In this episode of Nothing Ventured, Aarish Shah sits down withRajan Dosanjh and Ankush Shah, partners at Rank Ventures, to unpack what real early-stage investing looks like in 2025 and beyond.

We get into:

🔥 Why “banking is eat what you kill” but “venture is eat what you grow”

🔥 How bad governance, weak boards & misaligned incentives pushed them to build Rank

🔥 Why 2026 will demand profitability plans and default-alive thinking

🔥 Why skin-in-the-game investors behave differently

🔥 How to remove blame culture and run an effective board

🔥 What founders must internalize about the new funding environment

If you’re a founder, operator, angel or fund manager — this one cuts deep.

Timestamps:

00:00 — Intro to Rajan & Ankush and the Rank Ventures story

02:00 — “Banking is eat what you kill; venture is eat what you grow”

04:30 — The investment that went wrong — and what it taught them

07:00 — Shared values, asymmetric bets & building trust

10:00 — Operator vs investor mindset (and how to balance both)

14:00 — Bad governance in venture: fiduciary failures & hard lessons

17:00 — Why Rank has real skin in the game (and no management fees)

21:00 — DPI over TVPI: why returns need to be real, not theoretical

24:00 — The new VC market: slower capital, higher expectations

31:00 — What founders need going into 2026: default-alive + ROI-driven growth

Find Rajan Dosanjh online at:

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajan-dosanjh/

Rank Ventures: https://rank-ventures.com/

Find Ankush Shah online at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankush-shah-64144a34/

Rank Ventures: https://rank-ventures.com/

This episode is sponsored by EmergeOne, fractional CFOs for venture backed tech startups from Seed to Series B.

Get in touch at https://emergeone.co.uk/contact-us/ or join the CFO team at https://emergeone.co.uk/join-the-cfo-team/

Sign up for EmergeOne’s weekly newsletter, Off Balance at https://off-balance.beehiiv.com/subscribe Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

for information about our collection and use of personal data for

advertising.