Varoon Bashyakarla on modeling his future
Yale alum Varoon shares his Dropbox Rotation Program experience
Varoon Bashyakarla joined the Dropbox Rotation Program (DRP) after graduating from Yale, where he majored in Economics and Statistics. After rotations in San Francisco and Austin, he is back in San Francisco analyzing data and building statistical models to help grow Dropbox’s business.
How did you decide to join the Dropbox Rotation Program?
First and foremost, I joined Dropbox because of the people. All the Dropboxers I knew were people I respected, sought out, and hoped to learn from. The prospect of joining a small, high-growth operation, living in San Francisco, building a company, and exposing myself to the business side of things excited me as well.
What have you learned in your time at Dropbox?
I’ve learned how little I know about business, about statistics, and about getting work done in a business setting! I’ve also witnessed firsthand how difficult it is to scale a team, an organization, and fundamentally, a business. The idea seems simple enough in theory, but it’s anything but simple in practice. In my experience, scaling at Dropbox demands a delicate balance of structure and adaptability as we expand domestically and internationally.
In addition, each rotation in the DRP taught me something different. Sales seems to be, at its core, an exercise in psychological engagement, and a little humor goes a long way on the User Operations end.
The Rotation Program has taught me a lot about myself, too. I used to think I’d enjoy doing purely statistical work. The DRP has convinced me that I enjoy the people-facing and operational components of statistical work as well — getting a pulse on the rest of the business, defining a problem, building something to address the underlying challenge, convincing people of its efficacy while being upfront about its shortcomings, implementing my work in a manner that abstracts many of its technical details for others.
What are some of the projects you’ve worked on?
During my time in Sales, I worked with a team to improve our predictions of how likely prospective customers are to purchase Dropbox for Business. I specifically measured the extent to which incorporating social media data into this assessment can improve our prediction. While in User Operations, I analyzed historical data and constructed an interactive tool to streamline our customer self-help website.
What led you to join the online revenue operations team after the program?
After spending time in Sales and User Operations, I identified an opportunity to apply and to build my skills in statistics, data mining, and machine learning to address some of Dropbox’s business needs. Luckily, our online revenue operations team was searching for someone to do the work I was interested in doing.
The team wanted to understand the dynamics of customer retention to inform internal processes, to shed light on longer-term financials, and to prioritize experiments. Working on the online revenue operations team allows me to apply the context I had gained from conversations with our users while on Sales and User Operations to the analytical problems at hand. My interests fit in well with the needs of the team and the company more broadly.
What’s your favorite thing about the DRP?
The DRP family. My class and mentors have been a great source of friendship, camaraderie, and community. It’s great to navigate the transition from college into the real world with a group like this one.
What have been some of your best moments?
My favorite time in the DRP was spending four months in Austin with three of my colleagues for our User Operations rotation. I made three lifelong friends, and members of the Austin office remain some of my closest companions at Dropbox.
The learning opportunity in Austin was unlike any other I had encountered. Figuring out how to maintain a cohesive Dropbox culture across offices, for example, was one of our biggest challenges. We all had a blast leaving our mark on the Austin office — not to mention several of its conference room names.
What three words would you use to describe the DRP?
Familial, fresh, open-ended.
Learn more about the Dropbox Rotation Program for new college graduates.
