Aneja: Kaizen rejected substantial LP capital to protect its core strategy
Sandeep Aneja · 100x Entrepreneur | Episode 8 | Sandeep Aneja, Founder and Managing Partner, Kaizen Private Equity · Sep 7, 2019 · at 50:51
Sandeep Aneja, founder of Kaizen Private Equity, discusses early fundraising struggles and maintaining conviction in his investment philosophy.
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“Investors we were talking to came back, and some were very excited, but they wanted us to change our strategy, or wanted us to do things which were inordinate, and they were putting a lot of money behind that, saying, if you do this, changes, we will put so much money which required us to change a lot of our philosophy. It was very, very, very hard, because the money promised sustainability, but also came with strings that would have changed who we were. And we had, I had put a lot of my savings into Kaizen at that time, and it made sense to accept the logical sense to accept the money offer, to take the money and change philosophy. It was from October of one year to February of another year, four months of blood, sweat, and tears, then when I felt like I had lost my purpose, and came out of that period saying in February of whichever year that was, Saying, no, I'm not going to compromise on my purpose. I will reject that money offer, and I'll go ahead with a harder path, which is to restart the process again, with the hope that we will get somebody else to back us. And that happened.”
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