Amar Shanghavi

What do you enjoy the most about being an investor?

I get to be part of the adventure and work with incredible people who have built great businesses. That is especially fun with our style of partnership investing as founders typically invest alongside us and trust us to partner with them to grow their life’s work.

What is one of the biggest misconceptions about private equity?

People like to make private equity sound complicated when really our job is the easy bit. Founding a company and being responsible for people's mortgages is the hard part. It is our privilege to be invited into a founder’s business at the time it is ready to accelerate growth given the personal risks they will have taken to get the business that far.

If you did not work in private equity what would you be doing?

Outside of work I have spent time tutoring a range of people (read victims!) from GCSE students to inmates at San Quentin prison. Therefore, I would probably be a teacher and spend most of my time strategising about how to take the U13 B team on a cup run.

What does life look like when you leave the office?

If I am not embarrassing myself around a golf course or watching a batting collapse at Edgbaston, you will find me in the centre of midfield (read bench) for my Sunday league football team. In the evenings I’m usually burning this week’s Hello Fresh box and panic ordering a Deliveroo.

Tell us something about yourself that would surprise us?

Outside of work I am universally known as “Shang” – even my mother has (eventually) abandoned calling me “Amar!”.