in conversation with Saqib Syed

Transcribed by : Divya Mendiratta

Niraj :  Hello and welcome to Foundation TV. Today we are going to start our new series. A series which is focused on the corporate environment. Series which is going to bring to you corporate leaders, leaders from academia and other professionals. Before we start this series, I have a question for you, have you ever dreamt of getting promoted at your work place? Have you ever thought of leading a team, or have desired to lead your department or to lead the company? I’m sure some of us have dreamt of those things, and I’m sure some of us have accomplished those goals as well. While rest of us may be still dreaming about those things, and may have some questions which may not be answered. In the past the only way to seek those answers was to find a mentor, or to find a friend who have been successful. Well going forward you have a third avenue, which is the avenue of your choice. That is Foundations TV. At Foundations TV we plan to bring to you professionals who have accomplished a lot in their field, and best of all who are ready and willing to share their knowledge and information with you.

With that theme today with us we have a very young entrepreneur, the guy who has accomplished a lot and amazing amount of stuff in a very young age. If I have to give his background I’ll just give few references. He did his MBA from Apse School after he graduated from his engineering school. Post his graduation he started working into software jobs, which eventually led executive positions at Computer Associates and BMC Software. And eventually jumped onto to become an entrepreneur and a private investor. The best part of his story is, his success doesn’t not end there, his success starts from there. Once he became a private investor he went onto to invest on many companies that are focused on Cloud Computing, IT infrastructure and Data Securities Two of his Investments got acquired by Cisco and Novell. And he has few more investments in and around Boston area. This guy is very passionate about Cricket number one and number two is very passionate about sharing his ideas, his thoughts with each one of us. With that background please welcome to The Foundations TV Studio my friend Mr. Saqib Syed. He is the CEO of Array IQ, and he is Advisory and chief mentor at many other Companies.

So Saqib welcome to our studio. I’m not sure if I really did a true justice to your background, with the amount of stuff you have accomplished. Would like to elaborate if I missed something, which I’m sure I have.

Saqib :  First of all Niraj I would like to thank you for inviting me to your studio. It’s a great opportunity to share my thoughts with the viewers. I think you did a great job on my background.  A few things that I would like to add to my background is specifically around entrepreneurship. I never thought about entrepreneurship when I initially came to this country back in early 90s. I enrolled in a Master’s program at university of Michigan Ann Arbor. And then after that my first goal was to find a job in United States, where I could move on further in my career. And then first thing was to get a green card, so that I could accomplish what I needed to do in terms of the passion I had for the technology. From then on there’s been a lot of help that I got specifically from mentors. So during that process I was debating whether I should continue working for a bigger company verses making a jump towards entrepreneurship. So only thing I would like to add is specifically I had never thought about entrepreneurship in my first 10 years in my career. But later on, the situation was such that I got dragged into it because of the wonderful mentors that I got from all lot of other entrepreneurial organizations you have around Boston.

Niraj :  Great, so your thought process just evolved as you went along and just enjoyed the journey.

Saqib :   Absolutely. I believe as an entrepreneur you should be able to adapt to changes. It’s one of the things that I learnt over the period of time. My mind was all set when I initially started working, but during the process I saw technology changed quite a bit. And that also changed the thought process in me, that for me to accomplish what I need to do is keep up with the changes. I need to change myself. So I went in and specifically thought about what I should be doing to specifically get into those areas that I needed to, and I wanted to be in data center, infrastructure, security, and cloud computing which at that point was not so prevalent. So it was more about internet. And I can share with you a story specifically when I graduated from my University with a Master’s program. I had an option to go to a start up at that time was pioneering the entire internet. It was a company called Netscape, and it had about a few people in the company. At that time I made a choice to come here to Boston to join a bigger company Digital Equipment Corp, which was a multi-billion dollar company. So you can imagine for someone who has started his career at a big company to come and talk about entrepreneur ship and investing in smaller companies and startups, it’s a tremendous change.

Niraj :   So the lesson learned for all of our audience and especially the fresh graduates and their parents is, If your kids are graduating and they want to go to a small company rather than a big company like Digital, let them follow their dreams. Big companies may not be there forever, that is not true for small companies either, but let them follow their dreams, and you never know where they end up being.

So let’s ask the first question. Saqib, I mentor many people out in the industry and almost everyone asks the question, “should I go for MBA or not? “. And I have given them the advice based on my perspective. But you are a guy who have gone through MBA, so what’s your perspective on value of MBA in short term and long term?

Saqib :  Thank you Niraj. That’s a great question. I always reflect back on my career on specifically the things that I did. And the decision making at that point because there’s always a 20-20 height side, when you look at it today it looks a little different.  But at that time when I had a growing family I had to make a decision, whether to do or not to do a MBA. And I’m sure a lot of folks who want to progress in their career will be asking the same question. So let me throw some light on what were the factors that led me into doing an MBA. And whether that was specifically useful in what I wanted to do in future.  Thinking back we were just acquired by a big company. And so I was a part of that big company, and I was getting restless at that time as I could not see a very clear career path in that company. Because specifically when companies get acquired the acquiring company would like to have their own people in key management roles. And at that time I really thought that maybe I should look at it from a bigger perspective, what is the goal that I wanted to accomplish. And look at it rather than from a small company, or that particular company I was working on, and look at it from a bigger perspective. So I had to really convince my boss at the company, that I would add a lot of value if I did a MBA and I wanted to move specifically into the mergers and acquisition side. So I used an argument with my boss to convince my boss, that I could to a MBA part time and still do my job at that time. And those were the times when people were moving from one job to another easily, so my boss was very keen to keep me in that role that he had, and he allowed me to do a MBA and also sponsored me for a MBA program. That helped me a lot eventually in my career. But let me answer that question on whether MBA really is one of the key factors or not. I should say that if you are an entrepreneur your ability to adapt to change matters a lot more than what you actually learn from your education. Education is important, but what you do after you finish your MBA or after you finish your Masters is more important than the program itself. And one of the things that I learned when I did my MBA in entrepreneurship was exactly that. So I was so energized when I finished my MBA that I said, ‘this has really given me what I need to go accomplish, what I came here to do.’ So I went off and started getting involved with many startups, and that kind of was the formation phase for me to understand startups and how they grow. That really led me to becoming a private investor later in my career.

Niraj :  Great. So if I have to sum up your response MBA or Masters in anything is education that is valuable to everybody that gives you a formation, a frame work of thought process. But unless you apply that knowledge that you have acquired in school you cannot really realize the value of that. Did I say it properly what you wanted to convey?

Saqib :   Absolutely Niraj. I think you’ve summarized that well. So when we talk to our youth and the budding entrepreneurs we need to inculcate in those entrepreneurs, ‘it’s about applying your thought, and applying your knowledge that matters more’. And that’s what entrepreneurs are good at, they make things happen, they are getting into unchartered waters and they have that ability to execute in those unchartered waters and deliver value. And if we can really get our youth and budding entrepreneurs to do that we’ll create a lot of value n United States.

Niraj : Great. I’m getting to ask one more follow up question on the same topic. Usually it is said that if you go for a MBA at an IV league it’s a great door opener for you in your career. But if you are in your career for 10-15 years and you have lead teams, lead functional team, and lead companies then MBA may not add as much value. What do you say to that though process?

Saqib :  I think it all defers, depends on how you think about that MBA program. IV league MBA is definitely very important, especially if you want to get into the big Wall Street firms, which no longer exists at this point they were tainted a few years back. Definitely in terms of managing organizations in bigger company, large corporates, they do look for IV league MBAs, and MBAs from one of these top schools. But I would kind of recommend that you seek your passion. Sometimes these smaller schools will have programs that really are one of the best in their specific areas. So understand what it that you are looking for and seek those programs, you’ll have better results. And that’s exactly what I did when I was looking for a MBA program back in late 90s to look for a specific program that really was in my area of interest.

Niraj :  Great. Again it goes back to the same thing, follow your passion. And if you find a program that meets your passion go for it. So Saqib you have transitioned from being a software engineer to being a merger and acquisition guy. Usually merger and acquisition requires skills which is pretty strong in financial background. So help our audience understand what skills do you need to be a M&A guy with no finance background?

Saqib :  Absolutely , I do believe that mergers and acquisitions specifically requires different areas of expertise. You start with market, the strategy, the product and then the finance. And then comes the cultural integration of the company when it gets acquired. So there are lot of different aspects of M&A.  I would recommend folks who want to get into to that specific area to look into to where are today, if they are on the strategy side, or on the product, or on the marketing side, they could get involved M&A. M&A is usually held very close to very few important people in the company, one of the key aspects is for you to get into to that small circle. And that require having a relationship specifically with those key people. There are different ways to go build that relationship. And that comes through some good ideas, if you are on the product, marketing or on the strategy side and you have good ideas to contribute towards M&A, there will be people willing to except those ideas. And once you become part of that group you will learn finance along the way. I do believe that finance is one of the very small component of M&A, so it’s basically those other three or four aspects that I believe are important when you want to really move into to M&A from where ever you stand today.

Niraj :  Great. So these are great ideas that we are sharing among us and along with our audience. I think my last question for today would be, you have been an entrepreneur what suggestion or advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs out there who are listening and watching our show?

Saqib :  Great question again Neeraj. I get asked this question in most of the panels that I’m on, and every time I answer the question it makes me think. I do believe the biggest asset that you could have to becoming an entrepreneur is your ability to ‘adapt to change’. If you are able to do that, if you are honest to yourself then you would be able to accomplish a lot. And remember entrepreneur are the ones who make things happen. So you should focus on execution while you have a clear thought process and making sure that you leverage all the resources around you to bring value, and that’s what you focus on. I do see that most people who come and ask me that question they get stuck on the fact that they are not able to go ahead and execute on the thought process, they get stuck on thought process. So I do believe that execution capability and ability to perform in unchartered waters is what make you an entrepreneur.

Niraj :  Great response. I’m sure our audience would’ve learnt a lot from today’s session in terms of what’s the value of education, what’s the value of MBA, what’s the value of following your dreams and having your parents allow you to follow your dreams, whether it is a big company of a small company. And how to transition career from products , strategy, technology, finance to whatever field you are in to mergers and acquisitions, because many people desire to go to that field. Saqib thanks a lot for sharing these thoughts with our audience, it was a wonderful session, and we enjoyed having you in our studio.

Saqib :  Thank you Niraj for having me over at Foundations TV. I enjoyed the discussion. I’m hoping that I’m able to inspire some of the entrepreneurs who are planning to form their own companies. And remember you always start small, I mean have dreams that are big but you start small. And I would really encourage budding entrepreneurs to take that big leap and jump into it once you have given a good thought process. And another thing that I would like to add, I have learnt a lot to becoming an entrepreneur through a sport called cricket, which is very pre dominate back home in India. So I grew up playing cricket, and I’m quiet involved working with youth here in the sport of cricket. So maybe next time I would like to talk about cricket, if anyone is interest on how to apply some of the principles that you have in sports to entrepreneur ship I would be glad to talk to you. Thank you

Niraj : Thank you.