From Silicon Valley to Gurugram to Bengaluru, with stints as diverse as IBM to Google to MakeMyTrip,Amit Somanihas always been in the thick of tech and internet action.

Starting out as product wizard (the search- based keyword tool he developed won him a Google founder’s award), he is now more focused on being a start-up evangelist as Managing Partner at Prime Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund. Here’s the travel enthusiast and fusion cooking buff’s take on:

The mindset needed to become a VC To start with you have to have insane curiosity and be open-minded. Often the best ideas can come from anywhere – from someone you meet at a party or at the airport. The second quality is “hustle”. We have to think of an entrepreneur as our customer and ask ourselves why he should do business with us. Are we getting the top 20 entrepreneurs? The third quality is “leap of faith”. This is especially relevant for seed stage funders like us who are betting on a proof of concept. In early stage, everything cannot be etched in stone. And the fourth is a long-term vision. It’s at least a 10-15-year commitment, so we cannot think month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter.

An operating VC versus a hands-off VC We are hands-on. Having said that we are not in the business of running the company or decision making for the company. However, unlike many VCs who are passive, we do roll up our sleeves and help the start-up in various ways – hiring, networking, etc. If you want to operate, then you should quit being a VC and become an entrepreneur.

The essential qualitiesof a start-up leadership Are they smart and can get things done? That’s one of the first qualities we look for. The second is the ability to learn fast. Start-ups are like an open-book exam, and you need to have a fast learning loop to figure out stuff. We also look for intellectual integrity. You have to have your feet on the ground, too, for survival. The paradox is that you need to confront the brutal facts of current reality and yet have deep amounts of optimism and integrity.

Workcations – a concept he promotes Working plus vacation is workcation – it’s almost work-related meditiation. This is changing the location of your office, working from somewhere different. We have three partners at Prime – often we may hire a conference room in a hotel to ideate, or go to an open green area for a meeting. The quality of discussion often improves when the setting is different. It’s different from an offsite where you end up having drinks and partying with colleagues. Workcation is going away from your day-to-day routine.

The essential books a VC should read There are many, but the two I would recommend are: The Success Equation – Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports and Investing by Michael J Mauboussin, and the second is Poor Charlie’s Almanack – The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T Munger .

A must-have travel accessory and gadget in the kitchen Kindle is one travel accessory that I take with me everywhere. In the kitchen, it’s not so much a gadget as Sauces. For fusion cooking, I stock my kitchen with a wide variety of sauces. One of my favourite things to cook is a Thai pasta dish with a variety of Thai sauces – could be peanuts or chilli sauce.

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