“I never think about the failure of the what. I always think about the failure of the how. How did I show up in these contexts? Was fear a really important emotion during these experiences or did I feel light? Was I courageous and open hearted, or did I feel closed?” – Rishi Garg

Rishi Garg (@rishigarg) is co-head of the Consumer Investing Practice at the Mayfield Fund, a seed and Series A focused venture capital firm. Before joining Mayfield, Rishi co-founded FanSnap, which was acquired by Nextag. He has led business and corporate development for Google, Square, MTV, and Twitter, and has invested in companies such as Quilt, Grove Collaborative, and Projector.

Chapters

  • Bringing the “people first” mindset to work every day
  • Rishi’s top habits for success, including journaling and physical activity
  • Rishi’s favorite tools: the legal pad and Flow Club
  • Books recommended by Rishi
  • Rishi’s favorite failure and his definition of success 

Rishi's Favorite Books

Key Takeaways

Rishi’s thoughts on success and failure are a great balance. 

On success:

There are three words that come to mind. Resilient spiritual freedom. That's what I'm working on. I see that as the journey of my life—as life unfolds, to become better at practicing that. It's not so much something you achieve, resilience because you can achieve spiritual freedom by disconnecting from life. But I don't think I want to disconnect from life. I think real freedom comes when you can be plunged into the river of life and still be free, and still be spiritually open and at peace.

On failure:

I never think about the failure of the what. I always think about the failure of the how. How did I show up in these contexts? Was fear a really important emotion during these experiences or did I feel light? Was I courageous and open hearted, or did I feel closed?

Transcript

Daniel Scrivner:

Rishi, thank you and welcome back. I'm super excited to do the second part of this interview with you.

Rishi Garg:

And I, you.

Daniel Scrivner:

I want to start by trying to connect the dots. The question that I want to ask is, Mayfield is super explicit, as we talked about in this last interview. If you go to the website, literally, the logo is locked up with the mantra, "People first." I wanted to ask you, how does that show up in the way that you work together with other people in the firm and the way you work together with founders?

Rishi Garg:

That's a great question. It's something we really believe in. It's all kind of a piece, I would say. This focus on people's an integrated strategy. So how does it manifest itself?

Rishi Garg:

Well, one, we have this stripe saying right here that, "People make products. Products don't make people." So if you're going to invest in something, you should invest in the people making the products, and spend a lot of time with them, and really get to know them because that's how you're going to build a company where the product, over time, exceeds expectations and makes a dent in the world.

Rishi Garg:

We're also early stage investors. We're generally not investing in products. We are generally pre-product or inception stage investors. Which means that all we really have to go on is the people, and how they show up with the integrity and the quality of the relationship we build with them. That's also, as I think I mentioned in the podcast earlier, the main way we add value.

Rishi Garg:

How do we create alpha? We have such a trust based relationship with the entrepreneur that, in those critical moments, we can work together in a way that helps to build the company, and influence the entrepreneur successfully, and have them influence us. So when it works together, it really is a dance and a symphony that works wonderfully.

Rishi Garg:

It shows up in some of our beliefs on our website. You'll see one of them is, we're loyal to a fault. Which a lot of people probably won't say very explicitly, but we just acknowledge it. That's the way we do business. We really believe in the founder. We try to back founders we want to be in business with for a very, very long time. When the founder's not running the business, it's almost always in close collaboration with the original founders. So, that's just how we do the work.

Rishi Garg:

I'll say the second thing is, one of our everyday ways, we really believe in the face to face. Our job in a lot of ways, it would be half of our LPs, is decision making. It's relationship building and then decision making. That is so much better when you're in person with each other as a group, when you can really access the full collective knowledge of an investment team of seven or eight people.

Rishi Garg:

So, that's been massive for us. We feel the same way about entrepreneurs. We had as active a deal pace as you can imagine, as we've ever had, actually, in the course of COVID. But I think we did 100% of our deals, we met the founder in person. So it was a long standing relationship, et cetera. Which doesn't mean you can't do great work only over Zoom. We just, by hook or crook, if we can actually have that face to face, it's the amount of information you get, the exchange of the biological connection you can create is just something special. So, that's our business.

Daniel Scrivner:

The thing I was going to add to that is, I think that's especially true, you think of all the companies that have switched to some form of fully remote, or partially remote, or mostly remote. They all still really rely on getting together quarterly, or getting together with some cadence because everyone recognizes that personal connections are really important. So, it's kind of funny.

Rishi Garg:

Totally. It's easy to discount all the stuff that we do to get to know each other at a company. But in the end, and more than ever before, people are bringing their whole selves to work. We're human beings. Anything that creates shared humanity, I think is not only valuable and makes work better, it's also a real strategic advantage.

Rishi Garg:

We talked about this before we got on the podcast, but I think there's going to be what I call a great defection in 2022, where ambitious people want to be in person, because they're going to spend time with their bosses and their peers. The ones who spend more face time are going to have better, deeper connections. Other people are going to realize that who are on the hybrid train, and they're going to want to be closely connected to those bosses, mentors, and peers in the company, as well.

Rishi Garg:

So for any company over 100 people that's on a growth trajectory, or a very established, I think you're going to see a sucking sound of ambitious leaders returning to Silicon Valley because there's really nothing like face to face interactions for creating the kind of content and relationships that create great work.

Daniel Scrivner:

One thing that I'm always fascinated by is how we all show up as our best selves each day. Behind that, typically, is a lot of intentionality around habits, routines, the things you do each day. I'm curious. What does that look like for you?

Rishi Garg:

It's a good question. My habits and routines have changed a little bit since I've had young children. But there's a few things that I do that I just like, that may be of interest. Essentially, three things. I journal pretty consistently. I use the written word as a centering mechanism for myself, and I do different things whether it's gratitude, refocusing on what's important. In my job in particular, it's easy to get really scattered. I think a lot of people have that problem. So I ask myself questions like, "If there's only one thing I did today, what would it be?" Just to make sure I'm focusing on the one thing that really matters. I usually try to write down two or three things by the end of the day that I want to get done, and only two or three things, so I'm making sure I'm focusing on those big rocks, if you will.

Daniel Scrivner:

Is that in the morning, or throughout the day you're journaling?

Rishi Garg:

It's usually first thing in the morning, and throughout the day if I can, if I need to, but I usually don't have time. But usually in the morning, or whenever I feel scattered. That's an important thing. I use a bunch of other techniques that everyone does; meditation, et cetera. I find that getting into my body's super important.

Rishi Garg:

There's a bunch of techniques that I've learned when I've done performance work as an actor, through high school and college. All of which are really about how do you get into your body and out of your head so you can be present in the moment; whether you're doing improv, or you're performing in a musical experience, whatever it is.

Rishi Garg:

So, I do things like spinal rolls. I do arm rolls. I will even just do a quick jog sometimes to get out of my head, into my body. I do some energy gathering movements before a meeting, or before I'm about to work on something important, or doing a podcast like this, although I didn't do it today, where I try to refocus my energy, pull energy out of the ground, visualize having energy being focused into me. It's incredibly rejuvenating. It's based on some Thai Chi work that I've done. Especially when I'm sleep deprived because my kids aren't sleeping, I find that it's a great way to counteract the effects of sleep loss.

Rishi Garg:

So, those are some of the things that really matter to me. In the course of all this stuff, I'm really grateful for having learned that in my theater work.

Daniel Scrivner:

I've never heard of getting out of your head and into your body, but it's fascinating. I want to know more.

Rishi Garg:

Yeah. It's so crucial. Every time I feel blocked, almost always throwing the weights around, or going for a run or something, it clears up everything. It's really great. A lot of people use that.

Rishi Garg:

The only thing is, I don't get to exercise as much as I would love to, so I tend to use it strategically. Sometimes in the middle of the day, you've just got to get outside and go clear your head.

Daniel Scrivner:

Another thing that we always ask about, or I was curious about is, favorite software, favorite tools. Really, the idea is, all of us have things we use every single day that, ideally, over time, we cobble together the stuff that is really effective for us. Sometimes that can be a To Do List app. Sometimes it can be an app for note taking. Sometimes it can be physical tools, like a timer that sits on your desk. So I'm curious, anything in that vein?

Rishi Garg:

Good question. Maybe it's my old, being old speech and debate person, but I still use legal pads. Which I know is crazy, but I find that the visual space and the blank sheet of paper are much more spatially valuable for me to be able to see my whole set of things I need to do, and to clear my mind and get things on paper. So I still use paper and pencil.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's for daily to do lists, all of that?

Rishi Garg:

Yeah. Even for to do lists, I'll find that I feel a lot more, I'm able if I'm free writing, to get everything down and feel really focused about it, organize it better in my head. Although I use to do apps and stuff like that, but nothing special I would say, that probably everyone you have on doesn't use.

Rishi Garg:

I do use a couple of applications that I think may be a little bit unusual, which are around how do you increase your ability to be centered. There's one application at a company I'm a really big fan of. It's called Flow Club. I'm a small investor, personally. This company basically enables hosted video sessions for groups of up to eight or 10 people, to hold space for each other while they attempt deep work in the course of an hour. You can extend it. You can do 30 minutes. You can do two hours. You can do whatever you want.

Rishi Garg:

I'm a facilitator and one of the hosts of Flow Club. You basically start the meeting by talking about what you want to get done in the next hour, and then everyone keeps themselves muted and keeps their video on, and you work, usually to music provided by the host, for about an hour. Then with five minutes left, we come out of our deep work trance, and we talk a little bit about how we've accomplished stuff. It just keeps you, when you know you've been accountable to your group to get something done, it keeps you focused. Having the music keeps you focused. That intention setting keeps you focused.

Rishi Garg:

But I've found that to be a really nice tool. I like using that a lot. It's a very early stage startup, but cool group of guys.

Rishi Garg:

The other one is called Centered App, which is an app I really like, started by a guy named Ulf. The app basically shuts down all your notifications and stuff like that, gives you some music. Then you use the Pomodoro timer of whatever time you want to get a list of tasks done. Little tools like that, I've found are really great to make sure, again, the most important stuff gets done, which usually requires focus, and attention, and time. Or if you have to write it down and think, "This is the most important thing," usually it's something you don't want to do, necessarily, or something that feels hairy. So it helps me also eat the frog because it's so great to see it crossed off the list when you're done.

Rishi Garg:

Those are just a couple of the kinds of apps. But I really believe in this idea of the future of human productivity is about depth, not breadth. The future of human productivity is not about the hyperactive hive mind. It's about people doing the few things that really matter that week. It's about accessing creativity and it's about helping each other do that.

Rishi Garg:

I think it's a really great use of people and marketplaces, to bring people together to help us be more productive and feel more satisfied with our work lives.

Daniel Scrivner:

On Flow Club, I've looked at it. I've never used it. Hearing you talk about it now, I'm like, "Oh, man. That sounds actually great. I need to give that a try." I'm curious, and this is a shot in the dark. As a facilitator of those, do you have any interesting, remarkable stories? Do people have breakthroughs in those moments? Anything interesting to share?

Rishi Garg:

The most interesting thing, nothing breakthrough wise. I'll tell you, I see the same people over and over again, so it's totally addicting because we spend so much of our time, most of our time especially in our industry, working.

Rishi Garg:

So, if someone can say to you, "Hey, listen. We're going to work together and you're going to get a bunch of important stuff done," it's like catnip. It's the same thing that, I used to like going to a spin class first thing in the morning. Why? Because you're groggy and tired. I want to outsource my brain to the instructor so that their voice is all I'm listening to and it takes all the head out of it. That's why we hire instructors for stuff like that.

Rishi Garg:

So, it's the same kind of idea. You know you have work to do, but it's someone else's job to make sure you show up and go. People use it for all kinds of things; everything from deep work, to inbox zero, to writing a screenplay. I think the future of this company, and why I'm bullish about it is that, you can imagine a world where people go on missions throughout the week, and you have focused flow clubs for certain kind of projects. You want to get your blog post written at the end of the week, or get your screenplay done, or debug this important piece of code, or whatever it is.

Rishi Garg:

So yeah, I think they're going to see some really new, and interesting, and exciting ways of working. A good book to read is Cal Newport's most recent book. I forget the name of it right now, but it's about the hyperactive hive mind of the future of work. He made some really great points in that book about how e-mail has killed us, productivity wise.

Daniel Scrivner:

I'll look that up and link to it in the show notes. I'm definitely going to give Flow Club a try, so thanks for sharing.

Daniel Scrivner:

Another thing that I'm always curious about is, just books and/or figures that have had a profound impact on you. I think there's a couple different ways we can look at that question. I think one is, it could be personally, it could be professionally that these books have a big impact on you. I think it could be something that's just near and dear to your heart, or it could be something that you, I know anyone that's an investor, anyone that's a founder, you typically have these books that you recommend very frequently to people that are going through the same struggles. So, curious for any books or figures that have had an impact on you.

Rishi Garg:

That's a really good question. What's a couple things that I recommend a lot. One is out there maybe a little bit, but it's one that had a profound impact on me. I'll say is the autobiography of Malcolm X, which I read when I was in college. The reason I find this so, it was so impactful is that one, watching this man come from nothing to become something, I think really showcases the potential of humanity, in a lot of ways, and the leadership inside all of us. But also, it really helped me confront my own relationship with color and race, and my own approach to that as a brown person in America.

Rishi Garg:

So, that's one book that was really influential to me. There's another book that I really like called, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, which is just a wonderful, it was written, I think, in the early '90s. I tried meditating for the first time because of that book, and it's a really beautifully written account of the role of meditation and death, which is such an important teacher. So, I find that to be really great.

Rishi Garg:

Another book I recommend, this is a funny one, but I have a lot of friends who are starting jobs. They asked, "What's the best way to onboard?" A lot of people don't have a structured approach to onboarding. So, I recommend The First 90 Days, which is this HBS book about how to get up to speed effectively in companies. But I find that people don't read as much as they probably should, or have a structured approach that's been pretty successful and effective.

Rishi Garg:

Then, the last book I'll mention in a perennial favorite, which I heard from my partner, Tim Chang, who recommends a lot of great books to me. It's called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. It's a funny book, but he has a lot of really great metaphors in there that are about achieving spiritual health. So, I enjoy that one, too.

Daniel Scrivner:

These are amazing. There's so many off the beaten path ones. I'm excited to go get these.

Daniel Scrivner:

Okay. Now onto the last two closing questions we ask everyone. The first one is for a favorite failure.

Rishi Garg:

Yes, a favorite failure. I'm going to give you a little bit of a rom com answer, and then I'm going to give you a more interesting answer. The rom com answer is, I started a company called FanSnap back in 2007. By 2010, it was doing okay, but not great. I signed a big deal with Microsoft. Then I took a little bit of time back from the company that's kind of going half time.

Rishi Garg:

The reason it's a rom com example is because I ended up moving back to the East Coast and I started dating my wife there, the woman who now became my wife, which I would not have done if we had met in San Francisco. She moved to the East Coast, and it wouldn't have happened, except for the failure of FanSnap to achieve breakout philosophy. So, that's one of my favorite failures.

Rishi Garg:

But the other failure that I think about a lot, that I'm always working on is, as I've gone through my career and I've had, whether it's things that worked out really well, or things that worked out just okay, I never think about the failure of the what. I always think about the failure of the how. How did I show up in these contexts? Was fear a really important emotion during these experiences or did I feel light? Was I courageous and open hearted, or did I feel closed?

Rishi Garg:

My failures in how I did my work, when I've been closed and less courageous, those are the ones I've thought about. That's what I really try to learn from. Those are the failures I'm really thankful for, because as I look back now, that's what actually matters. So, reflecting on those kinds of failures, that's where I get inspired to try and approach my work now as open heartedly and courageously as I can.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's fascinating. I love the thinking really deeply about the how you showed up, and how it felt, and how you were in those moments as opposed to the what. I'm curious, those things you mentioned, like fearlessness is a good one. It's not that you necessarily want to take that all the way to 100, or all the way. You don't want to crank that dial all the way up, but you might want to fine tune it. I'm curious. Is that how that process has gone for you, is just reflecting and thinking about how you'll show up differently in the next iteration? And it's more about maybe moving a couple clicks as opposed to the end, turning the dial all the way?

Rishi Garg:

Yeah, I think that's right. There's a couple different strategies I think I've come up with. One is just a lot of the work on the habits that we talked about earlier, the centering, reading, meditating. It's about helping myself get perspective so that I can remember that fear, which sometimes can feel really intense is just an emotion and it's sort of an illusion.

Rishi Garg:

So, first is just doing the work, and reminding myself to do the work to be able to do that. The second thing is, I try to figure out where in my life there are structural things that make it easier to succumb to some of that stuff, but I try to remove those. I'm trying to think of a good example now.

Rishi Garg:

I'll give you some advice that I always remember, that is related to this. Which is, I had this amazing teacher named Roth Capland at business school, who used to be vice chairman at Goldman Sach's. He always had this quick quote. He said, "Always live beneath your means so that you can play with some abandon." That's so important.

Daniel Scrivner:

It's a great quote.

Rishi Garg:

He always says, "Play with some, not total," to your point about going all the way to the end, "abandon," because you have to take risks to be successful. You have to feel like you're ready to do that.

Rishi Garg:

That's why young people are able to do such great things in the early days because over time, you acquire this fear of taking risks. You have more at stake. To remember that there's nothing really at stake, really ever, is helpful. Usually then you clear the way for more expansive and confident approaches to risk taking.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's so good. Okay, last question. What is your definition of success?

Rishi Garg:

There's three words I keep saying to myself that come to mind. Resilient spiritual freedom. That's what I'm working on. I see that as the journey of my life is to, as life unfolds, to become better at practicing that. It's not so much something you achieve, but resilient because you can achieve spiritual freedom by disconnecting from life. But I don't think I want to disconnect from life. I think real freedom comes when you can be plunged into life, into the river of life, and still be free, and still be spiritually open, and at peace.

Rishi Garg:

So, that's the thing I think about is how to practice resilient spiritual freedom every day.

Daniel Scrivner:

I'm going to do the opposite of what I just said, which is ask one more question. I'm curious. Something you said in your answer two questions ago is ringing in my mind. I know as an investor, obviously, your whole pursuit, your whole career is tied to outcomes. Those outcomes can seem very binary; succeeding wildly, like a company being worth 50, 100x, 1000x what you invested in, going to zero.

Daniel Scrivner:

I've noticed as someone who's founded businesses, invested in businesses, whether you like it or not, you have to get up close and personal with high highs, meaning big successes and big failures. Do you have anything as you've, through the course of your career, you've had your own successes and failures. Are there anything you've learned from both of those, something you've learned of, when you have massive success failures what to take, or what to not take away from that, and similarly when you have failures, what to take away or what not to take away from that experience?

Rishi Garg:

I guess there's a couple of through lines, if I were to analyze that for myself. Certainly one just general thing that comes to mind is, generally speaking, I think you learn more from success than from failure. In part, if nothing else, just because being successful feels good, so you tend to practice it more, and it compounds over time.

Rishi Garg:

I would go back to what I said a couple of answers ago, which is that the through line of successes is, for me at least, has been calmness, relaxation to a large degree, not necessarily comfort, but just being calm and executing open heartedly and open mindedly. As opposed to, as a construct, as an alternative, when you're faced with a challenge, trying to grind your way through it, which is definitely a tendency I have is to just, there's a problem. Let me work harder.

Daniel Scrivner:

That's the answer.

Rishi Garg:

I really fall into that trap. So, the things, when I look back, that I think are successful are sure, persistence. Persistence has been so, so, so crucial in everything. But persistence where I have tried to let go of fear, and even of the grind to some degree, and enjoyed the process with a calm mind, that's been the most valuable. That's actually led the most to success because working from that place usually means that you are free in your expression, free in your courageousness, and free in your voice. That's been really great.

Rishi Garg:

The other thing I've learned is how important it is to respect and value your voice, but respect and value the voices of others, and that's a dance that you do. That's been also part of my journey, has to become better at that whenever I can.

Daniel Scrivner:

Incredible answers. Every single one of these, I'm going to be listening back to again and taking down more notes. So thank you so much for your time, Rishi. Thank you so much for coming on, for doing this second, bonus part of the interview. This has been amazing.

Rishi Garg:

Thank you so much, Daniel. It's so great to have reconnected and have this chance to hang out together, so I super appreciate it.