Seventeen years ago, Mayur Rao came to the United States with $100 in his pocket and mind full of big dreams.
Today, he finds himself as the Founder, CEO and General Partner of Maatra, where he leads the firm’s strategy, investment process and technology infrastructure. Prior to that he served as a Risk Developer at Bank of America and JP Morgan. Rao also worked for Deutsche Bank, BlackRock and ExodusPoint Capital. Not too bad for a Computer Science major from the University of Pennsylvania.
“The journey has been really good,” Rao said. “What I’ve done all my life and what I do with my current company, Maatra, is build systems and models that are smart enough to know when to buy, what to buy, when to sell and what to sell.”
Rao joined fellow entrepreneur Vinodh Bhat for a pre-game panel discussion organized by AAPI New Jersey in the Devils’ Prudential Lounge. The discussion was moderated by Ritesh Patel.
Bhat has over two decades worth of experience with investment banking, venture capital, technology investments and currently consulting. He and other investors created the startup 212Media which helped launch multiple ventures and businesses from software to music streaming.
For Bhat, the starting point for any company is culture.
“What we focused on, the very first thing is actually culture,” he said. “We consider that the operating system on how we were going to build. We wrote some culture points down, like ‘failure is the best teacher.’ We wanted to create an environment where it was okay to take risks, and where it was okay to fail. As long as you learned something.”
Part of the life of an entrepreneur is to take risks. Though, Rao had a unique perspective on risk.
“A lot of times we want to do something but there is this perceived notion of risk. But a lot of times, it’s not a perceived notion of risk, it’s a perceived notion of fear of failure,” Rao said. “Anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur, if you’re struggling taking that next step or last step my advice would be simply asking are you fearing failure?”
Bhat stepped in on the idea of failure and even sighted something he learned from legendary tennis pro Roger Federer.
“One of the points he made was, he asked the audience, what percentage of points do you think I’ve gotten?” Bhat, a tennis fan, relayed. “People guessed 70 percent or 80 percent. It was actually 54 percent.
“We grow up thinking we have (to be perfect). In reality, you have to be slightly more right than wrong in order to have great outcomes. I can tell you that, building three companies, they were very messy.”
One aspect of being an entrepreneur is passion, but it isn’t the only thing.
“Passion is key. Passion drives execution,” Rao said. “Passion drives starting a company.”
But Bhat noticed that you don’t always have to be passionate about the project. It could be more about “solving a problem.”
“We started solving problems we saw among the people around us,” he said. “That’s on us to build something that’s better than what’s available to bring people over.
“Sometimes the company is very personal to something you see around you. It may not be your actual passion but you’re advocating for somebody else, or fighting for somebody else, creating something so that other people can enjoy their lives.”
