“This is one of the big issues of a bunch of data work on venture is insights from some periods don’t mean anything or are not translatable to present time. It’s really frustrating. So we go back to people, reputations, and experience.” – Narayan Chowdhury
Ritujoy Narayan Chowdhury is the co-founder and Managing Director at Franklin Park, where he focuses on private equity investment opportunities, monitoring clients’ portfolios and conducting industry research. He also plays a key role in the development and implementation of Franklin Park’s technology platform, and regularly interacts with clients on investment and portfolio matters.
Prior to Franklin Park, Narayan worked with Hamilton Lane and Public Financial Management. He is a CFA Charterholder and a member of the CFA Institute. Narayan received a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Bucknell University.
You can find Narayan on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/narayan-chowdhury/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/RNC76
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[02:27] Why my parents moved to the US
[03:43] Narayan’s dad
[08:54] The friction that Narayan has with his team
[11:59] Why current analyst training creates bad habits
[15:00] What Narayan does when his family goes to bed
[16:37] When did Narayan first start playing with code?
[17:34] Narayan’s entrepreneurial origins and how much he got paid
[19:54] “Never sit alone at lunch”
[22:54] The Mike Maples story
[25:48] When Narayan realized VC is very different from PE
[30:05] The difference between underwriting VC and buyout
[34:28] What do you do when you’ve pigeonholed yourself in one industry?
[37:02] How do you know if a GP is a core part of an alumni network?
[38:32] A 2025 micro trend of misleading operating metrics
[43:40] How has VC changed in the past few decades?
[53:58] What do most people underappreciate about hockey?
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Franklin Park
- Hamilton Lane
- Public Financial Management
- Bill Gates
- Tim Urban
- Wait But Why
- “The Tail End” by Tim Urban
- Yuri Milner
- Cursor
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Adele Oliva
- Apax Partners
- Alan Patricof
- Josh Kopelman
- First Round Capital
- VIMAC Ventures
- Infonautics
- Felicis
- Aydin Senkut
- Manu Kumar
- IA Ventures
- Jeff Clavier
- Freestyle Capital
- Foundry Group
- Union Square Ventures
- Mike Maples, Jr
- Eniac Ventures
- NextView Ventures
- Costanoa Ventures
- Palantir
- Samir Kaji
- Samir Kaji’s tweet on annual curiosity revenue
- Larry Page
- Pitchbook
- Meta
- Databricks
- USC
- Melanie Fraind
- Ryan Mann
- Michael Bacine
- Brad Atkins
- Wissahickon Skating Club
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“Every moment that [my daughter] is here and I’m not with her is a moment we’ll never get back.” – Narayan Chowdhury
“Every action should not be a wasted action, should not be duplicative, should be the best use of a person’s time. So any tool that we build that is contrary to that should be reevaluated constantly.” – Narayan Chowdhury
“What do you do when you don’t know anything, you haven’t met anybody, you have no context, the human brain starts inventing rationale.” – Narayan Chowdhury
“Never sit alone at lunch.” – Alan Patricof
“Looking backwards on track records in venture can be very scary decisions. It could be that the prior funds were completely passive throw-ins on a cap table where they were following some social cues in a ZIRP environment and perhaps they got lucky. Whether they were part of a giant outcome [or not], it sort of meaningless for the future because neither the syndicate nor the founder really know who that person ever was. And so, the go-forward benefit of that investment decision is zero versus ‘We were the trusted investor for that founder.’ Not all prior track records are the same. We have to go back to why, going forward, are founders going to seek out or accept those dollars.” – Narayan Chowdhury
*ZIRP: zero interest-rate policy
“I’d rather go bankrupt than lose this AI race.” – Larry Page
“The problem is that the barriers to entry on that strategy [to deploy a lot of capital] are pretty low. And you get killed – death by a thousand cuts – when you’re not the only one trying to flood the market with capital and outcompeting on price.” – Narayan Chowdhury
“This is one of the big issues of a bunch of data work on venture is insights from some periods don’t mean anything or are not translatable to present time. It’s really frustrating. So we go back to people, reputations, and experience.” – Narayan Chowdhury