Paytm's newest board member, Ruchi Sanghvi , needs no introduction to hyper growth companies. With a resume that boasts positions at Facebook and Dropbox , Sanghvi is an old hand in Silicon Valley. She is also quite familiar with the exhausting grind that startups spawn.That was the reason Sanghvi quit Dropbox, her last company, late 2013. "I've been in the startup world for over 10 years. It was all about working 24/7. I wanted to step back, gain perspective about what was happening around me," she says, speaking over the phone from the US."There are still tribes out there that practise cannibalism," she adds. Sanghvi carried cartons of rice, cigarettes etc to use as payments for people to ferry them around.She's also managed to pick up and hone a few hobbies during her travel. "I picked up surfing during my time in Bali, started practising yoga more religiously. And playing tennis," she says. On the work front, she's yet to decide what to do next. "If I knew, I'd already be doing it. It's a trick question. I have been quite fascinated with genomics though, brushing up my understanding of the space, even applying to a few companies. But it was difficult to find the right position since I didn't have a background in molecular biology. I did however end up investing in a couple of genomic companies like Color," she says.Ruchi Sanghvi during her trip to the Amazon riverSanghvi's a risk taker. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004, she was on her way to New York for a math modeling role at a derivatives trading firm. The tiny cubicle sizes and 100-hour weeks, with little time for much else, changed her mind. She decided to move West, without a job in hand. "It was difficult to quit without anything in hand," she says. "As a student on a visa, if things hadn't worked, I would have had to come back." Fortunately they did, landing her first at Oracle and then, FacebookWhen Sanghvi went to Facebook for an interview in the summer of 2005, the social network's office was a makeshift one, above a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto , with wall to wall graffiti. A blackboard at the entrance advertised vacancies for engineers. Plenty of people were working around the space, many of them students. It was difficult to tell who worked there and who didn't, she recalls. But what was unmistakable was the sheer energy in the room. She reached the office around noon, the day of her interview. Her interviewers weren't in yet. When Mark Zuckerberg finally walked in an hour later, he spoke to her for around an hour and a half. "He (Mark) asked me questions like if you could just take two things with you to Mount Everest , what would they be. He was tasked with keeping me occupied," she says. Her actual interviewers walked in only around 3 pm.The outcome of the interview resulted in Sanghvi joining Facebook as its first female engineer, a tag that has stuck. “I don’t mind it (the tag), since there aren’t many women in the technology field to look up to for inspiration," she says. “But yes, people tend to forget that I have had a career post that. I have held many other profiles, from product development to VP of operations to marketing and even recruitment."Sanghvi quit Facebook in 2010. Partly because, having worked closely with the product, privacy and profiles aspects in the initial phases, she found her passion waning with its next iterations. And partly, because she worried she was getting too old at 29 and that she may not have the same drive or passion later on.“It felt like most startup founders in Silicon Valley were in their twenties," she says. Sanghvi co-founded Cove in early 2011, along with husband Aditya Agarwal. The company was acquired by Dropbox just a year later and with that, the duo too moved there. After joining Dropbox, Sanghvi spoke with people across the organisation about the biggest challenge facing the company. The answer and her subsequent choice surprised all. It was recruiting. In many ways, this is a defining lesson in her view for those working at startups. “When you are joining a startup, don’t ask for what position, what role, what title. Be prepared to take on any role that helps the company grow," she says.It is also her experience that prompts her to say that she would never consider an MBA. “I think you learn best on the job," she says. “Also, it depends on what you want out of the MBA. If it is to found a company or hold an executive role, I’ve already done that. After working with two hyper growth companies, I think experience is the best teacher."