Harvard in Tech Spotlight: Jay Parekh, VP of Business Development at Chime
I spoke with Jay Parekh, VP of Business Development at Chime, a fast growing fintech focused on helping people achieve financial peace of mind.
Jay started his career in finance first in investment banking and then in growth equity at General Atlantic. At General Atlantic, he learned more about the exciting impact tech companies were creating and felt his interests gravitate more toward tech than finance. So after graduating from Harvard Business School, he joined Zynga as a product manager.
After some time on the product side, Jay shifted to business development because he wanted to partner more closely with companies across the ecosystem (as he had done in investment banking and growth equity) and better see the big picture of the company. He joined Braintree in business development right after they had acquired Venmo. Venmo was seeing explosive growth at the time — the company’s name became a verb, and countless young people saw Venmo as a more frictionless way to split money. Braintree and Venmo were together acquired by PayPal, so Jay joined PayPal as director of business development.
After several years, he missed the startup environment and wanted to move to an earlier stage company. Chime was a perfect fit: they were right around the Series B/Series C point and seeing great product market fit. Jay loved meeting the team and resonated with the mission of building a better banking service.
Jay shared his perspective on business development, resilience, relationship building, and advice for his younger self.
On how finance and product have shaped his business development work: Jay notes that finance helped him think through how to structure deals in incentive aligned ways while product helped him think deeply about the customer and their experience and taught him how to build cross functional consensus, prioritize, and get buy in. Product also empowered him with greater analytical grounding. He can dive into the data to uncover more opportunities and notice patterns and insights that he can bring to the business development side. His ability to understand many facets of the product, engineering, and design functions helps him reduce iteration time (instead of solely relying on them to answer certain questions, he’s able to dive into the data himself),
But there are some downsides too. A product mindset, while beneficial in many ways, can encourage a business development person to unintentionally internalize too many of the product constraints and details, which may keep them from being as ambitious as they could be in selling the high level, big vision of the company.
On finding resilience: Jay shares the importance of not being overly emotionally invested in any one outcome. Get excited about and channel resources into each prospect but also manage expectations internally. You can only do so much — the outcome of a deal is not always in your hands. Sometimes partners surpass your expectations, and other times they miss your expectations. Separate your own process from the outcome. Sometimes, you run a great process but achieve a less than ideal outcome due to factors outside of your control. Learn from mistakes, but don’t be overly disappointed by chance circumstances.
On cultivating relationships: Jay highlights the importance of taking a long term approach; the world is much smaller than we expect. Someone who may be a competitor today can later be a partner.
Approach relationship building with a deep level of curiosity. Aim to understand: what are their priorities? What are their OKRs? What makes them tick? What are their biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles in their industry? Ground yourself in this understanding and be well versed in the world and jargon of your potential partners.
Ask questions. People like to talk about what they do. Demonstrating a genuine interest builds affection and attraction and cultivates a strong foundation for relationships.
On reflecting on Harvard: Jay was glad he got to know a wide net of people, including those outside of his section. He enjoyed getting to know people in different contexts — in the classroom, in student groups, and more socially. Doing so helped him gain a deeper perspective and helped him strike the balance of breadth and depth.
In hindsight, he would have spent more time leveraging his role as a student to reach out to companies to learn more about different areas. As a student, your full time job is to learn. Express your curiosity and proactively email people working in spaces you find interesting.
On advice for his younger self: Jay notes the importance of succeeding for success’ sake rather than to avoid failure. Realize the benefits of succeeding for its own merits and of finding your own fulfillment in that journey. Focus more on the upside and less on pure downside protection.
Jay also underscores the importance of finding hobbies outside of work and family. Find something you are genuinely happy and excited about. Nurture these passions as early as possible. Doing so can have a powerfully positive impact on your life and help to strengthen your work and relationships through giving you creative outlets and through adding more dimensions to your life.
