SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

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Anand and Sudheer give a glimpse into their respective startup journeys - skillsets they brought from their previous experiences, new challenges that they were not prepared for, and milestones that marked their journey. 

The podcast covers all the different phases of their journeys: from identifying the problem to go after and building the MVP to scaling the product, figuring out monetization, and solving for Sales GTM and funding.

To learn more about what it takes to build scalable global SaaS companies out of India, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

Notes:

04:24 – Early days of startup journey

11:22 – Picking the right mountain and validating it (Vertical vs Horizontal SaaS)

20:40 – Finding the first set of customers

29:55 – Business model and monetizing

34:55 – Funding the early phase: bootstrapping vs fundraising

39:20 – Scaling up phase, expanding geographies

48:30 – Advise for early-stage SaaS founders

50:30 – Rapid Fire Round

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Alex throws light on how the entrepreneurs from frontier markets are reinventing startup best practices and offering a brand new playbook for innovation that looks different from that of startups in the valley.

The podcast centres around the shift of innovation from the silicon valley to the global playground. Alex talks about the incredible stories of entrepreneurs in emerging markets who maneuver challenging environments to build resilient sustainable businesses that create large social impact.

To hear more from Alex on global innovation trends, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

Notes:

02:31 – Genesis of ‘Out-Innovate’, the book

04:44 – Future is at the frontier: Innovation increasingly coming from emerging markets

08:49 – Social impact of creators

16:59 – The camel approach: Building sustainability from Day 1

20:50 – Going global from the Get-go

23:55 – Frontier innovators = Ecosystem builders

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Mukesh shares how his journey as a leader has evolved over the last decade and in times of COVID, what got him to write a book, and how he manages to carve out time to give back to the community.

The podcast deals with some of the most relevant topics in today’s times: focusing on holistic health, improving performance, and giving back.

Notes:

02:10 – Productivity in COVID times

03:39 – Settling into the new rhythm of running the company

05:36 – Executing fast through decentralized decision making

09:36 – Hacks for managing personal physical & mental fitness

13:04 – Cracking the performance code: No Limits

18:09 – Importance of introspecting about purpose

20:39 – Long term strategic thinking and daily healthy habits

24:00 – Supporting the Olympic Gold Quest initiative 

26:14 – ACT Grants and Bharat Health Stack

27:50 – Rapid Fire Round

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Subrata and Prashanth share an on the ground view of the state of the VC ecosystem in India amidst the COVID situation and what to expect for the road ahead. They share advice for founders as they plan for the tough times ahead along with learnings and observations from previous economic downturns including some of the positive outcomes.

The podcast clears the air around what founders can expect the fundraising situation to look like in the next near future.

01:27 – Comparing COVID-19 times with dot-com bubble burst and 2008 recession

06:23 – Efforts going on in the startup- VC ecosystem around helping fight COVID

09:50 – Current state of Indian VC ecosystem amidst COVID

13:00 – Assessing risk at a portfolio level

16:08 – Actionable advice to startup founders

20:20 – Planning for cash runway- time frame and approach

21:55 – Advice for founders looking to startup or in pre-PMF stage

24:30 – Fast forward: view of 24 months ahead

28:43 – Reinventing yourself in crisis times (INSIGHTS #13: 1999 to 2018 — Ashish Hemranjani recaps the BookMyShow journey)

30:25 – Fundamental transformation of some sectors

31:13 – Dealing with anxiety

33:25 – Rapid Fire Round

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This is a continuation to podcast #46 on SaaS. In this podcast, Shekhar and Krish dive deeper into the best practices for building a SaaS company out of India.

Shekhar and Krish share learnings on the important tips to keep in mind for founders looking to build a large SaaS company: spending time on market research to identify the right opportunity in your area of interest, validating the problem through multiple customer interviews, building strong context on the problem before building the MVP and having the willingness to pay conversation early on. 

The podcast is filled with analogies and examples from Shekhar and Krish’s more than decade-long experience in SaaS. 

To learn more about things you need to get right to be successful in building a large SaaS company, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

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Notes:

01:47 – Climbing the mountain analogy

05:18 – The advantage of having a strong industrial experience

09:08 – First mover advantage

13:32 – India advantage for SaaS startups

19:00 – Picking a good founding team

21:57 – Co-creating product with initial customers

23:30 – Understanding go to market

29:28 – Building MVP

32:15 – Testing for willingness to pay from early on

35:00 – Rapid Fire Round

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How are Indian Startups dealing with the COVID-19 situation?

This is a special podcast episode that deals with the tough situation that the world is facing today amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and features how the startup ecosystem in India is responding to it.

We have 4 guests on the podcast this time around: 

 

1. Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO & Co-founder of Bounce (two-wheeler scooter sharing solution operating in Bangalore & Hyderabad) 
    
2. Abhiraj Bhal, Founder and CEO of Urban Company (managed market place for all kinds of home services)
    
3. Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer of Freshworks (Software-as-a-Service company focused on customer engagement)
    
4. Girish Menon, Head of HR, Swiggy (online food ordering and delivery platform)

Podcast Summary

Our guests today represent startups employing over ten thousand employees and take out time from their schedule to share some of the best practices for dealing with the disruption to business operations.

 Vivek, Abhiraj, Suman, and Girish cover some of the most critical themes for business owners which include communicating within the organization and with the customers, prioritizing the health and safety of all stakeholders, planning for business continuity and dealing with challenges that come along the way.

 To learn more about how these leading startups are dealing with the COVID-19 situation, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

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Notes -

02:04 – Vivek on dealing with business continuity challenges at Bounce

05:48 – Abhiraj on steps taken to continue Urban Company’s business line

10:24 – Suman on the steps they’re taking at Freshworks globally

15:12 – Limiting exposure vs. extreme measure at the cost of losing business

20:45 – Best practices on communicating to customers

21:58 – Girish on educating customers and 2 lakh + delivery executives at scale

27:30 – Dealing with challenges in rolling out Business Continuity Plans for work from home

35:24 – Keeping employee productivity in check

38:40 – Impact of COVID-19 on business plan and runway

The several success stories of Zoho, Freshworks, Browserstack, Icertis who have all reached several hundred million dollars in ARR with most of their product built in India give proof points for the possibility to build large scale SaaS companies coming out of India.

Unlike the 90s when software was a one-time sale, the subscription nature of SaaS pricing ensures that the interests of the customer and the software vendor are well aligned. Today, there are over a hundred thousand software companies serving over two thousand categories with over five hundred billion dollars spent on software purchases. The SaaS industry is just one hundred fifty to two hundred billion dollars, so there’s another three hundred billion dollars of traditional on-prem software that needs to be replaced. Another opportunity exists in creating a product for the customers currently being served by custom software solutions built by the large IT services companies. At the same time, new industries are seeing digitization, creating more opportunities for building software.

In terms of liquidity as well, SaaS as a sector offers significant options- from an active M&A market and active interest from venture capital and private equity to fund growth to several examples of companies going public.

Krish ends by quoting Jason Lemkin, “In a SaaS business, once you cross $10M with good momentum, you basically become unkillable because of the recurring nature of the business”

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YQdnQ50mmenzWVA2MBsQy

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/insights-podcast-series/id1364412685

The several success stories of Zoho, Freshworks, Browserstack, Icertis who have all reached several hundred million dollars in ARR with most of their product built in India give proof points for the possibility to build large scale SaaS companies coming out of India.

Unlike the 90s when software was a one-time sale, the subscription nature of SaaS pricing ensures that the interests of the customer and the software vendor are well aligned. Today, there are over a hundred thousand software companies serving over two thousand categories with over five hundred billion dollars spent on software purchases. The SaaS industry is just one hundred fifty to two hundred billion dollars, so there’s another three hundred billion dollars of traditional on-prem software that needs to be replaced. Another opportunity exists in creating a product for the customers currently being served by custom software solutions built by the large IT services companies. At the same time, new industries are seeing digitization, creating more opportunities for building software.

In terms of liquidity as well, SaaS as a sector offers significant options- from an active M&A market and active interest from venture capital and private equity to fund growth to several examples of companies going public.

Krish ends by quoting Jason Lemkin, “In a SaaS business, once you cross $10M with good momentum, you basically become unkillable because of the recurring nature of the business”

In the first episode of 2020's #InsightsPodcast series, we take a look back to round up the learnings that 2019’s series left us with.We kick-start 2020’s #InsightsPodcast series with a special episode that offers a quick roundup of our 2019 podcasts and presents the top 12 highly recommended insights for entrepreneurs.

Finding the right opportunity

The bare essential task of identifying the right opportunity is something that every founding team must go through.

1.Farid Ahsan of Sharechat shares how he and his co-founders went about discovering the idea. “We started observing why people were making WhatsApp groups and sharing content on them.”

2.Ritesh Arora of Browserstack shares the importance of thinking global from early on, helping expand the opportunity set for the startup.

3.Kunal Shah of Cred shares his framework on how startups can validate whether their idea is creating a delta change in consumer behaviour and emphasises the importance of picking a market opportunity with good tailwinds. “Great product-market fits even with mediocre founders create a lot of value while terrible product-market fits with great founders can never create value. Fighting headwinds only burns fuel.” Building a team and culture to go after that idea The team forms the building block of any organisation and is an integral contributor to the success of a startup. A good culture keeps the team motivated to keep going after the problem.

4.Naveen Tewari of Inmobi talks about the importance of having a co-founder in the roller-coaster of a journey that entrepreneurship comprises. “Most of the moments in the journey are low moments. The co-founder’s role is to bring you out of these low moments that you’re in and vice versa.”

5.Binny Bansal of Flipkart shares about the importance of being willing to ‘let go’ and empowering your team. “We realised that only way to scale the company was to hire people like us, to do the things that we do - there were going to be hundreds of things to do and we would need hundreds of people would need to work like we work, every day.”

6.Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks talks about focusing about culture and building a work environment that motivates and inspires the team. “Anybody can create a happy work environment, but the real happiness is when people really feel that they’re playing to their strengths, the job is tapping their potential and giving them an opportunity to learn, and that they have managers who they see as role models.” Raising money and building a sustainable company With a boundless vision comes the need to find the right support, and finding the right investor can really help a startup.

7.Harsh Jain of Dream11 talks about the advantage of meeting investors ahead of fundraising. “Meet VCs six months or a year before raising money and get honest, open feedback. When the journey and progress is shared with VCs, they’re much more vested.” 8. Deep Kalra of Makemytrip talks about the importance of unit economics and scaling sustainably. “Irrespective of the kind of business, you should not be losing money on a variable cost basis.” Key lessons for founders’ growth In the greater scheme of the startup journey, the founder’s individual self often gets ignored. Here are some key insights on keeping a founder’s growth on track. 9. Shradha Sharma of YourStory talks about the founder’s growth journey being more internal and how entrepreneurship is a journey of patience and perseverance. “You have to internally reflect very deeply on what you want.” 10. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and the man behind the Aadhaar programme talks about the importance of being execution-focused. 11. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo talks about the importance of perseverance. 12. Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix shares his valuable insights on balancing family life along with running a startup.

In this edition of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, we have with us Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi, both of whom were early members of Facebook's engineering team.

On the hiring front, Ruchi says, "When companies find product-market fit, everything feels like it is falling apart. You need to hire enough people to keep things going. At that point, most people are often looking for the unicorn hire - someone who is perfect when the company is just 50 people but can also scale with the company when it gets to 100 people, is an individual contributor, and an excellent manager. It becomes impossible to find this unicorn hire at that stage. People need to reset expectations on how this person can help your company today and in the next one to two years, and be comfortable that their roles might evolve over the next few years."