping to conclusions and making a decision unilaterally about the other person. Sometimes in seconds, when they’ve misinterpreted what I said and jumped to the conclusion not to trust me.
Twelfth, we traditionally used to put companies up on a pedestal, and give them a lot of respect. We assumed they’re being run by competent people. But too many companies are being run by people who just show up and manage each day somehow, without having an overall plan.
Thirteenth, lose/lose: neither Ashneer Grover nor BharatPe nor the investors end up looking good in this fiasco. If you’re embroiled in a dispute, don’t say or do anything that would make you look bad. For example, I know an engineer who took down the servers of his employer that hadn’t paid his salary in months and whose founders lied to him. When you’re in the middle of a crisis and emotions are high, take care not to do anything that will make others think twice before working with you in the future.
We should take our eyes away from the sensationalistic drama, and think about the underlying lessons we can learn.
Or threaten.
And the second one.