243: Build in India, Sell to US | Nivas Ravichandran( Head of Marketing, Spendflo)

[00:00:00] Freshworks doesn't serve the Fortune 500, it serves the less fortunate 5 million. I jumped into SaaS accidentally, it was not very intentional. I probably didn't understand SaaS as well. Remember we said fresh desk and they'd ask what it is, right?

[00:00:15] Like, and we'll be like, hey, we're a customer support product company. They'd be like, oh, a call center. They'd assume it's a call center. Especially if you want to go US first, you have to invest in brand from

[00:00:27] day one and not necessarily wait till probably a couple of years later. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Operator podcast. I am Roshan Karyapa. Doing the zero to one is a specialized skill and it takes a certain expertise.

[00:00:42] It takes a certain attitude to be able to fight through the ambiguity and get to a point of predictability. My guest today is Nivas Ravichandran. He's an experienced marketer and he has done this zero to one at a few different places.

[00:00:55] Most notably, he was early in Freshworks and saw through the phenomenal rise of the company to IPO and beyond. Right now he heads marketing at SpendFlow. And in this conversation, we talk about the various elements on the zero to one working with founders.

[00:01:11] You know, what does marketing Northstar look like evaluating different channels, specifically events, and then expanding to the US. A lot of insights in here that could be readily actionable for you. I hope you like this conversation. Hey Nivas, welcome to the Startup Operator podcast.

[00:01:35] Thank you so much for making the time. Hey, oops. That's okay. Thanks Roshan. Thank you so much for having me over. I've seen this on YouTube a lot and yeah, I'm super happy to be here today. So the pool of SaaS marketers is very, very finite. Right?

[00:01:51] You are one of those folks. You know, I've been connected with for quite a while. In fact, we should have done this earlier, I think. So, but better late than never. We're going to talk about a lot of SaaS marketing specifically, but let's start

[00:02:05] with the key aspect of your journey, right? Which is joining Freshworks in 2015. I think it was four or five years into the founding of Freshworks. Still early days, still perhaps, I mean at the five to 10 ish million mark, I would say, right?

[00:02:21] So what was it like joining Freshworks at that time? So I actually, I mean, didn't intend to join Freshdesk back then. So Freshworks was called Freshdesk back then. So it was part of a startup called Frillp that was where Girish, the

[00:02:40] CEO of Freshworks had invested, had done an angel round and we got acquired into Freshdesk. So for me, I jumped into SaaS accidentally, right? Like it was not very intentional. I probably didn't understand SaaS as well. And I don't think at that point of time, people even were

[00:03:00] doing a lot of SaaS companies. It was mostly the flip cards and the mintras of the world, or the stringies of the world, which are a lot more popular. 2014, 2015 was a large consumer internet trade. And when I got, when we got, when Frillp got acquired by Freshdesk,

[00:03:17] I still didn't know what was SaaS, why were people paying for the product or any of those things. So today thinking about it, it all feels like, you know, like connecting the dots. But yeah, like so that's how it, so when I joined, I think we

[00:03:33] were at about 400 people roughly, still a fairly small company. 500 and Freshworks is like 7-8000, right? Yeah, 5,000, 6,000, I'm going to guess after the IPO and everything happening. So a lot more younger startup, people who hadn't done SaaS for the first time.

[00:03:55] People who are doing SaaS for the first time ever and trying to get things together. So that's how it was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's like solid content if you just go back to all of these behemoths, right? I mean, and look at the early days.

[00:04:12] I think there's just like a ton of lessons and also like super interesting conversations for sure. I guarantee someone should perhaps do a Netflix show on, you know, what Google looked like in 2000 or, you know, Facebook in 2010 or whatever. Right?

[00:04:27] So that was also a very, like, I think everyone at FreshDesk early days faced this, right? No one understood what SaaS meant. And whenever we said FreshDesk and they'd ask what it is, right? Like, and we'll be like, Hey, we're a customer support product company.

[00:04:41] They'd be like, Oh, a call center. They'd assume it's a call center. And like my relatives always thought I was working at a call center and it was hard to explain to them. And my cousin even offered me a job at Accenture instead, right?

[00:04:55] Like saying, Oh no, you're stuck at a startup. You should come to Accenture or Cognizant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fun times. But you know, there are aspects of FreshWorks that stand out to me, right? The marketing, the culture, the product certainly, right?

[00:05:08] I mean, like a world-class product for sure. We'll get to that, but what was it like working with Girish at that time? You know, I mean, it's still small enough that I'm sure that you

[00:05:19] know guys have been in the room like quite a lot of times and so on. Right? So today we know him as this visionary leader who's kind of pioneered SaaS in India, built the ecosystem, all of those things. Right. But what was he like then?

[00:05:33] And what did you see in him that was like super special? I think obviously a very visionary leader, right? Like a lot of things that you looked up to him from just his humbleness to ideas around like, Hey, like just the clarity of

[00:05:48] what is the type of market that we should go after. How do you build and things like that. That just blew our mind, right? Like probably which we didn't realize value of probably of so much value

[00:06:01] that day, but today when I think about it, I'm like, wow, right? Like given how the markets shifted and things like that, right? Like someone thought about building products from India for the world. A lot of the companies were actually just selling to India and probably neighboring countries.

[00:06:16] Right? They were never necessarily going after say US or like larger, like, I mean, non like non not at the same time zone as India. And you would see probably the first five customers of fresh desk came from three different continents or four different continents, right?

[00:06:32] Like, so that story itself feels like very surreal today. And so I started off with fresh service, the IT service management product, and I honestly didn't understand why we were like selling that software who was who it was catering to in the

[00:06:50] initial days, but I think just working with the fresh works or the fresh desk team, the most important piece, right? Like the ability to make mistakes and experiment with things was a phenomenal thing that I think Gresh had set up. Right?

[00:07:05] And also the freedom to execute the, there was a, I think there's still a culture code which says trust by default. Right? So they just let you execute and then even if there are mistakes, we figured it on our way. Right?

[00:07:20] It was not like, Oh, you should never like try out an idea. I've gone with very bizarre ideas. And I think the Gresh being the man or even like any of the other leaders, right? Like being who they are.

[00:07:32] They've been very receptive to like even bizarre, like right now thinking about it, I'd be like, shit, what random ideas did I come up with? And I think the more interesting segment for me, but particularly was working in fresh sales, right? Where it was a CRM product.

[00:07:49] I was probably the first marketer over there. Got to learn a lot and just setting up like just basics, landing pages and say we did like a lot of Cora, G2. Like just building brand for a new product and spending time with Gresh.

[00:08:05] Not that we like even very few instances of brainstorming with him. Uh, or even just when he crosses and has like conversations by the Bay, right? Like where we're like super insightful. And I think just gave like a lot more, um, like just energy. Right?

[00:08:23] I think the other very interesting thing is the all hats, right? Like I still remember even in during my, like I left fresh works in May 2022. And even then whenever Girish did an all hats, right?

[00:08:36] Like people left with like so much energy and, um, yeah, that, that it, like, even if people had like other thoughts, right? Like saying, oh shucks, it's going a little dull. You hear him and you come back and you'd be like, okay, you know what?

[00:08:49] Let's, let's go get this done. So I think, yeah. And just one thing that I really admire him even for today is the way he transformed himself from, uh, when he was in 2015, when I probably first, uh, like interacted with them to 2022, 2023, even today, right?

[00:09:09] Like the way he's transformed on a lot of aspects, just immense respect for the man. Amazing. Amazing. You know, we've had a couple of fresh works marketers before. We've had Sairam and we've had Preeti Padmanabhan. Oh nice. Right.

[00:09:22] And, uh, this is something that they mentioned as well, the energy that Gresh has and like the fact that he's a true visionary, right? Um, this third element, right in terms of transforming himself. I mean, we covered this on our, we can show the roundup basically, right?

[00:09:37] I mean, to be at the helm of a company for 14 years, right. To go from like a garage startup or whatever, uh, to IPO and beyond. Uh, surely that same person cannot do that, right? They have to live many different lives, uh, become very different people,

[00:09:54] um, to be able to do all of this. And you know, I'm honestly excited by what he's going to do going forward. Right? I mean, um, yeah, hopefully, you know, we'll have a ton of other product startups come up as well, uh, with him, you know, probably

[00:10:09] having more time to mentor and so on and so forth, right? So phenomenal stuff. Um, I'm pretty sure he's still very invested in fresh works. Oh, I'm sure. Just that he's focusing on the product side of things. Uh, and he's let Dennis take over on that.

[00:10:25] I don't want to talk too much because it's a public company. So yeah, we don't want to get into much on that. Sure. Sure. Uh, look, I mean, fresh works, right? I mean, they were in such a large category.

[00:10:38] Um, and so the, the contra point to the fresh work story is, you know, people who will say that, you know, they just did stuff cheaper, faster, better. But I have a couple of points against that, which is one, if you looked at

[00:10:50] the fresh works product, even in the early days, it was truly world-class. Right? Uh, it was apples to apples with anything that you could compare. And it was maybe even better than that. Right. Uh, for sure. Second, the amount you guys invested in marketing and culture, right?

[00:11:07] Um, you know, whether it is like truly pioneering, um, you know, inbound brand page channel, et cetera. So there's like lots, right? I mean, third aspect on culture and so on, but there's just so much you can learn from fresh works, uh, just from a marketing standpoint, right?

[00:11:21] And as a marketer, I am very curious to understand, you know, some of those lessons that, you know, we can all learn from the fresh works, uh, marketing journey. Right. I think Greece has obviously spoken about this a couple of times, right?

[00:11:33] Um, he very clearly believed in established markets where there is a significant space that is available, right? Like, so even if you take like, uh, say an IT service management, um, category or a customer support category or a CRM category.

[00:11:49] Uh, he also said this in, I think in one of the, uh, the Forbes are like one of the interviews, um, fresh works doesn't serve the fortune 500. It serves the less fortunate 5 million. Right. Like, so all the SMB and the mid market businesses, yeah.

[00:12:05] Uh, so we went after that market and decided to cater to them, right? Like, and not, um, every company can use like an army of, um, like implementation experts to be able to set it up, right? Obviously, uh, just being the more affordable version is not going to

[00:12:24] help if the product doesn't speak for itself. I think one thing that, um, fresh works did really well, um, today that I, I reiterated a lot more after seeing a lot of external products. Is I think very easy to implement quick to set up.

[00:12:39] Uh, I think the time to value was quicker over there. Right. And it was built for the, the SMB and the mid market very quick to adapt. Uh, not much training, not much implementation and things like that. Very quicker to get, get life.

[00:12:56] And I think that's what's speaking today when they, when they've expanded to the mid market and the enterprise segment as well, I've been speaking to a lot of the A's and the marketers in the U S as well from fresh works and the sentiment is very good. Awesome.

[00:13:10] So the unique aspect of what fresh works marketing to me is not just the, I mean, they went beyond just like, you know, paid ads, uh, you know, build for these keywords and whatnot into actually building a brand, right?

[00:13:24] Which we didn't think possible for an Indian software product company at least. Uh, right. I mean, I can think of very, very few examples, maybe Zoho, uh, and chargeway to an extent. Uh, right. But how did this whole brand building happen? Right.

[00:13:39] I think a couple of things, right? Like even today as an express works, I'm going to say it with a little bit of a, like, I think we could have done an even better job in building the brand at a global standpoint, right?

[00:13:52] Because I've seen companies that were way smaller than us invest a lot more on brand in the early days. Right. Like, and I've always, whenever I've represented fresh works at some of the conferences, I've always felt a little smaller because not many knew us,

[00:14:05] but we knew internally that we were way bigger company. I think that's an acutely Indian thing also, right? We're pretty understated in that sense. Correct. I think it's changing today because probably the previous decade, right? Like was around, Hey, you know what?

[00:14:21] Uh, we didn't know how to do SaaS marketing, right? Like, uh, like as you mentioned, there were only a handful of good SaaS marketers who've done SMB mid market and enterprise. So we probably had a lot more enterprise because of the IBMs of the world

[00:14:34] that was set up in India. But again, very India focused, right? Like we didn't have a lot of people who are doing a mid market or even today, if you were to hire like how many times did you hire a director of brand sitting out of India? Right.

[00:14:47] Like very rarely. As soon as you look at like any SaaS company, even that's based out of India, uh, when they want to hire a director of brand or a VP of brand, they'll immediately look to the West, right?

[00:14:56] I think it's a very, uh, I've also seen the West do it better today. Right. But I think we, uh, Indians, uh, India, Indian SaaS companies are catching up on that front, right? I think there are a lot of good companies that are doing brand from earlier, right?

[00:15:11] Like, and I think even at Spendflow, right? Like we've kind of taken that a little more seriously saying, okay, especially if you want to go U S first, uh, you have to invest in brand from day one and not necessarily wait till probably a couple of years later.

[00:15:26] Yeah. No, absolutely. I think the last, um, let's say the last 20 years we've learned how to do the product and engineering aspects of things. I think the following 20 years will be about the sales and marketing aspects of things. Right. Uh, and COVID was an inflection point. Yeah. Right.

[00:15:44] We could sit here and sell to someone in Texas or SF or wherever. Um, I think, you know, we're going to have tens, if not like hundreds of like great brands emerge from, uh, India and including software product brands for sure. Right.

[00:15:58] But, uh, yeah, I always find that fascinating, right? That, uh, fresh works did so much on the brand side of things. Um, but you know, this whole SMB motion itself, right? I mean, it's changed quite a bit from, you know, back in 2015 to

[00:16:14] now, um, inbound as a channel is not something that you can entirely rely on right now. Right. And you know how paid marketing is. I mean, every quarter these guys just jack up rates and you can't get efficient on that. Right.

[00:16:26] I mean, it's like hafta wasul in some sense. Right. Yeah. Um, so yeah, how has this whole SMB sales motion sales and marketing motion changed and how has that impacted marketing as such? Right. So I think one, um, aspect is I've moved into a lot more of mid

[00:16:42] market, right? Like, I mean, greater ACVs, uh, larger companies. So, uh, I think SMB, uh, the, the equation still resides in say heavy inbound product led and not having too many SDRs, uh, like not a long sales motion, right? Like given the ACV value is slightly lower.

[00:17:02] Uh, but one thing that I've noticed with the change in mid market, right? Like I think SMB is now like a lot of the companies that we're focusing on SMB today have at least especially from India going up market because they know we can typically

[00:17:18] sell mid market from India. Right. Yeah. I think the previous, again, the previous decade was mostly SMB heavy, right? Like probably a Zoho or a freshworks or a charge. Yeah. Today, I think companies have realized that, Hey, you know what

[00:17:31] we can do mid market as well in marketing enterprise. I think Ymore as well is a great example. Yeah. So we were born in the enterprise, but yeah, I mean, a lot of folks are doing this upmarket journey. Right. Right.

[00:17:42] I think charge we also took our took off on the upmarket journey. And I think any company prefers that because you realize initially the hesitation was it's harder to sell up market, harder to retain up market or bigger ACV deals. Right.

[00:17:55] Like, but I think the bigger the deals are, the longer the sales cycle probably, but the retention is higher because it's very difficult to switch between the sticky stickiness is better and the way they perceive value is very different from what an SMB would look at. Yeah.

[00:18:14] And yeah. So those are the things. No, it's definitely changed for sure. Right. I mean, I think it's the classic thing when you're starting out, you're not very confident and you want to under price yourself a little bit pretty much every product is under price to begin with.

[00:18:32] Right. And I think as an ecosystem itself, we were sort of like, okay, let's just get, you know, 5k and maybe 6k, 7k, 8k, whatever. But today I think there's enough of precedence with some of the enterprise folks that, you know, people are more confident and

[00:18:46] they're selling these enterprise products as such. So you mentioned spend flow, right? I want to understand before we get into the spend flow aspects of marketing and so on, right? What was the motivation to go and go back and do like a zero

[00:19:01] to one journey again, because, you know, I've spoken to many marketers and you know, they swear off of that zero to one journey, they've done it once it's sap so much of energy. It takes so much out of you that man, you don't want to

[00:19:13] go back and do that again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, just probably I'm going to say two things, right? Like one was being able to, so I did a lot of things at Freshworks. Right.

[00:19:26] I'm going to say a bunch of things, not a lot of things, a bunch of things and some of them worked really well. Right. But I was still, I still had the doubt within me saying, yeah, did it happen because of me or did it happen because

[00:19:39] of the brand Freshworks? Right. Like, so when I did a webinar or when I did an event or when I did any campaign for that matter, I got like X number of say leads or pipeline or whatever. Right.

[00:19:50] And I was still doubting whether, Hey, is this happening because of me or is it happening because of Freshworks? And, and also just that the, the second point in that piece was I wanted to kind of tear up some of my learnings and re do, Hey, okay.

[00:20:06] Just from maybe from a brand standpoint or maybe how do we set up like certain functions standpoint? I wanted to kind of like, wanted to probably be on the driver's seat as well on just setting up things and see how does that look like. Right.

[00:20:21] And I also felt, you know, I had the energy. I still have the energy, by the way, the energy to probably drive it for another five, six years. Yeah. Hopefully after that, I'll have to take a pause and look at whether I still have that energy.

[00:20:35] So I thought why not give it a shot? And again, when I actually entered SpendFlow, I was very, very hesitant because I was selling to finance. I had never spoken to finance as a person, even within Freshworks. I like, who likes to speak with finance? Now I do.

[00:20:52] I've gotten used to that. I think they, I have, I've started understanding them pretty well. At least that's what I'm going to believe. And it's been very interesting to understand how they think and what they believe in. Why do they behave a certain way?

[00:21:07] Like, and actually today my CFO and myself get along really, really well, right? And he, he probably comes and like, we actually have like regular catch up calls and stuff like that. And we've never had a conflict today, right? Like touch wood.

[00:21:21] So I think that, and when I had to sell to CFOs, I was like super scared because I've never spoken their lingo. I was actually worried that I'm going to sound dumb, dumb in front of them or probably even when I'm writing copy or messaging

[00:21:35] or even positioning campaigns. But I think I've been around for two years, so I think I've done a decent job at it. Yeah. Two years is a long time, man. Zero to one has such high churn. Right.

[00:21:46] Just on a, on a tangent with this whole marketing and finance, right? I mean, these are like, you think marketing and sales has friction marketing and finance has like proper real fiction, right? Marketing is asking for budgets and finances. Like how do we cut budgets? Right. So, yeah.

[00:22:02] I mean, it's, it's a, I think the zero to one journey keeps you young. Yeah. You know, and on your tours and I have that fantasy as well, right? To go back and like do some of these things and apply all the

[00:22:15] learnings that you know, you've gotten to get to the next level cheaper, faster, better for sure. Right. Yeah. But what are some of those things to keep in mind when doing a zero to one? Right. So if I were to, for instance, go to a similar startup, right.

[00:22:32] And I'm the first marketer. I'm working directly with the founder. We are, you know, we have a few paying customers no more. You know how it is, right? I mean, you have to do everything all at once and today, right? Yeah.

[00:22:47] What are those principles to keep in mind as a marketer to do the zero to one? Right. I think I'm going to start with probably if you've come with prior assumptions, right? Like because like a couple of channels worked at Freshworks really, really well.

[00:23:01] And if you're going to assume that that's going to repeat over here, you're going to be wrong. And I was wrong as well. Right. Like I mean, and everyone starts questioning, right? Saying, oh, okay. I have like, as soon as I came into Spendflow, everyone was like,

[00:23:15] okay, you know what we'll take the same Freshworks route, right? Like inbound heavy Google ads and search engine and stuff like that. But then now that worked over here, right? Like I mean, and obviously Google ads has taken a very, very different route.

[00:23:27] I think just clearing assumptions is the first thing, right? Like, and go with a fresh mind, execute two to three channels at a time. Don't try to take everything all at once. Because it's very, you can execute all channels, but you would not be

[00:23:42] able to focus on them, right? So probably keep experimenting with two to three channels at any given point of time. And I think the other thing is to just be able to, if you're building a team, right?

[00:23:55] Like giving them that space to go and try out like a couple of things, handholding them a little wherever they need and just able to unblock things because the team is looking up to you as a, as a marketing leader. Right.

[00:24:08] Like, so it's important for you to ensure when, when you're setting that first few things, the morale is right. The, you believe in the product, you believe in the vision. So that, that kind of resonates with the team.

[00:24:20] And I think one that I'm going to like, I've had this experience as well, where it's, it's very important to manage down, but at the same time it's important to manage up as well. Yeah. Critical. Right.

[00:24:33] It's, it can be very easy for founders to come up with ideas almost on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very tricky for you to initially, you'll feel like a yes master and you want to agree on everything because they are the, they have maximum

[00:24:49] context on things, but then you as a marketer should know when to say no and prevent like, like some of the ideas and just protect the team a little here and there, right? Like, because when they, I think I read this somewhere where the biggest

[00:25:04] influencer for a founder is their neighbor. Because whenever they see something happening at the, at a, maybe a neighboring CEO or a neighboring house, like they'll be like, oh yeah, let's, let's give this a shot. Right.

[00:25:13] So yeah, the V you just have to be like, okay, you know what? Hold. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the first thing that I did was I asked my co-founders to route all the requests through me instead of just directly going there

[00:25:25] because the team was getting a little overwhelmed by the different types of ideas that were coming on a daily basis. So, yeah. Yeah. No, it's a very good point. Um, you need to kind of insulate your team from all of this stuff. Right.

[00:25:39] And look, I mean, I've said it before that the founder is the default CMO. Yeah. Right. They have the greatest amount of context. They, uh, have the vision while it's still developing and so on. Right. So, um, and they're going to have like tons of ideas.

[00:25:53] I mean, look, that is why they're founders. Right. I mean, and, and they want to act on these ideas. You just had to figure a way to kind of prioritize all of these things

[00:26:01] and show them that it is being done, but it is being done at a particular time in relevance. Yeah. Right. Um, one of the things you mentioned with Freshworks is that you should have invested a lot more in brand upfront. Right.

[00:26:15] Um, and I like the kind of approach that you've taken with SpendFlow. Uh, and you know, a few of these folks are doing the same thing, similar thing, which is investing in brand from day one, right?

[00:26:24] Because the mindset earlier was, Hey, brand is like a big company thing. Yeah. Let's get to a particular scale and then start like, you know, investing in brand, but I love that you guys are doing it from day one onward, right?

[00:26:36] So, so what are those things that you are doing on the brand front and stuff that, you know, another early stage startup can adopt. Right. I think brands become super critical today, right? Like if you think about it, because the number of companies that are there

[00:26:50] in each category slash verticals become like just a large, right? And the only way for you to stand out or probably be in that top three or top four, right? Like when you, when you want to buy a mobile phone, right? Like how do you generally pick, right?

[00:27:04] Like you'll, you'll probably have four brands on the top of your mind, what, what, what mobile phones brands come to your mind. So non-Apple, non-China, which leaves me with Google basically as a default option, but yeah, any product I would just basically ask the

[00:27:18] smartest guy I know about it. So actually this, this again comes from Girish, right? Like he says, how do you get invited to the party? Right? So like when you, when you think of buying a TV or a mobile phone or anything, right?

[00:27:31] Like you probably remember three or four brands, right? And that's the concentration circle, right? If you don't get into that, you're going to lose out. Right? So how do you play that brand card as early is what we desire. We wanted to.

[00:27:46] And if you like, so I think the way we approached it was we realized our color was pink, right? Like, so I think we took the, instead of probably shying away, initially I was a little, but I think my, my CEO kind of convinced me on

[00:28:01] it and I'm actually glad that he did. So we, we decided to kind of take that with a lot of like pride and we also decided to just build on top of it. Right? Like today the pink is a very standout pink.

[00:28:15] If you see it's just very anti enterprise, anti SaaS. I mean, I think one of my co-founders says we'll be the pink in the world of blues, right? So, because if you see most of the enterprise SaaS company has a blue

[00:28:29] logo and it's just not the brand color, but the way, let's, let's say the website, the product, the experience that they have, like even like at an event or a webinar or how do you make it look, make us look like a big company. Right?

[00:28:45] Like I think you should, you should know how to fake it till you make it, right? Because immediately you're not going to be, be like a say a hundred million ARR company. Yeah. So how do you appear like that was the, was the question that we

[00:28:57] wanted to answer ourselves and what will build trust, right? Because if you're especially dealing with finance leaders in the U S a lot of them go by trust, right? Like they're very, very discovers. Right? So you had to build trust and build brand from day one.

[00:29:12] So we did a lot of activities around there, right? Like say beta in-person events, right? Like be it are the way we did our reports, the way we did our content, the way we did our webinars, right?

[00:29:23] Or even like, let's say we were coming up with like a lot more initiatives around that. To be able to build trust from day one. And we were like, Hey, you know what? You don't necessarily have to buy really can still come to our events, right?

[00:29:36] Like you can still be a part of our webinars. You can still be a part of our community. Right? So all of that, I think automatically started building trust and we've had people refer us just at a third level, third degree, fourth degree.

[00:29:51] And it comes in as direct traffic today, right? Like then like it seems like, Oh, okay. We've increased organic, but you actually think about it. It's all brand that's, that's a repaying in some format. Yeah. See for a customer, right?

[00:30:05] I mean, my perspective is the customer doesn't see a brand campaign very differently from a demand campaign. I mean, who the hell differentiates, right? I mean, you don't see a billboard and think that, Oh, this is a brand campaign. I have to react a certain way.

[00:30:17] Market is due, but customers don't. Don't, right? I mean, uh, uh, and so I always find that, you know, this whole brand and demand and suppression slightly like, okay. I mean, at a certain scale, maybe you have to sort it out, but initially

[00:30:31] I think everything is a brand thing. Right? Right. Um, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's very interesting as well. Right. So you mentioned, um, events and, um, you know, thought leadership and so on. I did see your, uh, state of SAS pending report that you guys put

[00:30:45] out very neat, very well done, but your event strategy, right. Is amazing. Like I see that you guys are at like, God knows how many of these, uh, you know, round tables that you've organized and so on. Right. So walk us through your event playbook. Sure.

[00:30:59] Uh, so I think when we started out, we obviously went to a lot of the conferences, right? Uh, but what we realized was they were treating us like a vendor, right? Like, I mean, a vendor prospect relationship, right?

[00:31:11] Like, so we, instead we wouldn't, we didn't want to appear like that. And we wanted to be more of partners in this conversation, right? Like, Hey, we're going to help you and you're going to like, I mean, get benefited out of it. Right.

[00:31:21] Like that's how we wanted to position this. So that's where we kind of pivoted to the round tables model, where we decided to do a lot more intimate, uh, eight to 15 people round tables across different cities in the U S as well as UK.

[00:31:36] And what we realized was we were able to have a lot of quality conversations just beyond what we were doing, right? Like we necessarily did not pitch in most of these dinners. It was mostly like a, like a casual conversation where we spoke about

[00:31:51] what series are you binge watching to probably, how was the traffic? Like I think it's just us trying to connect with them on a more personal level, which really helped in just doing, we obviously didn't shy away from selling as well, right?

[00:32:04] Like, I mean, obviously my CF was going to ask me the right questions. Whenever we do these round table dinners across different cities, uh, we decided to kind of build the trust first and build that relationship.

[00:32:17] And even when we've invited them, like when we've sent them emails or when we've sent them say, um, invites across any platform for that matter. They've never been like, Oh, stop emailing me. Because it still feels like, Hey, you know what? Does it dinner and event invite?

[00:32:32] Why don't you join? Right. Like, so it, it, it, it still feels like a community and we've started building our community as well. So we have like a lot of members around that. So walk us through like pre-event at event post-event, what happens. Right.

[00:32:46] Um, so as I understand you have SDRs here, we're calling into, uh, I don't want to call prospects, but who are calling into personas that you want at the event, uh, right. You have a certain number of confirmations and then what happens? Where do you put them up?

[00:33:00] What is the format of the event? Right. Um, and so on. Right. So we obviously don't initially call them because we feel calling is a very prospect behavior. Right. So we want to kind of shy away from that.

[00:33:10] We mostly relied on emails because it feels like an event invite. Right. So they obviously, uh, we, we don't allow everyone to come in and attend. Right. Like we also want to keep it very invite only select.

[00:33:21] So in fact, the RSVP on the, the, the, the CTA on the landing page would say get an invite or apply it right. Right. So, uh, that kind of makes it feel a little more exclusive. And if we want to have like about 15 people come in, we probably

[00:33:38] have like 30, 35 people apply. Whereas we'll obviously eliminate like eight, 10 people, because they're probably not, uh, like they're probably sales people. They're probably not relevant for us again. It's not necessarily from an ICP standpoint, but it's just that

[00:33:52] we want to keep like, because what we realized was if you want to broaden the audience too much, it loses the impact of the conversations at the dinner table. Right. It feels very like, I mean, very all over the place and we realized, okay, you know what?

[00:34:08] Even if it's going to be five people at the dinner table, let them have a very meaningful conversation. True. So we kind of send out the invites. Um, the team does a very good job of, uh, setting up calendar

[00:34:18] invites, uh, Uber cards, uh, like just ensuring they're able to come and attend because again, they are at the end of the day prospects for us. So we want to give them that right experience. Right. So dinners happen for about two to three hours if we're

[00:34:33] hosting a dinner, breakfast, lunches, depending on which city. Uh, how do we assume the traffic to be in that city? I like, for example, a city like New York is always like filled with traffic in the evening.

[00:34:45] So you got to plan the day out and you never do events on a Monday and a Friday, right? Because it doesn't like the turnout is always poor. You send out invites. Um, they, they apply, uh, like you, you, I think zoom info or a,

[00:35:01] like any list building, um, tool will be able to help you get the, the lists for prospects in different cities. And then once you get that list, um, you're able to screen through and send them calendar invites.

[00:35:15] And, uh, once they show up, it's more mostly like it's going to be like a three hour dinner. Right. So where the first 45 minutes is mostly welcome and like a reception sort of a thing, and then followed by one and a half hours of a conversation. Right.

[00:35:28] Again, this is not very structured. We kind of keep it a little free flowing where we probably open up with like an icebreaker question saying, Hey, uh, probably a fun question or a slightly serious question as well.

[00:35:40] And one advice that I'd probably give to marketers on that front, right? Because I've been the one moderating most of these dinner round tables is irrespective of who your ICP is. Don't try to sound like the expert, right? Because you're not right.

[00:35:54] Because like, for example, if you're selling to say procurement, you're selling to say IT, you're selling to tech, you're selling to anyone, right? Like you're, you're a marketer at the end of the day. Be that marketer. Right.

[00:36:06] So I've mostly opened up the conversation with saying, Hey, you know what? I'm just a marketer. I'm probably not going to understand half of the things that you're going to be saying, but I'll be the facilitator for this conversation.

[00:36:15] I'll enable it with the right questions and I might ask you like some dumb questions, but just don't worry. Right. And they've really appreciated that honesty. Initially I tried faking it. Right. I thought that's what they're going to appreciate.

[00:36:31] But then me being me, uh, was, was helping a lot better. Right. So obviously we give away, uh, it's also, this just becomes like a conversation. They're like, for example, if I say, Hey, what does why more do?

[00:36:43] They're obviously going to come back and ask me what I spend flow. So that's my chance to probably give like a very quick elevator pitch. And I probably use this to also just understand if they're a relevant audience for us or if they have a problem, which

[00:36:56] we'd be able to help with. If we don't, we'd probably not just proceed with it. And the important piece with respect to events, right. It's just to ensure you close the loop properly.

[00:37:07] I think a lot of the folks know how to run the event really well, but I don't think they've done a good job in the, the follow up slash closing the loop. I think one practice that we started building was just ensuring

[00:37:20] mapping, uh, the prospects to relevant people, right? Depending on who spoke to who and what sort of conversations happened. So it's being mapped to each individual. And we kind of segregated as hot, warm and cold and kind of act accordingly. Do it.

[00:37:37] Uh, obviously I don't want to reveal sequences and what we do with it because we still like an early stage company. So, yeah, no, that's definitely interesting. I mean, I've run some of these round tables in Southeast Asia, U S and so on.

[00:37:50] Um, and it's a lot more intimate, uh, uh, setting, right. Uh, whereas at a large trade show or an, you know, one of these exhibition type of booths, I mean, you're having quick conversations with people and they're moving on, right.

[00:38:03] And they're talking to like 20 of you, uh, basically, uh, but yeah, this is a great setting and also there's this law of reciprocity or something. Right. I mean, that is a lot more gratitude. They feel obliged to do something.

[00:38:16] Not that you're going to make like a large ask just that, Hey, can we have only introduction at the end of the day? And only if it makes sense for them, they're going to come forward and we've seen that happening. Yeah. So, um, on that note, right.

[00:38:30] I mean, we spoke about us expansion. Um, a lot of the SAS firms obviously are us first today, right. Like spend flow. Uh, you know, there are gone other days when, you know, you did India, Southeast Asia, uh, you know, maybe, uh, uh, Middle East and then,

[00:38:47] you know, went to the U S at the end of it. Uh, today, a lot of the startups are us first, right. Uh, what are some two or three things on the U S expansion side that, uh, you can give the audience?

[00:38:57] So honestly, U S is a great market. And I think as you mentioned earlier, COVID's helped, um, really flatten the earth to a better, this thing, except for the time zone today. I think the reason why a lot of the companies don't focus on the

[00:39:11] U S as a market is probably because of the 12 hour or the 13 hour difference between us and them. And you don't find a lot of people willing to spend the night hours. Right? Like, I think that's one challenge that even like for be it SDRs or

[00:39:25] be it sales reps, be it, uh, even product people, right? Like they don't want to be able to support U S because of that reason. But I think it's a great market for two reasons, right?

[00:39:35] Like one, they know the value of a product or a offering or a solution, right? Like whatever it is, they understand what it brings to them and the willingness to buy new products ahead of the curve, right?

[00:39:49] Like try out new products, experiment the ability to kind of, uh, or the willingness to gauge new products is a lot more higher. Right? So if you're really trying to crack a new market, uh, I think, I think, uh, someone actually recently mentioned India is probably the

[00:40:06] most difficult market because it's very hard to sell to Indians. Right. Uh, the way they perceive values is very different, but I think one thing that I've noticed in the U S is very, uh, like straightforward and it's easier to do business with them, just that it's obviously

[00:40:22] hard to crack in the beginning. But once you do that, you know, it's a lot more straightforward approach. Right. A couple of hacks is especially for Indian companies. They're like, I'm going to talk from that perspective. They don't know you, right?

[00:40:37] Like, so you have to build that trust. Um, you cannot just appear like a very shoddy. You can't have a shoddy website. You can't have like a, like a very poor looking brand or like a poor looking, even like your LinkedIn DP can't look bad. Right.

[00:40:53] So you have to do all of that to build trust that goes back to the brand piece where if you look like the company that's, that's able to support them, that's able to cater to them, that's able to give

[00:41:06] them the product or the service or the solution that they need. That's when it's going to happen. Right. So today, when I, when I go and look at a lot of the Indian SaaS websites, right? Like they can, they can do a lot better. Right.

[00:41:18] So I think that's where it starts. I think Suresh, uh, Suresh, someone from Kissflow used to say it, right? Like your website is your first product, right? Because no, not a lot of people treat it like that.

[00:41:28] If you see, look at the products, the product will be a lot more robust in comparison to their website. They don't focus on their website. If you think, oh no, we're outbound. So we don't have a lot of, uh, like website traffic, but when you,

[00:41:41] when you hit outbound, they're going to come and check your website out. Like you just don't know. So you have to ensure that all the, wherever your prospect or customer is going to view you, you are present and you have a good profile.

[00:41:55] Be it a G2, be it a Google reviews or whatever, right? Like whichever platform. I think the third is just the mentality shift, right? Uh, you're going to spend in dollars. It's, it's going to be expensive, right? But you'll have to make that plunge.

[00:42:10] And even like, let's say if you're going to do an event, or if you're going to be spending like a week over there, if you're, and if you're always going to do the U S to I N R math, uh, you're going to go crazy. Yeah. Right.

[00:42:19] Um, so you just have to be a little more calm patient. It's going to take time. It's going to be hard. Not that everyone's going to take money as well. Yeah. It's going to take money as well. Right.

[00:42:28] Like, uh, and, but if you are able to crack it, I think there's a good, uh, like a large pool of Indian founders that are cracking it today and are making it really big, uh, they're growing really well, right?

[00:42:41] I think, um, even compared to some of the other countries and even the U S companies out there. Yeah. Yeah. No, uh, very relevant points for sure. Right? I think, uh, you know, somehow we feel that you can brute force a market, uh, right.

[00:42:54] You'll run a bunch of LinkedIn ads or, you know, whatever, and you'll get those first few dollars rolling in. But then you realize once you spend on that, that the conversions will improve only if you, you know, really spend on brand rate, I mean that

[00:43:09] you look, look the part as such. Nobody is going to come and give money to, you know, uh, nobody. Right. I mean, so, so that's really basic is running the deal cycle. Right? Like if you look, if you don't look professional on your calls

[00:43:23] with, with your prospects, they're going to run away. Right. Like, so yeah, like very basic things, just ensuring your, how your deck, how your discovery deck looks like. Yeah. All right. We're going to end this with some advice to start a founders on

[00:43:36] how to build a marketing function. Uh, right. Many of folks out there, uh, want the true force multiplier, which marketing can be, uh, right? So if me as a founder, um, is looking to do the zero to one on marketing, uh, what should I do?

[00:43:52] Who should I hire? Uh, and so on. I know this can be a podcast in itself, but give us like the concise version. Uh, I think, uh, if you're, if you're able to find someone who's been there done that before, nothing like it, but if you're able to

[00:44:06] find someone who's super curious and is willing to work, like a lot of the market has actually want to work with founders, right? I think they get very excited, uh, wanting to work with founders directly.

[00:44:19] So if you're able to find someone with a good energy and with just good curiosity, good attention to detail and good communication, I think solves for a like a, like at least the early marketer, right? Like because you're not going to find an expert immediately, right?

[00:44:35] Because you're also trying to validate a lot of things. And if you want someone to run with you, that's, but if you're able to find someone who's been there done that through your network or someone who trusts you and comes along great.

[00:44:48] Uh, but even there, I think two to three things that probably founders should also be, um, uh, like cognizant about is just marketing. Sometimes it takes time, right? You, you're going to try like a bunch of things. Yeah. Uh, it can be expensive.

[00:45:03] Public services announcement for all marketers out there, right? They're going to snip this part and show it to their founder. Yeah. So I've seen salespeople say, Hey, you know what? We're going to have a ramp time of two quarters, but marketing

[00:45:15] will be like, uh, like founders generally go to marketers and be like, Hey, can we get leads next week? Right? Like it'll be like, hello, wait, it takes time. But I think I've been a little lucky with both my co-founders,

[00:45:25] uh, honestly where they've been pretty understanding of the way, uh, we've been able to scale marketing at SpendFlow. And, uh, the, the, this, this has happened to even at SpendFlow. Right? Like I, and I, I mentioned this earlier.

[00:45:39] Um, it's, it's great for you to have a lot of ideas, just hold back a little, right? Like, I mean, because you're going to probably get too excited. And if the more number of ideas, right? Like again, as marketing takes a lot of time, every new thing is

[00:45:56] going to like every new idea, every new initiative is going to take a lot more effort and. A lot of half-baked execution is not going to really help the company in any format. Um, yeah, I think just trust the marketer a little initially, because

[00:46:13] I've, I've heard this from a lot of the marketers, uh, as well where, um, um, like, I mean, yeah, like my marketing doesn't do good job. And like they're there always in a lot of the companies that I've spoken

[00:46:27] to the marketers, marketers get pushed over a lot, right? They feel like, Hey, you know what sales comes and rules over them and say, uh, like every other function for that matter. So just being a lot more respectful, I think, yeah, okay.

[00:46:39] Because marketing is also young in India in SAS specifically. So just giving it the due time to be able to grow and execute. No, it's hard, man. I mean, uh, you know, I have founders reach out to me for

[00:46:52] marketing advice and the first thing I try to do is understand whatever marketing is doing right now. I mean, because it's easy for you to just sit back and give gun on like, you know, what things should be and so on. Um, but it's, it's really hard, right?

[00:47:07] And every context is different, right? I mean, it doesn't guarantee success that, you know, just because you've done whatever, uh, it's a, it's a new game out there. I mean, it's a new pitch for sure. Very interesting anecdote, right? Like a founder came up to me.

[00:47:21] This was like a couple of years ago where he said, Hey, you know what? Uh, do you know a way to find and hire product marketing interns? I was like, wait, those two don't go along with each other, right? Because you need to have context.

[00:47:34] You need to have that level of understanding of the market to be able to do product marketing itself. Yeah. All right. We're going to continue this conversation off camera and, uh, you know, uh, about like some of the marketing things, uh, but not for you guys.

[00:47:49] Uh, thanks so much for joining us on this episode. Uh, I'll be back with another interesting startup operator. So see you soon.