Sid Rajgarhia
"I've spent my career helping businesses of all sizes make better decisions using data and processes, from management consulting at PwC to deploying Palantir at large institutions to creating Ironclad's SMB services arm from scratch. The common thread is that I find the greatest fulfillment in empowering people to solve hard business problems in scalable ways. That's exactly what drew me to First Round, where I work alongside partners to surface data insights and improve our investment decision-making process."
Someone once described this type of work to me as building an Iron Man suit for Tony Stark. Unlike in the movies though, most of what building an amazing Iron Man suit entails is understanding Tony Stark: knowing his blindspots better than he does, and responding to his needs quickly while continuously striving to anticipate them. And that's my favorite part of the job.
At First Round, Sid works alongside the partners to surface data insights that uncover what's working and what needs improvement. He evaluates and tweaks the investment decision-making process to reduce bias and groupthink, while leading several other projects centered around increasing partner conviction in their decisions to identify and serve founders.
Prior to joining First Round, Sid created the SMB services arm at Ironclad from scratch. Before that, he deployed Palantir technologies at large institutions and worked in management consulting at PwC, consistently focusing on helping businesses make better decisions through data and processes.
Though his work involves heavy data analysis, Sid approaches problems first through the lens of human psychology, which he studied as one of his majors at Northwestern University alongside Economics. He believes that understanding people's needs and blindspots is just as critical as analyzing the data when it comes to building scalable solutions to complex business problems.