In today's episode, Sudarsan Ravi, Founder & CEO of Talent Acquisition platform RippleHire, talks about how he stayed authentic in the face of early-day FOMO, what it takes to sell in a low-trust market like India and why you can’t put a deadline on building a great company.

Show notes:

2:25: RippleHire: ‘The’ word for employee referral

3:50: Ironic but true. Competition creates staying power

6:14: Getting funded does not prove ambition

8:12: Pole vaulting over FOMO

10:42: Selling at 40x pricing over competition in India

13:12: Buying SaaS in India - What’s new

16:05: Looking back on the Oh s**t! moments

17:18: What first-time founders can learn from my journey?

18:56: Why second-time founders put value over valuation

Upekkha-EY Bellwethers of Indian SaaS Report 2023
https://www.upekkha.io/ey-upekkha-report

Social:

Website: https://www.upekkha.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upekkha
Twitter: https://twitter.com/upekkhaBe

About the host:
Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan (Rajan) is the co-founder and Partner at the Upekkha Value SaaS Accelerator where he has worked with over 100 early-stage startups to build their SaaS flywheel. Prior to this, he was a product leader at Intuit and worked on Quickbooks online in its global market expansion. Rajan has helped with over a dozen cross-border strategic acquisitions. 

Where quick-shooting, high-burn rocket ships blazed, Saravana Kumar, Founder & CEO of Kovai.co, took the Value SaaS route to over $10mn in ARR, while bootstrapping the global brand from his hometown Coimbatore.

2:54: Going from single to a multi-product brand 

7:18: HQ Coimbatore & why great products can be built from anywhere

9:03: Choices: On staying solo and 100% bootstrapped

11:12 Marketing before product? What’s changed?

13:15: Challenges of going from single to a multi-product company

15:53: Hiring as a bootstrapped founder

tps://www.upekkha.io/ey-upekkha-report

Social:
Website: https://www.upekkha.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upekkha
Twitter: https://twitter.com/upekkhaBe

About the Host:
Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan (Rajan) is the co-founder and Partner at the Upekkha Value SaaS Accelerator where he has worked with over 100 early stage startups to build their SaaS flywheel. Prior to this, he was a product leader at Intuit and worked on Quickbooks online in its global market expansion. Rajan has helped with over a dozen cross-border strategic acquisitions. 

Chapters:

2:08: ‘Distribution not tech is what you need to win’
13:18: SaaS proliferation means you need to build brand fast
16:40: The choice to exit vs. keep growing with funding
12:14: Strategic actions that led to acquisition by Notion 
24:31: ‘You’re not hot till you are!’ - Life after exit

Social:

Website: https://www.upekkha.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upekkha
Twitter: https://twitter.com/upekkhaBe

Chapters

1:29: SaaS. Because it returns good multiples

3:57: How Chennai stole the SaaS crown

6:19: Going enterprise when others sold SMB

9:05: Pivots on way to first million

16:14: Yae or Nay? The funding question 

17:57: Brand marketing before product marketing 

23:37: The line from positioning to acquisition 

27:10: Filter Kaapi reboot 

34:04: Slow and deliberate > fast growth

Social

Website: https://www.upekkha.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upekkha
Twitter: https://twitter.com/upekkhaBe

In this episode, Vijay Yalamanchili, Founder and CEO of HR tech platform Keka talks about scaling SaaS while staying bootstrapped, and waiting on the right time to raise funds. Vijay also takes us behind key early decisions - though seemingly counterintuitive - on choosing India as a target market, pricing 3X over competition, and balancing services and product tracks along the Keka journey.

Chapters:

1:00: Breaking rules & selling SaaS in India

3:42: Pricing 3x of competition

7:16: Focus on one point problem and segment

12:06: Leading with UI/UX early on

14:38: Services vs product & should founders do both?

18:37: Scaling bootstrapped

22:05: Behind the brand name Keka

24:32: Getting to the first $1mn ARR 

25:52: Resilience through the lows

27:46: Timing your first fundraise

References:
https://www.upekkha.io/blog/saas_million_dollar_company_christoph_jans
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/myth-services-dna-thiyagarajan-maruthavanan-rajan-/

Social:
Website: https://www.upekkha.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upekkha
Twitter: https://twitter.com/upekkhaBe

In this episode we spoke to Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, Partner at Upekkha about the art of effective SaaS pricing.

Too often founders price their products based on a set of highly unscientific and imprecise factors. Unsurprisingly, this approach doesn't work. It invariably leaves customers feeling like they are paying too much and founders feeling like they are being paid too little. 
Prasanna has a way out. He argues that all pricing discussions should start with one simple question: How much value am I producing? 

If founders are able to answer this question, coming up with a pricing model that gives founders fair compensation while keeping customers happy is relatively easy.

Of course the process of answering that question does require a great deal of work and that's what this conversation was about.

For more podcasts like this visit https://upekkha.io/podcasts

In this episode we spoke to Tejas Mehta, Co-founder of SocialPilot, which is a Social Media, Scheduling Marketing and Analytics Tool oriented primarily towards digital marketing agencies who have to manage multiple accounts for each of their clients.

Tejas spoke about how SocialPilot moved upmarket by investing an immense amount of time and effort into their customer discovery. Specifically he discussed how his team translated knowledge of their customer into a more focused product that met the specific needs of a particular target segment. This in turn let them increase price and spur growth.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation was about how increasing their price helped them manage their churn which seems counter intuitive because on the surface you'd think that people would be less likely more likely to churn if you increase prices.

Bottom line, there are a lot of actionable insights in this interview that you can take into your business. Enjoy the conversation!

For more podcasts like this visit https://upekkha.io/podcasts

In this episode we spoke to Gagandeep Josan, Head of Solutions & Industry @ Whatfix about how he got his job.

Before joining Whatfix, Gagan was the CEO of Nittio Learn, an LMS platform that helped businesses train and reskill distributed workforces.

The reason I talk about Nittio in the past tense is because earlier this year Nittio Learn was acquired by Whatfix, a leader in helping enterprises drive digital adoption.

In our conversation, Gagan and I spoke about what the process of acquisition looks like for founders at smaller SaaS businesses. Specifically, he discussed:

• How he and the rest of Nittio's leadership team decided to pursue acquistion
• What it takes to find an acquirer
• What the legal and business process of acquisition looks like.

A quick point before you listen: We recorded this interview way back in August so keep that in mind when we discuss timelines.