Hemant Elhence and the art of the working team

A rock star is a splendid thing to have on a stage. Putting several of them on a software team can require a rather different ticket price. In 2020, Hemant Elhence put a version of that problem to the engineering leaders in his network: would they choose solid people who worked well together, or proven individual performers whose collaboration was questionable? After years of building a company, he was still willing to ask how a team should be built.

That question provides a useful entrance to his career. Elhence co-founded Synerzip with Vinayak Joglekar in 2004, pairing a US business presence with software development in Pune. He later became president of the combined business that launched as Excellarate. Today, his work includes an executive chairmanship and venture investing. Across the changing job titles, the recurring interest is unusually practical: how people, customers and engineering fit together well enough to make a business.

A customer hiding inside a fundraising conversation

Synerzip’s beginnings lay partly in a discovery made while Elhence was raising money for an earlier company. Talking to venture capitalists brought him into contact with a common difficulty among the businesses they backed. Software companies wanted to expand research and development. Getting the right engineering capacity was another matter. A product roadmap can be wonderfully ambitious on paper; eventually, somebody has to build the product.

Elhence and Joglekar shaped Synerzip around that need. It offered dedicated teams to software companies, bringing together the skills required to develop, test and deliver products. The arrangement connected clients with engineering talent in India without asking them to establish an entire overseas operation at the outset. Joglekar would later describe an opening among smaller enterprises and startups that larger offshore service arrangements had left underserved.

Elhence brought experience from Digital Equipment Corporation, McKinsey & Company and i2 Technologies. His education spanned engineering and business, including an MBA at Chicago Booth. Synerzip gave those interests a shared assignment: make technical capability work as a service another company could actually use.

The numbers acquired colleagues

There were measurable signs that the idea had found customers. In 2012, Synerzip reported its second consecutive appearance on the Inc. 500/5000 list, with three-year growth of 211%. Its overall ranking was 1,430. These were company results, earned by a working organization rather than a solitary founder performing all the instruments.

One client supplied a concrete example of where that engineering work went. Synerzip had worked with Quickoffice on mobile technologies, including iOS and Android, before Google acquired Quickoffice in 2012. It is a useful distinction: Synerzip helped build a client’s software; Google bought the client. The development partner’s contribution lived inside a product carrying somebody else’s name.

Growing also meant adding people who could run the company’s own machinery. In 2017, Florence Lowe joined as chief operating officer, taking responsibility for customer success, operations, finance and administration. Elhence welcomed her experience across early-stage and larger businesses. A company selling engineering help had its own expanding need for organizational help. Even the business of supplying teams requires a team.

An excellent résumé cannot pass the baton alone

Elhence’s management writing spends considerable time on what happens between individuals. In a 2017 essay, he explored hiring established teams, organizing distributed work deliberately and paying attention to the value reaching customers. Drawing on the analogy of a relay race, he emphasized the movement of the work through the business. A diary full of activity is an accommodating witness; the customer may demand firmer evidence.

His 2020 question about reliable collaborators and individual stars made that concern more specific. He weighed different kinds of work against the leadership attention each team required. Predictable product development and exploratory work could call for different combinations. He credited colleagues who helped develop the argument, including Todd Little, Michael Abugow and Jim Smith.

The interesting detail is the method. He sought advice, absorbed it and published a more qualified answer than the original either-or question allowed. For a founder accustomed to giving answers, making room for other people’s judgment is a useful habit. The finished argument treated collaboration as something to design for, with consequences for the manager as well as the people being managed.

The founder who kept taking notes

Elhence’s published conference takeaways offer another view of his working habits. After Lean Startup Week in 2016, he gathered ideas about customer value, experimentation, culture and distributed talent. He also gave profitability an unsentimental place in the discussion. Learning to make money belonged inside the cycle of building a business, alongside learning what customers wanted.

The notes resist the assumption that a management philosophy can be installed by purchasing its vocabulary. They place weight on people’s behavior, access to customers and a willingness to keep learning. There is something rather endearing about a software company founder returning from a conference with homework for himself. Success had apparently failed to excuse him from taking notes.

His later DevOps writing followed a similarly practical route. Before changing how software was developed and released, he argued for understanding business objectives, examining the culture, preparing infrastructure and defining measures of success. Automation mattered, but so did deciding what it was meant to accomplish. The machinery needed a purpose and an organization capable of using it.

“Business context. Business context. Business context.”

Hemant Elhence, in conversation with Tim Butara

In his conversation about microservices with Tim Butara, that refrain became explicit. Elhence urged builders to understand actual use before splitting software into independent services. He discussed the overhead that accompanies architectural complexity and the value of letting real users reveal where separation would help. It is advice with an accountant’s respect for cost and an engineer’s respect for evidence.

A new name on the business card

In December 2020, Synerzip merged with Prime Technology Group, backed by the private equity firm Frontenac. Joglekar marked the occasion by referring to the 500 employees who had become family to the founders. A corporate transaction arrives in the language of combined capabilities; people who have spent years building the company may count its meaning in colleagues.

The leadership arrangements changed, too. In March 2021, Nick Sharma was announced as CEO of the combined company, with Elhence serving as president. The business subsequently launched globally as Excellarate. The new organization brought together more than 1,000 engineers across North America and India. That figure described the combined company, a larger setting for the next stage of Elhence’s work.

For someone who had spent years leading Synerzip, the move placed the founder inside an organization with a different scale and structure. Dallas remained part of the operating picture. The work now involved bringing businesses together under a shared name. The familiar founder question - how to build the company - had acquired another company’s worth of moving parts.

Chocolate, peanut butter and the day job

After his Synerzip exit, Elhence turned his analytical attention to a more personal subject: arranging an investment portfolio. His November 2023 essay weighed return, risk and liquidity, drawing on his finance education. He wanted a manageable structure that left time for the work he still enjoyed. An exit had created a financial question without settling the question of how to spend his days.

He likened the combination of real estate and venture capital to chocolate and peanut butter. It was an unexpectedly edible image for an essay about asset allocation. The important personal detail, however, was his wish to keep portfolio management from becoming a full-time occupation. He still preferred software company operations as his day job. The business builder had found an investment analogy; he had retained his appetite for building.

Back in the business of building

His present roles make that preference visible. At 3Lines Venture Capital, he is a general partner whose biography emphasizes helping technology startups find product-market fit and grow sales. At Sentiero Ventures, he serves as a venture partner among entrepreneurs and operators who support the firm’s portfolio. These are settings in which experience of running a company can become useful to somebody running one now.

TechGrit announced him as executive chairman in 2024. His earlier experience includes both the technical product business and the commercial work of expanding it. Founder and CEO Jithendra Ganji continues to lead TechGrit, while Elhence’s chairmanship adds another form of responsibility to his working life. The recurring subjects remain engineering, customers and the organization that connects them.

He also appears in conversations directed at the practical concerns of other software businesses. In a TechGrit Talks discussion highlighted by Earnd in May 2025, he joined Randy Lieberman to examine R&D tax credits. The subject was specific, operational and a considerable distance from the glamour of an exit announcement.

It is a fitting place to leave him: still asking questions that somebody building a company might need answered. The early opportunity involved giving smaller software businesses access to engineering teams. The later work involves helping businesses make use of experience, capital and judgment. A rock star may enliven the photograph. Elhence’s continuing interest is in what the assembled company can get done after everyone goes back to work.