The Orbit Shift Podcast

TAM, technology, team, and timing. There are the four ‘Ts’ that Ankit Sarwahi, Managing Director of Middle East Venture Partners looks for in a startup when investing in them. 

In our latest episode, we catch up with Ankit the MD of MEVP, one of the biggest venture capital firms in the MENA region whose portfolio companies include Anghami, Rain, and Nana Direct. Ankit talks to us about his early journey, the differences he sees in the Indian and Middle Eastern startup ecosystems, his four T’s of investing, how he communicates clearly with his founders, and his due diligence process before investing in companies.  

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Ankit is the Managing Director of Middle East Venture Partners where he leads investments in fintech, food tech, and e-commerce verticals. He serves on the board of various startups and advises them on fundraising, organizational talent building, and new market entry. Prior to this role, Ankit invested for VC funds in India. Ankit is an alumnus of ISB Hyderabad and SRCC.

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The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Producer - Shashwath J

Host - Soumitra Deshpande

Audio Engineer - Arjun Pillai

In this episode we talk to Charlie Locke, sales leadership expert and Co-Founder of the SDR community, SDR Nation. We explore the key skills that SDRs need to succeed. When founders should hire SDRs, and how they can incentivize them to retain their top sales talent, and the ways in which the industry is changing. Charlie also breaks down the eight phases of cold calling and how SDR professionals can identify their weaknesses and put theory to practice to boost their conversions. 

Listen in.  

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guests

Charlie Locke is a sales leadership expert with experience in various companies such as Salesforce, Adobe, and Shutterstock. In 2020, Charlie teamed up with community building expert Michael Gagliano to build the only dedicated community for Sales Development Reps in the world - SDR Nation

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

In this episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast hosted by Founder Insititute; Ryan Micheletti, Head of Global Operations at Founder Institute talks to Lucas Fox, Head of Relationship Management, Brex, and Pradeep Rathinam, Chief Customer Officer, Freshworks about how founders can build a customer-centric startup.
They talk about how to define a customer-centric startup, the best practices of customer-centric startups, and how founders can listen to their customers without moving away from the ethos of their startups or the products that they're building.
Listen in. 

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guests

Lucas Fox - Lucas Fox was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but spent his adolescence in Madrid, Spain, and London, UK. 

In 2018 Lucas joined Brex, a >$7b startup reinventing the B2B financial services space. At Brex, Lucas helped start the recruiting team and scale the company, then he moved into a go-to-market role to lead the launch of Brex Cash, and most recently has built a Relationship Management team responsible for existing-customer revenue.

Pradeep Rathinam - Pradeep Rathinam is the Chief Customer Officer at Freshworks post-acquisition of AnsweriQ by Freshworks.

Pradeep was the Founder & CEO of AnswerIQ, a Seattle-based artificial intelligence company in the customer service automation space. Prior to AnswerIQ, Pradeep was the CEO of Aditi Technologies, a leading cloud services provider, and led the company to a successful sale to Symphony Teleca, a PE firm. 

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

"Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king" is the mantra that Alex Theuma repeats to us when quizzed about some of the learnings he has had as the founder of SaaStock — one of the largest SaaS conferences in the world. 

Join us as Alex talks to us about why building a community is important for startups. He also walks us through his career and how he grew a SaaS blog meet-up into the global conference SaaStock, some of the mistakes and learnings he made in his career, and how to build and scale a community. 

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Alex Theuma is the Founder & CEO of SaaStock a conference to help SaaS companies get traction, grow, and scale. Alex launched the conference in 2016, building on the popularity of his blog and podcast for SaaS founders and initial SaaS meetups in Dublin, London, and Berlin.

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Revenue operations or RevOps is a key growth engine that a startup needs to put into place to become a scale up. The RevOps engine helps companies streamline their sales processes and their commission and incentives payouts. In this episode, we talk to Siva Rajamani the Founder and CEO of Everstage. Siva tells us about when startups should look to build a RevOps function, the talent that founders should look to hire for their RevOps teams, the key goals and metrics RevOps teams should track, and how the RevOps teams are evolving. 

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Siva Rajamani is the founder and CEO of Everstage, a no-code sales commissions automation platform. In a short span, several fast-growth companies and unicorns have adopted Everstage to motivate and drive the performance of their customer-facing teams. Previously, Siva ran the Revenue Operations globally for Freshworks and led a 25-member team.

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

A lot is talked about fundraising and billion-dollar exits. But those are rare. How should startups get more realistic about building companies and look for meaningful exits? What’s the right way to approach an M&A so it makes sense both for the buyer and the seller?

In this episode, we unpack startup exits for founders with Andrew Gazdecki, the founder of startup acquisition marketplace MicroAcquire and Rowland Savage, VP of Corporate Development at Freshworks and the author of How to Stick the Landing: The M&A Handbook for Startups.

This episode was recorded live as part of our webinar series. To stay updated on our events, sign up here. 

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guests

Andrew Gazdecki - Andrew Gazdecki is a 4x founder with 3x exits, former CRO, and founder of MicroAcquire. Andrew has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, and prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat.

Rowland Savage - Before becoming the VP of Corporate Development at Freshworks, Rowland worked at Atlassian, where he led several acquisitions as part of their M&A team. A recovering entrepreneur, Rowland previously founded two startups taking both from concept to paid deployment. Rowland has also previously worked for two Venture Capital funds and is the author of How to Stick the Landing: The M&A Handbook for Startups.

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

With experience across multiple geographies including India and the US; and with experience across some of the biggest startups in the world including Uber and Airbnb, Carson Drake knows what it takes to build modern sales teams that grow revenue across different markets. 
In this episode we talk to Carson about his journey, launching Uber Eats in India, building trust with partner vendors, and how he has acquired over 7000 customers with Firstbase.io, a startup that helps you set up your company in the US.

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Over the last 8+ years, Carson Drake has spent time focused on operations strategy, scale, launch, and sales management/strategy at startups including Uber, Uber Eats, Airbnb, and other early-stage companies. Now, he has brought his operational mindset to building partnerships and BD at Firstbase.io, with an emphasis on identifying partnerships that drive recurring revenue and create solutions for their partners' customers. 

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Today companies not only want to focus on profitability but also create a positive social impact. With consumers identifying strongly with brands that are committed to the greater good, profitability and positive social impact have become intertwined.

In this episode, we speak to Rebekah Bastian, CEO, and Co-Founder of OwnTrail and an award-winning writer, who is a strong advocate of such an approach to company building. We talk about:

🚀Rebekah’s journey from Product Manager to VP of Product at Zillow

🚀Her new venture OwnTrail and the problem they’re looking to solve

🚀The benefits that diversity and inclusion bring to a startup

🚀The need for ‘tech mafias’ to refresh their networks

🚀How founders can track diversity and inclusion initiatives

🚀Building OwnTrail and how Rebekah approaches hiring

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Rebekah Bastian is an entrepreneur, award-winning writer, tech executive, and mentor. She is the CEO & Co-founder of OwnTrail and was previously vice president of product and vice president of community and culture at Zillow. Rebekah is the author of Blaze Your Own Trail, is a contributor to Forbes, and is a frequent speaker on social impact, career navigation, and building AuthenTech companies.

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

When he was 18 years old, Iddo Gino founded RapidAPI, a platform that allowed users to find, connect and manage APIs. Today the platform is the largest API hub in the world, where almost 3 million developers can discover, test, and connect to thousands of APIs. 

In this episode, we sit down with Iddo to talk about his journey into the world of programming, the importance of building a community, how he approaches VCs and manages relationships with them, and his thoughts on the developer economy and the growth of APIs.  

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Iddo Gino is the Founder and CEO of RapidAPI. Part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, he's a 2017 Thiel Fellow. Previously, he was a Co-organizer of Hacking Gen Y. Iddo has been programming since he was a kid and continues to contribute to open-source projects. Originally from Haifa, Israel, Iddo is based in San Francisco, CA.

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Pitch, plays, proof, and plans are the four Ps of product marketing that Kevin Murray, VP of Product Marketing at Freshworks uses to elevate a brand’s marketing. 

In this episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast Kevin walks us through each of these four Ps and how companies can leverage them. He talks about how companies can perfect their pitch with the right messaging, how to set up plays with repeatable sales motions, how to build analyst relations and get proof in the marketplace and how to avoid random acts of marketing by having a comprehensive plan that brings all stakeholders together. 

Get $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility.

About the Guest

Kevin Murray joined Freshworks in June 2021 to lead the global product marketing team. Kevin joined Freshworks from Automation Anywhere, and prior to that, spent 5.5 years with ServiceNow from 2014-2020. Kevin has also led product marketing teams at top technology companies such as Symantec and VMware and has expertise in IT operations, security, and enterprise mobility. 

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. 

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian