This week's guest is Udit Goenka, the founder of PitchGround, a leading online marketplace that seamlessly connects early-stage SaaS startups and eager early adopters with small and medium businesses. Since its launch in September 2018, Udit has guided PitchGround to achieve over $20M in sales as one of the top bootstrapped SaaS companies in India - an impressive accomplishment!
Udit's journey serves as solid proof that launching a successful startup doesn't require massive amounts of capital. All it takes is an innovative idea and exceptional execution. So dive into this incredibly engaging episode about Udit's inspiring journey of bootstrapping PitchGround to $20M within the competitive landscape of Indian SaaS startups.
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Saikat Pyne: Hi, I'm Sekar marketer, creative and media nerd. Welcome to
00:00:10
Saikat Pyne: the you incorporated podcast On this show, I catch up
00:00:15
Saikat Pyne: with some of the most bad ass founders, business leaders
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Saikat Pyne: and content creators in the whole wide world. Whether you're
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Saikat Pyne: a marketer, creative or a budding founder, if you want
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Saikat Pyne: to build your brand your voice your way, you are
00:00:31
Saikat Pyne: in the right place.
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Saikat Pyne: Join me on the you incorporated podcast and start building
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Saikat Pyne: your empire. Here we go.
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Saikat Pyne: Please join me in welcoming U Goenka, the founder of
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Saikat Pyne: Pitch Ground, an online marketplace that bridges the gap between
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Saikat Pyne: early state SAS companies and early adopters and SME s
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Saikat Pyne: around the world.
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Saikat Pyne: Having launched pitch ground in September 2018, ODI has led
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Saikat Pyne: it to over $5 million in sales as a bootstrapped company,
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Saikat Pyne: quite a feat in today's day and age when loss
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Saikat Pyne: making startups dump billion dollar valuations on retail investors. ODI
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Saikat Pyne: is also the founder of first sales, a tool that
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Saikat Pyne: helps you generate conversations and only sends you engaged leads
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Saikat Pyne: right to your inbox.
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Saikat Pyne: He is also a very prolific angel investor and has
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Saikat Pyne: invested in over 24 startups over the past year and
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Saikat Pyne: a half alone.
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Saikat Pyne: Welcome to the show that,
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Udit Goenka: uh, thank you so much for inviting me. It's an
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Udit Goenka: absolute pleasure and honour to be here.
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Saikat Pyne: I'd love to dig into your journey with pitch ground.
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Saikat Pyne: Tell me, how did the idea of really come about
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Saikat Pyne: in your mind?
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Udit Goenka: It was. It's actually quite an interesting story. So when
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Udit Goenka: I was working on my last startup, I ended up
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Udit Goenka: losing about $200 of my money. Every possible decision that
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Udit Goenka: you can think could go right, went wrong, right from
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Udit Goenka: hiring people to execution, to
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Udit Goenka: launching the product, to just focusing on hoping that let's
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Udit Goenka: just keep going. Everything I tried, it just kept failing
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Udit Goenka: and to a point that after two years, I couldn't
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Udit Goenka: put any more money into the project, and I just
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Udit Goenka: had to shut it down, especially because of the fact
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Udit Goenka: that I did not even see any sort of progress
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Udit Goenka: that could happen. So my hope completely died out on
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Udit Goenka: that particular project,
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Udit Goenka: and right after that, I went into a very heavy
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Udit Goenka: clinical depression for roughly around nine months, and this was
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Udit Goenka: one of the most difficult phase of my life. And
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Udit Goenka: when I started looking to come out of that depression,
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Udit Goenka: I started looking to give myself a closure. It's very
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Udit Goenka: important for us and people to realise that in order
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Udit Goenka: for you to truly move on, be it any kind
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Udit Goenka: of relationship, either either a personal relationship, professional relationship or
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Udit Goenka: your relationship with your work itself. You have to give
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Udit Goenka: yourself closure.
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Udit Goenka: And in order to give yourself closure, you have to
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Udit Goenka: find some answers. So while I was trying to find
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Udit Goenka: out answers, I landed on this amazing video by Simon
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Udit Goenka: Sinek on Ted X on YouTube. And he spoke about
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Udit Goenka: the why and how important it is to find out
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Udit Goenka: your why That truly changed my mind because
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Udit Goenka: we are all taught in schools and colleges, the answers
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Udit Goenka: to a question. But we're never taught what questions to
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Udit Goenka: be asked in the first place. And when I looked
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Udit Goenka: up into the video, I was like, I'm asking myself
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Udit Goenka: the wrong question the whole time because we've been just
00:03:36
Udit Goenka: been trained to ask wrong questions or in fact, just
00:03:38
Udit Goenka: look for an answer all the time. So I started
00:03:41
Udit Goenka: finding out, like why my startup failed and I landed
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Udit Goenka: on this article by Lighter Capital, which is one of
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Udit Goenka: the biggest de fund V C in US that funds
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Udit Goenka: a companies that said
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Udit Goenka: 92% of the SAS companies fail within the first three
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Udit Goenka: or first three years of running their business. Right now,
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Udit Goenka: when I read that,
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Udit Goenka: I was like, This is me, that's me. That 92%
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Udit Goenka: is me and I finally started finding some answers and
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Udit Goenka: that started giving me a lot of ideas, strategy, what
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Udit Goenka: to do, What not to do because I just kept
00:04:17
Udit Goenka: digging and researching more about what's happening. What's not happening.
00:04:20
Udit Goenka: I spoke to hundreds of various as founders. After that,
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Udit Goenka: I reached out to them and I asked them like
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Udit Goenka: Why did you fail? What did you do? Because whenever
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Udit Goenka: sort of any founders generally fail, they end up writing
00:04:32
Udit Goenka: like a LinkedIn post or a Twitter tweet Or they
00:04:36
Udit Goenka: go on Reddit. They write something somewhere, and I just
00:04:40
Udit Goenka: started reaching out to many of them, and I realised
00:04:43
Udit Goenka: that
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Udit Goenka: the problem has been that out of that 92% of
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Udit Goenka: the companies that fail 88% of those companies are built
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Udit Goenka: by developers. They don't understand marketing. They don't understand communication.
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Udit Goenka: They don't understand distribution in short. And this is where
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Udit Goenka: about 88% of the companies and I decided that I
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Udit Goenka: want to solve this problem because I have been there
00:05:07
Udit Goenka: and I have been a marketer my whole life,
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Udit Goenka: and I finally decided to just understand what would be
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Udit Goenka: the best mode of way to solve this problem in masses.
00:05:16
Udit Goenka: So while I figured out one problem statement very well,
00:05:21
Udit Goenka: I thought that marketplace would be a great model. But
00:05:23
Udit Goenka: in order to build a marketplace, you also need to
00:05:26
Udit Goenka: have the second side of demand generation done, which is
00:05:29
Udit Goenka: someone looking to buy because I had already figured out
00:05:32
Udit Goenka: that who would come and sell on the platform.
00:05:34
Udit Goenka: And I started talking to a lot of people again
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Udit Goenka: to a point that I understood. One major pain point
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Udit Goenka: of a lot of SME s was they couldn't afford
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Udit Goenka: to buy expensive Softwares where all of these big software
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Udit Goenka: enterprise Softwares available in the market back in those days
00:05:51
Udit Goenka: about 5, 40 or five years ago, they were very expensive.
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Udit Goenka: Your average billing for just one software would be anywhere
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Udit Goenka: from 5000 to $15 annually. That's a bare minimum billing.
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Udit Goenka: And to have and operate an online business and grow
00:06:05
Udit Goenka: an online business, you generally require a combination of about
00:06:08
Udit Goenka: like 10 to 15 Softwares.
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Udit Goenka: There's a stat that says that on an average, an
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Udit Goenka: enterprise uses 1 22 Softwares in a given year. So
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Udit Goenka: imagine that if an enterprise is using 1 22 Softwares,
00:06:21
Udit Goenka: a business, an active small business will at least require,
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Udit Goenka: like 1% of those Softwares to at least operate. And
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Udit Goenka: they couldn't buy and purchase and spend over 100 and
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Udit Goenka: 50 to $250 a year on software because that's not
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Udit Goenka: even the kind of revenue they were making. And this
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Udit Goenka: is where I started partnering up with these early stage
00:06:39
Udit Goenka: companies because for them,
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Udit Goenka: revenue was the least of an issue because they can
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Udit Goenka: go and raise capital for them. It was early adoption
00:06:47
Udit Goenka: and people talking about the product and giving them the
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Udit Goenka: feedback to understand which direction software companies needs to go
00:06:54
Udit Goenka: to because you can build a tonne of features. But
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Udit Goenka: companies want to focus on features that will bring them revenue.
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Udit Goenka: And how will that happen? Is when you build the
00:07:02
Udit Goenka: software
00:07:03
Udit Goenka: and you start talking to those paid users because they
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Udit Goenka: would be the one sharing the problem. And you exactly
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Udit Goenka: want to build what the people want. This is where
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Udit Goenka: the entire idea of page originated. And 25th of September
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Udit Goenka: of 2018. This is the date I would never forget
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Udit Goenka: to probably forget my birth. But this is the date
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Udit Goenka: that changed my entire life and launch Pi pi with
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Udit Goenka: a simple M V p and then never look back.
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Saikat Pyne: What was the first version of pitch ground? What did
00:07:32
Saikat Pyne: it look like?
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Udit Goenka: Oh, it was a very simple marketplace. It was full
00:07:36
Udit Goenka: of bugs. I still remember, right until five minutes prior
00:07:40
Udit Goenka: as well. There were a couple of API s broken.
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Udit Goenka: I was like, What's going on? What's not going on?
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Udit Goenka: I'm not sure what's gonna happen. Can it handle the
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Udit Goenka: load or not? And boom. Within 21 days, we did about,
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Udit Goenka: I think, $85 in revenue,
00:07:52
Udit Goenka: uh, within just 21 days of the launch. Uh, everything
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Udit Goenka: went well, though the platform was still buggy, but we
00:07:59
Udit Goenka: still somehow managed to do it. So that's a beauty
00:08:00
Udit Goenka: about tech that launch early. Don't wait for the perfect
00:08:04
Udit Goenka: time because that perfect time will never come. You just
00:08:06
Udit Goenka: have to launch and keep on launching again and again
00:08:09
Udit Goenka: and again and just keep scaling up.
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Saikat Pyne: And what was the setup like when you launched the
00:08:13
Saikat Pyne: M v.
00:08:14
Udit Goenka: P? It was just me all around. That's it. Oh, wow.
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Saikat Pyne: So you put it all together and you launched the
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Saikat Pyne: M V p Everything from Web development to u i
00:08:23
Saikat Pyne: u x It was just you through and through trying
00:08:26
Saikat Pyne: to just build this on your own.
00:08:28
Udit Goenka: Absolutely. So it was very basic that I put up
00:08:30
Udit Goenka: because I come from a development background.
00:08:32
Udit Goenka: I was able to put up something very basic to
00:08:34
Udit Goenka: get going because my entire train of thought was, I
00:08:37
Udit Goenka: need to test the idea before I can even scale up.
00:08:41
Udit Goenka: So that's it. I had already lost a lot of money,
00:08:43
Udit Goenka: so I wasn't courageous enough to put in more money,
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Udit Goenka: and I did not know it will work out or not.
00:08:49
Udit Goenka: But I didn't want to not try it either, because
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Udit Goenka: unless until you give it a shot you would not know.
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Udit Goenka: So one thing that I learned from my previous failure
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Udit Goenka: was build less and sell more.
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Udit Goenka: Keep it very precise to just one or two use case.
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Udit Goenka: That's it build. And if you can't find at least
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Udit Goenka: like 100 paying customers for just one use case, it's
00:09:09
Udit Goenka: impossible for you to find, like, more than that, customers
00:09:12
Udit Goenka: for even multiple use cases. If you're solving because the
00:09:15
Udit Goenka: more customers you on board, the more people will demand.
00:09:17
Udit Goenka: That's a like a chicken and egg situation
00:09:20
Udit Goenka: like you will just keep developing the app or platform
00:09:23
Udit Goenka: over and over again, so build less, sell more. That's
00:09:27
Udit Goenka: was my one of my biggest takeaway from my previous startup.
00:09:30
Udit Goenka: You made a great
00:09:31
Saikat Pyne: point there, but how do you build less and sell more?
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Saikat Pyne: How did the first couple of clients of
00:09:39
Saikat Pyne: come on board?
00:09:40
Udit Goenka: So selling and marketing has never been a major challenge
00:09:42
Udit Goenka: for me. That's been my strength since a very long time,
00:09:45
Udit Goenka: because when I started my career as a designer, then
00:09:48
Udit Goenka: developer and then turned myself into a marketing and sales person,
00:09:51
Udit Goenka: which was a very natural provision for me because I'm
00:09:53
Udit Goenka: a marwari without even realising that every marwari have the
00:09:57
Udit Goenka: ability to sell,
00:09:58
Udit Goenka: they don't have to learn. It's just there in their blood.
00:10:00
Udit Goenka: They just have to trigger that That touch point of
00:10:03
Udit Goenka: their is that. Hey, you can just go out there
00:10:05
Udit Goenka: and sell and link somewhere. Yes, there's somewhere, right? Absolutely.
00:10:11
Udit Goenka: So
00:10:12
Udit Goenka: I just went into it, right. So when I get
00:10:14
Udit Goenka: got going, remember that I also had a couple of
00:10:17
Udit Goenka: previous previous exits as well before my last start of fail.
00:10:20
Udit Goenka: So I had some audience already prior to going ahead
00:10:23
Udit Goenka: and launching that. So I used with I launched with
00:10:26
Udit Goenka: those existing audience itself. And also when my last start
00:10:29
Udit Goenka: of fail I had on boarded like a decent number
00:10:31
Udit Goenka: of users over there, I did tell them the truth. Honestly,
00:10:34
Udit Goenka: what happened? What not happened? I even posted on my LinkedIn.
00:10:36
Udit Goenka: I shared it with all of them. I sent out
00:10:38
Udit Goenka: an email. So when I launched this particular platform, they
00:10:41
Udit Goenka: could relate to my pain. And they were like, I
00:10:43
Udit Goenka: think with the the second shot, and I offered them
00:10:46
Udit Goenka: some credits free credits to just get started with because
00:10:50
Udit Goenka: they did invest. They did buy my software. I didn't so,
00:10:54
Udit Goenka: like any any earlier adopter comes in. You generally call
00:10:56
Udit Goenka: them as an investor, right? They don't. They don't, though
00:10:58
Udit Goenka: they don't hold any equity in your company.
00:11:01
Udit Goenka: They're still like investing in you, right in a way
00:11:03
Udit Goenka: that they're buying your product so your customers will always
00:11:06
Udit Goenka: remain your best investors Ultimately. So I already had a
00:11:09
Udit Goenka: small bit of that audience to get going with, and
00:11:13
Udit Goenka: I I got that faith thrust of them back, and
00:11:16
Udit Goenka: I was just able to get going from there.
00:11:19
Saikat Pyne: And what did pitch grounds marketing look like in the
00:11:22
Saikat Pyne: last year of its operations? How had you set it
00:11:26
Saikat Pyne: up both in terms of the team and in terms
00:11:28
Saikat Pyne: of marketing pitch ground to end?
00:11:32
Udit Goenka: One of my core friends prior to that had been
00:11:35
Udit Goenka: two specific channels, one of them being partnerships and outreach.
00:11:39
Udit Goenka: That's something that I think I've been doing since the
00:11:41
Udit Goenka: last 13 14 years as a channel, and the second
00:11:45
Udit Goenka: one had been performance marketing, and when I got some
00:11:49
Udit Goenka: initial traction, I now got the confidence to go ahead
00:11:52
Udit Goenka: and start using my credit card. So I had two
00:11:55
Udit Goenka: credit cards,
00:11:56
Udit Goenka: each having a limit of approximately, I think, five or
00:11:59
Udit Goenka: $6000 approximately. I think the currency rate back in those
00:12:03
Udit Goenka: days was around 68 or something like that. If I remember,
00:12:06
Udit Goenka: it was roughly around, like a total of $10 basically.
00:12:09
Udit Goenka: So I ended up utilising both my cards, put it
00:12:11
Udit Goenka: up on Facebook ads, and boom! Just invested all the
00:12:14
Udit Goenka: money over there.
00:12:15
Udit Goenka: Using that, I also knew that I would have 45 days,
00:12:18
Udit Goenka: which is like, good enough time for me to also
00:12:19
Udit Goenka: make the payment, as I wouldn't have to pay, like, immediately.
00:12:22
Udit Goenka: That helped me to, like, really scale up during the
00:12:24
Udit Goenka: initial days. So that's how I initially scaled up within
00:12:28
Udit Goenka: the first three months, and we ended up doing about, like,
00:12:30
Udit Goenka: $250 in just three months of 2018
00:12:34
Udit Goenka: and then after that for right away. After that. The
00:12:37
Udit Goenka: following year, I on boarded a couple of developers because
00:12:40
Udit Goenka: I couldn't focus on development anymore. And then I also
00:12:42
Udit Goenka: on boarded one customer support person, and I started scaling
00:12:46
Udit Goenka: up further from there and then eventually start building a
00:12:48
Udit Goenka: team as required. And then during this journey, I met
00:12:52
Udit Goenka: my second co-founder, my first co-founder, who is now our
00:12:55
Udit Goenka: CTO as well and
00:12:56
Udit Goenka: and also my previous co-founders Oscar. He ended up joining
00:12:59
Udit Goenka: this company as well with me because all of our
00:13:02
Udit Goenka: previous exits and failures had been together. So I reached
00:13:06
Udit Goenka: out to him and asked him that I want you
00:13:07
Udit Goenka: in this company. He didn't even think twice. He just
00:13:10
Udit Goenka: joined in and he's a second co-founder so really lucky
00:13:13
Udit Goenka: to have them. And that's how we've been able to
00:13:16
Udit Goenka: build like the core founding team. And, um,
00:13:19
Udit Goenka: for all the content side and everything. I asked my
00:13:21
Udit Goenka: sister to join him because she was working with biology
00:13:24
Udit Goenka: Telefilms back back in that time. So she was also
00:13:26
Udit Goenka: very frustrated to travel a lot, and she was like,
00:13:29
Udit Goenka: all working for quite a good number of weeks and months.
00:13:32
Udit Goenka: So she thought, This is a good opportunity, though she
00:13:35
Udit Goenka: joined me as well. So that's how we build like
00:13:36
Udit Goenka: the core team of the company.
00:13:39
Saikat Pyne: So just to get it right, your 1st, 2nd and
00:13:42
Saikat Pyne: 3rd hire were developer one person in customer support and
00:13:47
Saikat Pyne: then one person who eventually became the second co founder, right?
00:13:51
Saikat Pyne: These were the three first hired,
00:13:53
Udit Goenka: correct and then
00:13:54
Udit Goenka: had also joined me to handle a lot of the
00:13:56
Udit Goenka: content side of the things
00:13:57
Saikat Pyne: content, side of the things. And most of the marketing
00:14:00
Saikat Pyne: for the business was happening via channel partnerships or performance marketing.
00:14:05
Saikat Pyne: We
00:14:05
Udit Goenka: use three channels in total, and the way we built
00:14:07
Udit Goenka: a funnel was a little smart, right? So what I
00:14:10
Udit Goenka: did was I always knew one thing that if you
00:14:12
Udit Goenka: want to sell something, especially in the busy market, that
00:14:15
Udit Goenka: you do not dominate at all and you're just starting out.
00:14:17
Udit Goenka: Focus on one IC p. That's it. I speak a
00:14:20
Udit Goenka: lot about IC p everywhere because I think
00:14:23
Udit Goenka: that's something that a lot of people don't and a
00:14:25
Udit Goenka: lot of business owners won't focus on because people feel
00:14:27
Udit Goenka: everyone is a customer. But we add one or two
00:14:30
Udit Goenka: IC p. It stands for ID customer profile. You would
00:14:32
Udit Goenka: make far more money than anyone else. I realise that
00:14:35
Udit Goenka: agencies are usually the ones that require the least amount
00:14:39
Udit Goenka: of education they're already upgrading with regards to what's going on, right,
00:14:43
Udit Goenka: so If I reach out to an agency who's running
00:14:45
Udit Goenka: a digital marketing agency and I pay them for an
00:14:47
Udit Goenka: email marketing software, I don't have to tell them the
00:14:50
Udit Goenka: benefits of email marketing software.
00:14:52
Udit Goenka: I just have to tell them why they need to buy.
00:14:55
Udit Goenka: And what does the software will do in order to
00:14:58
Udit Goenka: help them? Right? So the why is something we have
00:15:01
Udit Goenka: to convince not the what and how the watt and
00:15:04
Udit Goenka: how is something they are already aware of. So I
00:15:06
Udit Goenka: started focusing on again the why that Simon spoke about
00:15:10
Udit Goenka: and my why
00:15:11
Udit Goenka: was agency because they were educated. So my buying cycle
00:15:16
Udit Goenka: will reduce drastically and for me to start pushing the
00:15:19
Udit Goenka: sales very early on in the marketplace and deliver the
00:15:22
Udit Goenka: results to the companies that are coming on our marketplace
00:15:24
Udit Goenka: as well. Our timing and sales uh, cycle was very critical,
00:15:29
Udit Goenka: and the field for us with agencies was less than
00:15:32
Udit Goenka: seven days, so that means the day we would pitch
00:15:34
Udit Goenka: to agency within seven days, they would make a purchase.
00:15:36
Udit Goenka: That's how was because again, we don't have to tell
00:15:39
Udit Goenka: and train them right. They already were aware of the
00:15:42
Udit Goenka: market So then what we started doing was Facebook Group
00:15:46
Udit Goenka: was out during that time. It was a very brand
00:15:49
Udit Goenka: new product by Facebook and they were pushing it very aggressively.
00:15:52
Udit Goenka: So one thing I have also and always realised, that
00:15:54
Udit Goenka: any time at any given point,
00:15:57
Udit Goenka: if a platform is releasing a new product, take advantage
00:16:00
Udit Goenka: of that, especially if it's a social product, because the
00:16:02
Udit Goenka: platform will invest all of their money in pushing that
00:16:06
Udit Goenka: particular product of theirs.
00:16:08
Udit Goenka: That's your time to leverage that as an opportunity because
00:16:11
Udit Goenka: they would open the flood doors of organic marketing.
00:16:14
Udit Goenka: And that's when I decided to build a Facebook group
00:16:17
Udit Goenka: instead of anything else. So my fun look like I
00:16:19
Udit Goenka: would outreach to agencies. Ask them that. Hey, why don't
00:16:22
Udit Goenka: you join in this community of mine, which consists of
00:16:25
Udit Goenka: a lot of agencies? Over here we talk about like automation,
00:16:28
Udit Goenka: goal sales and much more things they
00:16:32
Udit Goenka: loved in. They joined in right into the group and
00:16:34
Udit Goenka: then they would call all the products and everything and
00:16:37
Udit Goenka: they would come in and buy. So that's how we
00:16:38
Udit Goenka: have always been able to remain bootstrap as well because
00:16:41
Udit Goenka: we have always focused on a specific set of IC
00:16:44
Udit Goenka: P s. Even today, we only focus on just three IC.
00:16:47
Udit Goenka: P s in total, which is our agency. The second
00:16:50
Udit Goenka: is creators, which we started focusing on very recently. And
00:16:53
Udit Goenka: the third is like small business owners who are online
00:16:57
Saikat Pyne: Lovely, lovely love that There are so many things that
00:17:01
Saikat Pyne: I'd want to ask. But I'll try and go one
00:17:03
Saikat Pyne: by one. First is how did you land on your
00:17:06
Saikat Pyne: IC p? Was it the Marva instinct? How much of
00:17:10
Saikat Pyne: it was instinct? How much if of it was analytics?
00:17:13
Saikat Pyne: Based on the first couple of purchases,
00:17:16
Udit Goenka: I think it was 100% data. So for me, 2%
00:17:19
Udit Goenka: is got 98% is data. So if the data backs
00:17:22
Udit Goenka: it up, then chances of you being wrong is slim
00:17:26
Udit Goenka: to next. It's almost none. But if you're using any data,
00:17:29
Udit Goenka: chances of you going right is very high. The priority
00:17:32
Udit Goenka: is as good as 98%.
00:17:33
Udit Goenka: That's why I just trusted the data. And at the
00:17:35
Udit Goenka: same time, I've spoken to agencies in the past as well, right?
00:17:38
Udit Goenka: I never had to explain them the benefits of a
00:17:41
Udit Goenka: product but rather why they should get it right away.
00:17:44
Udit Goenka: So the why part was the easiest thing rather than
00:17:47
Udit Goenka: the how and what. So that sort of really helped
00:17:50
Udit Goenka: us to nail down and build a funnel. And more importantly,
00:17:53
Udit Goenka: the competition wasn't that much about five years ago. It's
00:17:56
Udit Goenka: very recent post covid,
00:17:57
Udit Goenka: that a lot of people have started focusing on building
00:18:01
Udit Goenka: a lot of fast. But prior to that pre covid,
00:18:04
Udit Goenka: the competition was not as fierce, right, so the options
00:18:07
Udit Goenka: were very limited. So people would just go and come
00:18:10
Udit Goenka: in and buy, because these products, especially getting it on
00:18:12
Udit Goenka: a lifetime deal, was something that people weren't even unsure.
00:18:16
Udit Goenka: In fact, I still remember some of the cold email
00:18:18
Udit Goenka: that we had sent out. People were like, Is this
00:18:20
Udit Goenka: even a thing?
00:18:22
Udit Goenka: Are you? Can I just buy the software at one
00:18:24
Udit Goenka: time price? Because I'm used to paying like 2000? Yeah,
00:18:28
Udit Goenka: like too good to be true. Like many people ignored
00:18:30
Udit Goenka: that email just because they thought it's too good to
00:18:32
Udit Goenka: be true, right? I told them, No, come here, I'll
00:18:34
Udit Goenka: make you speak to the founders. Then they asked me
00:18:37
Udit Goenka: why how and I told them, Look, these are early
00:18:39
Udit Goenka: stage founders, right? They need support. That's why they're ready
00:18:42
Udit Goenka: to offer such kind of prices. So there is nothing
00:18:44
Udit Goenka: that we ever heard from anyone. We have been openly
00:18:48
Udit Goenka: telling about this, that why we are able to do
00:18:50
Udit Goenka: it right?
00:18:51
Udit Goenka: So that built a lot of trust, apparently which some
00:18:54
Udit Goenka: of our competitors never shared and never spoke about right,
00:18:57
Udit Goenka: because they didn't want some secret to be out there
00:19:01
Udit Goenka: and versus us. We have been very transparent with our
00:19:03
Udit Goenka: customers at any given point, so we told them that look,
00:19:07
Udit Goenka: the companies are not looking to sell these licences for
00:19:10
Udit Goenka: this price for the rest of their life. They just
00:19:12
Udit Goenka: are looking to sell this to 200 to 500 customers. Right?
00:19:16
Udit Goenka: 500 customers is the most difficult one that will save
00:19:20
Udit Goenka: them at least 1 to 2 years of their journey,
00:19:22
Udit Goenka: also helping them give the right direction. So instead of
00:19:25
Udit Goenka: figuring out what to build, the those users will tell
00:19:29
Udit Goenka: what to build and when those features and solutions are built,
00:19:32
Udit Goenka: those 500 people will go and start talking about the
00:19:34
Udit Goenka: product everywhere that will also reduce the oral ca. That's
00:19:38
Udit Goenka: where a concept of community came into picture back in
00:19:41
Udit Goenka: those days. Now the community part has been talked about
00:19:43
Udit Goenka: by a lot of people. But back in those days,
00:19:45
Udit Goenka: about four or five years ago, the concept of community
00:19:47
Udit Goenka: was still very new online. So that's what we did.
00:19:50
Udit Goenka: And when people started buying those products and they started using,
00:19:53
Udit Goenka: they were amazed that we have customers that have saved
00:19:57
Udit Goenka: over $500 a year on software.
00:20:01
Udit Goenka: Yeah, so we still have those customers buying from us
00:20:03
Udit Goenka: every single month, right? Because we keep bringing exciting Softwares.
00:20:07
Udit Goenka: Now we keep bringing new Softwares, and again people are
00:20:10
Udit Goenka: able to save a lot of money in the end.
00:20:12
Udit Goenka: And that's the most important part. In the end,
00:20:14
Saikat Pyne: you led me on to my next question, which is
00:20:17
Saikat Pyne: once the customer. Bit of it is pretty sorted at
00:20:21
Saikat Pyne: your end with these channel partnerships and social media and
00:20:25
Saikat Pyne: performance marketing. What about the Onboarding part of it? How
00:20:29
Saikat Pyne: did you on board? Let's say the 1st 10 SAS companies,
00:20:33
Udit Goenka: I had been pretty active on a lot of different communities,
00:20:35
Udit Goenka: right or different communities on slag discord. I was also
00:20:38
Udit Goenka: very active on product, and I was also very active
00:20:41
Udit Goenka: on several other, like private communities, Facebook groups many people
00:20:44
Udit Goenka: would build. And also Twitter was one channel that I
00:20:47
Udit Goenka: would like constantly hang out at. I wasn't active, but
00:20:49
Udit Goenka: I would just check things out because, uh, a lot
00:20:52
Udit Goenka: of those indie indie a, uh right, which is like
00:20:56
Udit Goenka: the sores. Basically, they would build a lot of theirs
00:20:59
Udit Goenka: in public, which is they would just tweet it out.
00:21:01
Udit Goenka: And I started reaching out to them that, Hey, this
00:21:04
Udit Goenka: is not the way you can really grow because Twitter's
00:21:06
Udit Goenka: algorithm was not that good five years ago as it
00:21:10
Udit Goenka: is right now. So the reach is not going to
00:21:12
Udit Goenka: happen and plus a lot of people who are anyway
00:21:14
Udit Goenka: not using Twitter. So I reached out to them. I
00:21:16
Udit Goenka: told them, Look, I built a small community, so why
00:21:18
Udit Goenka: don't you just come and launch with us?
00:21:21
Udit Goenka: You is not getting traction. At least we can help
00:21:23
Udit Goenka: you build your initial set of 102 103 100 users
00:21:26
Udit Goenka: so that you can take it off much better from
00:21:28
Udit Goenka: them and understand why you're not able to find a
00:21:31
Udit Goenka: product market fit. Because if these people are not coming
00:21:33
Udit Goenka: and buying from you, even on a lifetime deal, that
00:21:36
Udit Goenka: means something is definitely wrong with your funnel, your messaging,
00:21:38
Udit Goenka: your communication and your product. Right? Because if someone is
00:21:41
Udit Goenka: not buying your product on lifetime deal,
00:21:44
Udit Goenka: it's a straightforward message that something is wrong and you
00:21:47
Udit Goenka: need to fix it. You need to identify the problem
00:21:49
Udit Goenka: and you need to fix it. So that's something that
00:21:52
Udit Goenka: became a core value proposition. That's what we started talking
00:21:54
Udit Goenka: to these companies and they started identifying the core USB.
00:21:59
Udit Goenka: But this is actually a brilliant idea. Let's just test
00:22:02
Udit Goenka: it out. They did. And since then, many of those
00:22:05
Udit Goenka: companies have grown to a point where about percent of
00:22:07
Udit Goenka: the companies that have worked with us have successfully raised capital. Today,
00:22:10
Saikat Pyne: coming back to the selling side of it, that what
00:22:14
Saikat Pyne: does marketing for pitch ground look like? Right now? What
00:22:17
Saikat Pyne: does the strategy look like?
00:22:18
Udit Goenka: So for the first three years,
00:22:20
Udit Goenka: we did the same thing, which is outreach. Get them
00:22:25
Udit Goenka: to the community and pitch them. That's all we did.
00:22:29
Udit Goenka: We did not do anything else beyond this. We were
00:22:32
Udit Goenka: definitely posting on social media. But posting on social media
00:22:34
Udit Goenka: doesn't mean growth, right? It just means posting. So we
00:22:37
Udit Goenka: are just posting for the sake of posting so that
00:22:39
Udit Goenka: when people look on our profiles, it looks like I
00:22:42
Udit Goenka: have that builds trust. That was the only reason. But then,
00:22:44
Udit Goenka: since last year, I started focusing on other channels where
00:22:48
Udit Goenka: my first channel was,
00:22:50
Udit Goenka: uh, Twitter. And at this time, I took a very
00:22:52
Udit Goenka: different approach. Rather than pushing our brand, I decided that
00:22:57
Udit Goenka: let's create a U G brand, which is a brand
00:22:59
Udit Goenka: on top of it, because I already had gained a
00:23:02
Udit Goenka: huge amount of experience. I had failure, successes, exits, enough information,
00:23:08
Udit Goenka: enough experience where
00:23:10
Udit Goenka: I felt my sort of knowledge and experience can help
00:23:14
Udit Goenka: a lot of people out. So when I spoke to
00:23:16
Udit Goenka: one of my good friend, he told me that was it, like,
00:23:18
Udit Goenka: you should probably start pushing some personal branding because most
00:23:20
Udit Goenka: of the content that we see around is pretty crap.
00:23:22
Udit Goenka: They're copy pasted online, right. You can share a lot
00:23:25
Udit Goenka: of your journey experience and the kind of data driven
00:23:28
Udit Goenka: approach that you take in your obsession for data that
00:23:30
Udit Goenka: you have generally that will really help you out and
00:23:32
Udit Goenka: inspire more people to take better decisions. And, more importantly,
00:23:35
Udit Goenka: they could learn from your life. So start building in public.
00:23:38
Udit Goenka: And that's when I decided that why not, like, just
00:23:41
Udit Goenka: try it out, right? The worst case After three months,
00:23:43
Udit Goenka: it's not gonna work. I'm continue to working on what
00:23:46
Udit Goenka: I'm doing, and it's working. But, hey, it's always good
00:23:49
Udit Goenka: to expand after a certain number of years. So start
00:23:53
Udit Goenka: focusing on Twitter, and
00:23:56
Udit Goenka: I think that was one of the best decisions I took.
00:23:58
Udit Goenka: It just blew up crazily, where in just about a
00:24:01
Udit Goenka: year of time, I went from almost like
00:24:04
Udit Goenka: 1500 followers on Twitter to almost 44 today for pretty
00:24:09
Udit Goenka: much a lot of V CS, a lot of big
00:24:12
Udit Goenka: V CS, a lot of big founders, a lot of
00:24:15
Udit Goenka: industry experts, pretty much everyone is following me on Twitter.
00:24:18
Udit Goenka: They all discovered me through Twitter,
00:24:20
Udit Goenka: and once that happened, I was like, I think it's
00:24:23
Udit Goenka: time to also start focusing on LinkedIn because while Linton
00:24:26
Udit Goenka: was just picking up, I didn't want to miss out
00:24:28
Udit Goenka: an opportunity because, um who knows? By the end of
00:24:32
Udit Goenka: I thought like by the end of 2022 LinkedIn will
00:24:34
Udit Goenka: be started with people. So it will get very difficult
00:24:37
Udit Goenka: to get in front of people, which we are already
00:24:39
Udit Goenka: seeing right now. After the next letter programme, especially. So
00:24:43
Udit Goenka: I just decided to go with Linkin, posted a few posts,
00:24:46
Udit Goenka: and I saw a good friend talking about the link
00:24:48
Udit Goenka: next letter programme.
00:24:50
Udit Goenka: I was like, Let me give it a try. There's 100%
00:24:53
Udit Goenka: possibility I'm not gonna get selected, right? Not even 99.9.
00:24:57
Udit Goenka: I was 100% sure that I would not be picked,
00:25:00
Udit Goenka: but I was like, Let's just take time and one
00:25:02
Udit Goenka: of those, like, boring afternoons where I had nothing else
00:25:04
Udit Goenka: to do. I was just feeling like, a little low.
00:25:06
Udit Goenka: I was like, Let me just fill this up. I
00:25:08
Udit Goenka: filled it up and then may I think it was
00:25:11
Udit Goenka: May 5th or something?
00:25:13
Udit Goenka: I got the email from them that you have been
00:25:15
Udit Goenka: picked up. I first check their email signature, right? And
00:25:19
Udit Goenka: d k i m to to check with. It's an
00:25:21
Udit Goenka: actual email from LinkedIn or someone has proved their email
00:25:24
Udit Goenka: and they sent out right. I checked. I saw that
00:25:27
Udit Goenka: it's actually from LinkedIn. And then I saw their announcement
00:25:30
Udit Goenka: as well for my name. And then I was like, OK,
00:25:32
Udit Goenka: this is official. I was very excited, so that became
00:25:35
Udit Goenka: my second channel. And the incentive that they gave sort
00:25:38
Udit Goenka: of also pushed me to get active back in my
00:25:41
Udit Goenka: mind that
00:25:42
Udit Goenka: it's not for the money, right. But it's the fact
00:25:44
Udit Goenka: that I need to get active right. I need some
00:25:47
Udit Goenka: push to get going further and be interactive, started opening
00:25:52
Udit Goenka: up as an opportunity to further distribute. And then recently
00:25:56
Udit Goenka: I started focusing on videos. Since the last one month
00:25:59
Udit Goenka: or so, I've been posting videos to crack like Instagram
00:26:02
Udit Goenka: and YouTube shots now, because 2023 on YouTube will be
00:26:06
Udit Goenka: just about shorts. So we started building up our entire
00:26:09
Udit Goenka: organ channel. Now when we did that,
00:26:12
Udit Goenka: what happened was that
00:26:14
Udit Goenka: our branding exploded in the community
00:26:17
Udit Goenka: and that led to an insane amount of trust among
00:26:21
Udit Goenka: the users of that enabled us to hit product market.
00:26:25
Udit Goenka: But that means people started talking about us. People started
00:26:29
Udit Goenka: mentioning us in their story. People started mentioning us In
00:26:31
Udit Goenka: their blog post. People started mentioning us in tweets, various
00:26:35
Udit Goenka: posts and things like those because people were stunned that
00:26:38
Udit Goenka: something like this exist right. And even now, not a
00:26:41
Udit Goenka: lot of people know that something like this exists. So
00:26:44
Udit Goenka: I thought,
00:26:45
Udit Goenka: I think this is the way to move forward, that
00:26:48
Udit Goenka: I would just focus on brand awareness now and not
00:26:52
Udit Goenka: brand awareness about patron but brand awareness about something like
00:26:56
Udit Goenka: Lifetime deal exists,
00:26:58
Udit Goenka: right? I continue to doing that, and it's just been
00:27:03
Udit Goenka: an explosion. And after that, we continue to build our
00:27:06
Udit Goenka: performance marketing in the magnet funds after that. But this
00:27:09
Udit Goenka: has been what we have been doing lately, and it
00:27:11
Udit Goenka: has been working on brilliantly for us. So there's a
00:27:13
Udit Goenka: lot of, like content play now, By the way,
00:27:15
Saikat Pyne: if you are a creator or a founder, or even
00:27:18
Saikat Pyne: somebody who wants to build their personal brand, they just
00:27:22
Saikat Pyne: gave you a Golden Nugget.
00:27:24
Saikat Pyne: 2023 is going to be the year of YouTube shots.
00:27:27
Saikat Pyne: What would be your recommendation for first 5 to 10
00:27:33
Saikat Pyne: SAS solutions that me as a micro, a founder or
00:27:38
Saikat Pyne: the service business founder what are like the 1st 10?
00:27:41
Saikat Pyne: A tools I should buy. Go.
00:27:45
Udit Goenka: So I think the very first tool that pretty much
00:27:47
Udit Goenka: everyone should start off with is a social media publishing
00:27:50
Udit Goenka: tool because it will help you save a huge amount
00:27:54
Udit Goenka: of time. And whenever you are starting out with any
00:27:56
Udit Goenka: sort of online activities, you have to first figure out
00:27:59
Udit Goenka: that the channels that you're going to use and most
00:28:02
Udit Goenka: more importantly, you're going to be using some sort of
00:28:03
Udit Goenka: a social media channel. Which means that you have to
00:28:06
Udit Goenka: now figure out time how you can batch your contents
00:28:09
Udit Goenka: and save time.
00:28:10
Udit Goenka: And this is where, uh, the Social Media sort of
00:28:13
Udit Goenka: publishing software helps you out because they also like republish
00:28:16
Udit Goenka: contents and things like those. So we at currently have
00:28:21
Udit Goenka: a software known as New Link and we soon launching Social,
00:28:24
Udit Goenka: which is a complete, uh, sort of a robust alternative
00:28:28
Udit Goenka: that we are launching, uh, later this month through tools
00:28:30
Udit Goenka: are a definite so you can get either one of
00:28:33
Udit Goenka: them then, uh,
00:28:37
Udit Goenka: the next tool that I would recommend highly to people
00:28:40
Udit Goenka: who are doing a lot of webinars or a lot
00:28:42
Udit Goenka: of video content, and they want to repurpose contents like
00:28:45
Udit Goenka: how Gary is doing. Then there is a Then there
00:28:49
Udit Goenka: is a software known as content price on page again
00:28:52
Udit Goenka: on a lifetime deal. Now what they do is they
00:28:54
Udit Goenka: help you turn one large piece of content into multiple chunks,
00:28:59
Udit Goenka: along with helping you add captions, all with a click
00:29:02
Udit Goenka: of a button.
00:29:03
Udit Goenka: Now what happens with this is that you create one
00:29:06
Udit Goenka: video and you end up creating. Let's say, if you
00:29:08
Udit Goenka: do a webinar of 60 minutes, you can easily pick
00:29:11
Udit Goenka: up 30 best moments, and you can create 30 reels
00:29:14
Udit Goenka: out of it. And now you can put that back
00:29:17
Udit Goenka: into the social media tool, and you can publish it
00:29:19
Udit Goenka: on on on LinkedIn. You can publish it on Twitter.
00:29:22
Udit Goenka: You can publish it on Instagram. You can publish it on, um,
00:29:26
Udit Goenka: YouTube shots at the same time, and any other platforms
00:29:28
Udit Goenka: that you can pretty much find so that will help
00:29:31
Udit Goenka: you like interlink and start using the Softwares with each other.
00:29:35
Udit Goenka: The third software that I would recommend to all of
00:29:38
Udit Goenka: you would be a vile copy, which is currently on
00:29:40
Udit Goenka: a lifetime deal.
00:29:41
Udit Goenka: Uh, or if you are not looking for a lifetime
00:29:44
Udit Goenka: deal version, then you can probably look for a software
00:29:47
Udit Goenka: known as that had launched on previously. It's an A
00:29:50
Udit Goenka: I writing tool, so it will help you to help
00:29:53
Udit Goenka: you write your copy for social media or ads or
00:29:57
Udit Goenka: any or other platform. It will also help you to
00:29:59
Udit Goenka: write like your blog post and things like those. So
00:30:01
Udit Goenka: if you're running loan cash, especially SME S, they do
00:30:04
Udit Goenka: run loan cash, and they're not very confident enough.
00:30:07
Udit Goenka: If you especially if you're transitioning from offline to online,
00:30:10
Udit Goenka: you're not confident enough whether to invest in building a
00:30:13
Udit Goenka: team or not. This is where such Softwares can really
00:30:15
Udit Goenka: help you out, because the software will generally cost you,
00:30:17
Udit Goenka: like ₹5000 10 Indian rupees or, like $50 100 dollars,
00:30:23
Udit Goenka: $200 at the very most, which is a very decent
00:30:26
Udit Goenka: size for you to go ahead and experiment for about
00:30:29
Udit Goenka: a good six months. Because you'll still save more than
00:30:32
Udit Goenka: hiring someone
00:30:33
Udit Goenka: because you cannot just hire an intern and expect them
00:30:36
Udit Goenka: to do all of this work because even they are clueless.
00:30:38
Udit Goenka: You need someone to train. But if you don't have
00:30:41
Udit Goenka: someone to train and you don't have a budget to
00:30:44
Udit Goenka: hire an experienced marketer, which in India would cost anywhere
00:30:48
Udit Goenka: from 2 to ₹4 lakh which translates to about like
00:30:51
Udit Goenka: up to $5000 then in that case, this is the
00:30:54
Udit Goenka: best bet that you have right.
00:30:56
Udit Goenka: Use these tools to just go ahead and start growing yourself. Now,
00:31:01
Udit Goenka: apart from this, if you're a designer, then I would
00:31:03
Udit Goenka: say like is one of the best Softwares that you
00:31:05
Udit Goenka: can use out there. It's barely ₹7000 annually. It's not
00:31:09
Udit Goenka: a lifetime deal, but it's a brilliant product for any
00:31:12
Udit Goenka: someone who is like a non designer. Um, if you
00:31:15
Udit Goenka: are a U I designer or if you are getting
00:31:17
Udit Goenka: into U I designer, then there is a product known
00:31:19
Udit Goenka: as Buzzy, which is on a website that turns and
00:31:21
Udit Goenka: converts a Sigma design into a react ready front end development, uh, platform.
00:31:28
Udit Goenka: So your entire front end can be developed in a
00:31:30
Udit Goenka: matter of just a few clicks. That's it. Using using
00:31:33
Udit Goenka: a bus which is currently on our platform. This again
00:31:36
Udit Goenka: saves you a huge amount of time, huge amount of money.
00:31:40
Udit Goenka: And
00:31:41
Udit Goenka: as developers are getting like, costlier and costlier, such no
00:31:45
Udit Goenka: core technologies will keep coming in to save people a
00:31:47
Udit Goenka: lot of money then another very handy tool that I
00:31:49
Udit Goenka: really like is known as mini marks. It's again on
00:31:52
Udit Goenka: a lifetime deal on page. It helps you to manage
00:31:54
Udit Goenka: all your bookmarks under one roof, and it helps you
00:31:57
Udit Goenka: to sync across all your bookmarks across your iPad or
00:32:01
Udit Goenka: or your android tablet or your phone or for multiple
00:32:04
Udit Goenka: phone across. It helps you to also manage it with
00:32:06
Udit Goenka: your team, which is the best feature that they have.
00:32:08
Udit Goenka: So usually what happens is that I've created, like a
00:32:11
Udit Goenka: group folder in that, and I've shared it with my team.
00:32:13
Udit Goenka: So any time I find good resources, I put it
00:32:15
Udit Goenka: inside the folder and my team gets to know about
00:32:17
Udit Goenka: it right away. And any time my team finds a
00:32:19
Udit Goenka: good 34 to be added. So let's say that I'm
00:32:22
Udit Goenka: surfing around and find a good fast company. I add
00:32:25
Udit Goenka: it to my mini marks, bookmark
00:32:28
Udit Goenka: and my discovery team for SAS. They are like, OK,
00:32:32
Udit Goenka: new SA have been discovered. Let's just put it up.
00:32:34
Udit Goenka: If they come across, they add it.
00:32:36
Udit Goenka: So this way it just makes it very easy because
00:32:37
Udit Goenka: you're surfing all the time, right? You would not know
00:32:40
Udit Goenka: what you would come across at, what stage and at
00:32:42
Udit Goenka: what time and what thought you would do to Le,
00:32:44
Udit Goenka: which will lead you to work. So something like this
00:32:46
Udit Goenka: generally helps, and the problem with default bookmarks is that
00:32:49
Udit Goenka: you cannot share them. There's no shared liabilities, and it's
00:32:52
Udit Goenka: not properly designed, like they are still designed as if
00:32:56
Udit Goenka: they were designed back in 2005. And I think browsers
00:32:59
Udit Goenka: have not worked on that since the last over a decade.
00:33:02
Udit Goenka: So another beautiful product. So that's five products for you
00:33:05
Udit Goenka: so far. Then there's another product known as in it,
00:33:07
Udit Goenka: which is something that I use pretty aggressively. So any
00:33:09
Udit Goenka: time I write a copy, I run through inst story
00:33:11
Udit Goenka: it that helps me to understand the sentimental analysis that
00:33:14
Udit Goenka: the copy will trigger,
00:33:15
Udit Goenka: So that means will it copy trigger anger? Will the
00:33:18
Udit Goenka: copy trigger happiness right? Even before posting it I get
00:33:22
Udit Goenka: to know right away because there are Softwares available that
00:33:25
Udit Goenka: can determine based on a I. But what emotions will
00:33:28
Udit Goenka: trigger now As a marketer, this helps me to understand,
00:33:32
Udit Goenka: because if I want to trigger an emotion of fear,
00:33:35
Udit Goenka: because fear is one of the best ways to sell right.
00:33:38
Udit Goenka: So fear also means let's say that if you're doing Fomo,
00:33:41
Udit Goenka: Fomo stands for fear of missing out, which is one
00:33:43
Udit Goenka: of the best marketing growth way to really sell, right?
00:33:47
Udit Goenka: I write that content. I run that analysis to understand
00:33:49
Udit Goenka: if the fear trigger emotion is struggling or not. So
00:33:52
Udit Goenka: I really love the tool. That's the sixth one as
00:33:55
Udit Goenka: a recommendation,
00:33:56
Udit Goenka: then the second recommendation I have is my fund box,
00:33:59
Udit Goenka: which is again on patreon at the lifetime deal. They
00:34:02
Udit Goenka: help you to manage all your invoices. Subscriptions? Billings. Very important, right?
00:34:06
Udit Goenka: You can. You can't come online and not get paid
00:34:08
Udit Goenka: right again. Very helpful. It's on a lifetime deal.
00:34:11
Udit Goenka: Then the A software that I would recommend would be
00:34:14
Udit Goenka: s a I. It's an A I based meeting scheduling tool.
00:34:18
Udit Goenka: So the moment you start working online, people would want
00:34:20
Udit Goenka: to book meetings with you so that they can get
00:34:22
Udit Goenka: on a call. So that's the A tool. I would
00:34:24
Udit Goenka: recommend the nine tool that I would recommend to all
00:34:27
Udit Goenka: of you would be, uh let's see, as soon as
00:34:31
Udit Goenka: you have built up your website, protect your website because
00:34:34
Udit Goenka: like that, getting an insurance right? So don't wait for
00:34:37
Udit Goenka: your website to get hacked. Just protect it right away.
00:34:41
Udit Goenka: And then the final product that I would recommend would
00:34:45
Udit Goenka: be C. MS. That helps you to build all of
00:34:48
Udit Goenka: your C MS and helps you to manage all your
00:34:50
Udit Goenka: contents and the websites and everything under one roof. So
00:34:53
Udit Goenka: those are the 10 products I would recommend
00:34:56
Saikat Pyne: that was so comprehensive. Have you seen more traction from
00:35:01
Saikat Pyne: this niche of solar preneurs and what are generally the
00:35:04
Saikat Pyne: kind of tools that you're seeing so preneurs buy? I
00:35:07
Saikat Pyne: think
00:35:07
Udit Goenka: the the 1st, 1st and foremost, the most important tool
00:35:11
Udit Goenka: that people look forward to begin with is something around
00:35:13
Udit Goenka: marketing around saving time, initially, right, and then eventually tools
00:35:17
Udit Goenka: that can help them make money right, because setting up
00:35:20
Udit Goenka: and saving time is more important initially than making money,
00:35:23
Udit Goenka: because the moment you save time,
00:35:25
Udit Goenka: you now have more time to investigate and understand what's
00:35:29
Udit Goenka: going on, what's not going on. And they like, plan
00:35:32
Udit Goenka: things accordingly. So marketing tools is something that people expect
00:35:36
Udit Goenka: us like constantly to keep bringing in more and more
00:35:38
Udit Goenka: marketing tools followed by, like project management tools and then,
00:35:42
Udit Goenka: like sales tool.
00:35:44
Saikat Pyne: Lovely. What is the de facto project management tool that
00:35:48
Saikat Pyne: you would prefer to get into?
00:35:51
Udit Goenka: So if you need something that's free, efficient and you
00:35:54
Udit Goenka: just want to get started, then asana is one of
00:35:56
Udit Goenka: the best ones out there in the world right now.
00:35:59
Udit Goenka: You don't need any money, you can literally get started.
00:36:01
Udit Goenka: Invite your team members and everything as well. And I'm
00:36:03
Udit Goenka: recommending something free because a lot of SME s might
00:36:06
Udit Goenka: hear this podcast. I want to make sure that I'm
00:36:08
Udit Goenka: also giving, like, a budget friendly solution, right, So the
00:36:12
Udit Goenka: best way to just get started with something, and as
00:36:15
Udit Goenka: you start getting and you start making money online and
00:36:17
Udit Goenka: you start acquiring more customers, then you can move towards
00:36:20
Udit Goenka: more of a paid service.
00:36:21
Udit Goenka: A lot
00:36:22
Saikat Pyne: of these solar preneurs were potentially building. That's a Microsoft
00:36:25
Saikat Pyne: would also love no code automation tools. We had the
00:36:29
Saikat Pyne: CTO of quick work speak about ABC of automation for
00:36:35
Saikat Pyne: solar preneurs and creators. What's your take on? No code?
00:36:38
Udit Goenka: It's a funny thing, right? So I'll tell you a
00:36:40
Udit Goenka: little bit of back story before this entire no movement.
00:36:43
Udit Goenka: So about 10 years ago, a lot of these hosting
00:36:46
Udit Goenka: companies used to sell servers,
00:36:49
Udit Goenka: and it should be a very boring industry. So this
00:36:53
Udit Goenka: entire industry coined a new word known as Cloud. It
00:36:56
Udit Goenka: was still servers, right? Was nothing special because the technology
00:37:00
Udit Goenka: wasn't that advanced back in those days to handle that
00:37:03
Udit Goenka: sort of an infrastructure. So people started calling it servers earlier.
00:37:07
Udit Goenka: It used to be known as people started calling it cloud,
00:37:11
Udit Goenka: which earlier was known as clusters. There is no difference, right?
00:37:15
Udit Goenka: Because there was no software, it was still all hardware.
00:37:17
Udit Goenka: Now you see micro services and everything built by platforms
00:37:21
Udit Goenka: like AWS, Google Cloud and a. But then again, this
00:37:24
Udit Goenka: is the same thing that's happened right now that a
00:37:26
Udit Goenka: company who are not able to sell it are just
00:37:30
Udit Goenka: making it no core so that they can just sell
00:37:32
Udit Goenka: the platform because eventually. If you're selling a marketing sales,
00:37:36
Udit Goenka: so any non developer tool,
00:37:38
Udit Goenka: it's actually a no good solution, even developer tools. Today,
00:37:41
Udit Goenka: most of the developers tools today are no good solutions,
00:37:44
Udit Goenka: so that's just a marketing angle and plug and play.
00:37:48
Udit Goenka: So it's nothing else beyond just a term that's been
00:37:51
Udit Goenka: coined by the SAS industry to just sell to users,
00:37:54
Udit Goenka: which is completely fine because every industry keeps evolving and
00:37:57
Udit Goenka: over time, right, they keep coining out new words, and
00:38:00
Udit Goenka: they keep injecting like random things here and there. But
00:38:03
Udit Goenka: the biggest stuff remains the same. It's just a repackaging
00:38:06
Udit Goenka: something and trying to sell and go out there and sell, basically,
00:38:09
Udit Goenka: So the same thing is happening with the entire court
00:38:12
Udit Goenka: thing as well.
00:38:13
Udit Goenka: The true no code solution, which I call it as
00:38:16
Udit Goenka: a no code, is platforms like a buzzy. For an
00:38:18
Udit Goenka: example that's helping you to convert an actual Sigma design
00:38:24
Udit Goenka: into an actual code solution for your front end without
00:38:28
Udit Goenka: you touching the code. Now that's a real no code solution. Now,
00:38:31
Udit Goenka: if you talk about bubble, it helps you to build
00:38:34
Udit Goenka: a SAS without
00:38:35
Udit Goenka: knowing anything about coding all you have to do is
00:38:38
Udit Goenka: just drag, drop, understand a bit of logic flow. You
00:38:41
Udit Goenka: need to be coded with u X, that's it, and
00:38:43
Udit Goenka: you have been able to build a now. Those are true. No,
00:38:46
Udit Goenka: no code. So that's how we classify these products. So
00:38:49
Udit Goenka: for me, those true code solutions are truly revolutionary, because
00:38:53
Udit Goenka: this is something that I've started talking about to a
00:38:55
Udit Goenka: lot of people as well that before building any of
00:38:58
Udit Goenka: your idea and going into full fledged development, use these
00:39:01
Udit Goenka: platforms to build your basic M V P.
00:39:04
Udit Goenka: Because you will be able to get your M V
00:39:06
Udit Goenka: P up and going in a matter of 7 to
00:39:07
Udit Goenka: 10 days. Test out on 400 customers,
00:39:11
Udit Goenka: each paying you about $50 per month.
00:39:14
Udit Goenka: That's $5000 in m R R. Now hire a developer
00:39:18
Udit Goenka: from there.
00:39:19
Udit Goenka: You don't need to just keep on raising capital, right?
00:39:22
Udit Goenka: You can be effective with your strategies ideas, because the
00:39:26
Udit Goenka: first thing that everyone in it is in everyone's mind
00:39:28
Udit Goenka: is just build the M V P and just raise capital.
00:39:30
Udit Goenka: Don't do that, So take a step back, build an
00:39:34
Udit Goenka: M v p. Get your customers first because eventually if
00:39:36
Udit Goenka: you don't have paying customers that you invest, money will
00:39:39
Udit Goenka: burn out as well.
00:39:40
Udit Goenka: So that's how we can classify these products. And the
00:39:44
Udit Goenka: automation is definitely taking over. But again, it's a very
00:39:47
Udit Goenka: complex topic right now for SME s. They're still trying
00:39:50
Udit Goenka: to understand what is Internet. They're still trying to understand
00:39:53
Udit Goenka: how social media works at the moment. So we still
00:39:57
Udit Goenka: haven't adopted Web two point Oh, properly. By the way,
00:39:59
Udit Goenka: there are many SME s who are yet to even
00:40:02
Udit Goenka: have a website.
00:40:03
Udit Goenka: So we're still in a very early days. So I'm
00:40:05
Udit Goenka: expecting probably in the next 10 years where especially it's
00:40:08
Udit Goenka: family owned businesses. When the younger generation starts taking over
00:40:12
Udit Goenka: the business and they start getting involved in the businesses,
00:40:15
Udit Goenka: they will be the one who would try to take
00:40:17
Udit Goenka: it to the Internet because they are very comfortable making
00:40:20
Udit Goenka: reels today. They are very comfortable doing webinars today. They're
00:40:23
Udit Goenka: very comfortable going in front of camera talking to people.
00:40:26
Udit Goenka: What is the older generation who are not used to
00:40:28
Udit Goenka: something like this if they haven't been in the traditional
00:40:31
Udit Goenka: industry around media,
00:40:33
Udit Goenka: So that's a transition that we're gonna see, But it's
00:40:35
Udit Goenka: gonna take time in India to happen. So automation definitely
00:40:38
Udit Goenka: is the key. But it's gonna take time for a
00:40:40
Udit Goenka: lot of f. M. E s to really implement it
00:40:43
Saikat Pyne: through that. And on that insightful note, folks, it's a wrap.
00:40:48
Saikat Pyne: Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
00:40:51
Saikat Pyne: Really appreciate you taking time out. Thank
00:40:53
Udit Goenka: you so much for inviting me pleasures on mine. And
00:40:55
Udit Goenka: I hope I could share some good golden luggage that
00:40:58
Udit Goenka: people could pick out from.
00:41:00
Saikat Pyne: You Sure did. Guys, please do tune in next week
00:41:03
Saikat Pyne: for the next episode of the U Incorporated podcast. See ya.
00:41:12
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00:41:17
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00:41:22
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