Archive - "Work" of Words

Giving Up and Other Blasphemies

Declaring failure is sometimes the right thing to do

May 27, 2023 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

December 2022

Outgrowing "Growth Mindset"

Note: I struggled to title this essay, and a shoutout to my friend Alex Brussell for giving me the answer (but see my endnote for an alt title). I have…

Dec 29, 2022 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

June 2022

Gilded Cages and Bullshit Jobs

Some years ago, a picaresque academic named David Graeber wrote an extremely depressing book called “Bullshit Jobs”. His primary target was a range of…

Jun 20, 2022 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

April 2022

Peer Group Problems

There is a great song that captures some of what I want to talk about here: Ray Charles singing “It should have been me”. Uncle Ray was always a few…

Apr 5, 2022 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

February 2022

Remember Who Brung Ya To The Dance

In life — work, home, relationships of all kinds — there are people who “brung ya to the dance.” Sometimes we forget them, and this is a mistake. It is…

Feb 15, 2022 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

November 2020

The Importance of Cover Letters

We just closed the application process for the Spring 2021 Amasia Fellowship. This is one of our two programs to expand access in venture capital, and…

Nov 23, 2020 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

August 2019

Bags Revisited: #Onebag For The Business Traveller

Bags! More than two years ago I wrote about bags and an update is needed. For two reasons: (a) my brain is about to explode from climate change thinking…

Aug 13, 2019 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

July 2018

The VC business, for a fund manager, is an orgy of rejection. During the course of a year, we will touch 1,000 companies at Amasia; we'll invest in…

Jul 17, 2018 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

October 2017

Impact Investing -- Three Lessons

In 2000, I joined hands with Deval Sanghavi and formed Impact Partners, the first venture philanthropy firm focused on India. What we did was non-profit…

Oct 10, 2017 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

July 2017

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

It's been an extraordinary few days in Silicon Valley — a high-profile VC firm has been “blasted off the earth” and the industry is reacting in…

Jul 1, 2017 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

May 2017

Investor Reporting: Five Things to Think About

Tim O’Reilly recently wrote a great essay on the virtues of not raising external capital. It led me to reflect on one aspect of having outside investors…

May 16, 2017 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

April 2017

Raising The Next Round: Five Reasons Not To Think About It Until You Have To

I wrote this essay six years ago — it is perennially relevant. Over the years I’ve had hundreds of conversations with CEOs about “the next round”. This…

Apr 10, 2017 •

Ramanan Raghavendran

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