From Banking to Building: My Journey to Entrepreneurship

5 MINS

# From Banking to Building: My Journey to Entrepreneurship

When I left Credit Suisse Hong Kong to start my first venture, people thought I was crazy. A secure AVP role in investment banking versus the uncertainty of entrepreneurship? The choice seemed obvious to everyone except me.

The Comfortable Path

Investment banking at Credit Suisse was everything my younger self had aspired to. The prestige, the compensation, the clear career trajectory. From Analyst to AVP in Hong Kong — I was on track.

But something was missing.

Every day, I analyzed deals and moved capital. Important work, surely. But I wasn't *building* anything. I was facilitating others' building.

The Turning Point

The realization came gradually: I wanted to be on the other side of the table. Not the banker advising the entrepreneur, but the entrepreneur building the company.

IIT Bombay had given me an engineering mindset — the belief that problems can be solved, that things can be built. Banking had given me financial literacy and strategic thinking. Together, they formed a foundation for something new.

The First Leap

In 2013, I co-founded Crazy Travellers. It wasn't a massive success, but it was an education:

Lesson 1: Ideas are cheap; execution is everything

Lesson 2: Customer discovery can't be shortcut

Lesson 3: Failure is tuition for future ventures That first venture taught me more about business than years of analyzing deals from the outside.

Finding Deep Tech

With Drona Aviation, I found my calling in deep tech. Building nano drones for industrial applications wasn't just a business — it was a mission to bring cutting-edge technology to real-world problems.

Deep tech entrepreneurship is different:

Longer development cycles

Higher technical barriers

Deeper moats once established The patience required is immense, but the impact is proportionally larger.

The 3X Founder Mindset

Three ventures later, I've learned that entrepreneurship is as much about who you become as what you build:

Resilience: Every startup tests your limits. You discover capacities you didn't know you had.

Learning Speed: Markets move fast. Your ability to learn faster than circumstances change determines survival.

Risk Calibration: Not recklessness, but calculated risk-taking based on asymmetric upside.

Looking Forward

At Melento, I'm building the CLM business from zero to one once again. The thrill of creation hasn't diminished — if anything, experience has made it more rewarding.

For anyone considering the leap from corporate to entrepreneurship: the transition is harder than you expect, but also more fulfilling. The skills you've built aren't wasted — they're repurposed for a new kind of challenge.

The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is now.

Building Deep Tech in India: Challenges and Opportunities

Apurva skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Apurva Godbole was part of the January 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 15 other talented participants.