"I Don't Have to Wake Up Every Day and Look at My Stocks Anymore" - Rohit on Managing Concentration

Rohit Parchuri is the Chief Information Security Officer at Yext. He lives in the mountains of Tennessee now, but his concentrated position came from a decade in California, working at a tech company in Santa Clara.

That's the setup. The story is about what concentration does to you when you carry it for years.

"As soon as you wake up, the first thing you look at is the stock numbers," Rohit says. "I used to do that for a few years."

That habit became a signal. Concentration had stopped being a spreadsheet problem. It had become something he carried with him, day to day.

How it built up

Rohit is direct about how it happened.

"Just like other tech professionals, I had a stock concentration problem, which also kind of turned into a financial risk over the years," he says. "I think halfway down my employment, I figured my financial skills have been tilting to one side. There was just a huge concentration and weightage problem that's happening."

He kept diversifying his cash compensation. The stock just kept piling up on one side of the ledger.

"Every financial diversification course you go to, they talk about don't put all your eggs in a single basket," he says. "For me, it was happening that way. Everything was going to that single basket."

The barrier was clarity

Rohit believed in the company. That made decisions harder, not easier. Selling triggered a tax bill he couldn't justify. Holding meant carrying the risk indefinitely.

"It came to a point where I needed to really figure this out," he says. "Do I need to liquidate my existing stock and incur a huge tax bill? Or figure out a different vehicle?"

The vehicle existed. He'd just never been told about it.

"I didn't know about the whole exchange fund concept," he says. "I've heard of the term before, but I just didn't know how it operated or how exactly this would work out in terms of the stock concentration I had."

So he taught himself. Online courses. Conversations with peers. Conversations with founders.

"I was introduced to Srikanth actually by one of the founders that I was working with and it kind of came full circle."

What changed his thinking

Once Rohit understood deferral, the problem reframed itself.

"The tax element really changed my behavior," he says. "How I would look at the taxes really changed how I thought about everything."

That's when Cache became the path forward. Rohit was a Cache investor early. He came in through the first exchange fund the company offered, two and a half to three years ago.

"My portfolio has really grown out of proportions that I have not seen anywhere before."

What peace of mind actually looks like

For Rohit, the most noticeable change wasn't financial. It was behavioral.

"It's kind of this anxiety where you don't really have a lot of options at your disposal, but you don't wanna do something," he says.

Diversification cut the anxiety down because the risk was distributed.

"Now it's more diversified. The risk has come down and so did my anxiety around that fund."

He still tracks his investments. He just doesn't track them every morning.

"I was just looking up my returns just this morning," he says. "I was quite surprised because it's been about a few months since I looked at that. I don't have to wake up every single day and look at my stocks anymore because my risk is well managed at this point."

What he tells others

Rohit doesn't pitch diversification as a cure-all. He frames it the way he framed it for himself: a process.

"Educate yourself first," he says. "Talk with people about what it did for them. Then see if this actually makes sense for your personal financial roadmap."

He's clear about the limits.

"This is not a panacea. It has its own risks and its own factors that you have to keep in mind."

Then he adds: "But more importantly, what it's done for me is close to being a miracle."