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Silicon Valley venture capitalist Rajeev Madhavan has a way with roses, even when he’s not trying. His 3-acre Atherton estate is overflowing with them — more than 2,000 specimens encompassing over 400 varieties line his fences, fill his formal gardens and climb structures between his home and pool house that does double duty as an impromptu startup meeting space.
His knack for growing plants is akin to cultivating companies, a connection that’s become more meaningful the older he gets and the more fledgling companies he tends to and guides as the co-founder and general partner at Palo Alto’s Clear Ventures.
As a child growing up in Kochi, India, Madhavan was more interested in playing cricket than spending time in the garden. When he and his family moved from their home in San Jose to Atherton in 1998, the buyer didn’t want his six potted roses. He loaded them with the rest of their belongings and didn’t give them much thought.
In 2001, during a business trip to Portland, Oregon, Madhavan happened to sit next to Ben Hanna on the flight, who was launching a direct-to-consumer heirloom roses business, Heirloom Roses. The two entrepreneurs began talking, and Madhavan found time to visit the rose nursery during his trip.
“I was so impressed with what I saw that before I left I gave him my credit card and said, ‘Send me one of every variety.’ I didn’t realize he grew several hundred,” he said with a laugh. “From Portland, I flew directly to Japan and received a call from my wife while there. She said, ‘What did you do? There are hundreds of boxes of roses in front of our house!’”
That initial 400-plus plant order launched Madhavan’s obsession with the perennial, but it was only the start. One of his two daughters prodded him to expand his collection.
“When my daughter was in 10th grade, she took a field trip to the San Jose (Municipal) Rose Garden. When she returned, she told me it had way more roses than mine. Well, that’s all it took,” he joked. (According to the Municipal Rose Garden’s website, the garden has approximately 3,500 roses on 5.5 acres.)
Over the last 20 years, the serial entrepreneur has planted formal rose gardens next to his original property and on an adjacent lot he subsequently purchased. He’s amassed an assortment of heirlooms, grandifloras, antique double blooms, fragrant English and other rose varieties. One rose that he avoids is the grafted hybrid, partly because they don’t have the lineage and partly because of the suckers that require more maintenance.
He acknowledges that he doesn’t have time to propagate the plants. “I have everything needed for growing from cuttings gifted from friends over the years, but I can only do so much with the time I have.”
On average, the tech executive spends half a day every Saturday in the garden. He gives plenty of credit to the two gardeners who work with him and have been helping him with the garden’s development and maintenance for the last 20 years.
He’s in the yard by 5 a.m. and works until noon, finding the time useful for his mental well-being.
“I tried golf, but it’s not the sport for me. Gardening gets my hands dirty and is a very cathartic experience from work and issues that surface with startups. And, like startups, the garden has challenges like water leaks and plant failures. The gardeners who work for me are invested here, so (they’re) not just fixing things but solving problems,” Madhavan explained.
He readily admits that he doesn’t grow roses for the enjoyment of the blooms. In fact, his wife is allergic so they don’t enter the home. On holidays she takes roses to a Hindu temple.
“I don’t take pictures of them or smell them,” he said. “I have this garden to grow them; it’s all about the growth phase and understanding the parameters of what will grow where.”
Besides his friends at Heirloom Roses, Madhavan also sources his rose plants locally at Wegman’s Nursery in Redwood City.
“One of the biggest problems in the Bay Area is that local nurseries have gone away. Out of the four nurseries in my area, two have survived,” he said. “It’s a shame that people go to Home Depot and buy generic plants and we’re losing interest in these specialty heirloom varietals.”
Almost all of the roses he purchased 23 years ago are still blooming. But like any good business founder, he isn’t shy about removing plants that don’t perform in his garden.
“He’s every founder’s dream investor,” said Partha Seetala, founder and CEO of Robin (part of Rakuten), of Madhavan’s mentorship. “He was always ready to roll up his sleeves when we needed support, yet he knew when to step back and empower me and my executive team to make our own decisions.”
As an engineer, Madhavan is interested in how technology can keep his garden monitored and watered. (His robot lawnmower is a testament to that.) He’s also always looking to make his and his gardeners’ time more efficient and sourcing solutions to cut his irrigation costs.
“I usually start my Saturday mornings pruning but end up programming all the robots. Anywhere I can reduce the gardeners’ workload, I’m on it,” he said.
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