Sri Ganesan: Why Every SaaS Founder Should Care About Customer Onboarding # 190

Hello, hello everyone.

This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District.

In today's episode, we'll talk— we'll be talking about why every SaaS founder should care about customer onboarding. Today we have our guest, Sri Ganesan, joining us. Sri is the co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane. They are a leading customer onboarding platform and SaaS product that helps businesses by replacing not only their generic project management and document collaboration tools, but they replace it to become a unique unified workspace. Teesri has spent his last 9 years building and scaling SaaS businesses.

His last startup, which was called Conotor, was actually acquired by Freshworks in 2015 and went on to become their fastest growing product, which most of you know today as FreshChat. And then prior to building startups, Sri was leading product teams at companies like Verizon, Rediff.com, and Jixi. So he's got a great background and I'm excited to talk to him. So welcome, Sri. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Hey, Akeel, thanks for having me on.

Yeah, so let's get into that. I'd love to hear a little bit about your story and just a bit of your background. And then tell us about your acquisition story by Freshworks, because I know a lot of SaaS founders get excited about building their product and then being acquired by a big strategic company. So maybe if you can share that, that'd be great.

Sure. So I had the previous startup journey that we had was between 2012 and 2015, back on the heels of being part of a startup which also got acquired. So Jixi was a startup, a B2C startup. After it got acquired, And we had a pretty successful product. I thought it was easy to start a company and do all of this. You need to be a little delusional to start up is what I feel. And I was at that moment. So got a couple of my friends together. We started building this B2C chat product first, which we quickly realized rather than going up against the very well-funded other B2C players, we maybe have a chance at building something unique and different in the B2B space, which was a messaging SDK for other mobile apps. So that's what we built in our last venture. Had fairly good success in some geographies. In North America, we had just 2 key customers. So we had like Target and 1-800-Flowers using us at different points in time. And then one thing led to the other and— We got to a situation where another company was interested in buying us. This was like 3 years into our startup. And in our minds, we had hustled a fair bit to get to where we were. And we had a lot of success in some markets which were more mobile-first, but we were also tired. We had been running it as just a 3-member team for the first 2.5 years. No employees, just the founders between us doing everything— sales, marketing, building product, supporting. Literally, I think when we had our first employee, we already had 16 million users on the platform.

Wow.

So it was pretty hard. And when we had one option to, you know, for the company to be acquired, it so happened that in a chance set of events, Freshworks also came to the table, which made things a lot more black and white for us. We were like, hey, this company Freshworks is doing really well. They're growing fast. We keep hearing about them. And the way Girish, the founder of Freshworks, talked to us also helped us make that decision because he didn't say, hey, you're not going to succeed, come and join us. He said, hey, we need what you're building, this whole mobile-first product is super important for us because the world is going mobile first. So we want someone who's evangelical and like can build this mobile-first business for us. Why don't you folks come in and build what you're doing within Freshworks? So it was laid out nicely for us and it felt like a win because Freshworks was growing fast and we thought we'll have access to more resources to continue on the mission we were on, got acquired by them, then figured that just being inside a bigger entity won't necessarily change our trajectory. Like, at least globally, we weren't seeing a huge pull or demand. Realized after a year that it wasn't necessarily about just having access to more resources, but the market needs to have that demand for what we were building.

Right.

Realized there were other companies that were doing exactly what we were doing, but for web, and they were growing much faster. So did that one pivot. After that, we saw everything take off like crazy, right? So that one change helped us understand what momentum feels like. And after experiencing that, we thought, hey, we must do one more startup on our own with momentum on our side. And that's what we're doing now.

Wow, that's an amazing story. So you guys were only 3 founders when you acquired, and that was after 3 years that you guys sold it, or was that when the offer came?

Yeah, we sold after 3 years. We were just 3 of us for 2 and a half years. In the last 6 months, we grew from 3 people to 10 people. So at the time of acquisition, we were a 10-member team.

And so 10-member team, you know, 3 years into it, and you've been acquired by Strategic. That's an amazing story. That's a true bootstrap story. And then, you know, so you come in now, you're in a corporate setting, I guess, more people, more resources, more, you know, ideas, you know, a lot of smart people around, a lot of talent to work with. What was that kind of shift for you guys going in? And then, because I imagine if things were going great, you know, I'm assuming you said, did you leave after a year and decided to build your startup? And what was the decision to say, okay, I can stay here with Freshworks and keep growing here? And I don't know what the incentives were, or I can go and build something else, or you could actually build something in Freshworks. Why did you decide to say, No, we're ready to go back out, or what was the decision there?

We actually spent 4 and a half years continuing to build that business inside Freshworks. So we didn't leave, like, got acquired, pack your bags and go. It was a good environment. We were in at a time when Freshworks was also small. There were like 300 people at the time, and I think we had a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do. We also got like some of the Freshworks team to join us. There was like a small team, 6-member team that was building a mobile product as well there. So we had suddenly a bigger team that could execute. And yeah, we had the ability to spend money on AdWords and whatnot and build out that business and learn from Freshworks as well. So that kept us there for a while. We learned a lot over there. And then at some point we got inspired by what Freshworks was doing for the SaaS ecosystem. And we thought, you know, we could do one more venture with all that we have learned at Freshworks, and it could be like another successful venture. We could bring a new set of people on the journey with us who will get to experience that momentum and what it does for people who join in early. So that was sort of the motivation for us that, you know, we'd seen what growth does for people and for the ecosystem because Freshworks now has like a few thousand employees. And a lot of careers in product, in product marketing and engineering for SaaS products have been created from there. Other companies want to hire from there, which I think is like a very positive thing for the ecosystem. And yeah, that's what motivated us to do one more.

Okay. And so when you guys decided— so now this is your company today, Rocketlane. You guys help with customer onboarding for SaaS companies. We'll talk about that. Was it the same 3 founders? Was it the same 3 of you? You guys now started. And did you guys do something, anything differently this time? Were you bootstrapping? Did you guys decide to raise this time? Did you guys build a bigger team from the beginning? Or how did you guys do it now? How are you guys doing it?

Very contrasting. Everything is different this time. It's the same team, yes, but we raised money before we finalized the idea. You know, decided not to build an MVP, but to build a full-featured product and launch it, you know. So we took 10 months, 11 months to actually launch the first version of our product, which was by no means an MVP, right? It's like a beautiful full-featured product which got on, like the day we launched it, it was number 1 on Product Hunt.

Wow.

So that was one what we went for. And we also spent a lot more energy on marketing this time. Last time we built and hoped that people would come. This time, 9 months before we launched the product, we started building a community. So we sort of had, I think, an 800-member community at the time of launch. Now it's more than 2,000 folks globally around the problem that we are solving.

Wow.

So a lot of things we have done differently. Built a pretty sizable team from the get-go. So we're thinking long-term over here. We know that there is a real need for what we're building. So there's no dipping your toes and seeing if things work. Instead, like, we've just dived fully in from day one and built a team that's been executing to get us to be a leader in this new category in a very quick time.

Okay. And did you build this— sorry, this last question on this. Did you build your community inside like an Indie Hacker or where was this built? Or like on Slack or email list or how did you find this community?

Yeah, this is a Slack community. And yeah, we just, we didn't spend energy on new tooling. We felt Slack would be ideal because people are already on Slack and active in their company's Slack accounts. So even if we were to ping them, someone were to ping them in the community, they get alerted more easily versus having to figure out how to bring them back. So I think it's worked well for us.

Love it. That's cool. Well, you know, people thinking about starting community, I think Slack is a great way to— I agree, it's a great way to build it. So let's talk about your company, Rocketlane, onboarding. Tell us, why is it important now? You know, because you said it's, you know, we talked a little bit before the show where, you know, we're kind of late to the show. People are starting to realize now how important customer onboarding is. We are focused so much on sales and marketing. Why is it so important? What operational metrics will this impact directly that maybe people don't realize how important it is?

Yeah, the impact is pretty profound of getting your onboarding right. It is the first partnership that the customer experiences with you after you close the sale, right? And it's actually the time when the customer decides, hey, working this vendor is— with this vendor is delightful and we'd want to do more with them versus, hey, this was a mistake. At the first opportunity we get, we should move away from this vendor. So I think how you engage, how quickly you get them to value matters a lot, right? So if you've not yet gotten them set up and onboarded in 3 months, then in all probability the customer's going to say, hey, this is not working out. Let me disengage. Let me focus on my next initiative. And just write off the cost that they had in buying your solution versus if you get them to value faster. Let's say you do it in under a month, they start seeing value from your product, then you're able to talk about expansion very early, right? So if you're selling to mid-market or enterprise, there is a land and expand motion. So you can start focusing on, hey, what more can you sell to the customer? Can you go to more teams? within their company, etc., right there. They're going to be happy to give you a case study. They're going to be like a referenceable customer, and essentially they're going to help you grow faster within that account as well. So the NRR, which is the metric that all SaaS companies are looking at, is going to be higher if you did a great job during onboarding. If you did a sloppy job, customer success team, when they come in, they're on the back foot already. They need to focus on ensuring that you can even renew that account. So churn, NRR are 2 metrics that are clearly impacted. But what we don't realize is also getting a customer live faster means you start recognizing revenues from that customer faster, right? So that's a financial metric, like your CFO cares about the revenue recognition. But even if It's not about the technical accounting. At the end of the year, when it comes to renewal time, if you've taken 6 months to onboard that customer, they're going to say, hey, we spent 6 months in just onboarding. You need to give us a discount on the next year, or you need to give us a few more free months. That whole conversation can be avoided if you do a great job during onboarding.

Definitely.

Yeah, a lot of things that it impacts.

Yeah, those are super critical points. I still focus a lot on churn, but NRR is becoming kind of a hotter metric to pay attention to, and that's kind of what's going to drive your company forward and what a lot of investors are paying attention to. And I liked what you said. So the moment they close the deal, they say, okay, I'm ready to trust you and make an investment in your time and energy with your company. Now it's got to start right from that moment on. But then I wonder, because you mentioned You know, onboarding that takes 3 months, 1 month, 6 months. But then there's SaaS companies that are, you know, pretty, you know, maybe less, you know, the time to value is a lot shorter and so is the onboarding process. So maybe tell us what, you know, what is Rocketlane specifically built for? What kind of SaaS company should be thinking to use a company and, you know, use your product like yours?

Yeah, this is not for companies that believe they can do their onboarding self-serve, right? This is for companies that have an onboarding or implementation team or a customer success team that's helping the customer get onboard and typically involves at least 2 weeks or more of implementation time, which is where you would often find that you think in your head, it's like, hey, we can get the customer live in 2 weeks, but after 6 weeks you're still working with them.

Right.

So this is a way Rocketlane helps you hold your team and the customer's team accountable and get them to value faster with a clearly laid out path and journey and a space where they can collaborate and make things happen together, right? So great visibility, everything in one place, great experience from your brand. And what all of this does is it makes the whole engagement more professional. It increases the intensity because People see that you're using a tool and there's deadlines and there's tasks assigned to them and there's notifications flowing from the system to their leaders as well, saying, hey, this got done, this is still pending. So on both sides, people work with more intensity to make it happen, which is what is usually lacking, which is what leads to delayed onboarding because someone is dropping the ball somewhere thinking this is not a priority. This brings consistency into execution, ensuring that every onboarding happens with that right intensity, happens with that same playbook, ensuring that success can be seen faster.

Right. So you're talking from a perspective of, okay, so I come in, a sales team closes it, and now it goes over to the account executive team and goes to the, the onboarding team. But then there's also the part of, you know, thinking from the sales and marketing team perspective and how can they look at this And if they're looking at— they're part of the decision of choosing an onboarding platform. And the reason why I say that is because maybe I'm thinking of, as a marketer, I'm thinking, what's my LTV or what's my ACV? And by picking the right platform, then I know I'm doing a better job, right? Kind of can see it down the funnel. Same with sales. Maybe my renewals, maybe the commission structure is all based on onboarding and it does affect it, right? So you want to make sure it's a good solution. From that perspective, what should we be looking at, or how do you guys stand out from the others, I guess, if you can answer that?

Sure. So firstly, we are built to be a very beautiful, impressive product that can be used even during the sales process, right? In 2 ways. One, often when you're working with an enterprise, just before they decide who they're going with, they're going to ask you, hey, what does your post-sale journey look like? Because they want to know that you're capable of handling them, right? Like, let's say you're a startup and you approached like a mid-market customer. They want to know you have it in you to onboard them, that you're not going to fail miserably after they make the choice. So if you send them a spreadsheet or a checklist, you're going to look immature. If you send them a Rocketlane exported document saying, here's the onboarding plan, you look more mature. And in fact, we even have a way you can present it on a call to the customer. We have like a presentation mode where you can interactively present the different phases of the journey that you're going to take with them, which helps them believe that, hey, this company knows what they're doing, we can work with them, right? So you can close more deals. Secondly, if you have a pre, you know, pre-annual contract POC that you're doing with the customer, you can use Rocketlane for running those POCs as well and end those POCs on time, measure what's happening, ensure that you're holding the customer accountable. during that phase, right? So, and that's another way in which we help sales teams. And I think overall, from a sales and marketing standpoint, you care about how your brand comes across to the customer, right?

Of course.

And I think Rocketlane helps you because we have like a branded customer portal that you can showcase. So it's going to be like success.yourcompanyname.com. The customer sees where they are in the journey. It's like a modern experience. So if you're a modern company trying to sell to customers that care about working with like the most current best-in-class companies, then you're going to have the best version of yourself put forward in front of the customer by using a tool like Rocketlane. I think these are some clear ways. And of course, as you said, even from a commission standpoint, if expansion happens early, often the sales team can take more credit for that And that's something we facilitate because your success team can play offensive when onboarding has done a great job and get you that additional seats to happen within that first 3 months, which is when I think typically sales team gets credit for those expansions.

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So, okay, I accept that I want to use a tool like Rocketlane. I accept that the importance— I understand the value of my onboarding and I want to improve it. I want to maybe optimize my flow or I want to start building on it. How do you look at, okay, I want to improve this. Where do I start? How do I prioritize what work I need to do? And what's the most important thing to cover when I'm onboarding a new client? Because time to value is one thing, but we don't know how long that would take. And then if you give them log— most people, okay, here's your login information, here's your— for your users and seats. They come into this platform and all of a sudden they're overwhelmed, they're scared, and then they're like, maybe they wait for somebody else to take over, right? The marketing team or Or somebody else. So you want to make them feel at ease before you're able to get to time to value, right? So what are some other words or other tasks that need to be clarified? What's the steps to get to that, help smooth that process?

Yeah, I think a couple of things are very important. One is getting your playbook right for onboarding, right? So you need to craft a journey for how you are going to onboard your customers. We have some templates that can help companies get started with that so that you're not overwhelmed coming into it.

Okay.

And we also have a team that will onboard our customers and they will give their inputs on best practices around onboarding as well so that you're not trying to do it on your own. So we onboard our customers using Rocketlane too, and we craft a journey that ensures that anyone coming in gets the help they need to mature their process, and codify it into Rocketlane. Secondly, I think the most important thing you want to get right is the very initial part of it, like the kickoff and the steps around it. So that's another area where we can provide guidance on what you do in that very first step that's going to set up the rest of the process for success, how to ensure intensity as people go into that kick off and come out of it energized to really go through the rest of the project. So those are things which I think when someone goes through an onboarding with us, they do learn and take away some tips and tricks from our team. And that's a mandate that I've given our team as well, that there should be learning moments for our customers when they go through the journey with us. And yeah, I think that's worked well. We've made a lot of customers successful with shortening their time to value. They come and tell us that, you know, our guidance has helped them. So it's not purely the product, it is our team as well that helps them get set up and started.

Yeah, that makes sense. So you guys actually have, you know, resources, scripts, and templates to use on your website. Maybe we'll put a couple of links of those in the show notes if people want to check them out. I think that'll be super helpful. And maybe my last question here is about that, and then we can dive into the second part of the The interview, which is the personal rapid-fire questions. When it comes to using, you know, thinking about using templates or creating templates or scripts to give over to your onboarding team, what is your thoughts on using those versus kind of just allowing natural conversations to transpire? Because I've been on some onboarding calls and I feel the person's not talking to me. He's just, he's looking at the screen asking a question and he's just kind of capturing. And I guess I understand they're doing what they have to, but he's not really listening to me and not really following. Like, you know, and then I don't really feel like I'm being heard, right? So what's your thoughts?

You need guidance from a script perspective to ensure consistency, but it's more about making sure you touch those points than about that becoming the sole driver of the conversation, right? So essentially, if you have questions, it's good to have slides with questions from time to time so that you ensure you're covering those. But it's important to also coach the team on how to ask the question, how to explain why you're asking the question, and actually pay attention and listen to the customer when they're responding, right? Because the whole idea of asking those questions is to contextualize the journey for them after you've asked the question, right? It's not about entering something into a CRM or the onboarding tool. It's instead to help anchor the rest of the journey based on what the customer's key goals are or how they're doing things today and so on. So I would say it's good to have guidance or somewhat of a flow which you want to go through and have a deck which helps you keep that flow consistent, but not solely rely on that, not You know, you should definitely go off script if you need to, and you should, you know, use that as your anchor, but not as like the entire story.

The be-all and end-all. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Well, I guess last question before we get into the rapid fire. Any last tips or suggestions maybe for SaaS founders listening in? They want to either implement a customer onboarding process or they just want to optimize their existing process. Anything you would tell them?

Yeah, I would say think about how your brand is coming across during that onboarding journey as well, right? Because I think if you're trying to say, hey, we are a modern company, we are a friendly team, we are a company that is world-class, then all of that should reflect in even your kickoff deck. Right. So are you helping your team connect at a personal level with the customer? Are you helping your team sort of lay out things in a world-class way in that first meeting that the onboarding team is doing with your customer? So I would say pay a lot of attention in leveling up in your kickoff meetings. And, you know, I'm happy to help founders with this. I can put together like a webinar or something to do that as well. But I think it makes a huge difference in how the customer perceives you from there, how they engage from there as well. Because if they're sort of turned off in that first meeting, then you're never going to get to where you want to be. You want to energize them. You want them to feel, hey, this company is going to make me successful. I want to work with them. I love working with this team. And that's what they should come out with after the kickoff.

Wow. That's what people underrealize, right? They try to sell the tech. I think, you know, maybe they love the tech, but if they don't love working with the team, I guess that's literally probably half, or if not more than half of the equation, right? Because I know myself, if this is a company, I don't care how good the tool is. If I don't enjoy working with the person I'm working with, I'll probably look for the time to switch over. So that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Kashreen. How do you feel? Ready for the rapid-fire question?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. All right, cool. So we'll start with the first question. Sri, what's one activity you enjoy doing outside of work that you say gets you into flow state?

I would say playing badminton. It's something I try to do on a weekly basis, at least when I'm in India. I definitely do it every week. When I'm in the US, I find it harder to find the right combination of people to play with.

Awesome. I love badminton, so if we're ever in the same area, we'll have to play.

Yeah.

What's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And if you can go back in time, I'm going to say if you could tell your 20-year-old self, because we used to have 25-year-old. I think 20-year-old is a little bit younger, immature. I think 25, you're a little mature. So 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself?

Maybe I would say worry less. I used to be a youngster who was maybe worried a lot about how things would turn out and maybe failed to enjoy the moment a little bit back in those days. So maybe that would be what I would tell myself.

Yeah, I love it. Live in the moment, live in the presence, enjoy it all. Yeah. Sri, what are some of the biggest challenges you guys are currently facing in order to continue to grow Rocketlane as you are right now? Meaning, what's keeping you up at night these days, if anything?

I think one of the problems we have as a new category is people don't know what this can do for them, and they don't know this exists, right? Like, they don't know what it is and know that it exists. So in that sense, Getting in front of as many people as possible to showcase what we do is something I think about, worry about, like, how do we do that? How do we ensure that more people can see what we are up to? Because the moment someone sees it, whether it's a customer success leader, a CCO, or a founder, they love the experience and it becomes something that they want. But for us to grow rapidly, I think a lot more people need to understand there is this new kind of collaborative onboarding experience that can be delivered to their clients.

Right. So the education part, just letting more people know, yeah, aware of the possibilities. Yeah. Who or what are the best 3 resources? It can be books, this can be people, mentors, or people you've been following in this space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these, these last few years?

Uh, maybe, uh, I, I'll start with a book. Uh, one of the books I read called, uh, Leadership and Self-Deception. Uh, very interesting read, opened my eyes to how I behave in some situations. And, you know, everyone I've recommended this book to has really told me that it changed their perspective on how they do things, how they interact with others. So I think that's definitely made a huge difference in both personal and professional life in terms of how I engage with people. And definitely something I'd recommend. Another book I would say is Made to Stick, which is about how you can convey your ideas better and help them— help people remember those ideas, take away those ideas, right? So I think that's an important book for many founders as well and for anyone, right? Because I think, you know, in a team you have an idea, you want to convey your idea in a way in which people accept it and take away that idea as something they want to try out. So made to stick as well. And maybe I'll end with mentor, you know, Girish, the founder of Freshworks, the company that acquired us. I think Freshworks is like the first SaaS company from India to have, you know, listed on the NASDAQ and, you know, really made a huge difference to the SaaS ecosystem.

Yeah.

And every time I meet him, I learn something new. So it's been like a fantastic experience learning from him. And hence, you know, I have to mention it.

Yeah, yeah, he's a great entrepreneur. Definitely somebody to look up to and follow. Sri, what does success mean to you today? Whether there's personally, business, financial, life, there's no right answer.

I think I would consider making each of our team members successful, providing an environment where they experience real growth in their skills, in the challenges they have to face, in their knowledge. That's what I would consider as a success. If I've given them an environment that is high momentum, that is challenging them to learn and grow every day, Yeah, that's success too.

Nice.

I love it.

So supporting an ecosystem and helping people grow. Yeah, that's what fuels you. That's the right way to look at it. That's awesome. This has been great. I really enjoyed having you on the show. I learned a lot myself as well. Where can founders listening in, if they want to get in touch with you, learn more about you or Rocketlane?

I'm at sri@rocketlane.com on email and I'm active on Twitter @SriKrishnanG. That's Sri Krishnan G. Complicated, like complex handle, but that's me on Twitter.

No, that's awesome. We'll put in the show notes so you don't have to find complications. You can just click on the button and you guys can follow Sri. So thank you so much, Sri. This has been great. I appreciate you jumping on today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below. And help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again, and see you on the next one.

Bye.