Becoming the Door

Growing up yearning for a mentor I didn't have taught me to try to be one for others - hosting a room full of Mesa students felt like one step closer to becoming that door.

Mesa School of Business students outside our San Francisco office.

Prying it Open

I grew up in Salem, a small town in South India. Back then, information about the broader world wasn’t easy to come by - nothing like today, when everything is a ‘search’ away. I didn’t have older siblings to learn from, and I didn’t have access to anyone who had gone out and built a career beyond Salem. What I wanted was a door -someone who’d seen the world, who could take me under their wing and say, “Here’s how it works. Come on.”

If no one was going to open a door for me, I figured I’d have to pry it open myself. So, I did exactly this, relentlessly, and more than a little shamelessly. I’d spot a quote from some executive in the newspaper and cold email them out of the blue. I sent hundreds of these. Once I wrote to a businessman caught in a legal mess back home (was then living in the UK) and he was so intrigued that he sent intermediaries to track me down. It’s like this - a few hundred cold emails that eventually helped me break into the sports industry with zero connections, and limited experience.

That scrappiness became my whole style. My path was unusual for an Indian kid with MBA dreams: sports, media, sales, not the well-worn engineering track. And business school applications were brutal: six GMAT attempts and nine rejections before a “yes” finally came, from Kellogg. I remember every “no.” Nobody handed me the way through, which is exactly why I now look for that same fight in others.

So, for years now, I’ve tried to be the person I didn’t have. I help people (and mostly the underdog with something to prove) get into business school, not by polishing essays, but by making them think harder about who they are, what they truly want from their lives and careers, and how to tell that story honestly. The thank-yous still catch me off guard: parents weeping saying I put their kids’ career on track; someone emailing years later, now at BCG, to say how our interactions changed how they saw themselves - and then quietly sending me their younger sibling to work with. That’s when I know it’s real.

A room full of me

Last week, a group of undergrads from Mesa School of Business, here for a semester at Berkeley, came by my office (it happened the way good things do: Mesa co-founder, Varun Limaye, is a friend and fellow Kellogg grad.) These kids were hungry, eager-eyed, hitting every event and hackathon in the Bay, completely unafraid to knock on strangers’ doors. I saw myself in them instantly. They weren’t waiting for permission to begin - they’re already building: D2C brands, AI/tech products, shipping real things into the world before most people their age have even picked a major.

With Varun Limaye, Mesa's co-founder and a fellow Kellogg grad.

They presented their work to me. It was raw - but bursting with curiosity, and it was that attitude, not the polish, that mattered. The energy was electric, and you could feel how badly they wanted to make an impression, far from home, trying to prove something. I knew that feeling in my bones. It was me, fifteen years ago - hungry, a little lost, sure that if I just tried hard enough, someone would finally notice. They were playful with it too - all smiles, waiting to poke fun or catch me off guard.

The students presenting their work — D2C brands and early tech ideas.

So, I did the opposite of what these sessions usually are: uptight, formal, forgettable. I put them to work, then made it feel like home: swag, food, a little mischief. We connected on social media, and I got curious about how they actually make their content, and just like that, I was the one taking notes. I threw out ideas for what to explore in SF and even tried (and sadly failed) to pull off a World Cup watch party for them. Somewhere in there, it hit me: I wasn’t the kid looking for a door anymore… I’d become one. And it filled me with a quiet kind of pride, the sense that I could be, for these kids, the open door I had once longed for.

A better teacher than a student

And I want to keep doing this. A while back I gave a talk to Berkeley Haas MBA students on breaking into strategy roles at tech companies - the real, been-there (failed first, then eventually got there) version: the actual roles and work, what strategy looks like at different companies, and how to get in. A student told me it was the best guest session they’d seen. I don’t think that was luck. It’s a pattern, really - two people I managed early in my career have become founders: one had a successful exit, another’s work recently took him to Cannes. Both are more successful than I’ve ever been, and both still tell me how much they took from those years, half-teasing that I’ve sold myself short. Through all of it, maybe I was always meant to be a better teacher than I was a student.

Speaking to Berkeley Haas MBA students on breaking into tech-strategy roles.

The bottom line: we don’t always get the mentor we need. But if we’re lucky, we get to become one. And I think that kid in Salem, firing cold emails into the void, just hoping someone would write back, would be quietly thrilled at how it all came full circle. And honestly, there’s little I cherish more. Some doors, it turns out, you become… and I have a feeling this is just the start.