How to build a start up? | Ft. Sethu Meenakshisundaram ||Episode 11||

Our today's guest is Tedu Meenakshi Sundaram, co founder of Zuri, which if you ask me is a pretty cool company. His company recently raised $2 million in seed funding. He left Singapore to come and work with his team in India. If you can't tell from his LinkedIn, stalk him on Instagram to find his other talent as a great photographer. Today he's going to throw light on a very important topic. How to start your own startup and and everything related to it. If you have ever dreamt of starting your own venture and need actionable step by step steps, do not miss this episode. Welcome to episode 11 of Sales Spin. Today we have Setu, founder, co founder of Story and I'm really happy to have him because today we're going to discuss the topic which is very close to my heart and very close to a lot of people who are watching this for the first time and a lot of SDR salespeople have come to me and you know, discussing around the same topic. So thank you so much Sadhu, for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Are you back to Bangalore? Because last time we spoke you were in Singapore.

Yeah, back to Bangalore. When I came we had an office. Working from office and then back to our homes now.

Wow. Okay. I'm sure you would have like tons of insights for today's episode given that we're going to talk about the exact same thing like how to build a startup. Because I'm sure there are people like me, there are people like who are like probably getting into the startup world right now then they might aspire to maybe open up the startup sometime. So Sethu, I did not send you the format because there is none. I'll tell you how this goes. It's very candid that the whole reason we don't want people to really come with prepared answer otherwise that candidness, that honesty kind of is lost. Right. So I'll tell you it's going to be very simple. Nothing rocket science. So we're going to spend 15 minutes just to get to know you as a person, as your personality because that'll help me introduce you in a better way. And maybe if you could talk about a little about what led you to let's say start Zuri, what Zuri does and I'm going to record that. But that's not going to be the part of the actual airtime. Then we're going to rejoin because I have a 40 minute limit. It's my personal account so we would have to rejoin and after that will be like a full, full thing which we're going to air. Okay. For that I have prepared the question. I'm going to give you the idea of the question I have which is already shared with you on the LinkedIn message. It's on the lines of should you start a startup like or when should you do that? How to do that, how to find an idea, how to settle on an idea, how to protect the idea, how to find a co founder if you're, let's say, not a techie person. And how to get the funding. And I'm sure we will have tons of questions from that. Is that fair? Okay, let's go on the floor. So let's start with how things going right now with Zuri. I remember last time I think you guys have gone, you know, take taken leaps since we last talked. It's been like seven, eight months if I'm correct.

Yeah. I think when we spoke it was just an idea.

Right.

Complete thought through model. So today we have a close to 20 member team.

Wow.

Across product, tech, sales, marketing, whatnot. So I think we built a team since then and obviously I relocated back to India with my family amidst the pandemic that happened and we raised VC capital, 2 million notable investors, so to say. And also we had done the initial product launch. We onboarded about 35 customers so far. Mix of both free and paid. We processed about 25,000 employees data on our platform. I think so much has happened since then, but I think we're just getting started.

Okay, I remember. I think I'll be very honest of this. Something which I've told you as well earlier. I think there are tons of startup and I think what Lurie does is something which I talked to my co founders years back. You know, there should be a company around this which helps us tell us and this, this is a problem with every growing company. Right. Even right now. I'm sure we probably not at this stage but I'm sure as and when probably in one year we probably have the same problem where we have tons of tools and we don't know which one are we using, which one we're not because we don't have the time. And at the same time I'm thinking from the founder's perspective and they must be hey, I would rather make more money money than rather than thinking about where I can save. But at the same time money saved is also money earned. Right. In a way. Could you. And again this is my understanding, could you maybe tell the viewers, let's say, oh, how did you come with the idea of Zuri and what Zuri does? First of all, I'm sorry.

Okay, so I think today all of us are living in a subscription first world, be it as consumers or as business. And every business model, right from the big five software vendors, as they call it, Microsoft, SAP, Adobe, Oracle, all of them have pivoted their entire business model, subscription software. So nobody's buying perpetual license software, so to say. And every software a customer buying today is living on the cloud, either public or private. Now, earlier only, it used to be the software buying layer in a company which used to be the only entry point inside a company and there was a clear owner. That was because software is expensive and it was perpetual. But fast forward to today, the buyer of a software is not just it, but anyone with a credit card inside a company who's okay to reimburse. So today Suddenly if a 5,000 employee company, the number of software buyers, not only the IT team, the five member team, but a 5,000 people company. And that's where the entire control has gone away for it, right from you know, understanding what software is in the environment to who's using how much of it and what's the dollar cost I'm incurring. So all of that today is absolutely no clue for the it. So when things are okay, it's all great, but when hell breaks loose, I think IT is held responsible. The worst part is they don't even know what they held responsible for, unfortunately. So that's because of too much of subscription software or SaaS around us. So that's the problem that Zuri is trying to solve where we're ultimately getting back control the IT teams from a software discovery, management and optimization perspective. And not to forget security and compliance layer as well. So think of it like a single platform that's intelligent enough to have your back when it comes to the new world of software.

Great. I think that is something like I said, every company would think about for a moment and then they'll simply forget about it. But I think that's something which I've not seen across any other company doing it. So do you have any competition or are you the pioneer in this space?

So in fact, the funny part is when we started the company, we thought we were pioneers, right? Because we didn't know how to search for this problem because we search for subscription management and companies like chargebay and Chargify pops up right on Google. But that's not how the how people are going to this problem. Define this so actually it's been defined by Gartner as SaaS management and we got to know of it later.

Yeah.

When you see a SaaS management. There are companies in the US taking a stab at this problem over the last three years. It's still early in the in the game. But I think this will now post Covid. I think it's taken up a complete leaps and bounds in terms of the maturity already. So today the Google search results are going up. People are trying to understand this problem in depth. They're searching for solutions actively and all of that is happening today. So There are about four or five competitors in the U.S. name a few are blissfully productive Zylo and all of them are based in the US doing this. But Zlori is only company that's actually coming out of Asia and coming out with a complete feature set but a very attractive pricing for its customers around the world.

Nice. Okay. I think, yeah. I remember when I went to chart B before that I did a lot of reading and I remember clearly reading this in one of the competitors website, chargebeats competitor website without naming them. It was on the lines of that subscription industry is the biggest industry and will be the biggest industry with the way everything is moving to subscription. So today I have my coffee on subscription, I have all of my cosmetics on subscription, right. And we have this gym membership on subscription, right. So everything is moving to subscription. And I remember clearly this reading. The number 83 trillion is the market cap. So this is the world economy. We're talking about the world economy. So for example, when I, let's say speak to a founder, I would often ask, hey, your startup is great. What's your market cap? What do you think is market cap? Every founder will come up with a number which is in billions. Let's say 4 billion, 5 billion, 20 billion. Subscription economy is I think the biggest economy. If you think about it, it's $83 trillion. And this is the number I'm talking about like from two years ago. I'm sure that number has gone up since the pandemic because a lot of other businesses would have come up. Assuming that a lot of businesses also got shut down, let's assume the business, the amount remained the same. So $83 trillion is up for grabs by everybody. That means this is the. Because I also remember reading an example from a guy in London who used to, you know, polish the shoes, right? He came up with a subscription model 2010. He said, you know, pay me one, pay me 120 pounds. And you get, you know, these many shoes polished for free, plus you are offering of course some freebies. So it's, it's a world model. But I think you're probably not probably. You're definitely touching the problem going into industry which is huge and I think market cap is huge and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of potential for you guys.

Yeah, yeah. So the way I say this, when everything becomes subscription based and somebody should manage all those. Right. I think there's a huge consumer play as well. What's happening. I'm sure somebody is going to solve that problem. The consumer side. If somebody's going to solve that, I'll be a happy customer of them. Right. But I think since our co founding team had experience with B2B sales for the last 12 years and building enterprise grade products, we thought let's solve this problem not for consumers, but for businesses. That's how we got started. And also it's consumer is very different play altogether right now. How will you price it? When will you pay for it? It's a difficult proposition for you to come out. In fact, I know a couple of companies do that. So it's called True Bill and Trim. So what they do is as consumers you could share your entire credit card bills and expenses for a month with them and they will help you save money on Netflix to whatnot. And based on how much they save for you, that's the cut they take out of that. So it's a very interesting model that's taken off in the US But I have not heard of any other examples in outside of US either in Asia, Europe or UK for the matter until now. But I'm sure it's going to come up.

Yeah, not bad. Not bad. So you're talking about the consumer, right? So for example, I, as a consumer can. Okay, got it. All right, Peru. Tell me something about your background. Like how did you get to Zuri? Like do you have, like have you found a previous company before? So you're an entrepreneur. How does that work?

So I was earlier part of a company called Molescape. So I joined there as an employee. So it's a corporate learning gamification company. So interesting idea back then where corporate learning, I'm sure you would have sat for eight hours in a learning training session.

Right.

And you would have probably gone for, I don't know, nice coffee, a nice place. I don't know, whatever.

Right.

And learning probably took a backseat because it was just monotonous at one site. So. So there was A company that was making gamification to make it interesting, exciting and simulators around it. So back in the day I joined there as an employee but I think grew to become the founding team member eventually. And so my co founders Chaitanya, also from the same company, all of them joined as employees but eventually became founding team members. And it's during the COVID time when I was in Singapore, these guys are based in India is when obviously you told no to offices to save money. And like every founder out there in the world, every CEO, we're only looking at saving money, right? 2020 April and I think it's repeating again history. People are looking at optimizing cost. And we realized that if real estate is not a top three expense item in your balance sheet, what else is sucking up the money? And to our surprise software was the top two. We're like this never hit us, right? We never think of that's the expense software could have. But hey, there it was. And Chaitanya was responsible for managing all the software stack in the company. And he was managing a spreadsheet of 40 software. And the number of the expense number and the number of software did not match up. Obviously we know something was honest. So two months of exercise, talking to people, understanding what software stack they used. And then Chaitanya wrote a quick bit of code on top of our G suite engine. And to his surprise we had 145 applications. He thought 40 by the way, that's almost three times. And he wasn't even aware of this. He takes pride in taking control of everything. And there he goes, right? Look at his face then. And then the entire expense that was happening we realized that 6, almost 20% of the tools was not used in the last six months. And we were happily paying for it. And immediately we're able to save about $40,000 now. That's a huge amount of money. Even a normal day during COVID it was life saving, right? And we were like okay, this is weird. 100 odd people company. This is happening, is it the reality across all other companies, right? So we quickly spoke to 100 different companies around the world. Friends network there, India, US, Europe, Asia, APAC, you name it all geographies, right? From 100 employee company to even 20,000 employee company. And guess what? Everybody went to this problem. And the common trend that stood out to us, nobody knew how to define this problem. That's the funny part. So they didn't know there was to be solution. So some people defined as tech stack problem, somebody called as software Stack problem, somebody called it as software tool optimization problem. There is no one common definition. So moment we realize, okay, everybody's going through this, but they're not educated. And since we had built a market around an unknown concept called simulators for learning, we thought this is something that we can educate the market on and we could actually build a product. And I think that's how we got started. And the moment we told this idea to a lot of founders, they kind of do the cfo, cio and we even got paying customers after that. It's quite quick, all of this happening. And here I'm talking to you about the experience now.

Wow. Okay, that is something. Yeah, I'm definitely, I've definitely made notes around this because I have a lot of questions as to how you jumped from, let's say, being an employee to starting a company. And so this is your first time founding a company.

That's right.

Wow. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna circle back this in the live show. When we do that, tell me something about your family.

I'm so married with 3 year old son, so interesting part is I still remember when I bought a board the flight, my wife told us she's like the safest country to be in the world right now, Singapore. And you're pulling us away from here to India, so you better make the Zuri journey worth it.

Why did you come? Like, did you, did you have to come?

Yes. So I think because my team was here, I think it is good to be in the same time zone and our customers are based in the US So it's far more human time, I would say still being in India, but.

Singapore and India are like not far, that far away. Like a couple of hours. Right.

A two and a half hours difference from a time zone perspective ahead. So I think today I take my US calls at 1, there would have been like 4 or 5. And not only that, I think also another thing is we want to be under one roof. So because probably I was. Because by when we moved, India had become better in December last year.

Right.

So everybody was going out and traveling. So we thought, okay, it's all back to normalcy. And nothing like working under one roof with your 20 members. And building startup is stressful if you look at it that way. But for 20 people in an office, it isn't stressful, it's fun. I wanted, I came for that experience, but I think it was wrong.

Okay. Right. How many hours do you work? And this is the question I always ask all the founders. Like Because I think if I'm, if I end up working sometimes 11, 12 hours, I'm pretty sure all the founders I see, for example, my, I see my founders, previous founders, pretty sure everybody I could see them working like, I don't know, 18, 20 hours. How long do you work?

So I, I, I mean I think having a three year old at home makes all the difference, I guess in a very good distraction. I think I have a spend time within policy, right. So I think I plugged myself out. But generally I think as a founder you always think about the company that's 24 hours, right? For the extra time you're sleeping. But I think the hard work or the intense work we do in a day is probably eight hours, the intense work. But overall time I spend is about 12 hours and not more. I think working inside a room for 12 hours, just being alone, I think that's equal to 18 hours a year.

Wow, okay, that is something. How do you manage all this? Right? How do you manage stress? I understand you have like of course, a good distraction year old son and I'm not sure everybody has kids, for example. I don't have kids, I don't have anybody except my wife. And so I think this will be a question we can probably ask later, but I think it's better that we should ask right now. How do you manage the time? Because I believe as a leader, the time management is like one aspect. If you're able to do this well, it can really lead you to glory, success, everything you desire in life. How do you do that? Do you have time blocks? How do you do that?

Okay, so at Zuri, I take a customer facing role. So I think my day depends. The customers want to speak to me. Customers. Sometimes I speak till 1, 2, 3 in the morning. So it's never fixed, right. In that sense. So I know I don't have a schedule every day when I start. So simply put, I think I have two rules, right? One is if it can be delegated, delegate very quickly. So that's an easy thing to do because I think as founders sometimes you want affectionate, everything that you want to do yourself, I think then you become the bottom line. So very clear, if my people make a mistake, that's okay as long as reversible mistake, right? And number two, if something is short, quick and reversible, I take it immediately without thinking too much. But if something is long, irreversible and expensive, then I take my time to think about it and then I keep it for weekends, right? It's I follow these two very diligently and I give. So also I think I tell very quickly we should become from a three member founding team to a 20 member founding team. The moment that happens, then everybody's thinking like you when they're working, which means you don't have to work 18 hours, you can work for 12 hours because everybody else is equally taking it up and also gives them that ownership today because they think the founders trust them, they can make the mistakes and come back. So in fact one of our philosophy at Zooey is this is a safe learning environment for anyone who's running. So we call it out loud as we speak so they at least know that they can do it right. So these are two things that helps me move on quickly without adding up too much to myself and that way I'm able to sleep for at least 7 hours.

Awesome. Good to know. I think I had one last question which was yeah, do you have a technical background or did you like find people who were technically, you know, had a technical background so that you could start? Because I'm sure it would require every tech startup would require a lot of coding, every, you know, all that aspect. And for example, my founder is not someone with a tech background but the co founder is and I'm pretty sure that's how they were able to, let's say build the product. Do you have something similar story or do you have a tech background?

So we have in fact three of us come with complementary skill sets. So Chaitanya is a tech engineering guy. We always, in fact the best part about three of us is we did not only. So there are two kinds of roles, strategy and execution. So moment only strategy guys come, it's very hard to execute. So it's not only tech and non tech but also execution as well. The best part about three of us is we have complementary skill sets. So Riti's headed marketing and partnerships. I take care of sales and customer success and Chagani is taken of tech and product. And between three of us we're executors as well and not just people who are in strategy. So I think complementary skill set people have done that was a relatively easier call to come together to start server, not it.

Okay, thank you. I think I have enough information on you. So. So the question I have for you is when should people start their own startup?

All right, so. So before I answer the question Rahul, I think I would tell you why people shouldn't start up. Maybe so one of the reasons you shouldn't start up is because of peer pressure and you shouldn't start up because you're going to make millions of dollars a month. That's, that's probably never going to happen, right? Very liberate chances. And three, you should start up from probably because that's going to give you some sort of fulfillment and you're really invested in it, right? That's when you got a startup. Now is there a right timing to start up? Answer is no. But I have a sort of a theory. Starting up in early 20s, starting up in 20s, you have the energy but not experience. Starting up in 40s, you might have the experience but may not be the energy. Right. So probably 30s, you have both in equal measure. So the great time to start and that probably tells you why it's harder in my 30s, right. So just some sort of framework, I tell people. And also it's not really at the fag end of your life as well, right. And also you don't have too many responsibilities and you would have probably earned so much till then so that you don't have to think about any debts that you got to pay during that time because all that added pressure which you can wait off even before starting, right? Because the product, the, the product market fit, the initial sales, the dollar flow, all of that itself is already a lot of pressure, right? So, so you don't have to need everything else. The way I look at it is keep the distractions away. And if all the distractions are gone, then if you have a great idea, then you can probably jump in, right. And give it two to three years time. Right. So don't give up after six months, nothing happening. Eight months, nothing happening. I mean everything takes time to compound, so you got to give that time. So these are some of the pointers that I had. And also don't start up thinking we'll definitely raise VC money. It's again a chance as well, right. So don't. While of course liquidity is crazy in today's world, everybody's got money to invest. Too many angels. But don't start with that. Prepare for the worst case that nothing happened. I'm going to bootstrap all of that. If you're ready for it, then I think startup, why it matters is because you can't do that. You need a team to do it and your team will figure this out during recruitment whether you have clarity of thought or not. If you're okay with all of this, then they read you during interview and they actually then sign up for you. That's how we initially hired open about everything. So we're able to assemble a 20 member team in about four months. So at some point, as I hope is useful.

Makes sense. Makes sense. How do. So I think I get the idea like why should people started and why should people not? So let's say when somebody has stumbled upon an idea, how can people go about, let's say formulating that idea, you know, putting that idea into action. So for example, in your case, let's say when you found that hey, this is the problem and you realize, you know, after some research, I'm sure extensive research, hey, nobody's solving this problem. Or even if some companies are solving, maybe they're not solving to that extent. And even let's say companies are already solving, you can always solve the problem, similar problem in a different way, right? Cheaper, better. So how can somebody go about, let's say, putting that idea into action?

So fundamentally there are two things, right? One is the problem they're going to be solving and second is will people pay the money for it. So most times what happens is in startups when people start up, they start with the first theory, right? It's a problem, I'm solving it. Exactly. But they don't think about second where people will pay the money or not. That's why it's always good to have the sales or revenue focused co founder along with the tech co founder, right? So one can just look at the number one, one can look at number two. So that matters a lot. A lot of startups don't fail because the product is bad, they fail because they don't get the right distribution, right? That's the thing. So one of the ways to look at it is when you do, when you speak to people, just ask them, will you pay the money for it? The actual buyer profile. And today there are so many different forums or research forms that I can.

Do it for you, right?

Or even your own friends network. If you're able to get at least 20 to 30 people saying yes to you, then I think that's a great signal to get started. Doesn't matter you're selling a $10 product or $10,000 product, it just works, right? So that's probably the way I would say what defines the failure and success of a startup in the first place?

I have a follow up question to that. When you said let's say you go around, let's say in a serious network, right, where people would be able to, let's say willing to pay. But right now it's just in Theory, right? So for example, I have an idea and I say, hey, this is what I'm going to sell people. And you're going to ask a hundred people, let's say, out of which there's 20 people say, hey, I'm going to buy it right now. They're not buying it, they're just saying it. So do you think saying, getting that yes is as important as when people actually have to buy that product?

A great question. So I think imagine this, right? When you go to startup, you're not maximizing your gains, you're only minimizing your risks, right? So imagine if you're talking to 100 people and even two people don't even say yes for a hypothetical purpose, right? It's a clear red flag for you, right? If at least 20 people say in your example, they say yes, but do you think will they pay? To me, at least in the 20, at least two will end up paying a 10% probability, right? That's still good enough. They're able to find that 2% or 1% of people willing to pay an actual sale and the product is ready. The chance of that is the market is much bigger. Let's go start selling. That's fine.

No, I think that makes sense. I think I, and again, like I said, I'm thinking from a perspective that, hey, if I have to do this today and if I have to take all the steps and all the viewers who are watching the same steps, they would probably have the same question. And that's why I had it. So sorry if that was a bad question.

It was actually good because I think just want to add to that, right? A lot of people, generally the whole passion of a startup, they just jump out, they do it. And after six months when everybody says great product, nobody pays, it sort of starts getting a little depressing, right? And they want to give up. But the moment you know that these are risks, before you start up, you will want to extend that Runway to start making that sale. And when that hits, it's a great, great feeling.

Awesome. So I think you have, in the last one year, you guys have come a long way. You guys have raised money recently. So is there a framework, let's say, where people should go to, hey, if you want to open a startup, these are the, this is the framework you should all follow. And if you follow, you're actually minimizing the risk like you said.

So I think first starts with the team. The way I think about, if you're starting up, think about the co founder. So I'm a strong proponent of starting with a co founder otherwise the journey can be very lonely somebody else to support you start with a co founder and let the co founding team be a very complimentary team. So clearly more than you know what your strengths and know what your weakness are and hire for that as part of a co founder. And I've seen a lot of people start and then hire for a co founder, cto, co founder, CEO. Don't do that because that's going to get extremely hard start with that team. And third, think of two scenarios where you're going to get VC money. The max amount you would want, the minimum amount you would want. And third option being is addressed, you're going to bootstrap. How much can you bring about the mvp? Even a bootstrapping phase, are you okay for it? But these three because as co founders we were ready for bootstrapping ourselves by the way. Right? And it's a very thoughtful decision. Thankfully we didn't have to use that saved up money because we had VCs and angels to back us up. But hey, just be prepared for it. Once you have all of this then I think go for the. Go for the shot, right? So moment I say people take a VC money, you cannot think about how do I build a company bootstrapped. And same way when you bootstrap you can't think how do I spend the money like vc. So you got to be very, very clear, right? So moment we got a comment we ended up building a larger team. Otherwise honestly if you've been bootstrapping would have probably be a five member team so far with three of the founders not taking money, right? So think of all this as a plan. If this is ready then I think you're probably these are my plain takeoff steps. You got this right? Probably you're going to go up to the sky and at some point probably cruise.

Fair point. I do have a follow up question from one of your previous answer when you said I think the best time to build a startup would be probably in mid-30s or probably in your early 30s or when you don't have a lot of debt, you don't have a lot of expenses and you've saved up enough. Fair point. But I'm sure there are other people, right who are in their 30s, they don't have saved up money, right. And they have no other source. And if they, even though they have a great idea, how can they go about let's say building or you know, starting their own startup assuming like I said And I know a lot of founders who've done this who did not have the money. I think they borrowed money from their in laws or probably parents. And I remember seven or eight months later the pressure started building up and either somebody, some people had to shut down the startup or probably had to forcibly take the VC money when they did not want to. When they want to keep the company bootstrapped for some time. Is there a way, first of all people can do that, let's say without borrowing money from the parents or let's say known ones.

Okay, so I think, I think borrowing money, so that's exactly what I spoke earlier, right. So I think anything that's going to add pressure, startup don't do that. So I think getting money and borrowing money will eventually add up. It's going to catch up. So to me in my head I wouldn't do that. But today the good part about in India and anywhere in the world today is that angel investing as is at its best today, right. So because a lot of people who make good amount of money through exits today, right. Thankful to the ecosystem. So they're all willing to cut anywhere between a 10k to 25k USD checks, right. Even if you say that for me to get the MVP ready and get some initial five customers for the base product, who's going to pay me money but then all I need is $50,000 to raise that from angel isn't a very hard deal to do. Right? So like Kickstarter exists for consumer products Today, even for SaaS products, there are a lot of platforms available.

Product hunt for example, you can go.

And pitch your idea and raise and that's a great way to start experimental idea. I think to me that's a practically workable idea for somebody who is passionate to start up.

Now that is interesting. I honestly had no, I never thought about this. I knew about an angel investor. But at the same time, sure there are a lot of SDRs, for example, who are probably approaching their 30s and I'm sure a lot of other people, not just SDRs, all the salespeople who are probably approaching the 30s would probably want to think about this. That at the same time I also know a lot of founders who are actually an angel investor about 10 companies right now. So I'm guessing that's how they're doing it like you said. Okay, makes sense. So you said you were able to founders, co founders who were complementing your skills, right. How do you go about finding those people? So luckily for you, these people were in the Same company. How can, let's say people like me, for example, with no tech background, how can we go about, let's say finding tech founders? Are there other communities we can be part of?

So there are a lot of indie hacker communities now, right? So where you could actually go and say that this is my idea, you can't even say right here. But hey, there's my experience, blah blah, blah, looking at co founders. So there are matchmaking sort of sites even for CTO and CEO kind of co founders. Okay, that's available. So you could look at that option. But I think to me it's a personal opinion, right. Where to get something like that. I'm not sure the success ratio. I think this is like. So a startup journey is always tumultuous, right? Initial days, product market, but it's very difficult. So to me, this is my decision making for life and for anything I do professional, professionally as well is you got to keep your variables limited, right. And keep the constants higher. So to me, knowing my two co founders for the last eight and a half years is a constant. I know exactly how will take decision, how they behave, who they are at the core of as a person, right? So that brings me less variability as I start building the company. Same goes for them as well, right? But in case of getting a co founder you just met yesterday and starting to build today, then you don't know him or her itself is a variable and that becomes a little harder as you start to build, right. And want to make a decision, this person take a decision in a way that you never thought he or she would take and that gets harder. Right. This could be any decision for that matter. So to me, while there are avenues to find out your co founder, but I think it's better done to some kind of at least a three to five years of an experience. So that gets easier as you start building. Just another way to think of this is you can still build with the co founder you met yesterday, but it might just take a little longer.

Fair point. So what you're suggesting is while it's a great idea to have somebody whom you've known for years, but it's still okay to partner with somebody, let's say, whom you have met recently. It just, it's going to take longer because of course of the way, you know, you want to understand like how both of you would work together at the same time. It's a long partnership you're seeking, you're not looking for like a short term gig which is going to get over in a couple of years, right? Okay. How can companies, let's say, how does the full funding thing work? Because I'm pretty sure there are a lot of SDRs even I hire right now who have been in the ecosystem for some time. I understand how funding works because I've seen a lot of videos of work with a couple of companies, of course, a lot of companies. So I've seen those journey. So. So all the viewers, let's say we're watching this for the first time, who have absolutely no idea about the funding, all they know is, okay, you know, this company got the funding. All they know is, okay, the company has funding. That means they have money. How do companies go about the whole process of raising the funding? So for example, you got the VC funding recently. That's angel investing.

That's institutional capital.

Right? Okay, so how does companies. So I'll tell you the framework, for example, I understand the very basic. You got the angel investing right now. So after some time, of course, you have a revenue target to hit. If you're able to hit that, show some consistent performance month on month, then you can go about raising more capital based on a certain evaluation, based on the market cap, based on the companies. You're going after the logos. You have uploaded all that stuff, right? Is that how it works and is that how you will, let's say, go about raising your Series A or the next funding?

Yes, I think. First things first, right? I think raising a seed round. One thing that people have to know is it's very quick anywhere in the world today because in a seed, it's only an idea, right? Nothing else. So basically, people quickly either buy into you, the idea and the team and they say yes or no. There's nothing more than that, right? Then you quickly move to execution of paperwork and stuff like that. So a seed round is relatively. With a great idea and a good team, I think it's a little easier to raise in today's world and could be anywhere from, you know, half a million to up to 2, 3, 4 million. They're really easy to do. That's for you to fundamentally get the product out and show some traction. Right. And also we know that if you're in a SaaS, then product building takes time relatively than a services industry per se. So once you do that, once you hit a particular revenue, I think, I think depends on what you want to raise next pre Series A. And series A depends upon which market you want to focus on how complex the product is. It's a matter of all of that. So once for the initial traction, as they call it, the traction can be mutually agreed by the founders and the initial set of investors. Once it's achieved, you can then go for the next round again based on the parameters, etc, what industry you are in. And once you take that, that's when you start looking at revenue seriously. And you will only take the revenue from the market you focused on. You're building the product for us, then revenue from Asia or Europe might not become factored in, for example, or you have to build just for that market. So once you do that again based on agreement with investors, new set of investors who come on board, you then raise the next round. So it's always going to be, how do you say, climbing a mountain that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and probably more complex as well. Depends on the industry and the valuation looking at as well. That's broadly it. And today the good news is to get connected to seed investors and our angel investors. The best part is most VCs are okay to accept cold emails with idea and a pitch deck. They're willing to review it and come back. So you don't have to worry about are these people going to respond to me or not? They are going to respond to you. I'm just saying this because for the US you don't have to think, you don't have connection in the VC world. It's an equal chance for everyone.

Okay, good to know. I think I have covered honestly everything and the only thing which I want to discuss now is this is something which you brought up recently. Let's say if you're part of the community where you're trying to seeker founder or cto and let's say you've already settled on the idea now how do you go about protecting that idea? Because you can't go about blabbering all your idea like to everybody because you know that, that that is exactly your asset, right? And this is one question which has always troubled me. I think I've got like mixed responses from different people. I'm not sure if I'm convinced with any answer. And like you said, if you, you can't go about blabbering your idea on the communities, right? It's your idea eventually and it's not about the idea I believe, I think it's about the execution. Correct. So I might have a great idea, but somebody is a great executor. I think if they're able to execute it before, I think there's nothing I can do about protecting it how can, how can companies go about. How can early stage founders go about like protecting the whole idea?

It's a good question but again the answer is not straightforward, right? Hey, do this, do this, do this, right? It's not like that. So the way I say that I think like you rightly mentioned I would Michael Dell told about at some point ideas are a commodity. Execution is not right. So also if you see today, let's take the example of help desk, right? There's about 700 help desks out there in the world.

Wow.

Everybody's got a market, right? Freshdesk at one end is 100 million dollar company from just from freshtech as a product versus there are 10 million dollar company in the valley as well. And everybody's got a market. Say every product will have a large enough market that multiple players can take question is how big you want to play, right? So interesting enough so in fact once Duri has a platform, right? So we are at a meta layer of SaaS because we see the entire SaaS. So it's funny where we give a recommendation to a software company. If you're unhappy about a software you can look at alternate software. And when we made that engine at the back end, we were shocked for a day because for a marketing automation there are close to almost 450 software today. Now how would a customer make a decision right as a pitch, imagine that a strategy as an idea like you mentioned, all 450 would have sounded the same. But today each of those 450 applications have a very different way when customers go to make a decision to buy. So it eventually stands out in what you're offering. Now are you solving the problem to me, while you can't go probably blabber about this thing outside, out in the open, but what you can probably share is saying that hey, I have an idea to solve this problem but a very different way. Who's keen? So at least that we're able to filter out from 100 people to probably 10 people saying that that's an idea that I resonate with as well. Can we speak? And then you can probably nail down and see how we want to do it. That way you at least have a filtered level of people coming into your conversation level and that's going to make your life a little easier. Is what I think true?

I think it makes sense because now when you said that, I'm also thinking on the lines of let's say even if I have an idea which I protected for a while, I released the idea Build the product, got the VC money. Tomorrow somebody can still copy my product. Right. So a lot of companies, again, without naming any company, I'm sure there are a lot of companies, you know. Right. Who came after and, you know, copied a well established product and still became, you know, unicorn. Still became like big. Right. So that is possible. Right. Doing that. So, okay, makes sense. I think I'm totally okay with that idea. The last thing I'm sure viewers would want to hear or probably know. Are you currently hiring? If yes, what are the positions they can apply for and what is the best way to get to you or let's say anybody in the company to apply for that position?

I'm glad you asked this question. So we are actually hiring. In fact, we are hiring for the revenue function. So we're looking at hiring people. Good SDRs, great AES, I think aggregate and good customer success folks as well. And people who won't even shift from one role to the other. They want to give it a shot. Happy to have a conversation. So I think they can reach me on LinkedIn and I promise to respond to them.

Awesome. Yeah, I think you are Pretty active on LinkedIn despite your busy schedule. So hats off to you. The last thing I usually have in my interviews, setu, is a rapid fire where I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. And these are rapid fire. You can take a couple of seconds to answer. But yeah, feel free to move on to the next answer if you don't feel comfortable answering it. Okay. Okay. All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start with some very simple. Okay. Ready?

Yep.

Okay. One CEO you admire the most.

Once you admire the most.

A lot.

Of people admire the most. But I.

But I. Satya Nadella, your biggest m.

Biggest mistake ever. I had an opportunity to start up something three years ago and I said no to it.

Okay, your favorite SaaS company in India and in the world.

Two answers. Just one. Sorry, you want one from India, not from the world.

One from India. One from the world. Yeah.

One from India. One from the world. From India, it's Charge B.

Okay.

And one from the world. It's Twilio.

Okay. Product or sales? Which one is more important? Which one is more important? Sales. Your favorite city in the world. It's Easy.

Kyoto.

Nice. Last question is one company and you cannot name the lori who you think has the biggest potential to become like the next unicorn in India.

Too many unicorns in India, but next potential to become a unicorn in India. I know this rap that I'm sorry, but I'm just thinking.

That's okay. That's okay.

Darwin box.

Okay. Awesome. Good to know. Thank you so much, setu, for, you know, coming on the show. This was episode 11, so thank you so much, sadhu, for coming on the show. All right.

Thank you for having me.

It. Come on.