Selected Work
Shubham Chandra
2016–Present
GTM Strategy & Engineering, Digital Realty Advisor · Chicago
Research for a $55B hedge fund A $2.8B exit Teams scaled 5x
Selected Work
Shubham Chandra
2016–Present
Go-to-market strategy and engineering at a global data center company.
Investment research on AI and enterprise software companies.
Ongoing research for one $55B fund, with operating stints in between.
Sole Research Consultant · AI/ML & Enterprise SaaS
Led primary research (200+ expert interviews, 7 proprietary surveys) and secondary analysis across 30+ investment targets. The work directly informed $400M+ in deployment decisions.
Head of VC Partnerships & Growth
Built the VC referral channel with Tiger Global, Insight, Thrive, and 8VC. It became the company’s top-converting, highest-ACV lead source.
Analytics & Operations Lead
Managed a 6-person Palantir team building talent acquisition and performance systems for the entire sales organization.
Parsley Health (BizOps), Product Managers at Work (8K-subscriber newsletter). Early-stage advisory: Web3 payments, real-time gaming, enterprise AI.
Built the Marketing and Talent functions from zero as the first ops hire.
Joined at 38 employees. Left at 200+.
Designed and A/B tested 60+ touchpoints across email, social, and direct mail. Increased member sign-ups 14% and product usage 30%, consistently 20–40% above industry benchmarks. Built and trained 7-person team.
Recruited and trained 5-person team that scaled company 5x. Rebuilt outbound sourcing to increase self-sourced hires from 20% to 75%, saving $1.4M/year in agency fees. Designed executive interview calibration and standardized candidate debriefs.
Four funding rounds, then a $2.8B acquisition.
Led 4 funding rounds, raising $200M+ from D.E. Shaw and L Catterton. Set board agendas, prepared materials, coached executives. Analysis used in Congressional briefings and White House meetings.
Built GTM strategy across 11 countries via on-the-ground research and global surveys (n=2,700). Identified 30 retail partners, launched 17. Scaled field operations to 75+ FTEs.
Evaluated market adjacencies (CBD, cannabis) through expert interviews and consumer research to inform multi-year R&D roadmap. Redesigned internal recruiting: cut time-to-hire by 3 weeks and increased offer acceptance 20%.
Analysis for investors making eight- and nine-figure decisions.
Workstreams: expert interview programs, customer survey design and analysis, quantitative market modeling.
About
The short version.
I work at Digital Realty on GTM strategy and engineering, and do investment research for a $55B hedge fund.
That research has gone into decisions worth hundreds of millions. I’ve also been inside startups (healthtech, consumer, marketplaces), mostly on hiring and go-to-market. One of them later sold for $2.8B.
I started in strategy consulting. Building software is the newest part of the work, and I’m still learning it.
Off the clock.
I do better with things that take a little time to make sense of.
I’m drawn to interesting textures, small restaurants that don’t advertise themselves, and travel that doesn’t come with a gift shop. I like being in places that aren’t trying to perform for you. Street level feels honest: you’re walking, noticing, adjusting. In Kerala, that’s a fabric market, not a landmark. Heat, noise, color, bargaining, getting a little turned around and not minding it. I like the feeling of earning your way into a place.
Back home, I pay attention to craft. Clothes are an easy example: weave, weight, hand feel, drape. I’m not interested in labels as a proxy for taste. I’m interested in the work. Cooking is the same impulse. Start with something solid, then tinker until it tastes like mine.
I read a lot of sci-fi, especially the kind that starts fun and ends up making you stare at the ceiling for ten minutes. Consciousness, time, huge structures, weird rules. I like stories that reward close attention. I like direct people and sharp conversation. I can be meticulous about what I care about and pretty relaxed about everything else.
Where things stand.
Merit Scholar for both degrees. B.A. with Honors.
M.S. Computer Science, 2025.
For years I wrote requirements for engineers, and I did not always know what I was asking for. They built it anyway. In summer 2025 I finished an M.S. in Computer Science at UChicago. I studied systems architecture, algorithms and machine learning, and I work in Python, JavaScript and SQL.
Email works best.
I’m taking on advisory work. If you’re stuck on something in startups or markets, write to me.
shubham.m.chandra@gmail.comNJOY’s CFO for three years, through the $2.8B acquisition.
I had the opportunity to work with Shubham early in his career when he joined NJOY, which, like many young companies, was a fast-paced and often unstructured environment. Shubham’s innate curiosity, tenacity and structured thinking allowed him to become a key contributor in our early strategy and capital raising initiatives. His friendly, open personality made him a great teammate, always willing to be helpful wherever he could across our organization. Shubham possesses a continuous improvement mindset which always saw him seeking feedback and new opportunities to extend his knowledge and skills. We have maintained our relationship since NJOY and I have enjoyed watching his professional development.
Former interim CPO of Zoho. 10+ years of friendship and mentorship.
Shubham carries a wisdom rarely found in youth. I’ve learned from our friendship that intelligence, humility, grit, honesty, self-awareness, and curiosity develop independently from age. He found many of those qualities years before I did. In our more than 10 years of friendship, I have come to rely on Shubham to add a broad perspective on my ideas, to challenge and question my assumptions, and to accept me completely and listen to me without ego. He makes connections across disciplines, learns with incredible speed, and improves most things that enter his sphere. More importantly, he makes people around him better. Shubham is a good human.
Executive team colleague while I was interim Chief of Staff.
Shubham was a great addition to the Executive Team at Parsley Health. He helped us drive cross-functional communication, he project managed imperative business initiatives, and he ensured the team was well informed on various projects. Most importantly, Shubham brought an incredible sense of quiet confidence to every meeting and every project.
More references on request.
Five books, one subject each.
This site is set up as a small private library. Name, contact, and CV sit on the shelf itself. Anything longer is in a book.
The type is set in Alegreya, with Cormorant Garamond for titles and the spines. The palette is four dark leathers (oxblood, slate, bottle green, mulberry), one pewter cloth, and a little gold.
In fine printing, a colophon records how a book was produced: its typefaces, paper, and press.
© 2026 Shubham Chandra
Nothing is minified.
No frameworks and no build step.
One HTML file, one stylesheet, and four small scripts.