Nikhil is the Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm in San Francisco investing its first $175M fund. Nikhil was previously a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he led the firm's investments in Canva, ClassDojo, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, Literati, Pill Club, and The Farmer's Dog.
On his morning routine.
Most days, I’m up around 6.30 am.
I start my day by hopping out of bed and jumping into a workout on an empty stomach. I’ll either go on a morning run or complete a home workout using the Future Fit app.
To close out the beginning of my day, at about 8:30 am after my workout, I focus on some writing and key thinking work. I try to protect my mornings until 10 am.
The window of time between 8 and 10 am is when I’m extremely productive, so I try to keep it free for myself as much as possible.
It’s when I’m most in-tune with myself and my immediate to-do’s. If I had it my way, I would protect my mornings until lunch!
On shipping consistently.
I definitely prefer to have breaks in between meetings, but I also realized that I’m actually more productive in longer work blocks.
There was a time during the pandemic when I would block out Wednesdays for deep work, and that proved to be incredibly productive for me.
During that time, I was able to put out content consistently. Eventually, I’d love to get back to that work pace and resume posting long-form content on topics that intrigue me.
On writing for clarity.
The act of physically writing something down on paper helps me learn and think.
Once I started the practice of writing to understand topics, I realized how much I was learning along the way.
As a result, it’s become a permanent part of my brainstorming process.
There’s a kind of compounding effect on your learning and thinking when you write regularly. Not only can it benefit yourself personally, but it can help build an external community with others that interact with you and your way of thinking.
On imposter syndrome.
I still have a lot of imposter syndrome when it comes to publishing my work.
I’m always worried that I’ve missed something important, or that I’ve missed a perspective that is key to the topic I’m discussing.
Slowly over time, I realized that it doesn’t matter if I missed something.
If I do, I’ll inevitably learn it from readers’ feedback, which is such a positive thing long term. Creating content for an audience is a two-way street: you may create it, but they ultimately receive and digest it.
Between their feedback and my content creation, learning goes both ways.
On learning from peers.
I have a big appreciation for all of the friends I have in our business, including how much I’ve learned from them.
To keep that trend going, I’ve learned to be more collaborative over the years.
By listening to people’s notes and ideas about my and other companies, I’ve become a much more insightful investor. I’m in a peer group, along with a dozen other VCs, where we not only go through executive coaching but also talk about our feelings and experiences, both good and bad.
Being in that group has been incredibly valuable because it gives us a chance to be vulnerable and transparent with one another.
What’s been such a delight in this position is that the incredibly smart people you work with as collaborators can be friends as well as competitors, in a healthy business type of way. It's incredibly motivating and fulfilling.
On FOMO and investing.
Ultimately, it’s all about the investments you make vs the investments that you don’t.
If you get wrapped up in FOMO, you’ll constantly be stressed and unhappy, especially given the market environment we’ve had over the last 10 years.
This process is what I lean on to deal with the stress of missed allocation, or when I’m competing for a deal.
On his nightly routine.
My wife and I have been doing evening walks as a way to transition to nighttime. It gives us a chance to share our days with one another and unwind before or after dinner.
It’s important for me to switch my brain off of work, ideally 30 mins before bed. Once I’m out of work-mode, I like watching TV or catching up on readings or sports highlights.
I’ve experimented with a lot of sleep tech, but the one thing that matters to me the most is getting into bed before 11 pm, ideally around 10:30 pm.
I usually have about 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. For me, that time frame guarantees I have the best night's rest to prep for the next day.
And with that, my day comes to a close, and I reset for the next morning!
