SaaSBoomi

Wingify founders on a decade of bootstrapping, surviving profitably and staying together

Pankaj Mishra

What makes a company great?

What does it take to build companies that outlive "startup valleys of death"?

In this episode of SaaSBOOMi podcast, Paras Chopra and Sparsh Gupta share candid lessons on not just survival but building a culture that lasts, profitably. 

"We've been lucky to share a substantial part of our value system, together. There are fundamental values that we both agree together, and that helps us have a lot of disagreements. But because we share the value system, we know whatever disagreements we're having are towards the same end goal," Paras says in this podcast. 

"I actively look forward to Sparsh's disagreement rather than just agreement, to ensure that I am not stuck in some cognitive bias in my own ego."

"In the last ten years, I and paras have had disagreements when we entered into a room, but every single time when we went out of the room, we both believed that our individual ideas got groomed, became better," Sparsh adds in this podcast.

A lot of spotlight continues to be on India SaaS companies such as Zoho and Freshworks, and rightfully so.

But that’s not what’s shaping the future of India’s multi-billion SaaS industry alone.

It’s the startups such as Atlan, and its young founders like Prukalpa Sankar who are creating the building blocks of a massive industry, learning from the playbooks of their larger peers, and applying their own lessons from the journey.

Tune in to this podcast to learn how Prakulpa and her founding team applied lessons from their earlier startup in building Atlan, their journey from $0 to $1 million, and so on.

Suresh Sambandam, the CEO and founder of Kissflow, is a quintessential entrepreneur. And that's not just because he can hustle his way out of any crisis, but more because of the way he applies all his learnings egolessly in moving his startup forward.

Suresh talks about "the HP Way" he discovered while working at Hewlett Packard early in his career, and the way the company puts trust in its people.

"Trust isn't just about honesty or competency. It's a two-sided coin; you need to have competence and character. You won't trust anyone who doesn't have competency. You can't trust a doctor who is not a good doctor. "

In this podcast conversation, Suresh also opens up about two of the toughest challenges he faced in his career--the 2008 financial crisis, and losing his cofounder during 2013, which triggered a deep introspection and challenged his beliefs, moulded him forward.

Suresh recommends several books, including "the Fifth Discipline", which is about building a learning organisation.

Please tune in to this episode of the SaaSBOOMi podcast to learn how Suresh is applying best practices from across the world in building a learning organisation that survives the test of crises.

In this episode of SaaSBOOMi Podcast listen to Manag Garg, CEO & Founder, Eka Software.