The Orbit Shift Podcast

As a new immigrant Gopi Rangan’s American Dream was nearly cut short by a car accident. Fortunately for the ace investor, he was insured, shielding him from the financial burden he would have to undergo. This incident is ingrained into Gopi as the founding partner of Sure Ventures where he invests in insuretech companies. On this episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast Gopi talks to us about who he invests in and how he identifies these ‘agents of change’, what he looks for in pitch decks, why he loves typos in pitch decks, when a startup founder should look to raise capital from institutional investors, how founders can create great teams and when they should hire lovable fools and when they should hire the competent jerks.

About the Guest

Gopi Rangan is the Founding Partner at Sure Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. He invests with the mission to enable peace of mind for all. His main areas of focus are seed-stage startups in the insurance, aging care, mental health, wealth management, and related sectors in the United States. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD.

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Listen to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur Podcast by Gopi Rangan

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

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Continuing our series of talks from our recently concluded AgainstAllOdds startup summit we have with us, Shellye Archambeau. In this episode, Shellye talks to Preethy Padmanabhan of Freshworks, on her journey to become one of Silicon Valley’s first female African American CEOs and recounts how she transformed MetricStream from being a Silicon Valley ‘problem child’ to a sustainable multi-million dollar business. She talks about how founders can balance short-term interests and long-term desire to build sustainable companies, how they can bring in more diversity and inclusivity to their businesses, and what the business can gain from this, the dangers of falling in love with your product, and much more.  

About the Guest

Shellye Archambeau is one of Silicon Valley's first female African American CEOs. Formerly an executive at IBM and CMO at two public companies, Archambeau was recruited to be the CEO of a then-struggling Silicon Valley startup, which is now MetricStream, a recognized global leader in governance, risk, and compliance software solutions. She currently serves as a Fortune 500 board member and holds board seats at Verizon, Nordstrom, Roper Technologies, and Okta. Her debut book, Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms will be launched on October 6, 2020, with Grand Central Publishing.

Preethy Padmanabhan is the Head of Platform Product Marketing at Freshworks. Prior to joining Freshworks, Preethy was the VP of Marketing at Panzura. She is also an angel investment partner with SV2, Portfolia, and a Board Member for CortexBCI. She served in various non-profit boards focused on economic empowerment, women, children, and education. She also held positions in marketing, sales, and engineering across Nutanix, Dell, and Cisco. 

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Shellye Archambeau Official Website

Buy Unapologetically Ambitious by Shellye Archambeau

Register as part of the Freshworks for Startups Programme 

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

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 for another episode as Alex talks to us about why building a community is important for startups. In this episode, 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, how to build a community, and the big trends that he anticipates in the future for the SaaS industry. 

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.

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Register as part of the Freshworks for Startups Programme

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

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK
Assistant Producer - Shashwath J
Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Today we have a special episode for you. As part of AgainstAllOdds, our startup summit, we had the chance to sit down with Virginia Sharma, Vice President of Brand Solutions at JioSaavn, the largest streaming platform for South Asian music and audio entertainment. Virginia walked us through the founding and development of the Saavn app, how they combine data and art to make decisions at Saavn, her forecast for podcasts, the value of “edutainment” and the reason why AR Rahman collaborated with U2 shortly before the bands’ debut performance in India.      

About the Guest

Virginia Sharma is the Vice President of Brand Solution at JioSaavn, the largest streaming platform for South Asian music and audio entertainment. She spearheads the company’s global digital ad monetization efforts across platforms and is responsible for driving adoption to JioSaavn’s advertising solutions for brands. Having worked in the U.S., Singapore, Japan, and India, Virginia brings a global perspective to the digital entertainment company. Virginia has over 20 years of experience in leading marketing and sales teams. 

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Register as part of the Freshworks for Startups Programme 

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

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Used to be that we subscribed to newspapers, magazines, and gym memberships. But these days, every business is trying to become a subscription service. Movies, music, transportation, groceries, fashion, lawn maintenance, and the list of subscription businesses in our lives go on. 
Why is that? What is it about the subscription economy that makes it a superior business model? And what are the nuances of building a subscription business? In today’s episode Tyler Sloat, the Chief Financial Officer at Freshworks decodes the subscription model for us. We also dive deep into the business of software as a services model. 
As the former CFO at Zuora, a pioneering enterprise software company that manages subscription payments for businesses, Tyler is an expert on the subject. Tune in as he breaks down the building blocks of a subscription-based company, the metrics that you need to keep track of as a startup founder, the importance of the Rule of 40, and the role of the CFO in a startup. If you’re a part of a SaaS organization or a business that relies on monthly recurring payments we promise you that this is an episode that you do not want to miss out on. 

About the Guest

Tyler Sloat has more than twenty-five years of experience in finance and operations roles for SaaS, software, and hardware technology companies varying in size from start-up to Fortune 500. Sloat served as Chief Financial Officer at Zuora Inc. for nearly 10 years, guiding the subscription payments leader from start-up through a successful public listing and subsequent quarters as a public company. In that role, he helped the company grow annual recurring revenue ~20x, raised over $200 mn in capital, and at times managed all G&A, commercial sales, technical operations, and sales operations. Before Zuora Sloat was the Chief Financial Officer for Obopay, where he was integral in raising well over $100M in investment and strategic capital, forming global commercial relationships with the likes of Nokia, MasterCard, and Societe Generale, and deploying Obopay's mobile payment service in four countries spanning three continents. Tyler joined Freshworks as CFO in 2020. At Freshworks, Tyler’s role involves maintaining sustainable growth across its customer segments and overseeing all the Accounting, Finance, Legal and IT functions. 

Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.

Register as part of the Freshworks for Startups Programme 

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

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

On this episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast, we sit down with Alex Lazarow, venture capitalist and author of Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley. Alex walks us through how startups outside Silicon Valley in what he calls ‘the frontier’ are innovating, what they are doing differently, and what other startups from Silicon Valley and beyond can learn from these frontier companies. He tells us why founders should build camels instead of unicorns, how to create A-teams, his long-term and midterm forecasts for venture capital during the Covid-19 pandemic, and much more.

About the Guest

Alexandre Lazarow has worked at the intersection of investing, innovation, and economic development across the public, private, and social sectors for more than a decade. 

He is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation, a global investment firm, with over $3 billion in assets, and offices across the world. He is also an Adjunct Professor with the Middlebury Institute for International Studies MBA program, where he teaches entrepreneurship.

Previously, Alex worked with Omidyar Network, a global early-stage investing platform that has invested over a billion dollars in hundreds of startups. 

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Alexandre Lazarow Official Website

Buy Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs--from Delhi to Detroit--Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley on Harvard Book Review Official Website

Register as part of the Freshworks for Startups Programme 

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

Host and Producer - Jayadevan PK

Assistant Producer - Shashwath J

Audio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian