The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:43:51 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:43:51] S0: Well, it sounds like they actually view US brand as a negative signal. Right? [00:43:56] S1: That... It's hard to fully draw... Like, it varies person to person. There's like a... I think if we can thread the needle and be like, we are a US company with US capital, US innovation, you know, we are moving quickly like a US company, but we have the local boots on the ground presence of like ex bankers who are gonna help you deploy this. We have local legal folks, local compliance folks, like local solutions architects, security engineers, etcetera, who are working to adapt the playbook for Europe. That's probably like the best possible pitch if we can show that we're we're a bit of both. So in Europe, there's a lot more kind of just value selling upfront. Like we need to like be everywhere and be well regarded enough in every single firm to be included into the one to two vendor pilot that goes on. So it's it's very relationship relationship based based as as opposed opposed to, to, you you know, know, product product based at times. [00:44:45] S0: And APAC, anything unique about APAC compared to Europe and US?
00:44:45 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:44:45] S0: And APAC, anything unique about APAC compared to Europe and US? [00:44:50] S1: It's just so sprawling. The... I... It's... I mean, they're... You know, of course, like, the French market is different from the Spanish market. It's different from the Italian market. In APAC, like Tokyo versus Singapore versus Hong Kong versus Sydney versus Dubai versus India, it's, like, very hard to even draw, like, parallels across... They're probably more different from one another than they are similar. Singapore is probably the most similar to Europe. You know, that's Western in a lot of ways. A lot of the expansion we're doing there and a lot of our users there are actually just the Asian divisions of the bulge bracket banks that we're working with. Compared to Tokyo, like our deals there, it's like you need, you know, a native Japanese speaker on hand. It's a culturally very unique. It's a completely different market. So just the the the sprawl and the scale of it is is, is different. [00:45:36] S0: So it sounds like with... Because a lot of these banks you're working with are global banks. Right? But you've got to sell to them by region, so they come by Fogo globally?
00:45:36 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:45:36] S0: So it sounds like with... Because a lot of these banks you're working with are global banks. Right? But you've got to sell to them by region, so they come by Fogo globally? [00:45:45] S1: Occasionally. What I found... This is me drawing a broad, like, kind of a characterization that's probably not fully accurate. Frequently, I found that The US bulge bracket banks, The US banks have a central procurement where you, like, sell in New York and then you get users globally. Sometimes in the European banks, it's a separate procurement office, procurement center in Asia. You need to go, like, get budget approved. It's completely different paper. It's a different MSA, etcetera. [00:46:10] S0: Right. Interesting. [00:46:11] S1: It's a pretty boring [00:46:12] S0: answer. It's just kind of accurate. Yeah. Mean, I think the takeaway is it's not one size fits all. Yeah. [00:46:18] S1: Exactly. [00:46:18] S0: Which which makes sense. I'm conscious of time, so I wanna come to rapid fire sprint. But before I do, we talked a lot at the start about the challenges building rainbow. Now things are up and to the right. If you think in the past twelve months, has there been one moment where you've been tested a lot? And I wonder if you can share it.
00:46:18 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:46:18] S0: Which which makes sense. I'm conscious of time, so I wanna come to rapid fire sprint. But before I do, we talked a lot at the start about the challenges building rainbow. Now things are up and to the right. If you think in the past twelve months, has there been one moment where you've been tested a lot? And I wonder if you can share it. [00:46:34] S1: Yeah. Good question. The sheer volume of scaling has been a huge task. We've, like, you know, in the last twelve months, we've gone from, like, I think, like, 40 people to, like, 200 or something like that. So it's a completely different company. And so when you're 40, it's like you don't really need any process. Right? It's just like everyone just doing everything at the same time. And, like, as long as we're roughly on the same page, it's it's fine. Now it's like we're hiring people who are hiring people who are hiring people. And there are people at the company like we don't really know that well. Hopefully we spend a little bit of time with them. But to be able to create kind of an operational cadence, a set of values, a way of doing things that is not restrictive and still like fosters autonomy and creativity, but keeps people aligned is a big is a big challenge.
00:46:34 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:46:34] S1: Yeah. Good question. The sheer volume of scaling has been a huge task. We've, like, you know, in the last twelve months, we've gone from, like, I think, like, 40 people to, like, 200 or something like that. So it's a completely different company. And so when you're 40, it's like you don't really need any process. Right? It's just like everyone just doing everything at the same time. And, like, as long as we're roughly on the same page, it's it's fine. Now it's like we're hiring people who are hiring people who are hiring people. And there are people at the company like we don't really know that well. Hopefully we spend a little bit of time with them. But to be able to create kind of an operational cadence, a set of values, a way of doing things that is not restrictive and still like fosters autonomy and creativity, but keeps people aligned is a big is a big challenge. [00:47:21] S0: How how are you getting better? Like, if I reflect in my own self, like, being a manager of people leaders really are. Like, sure when you were like... You go back to, like, Princeton days, we all said it. Right? We're like, we wanna be a manager. We wanna be a coach. We wanna have, like, 20 direct reports. And now I think of it and I go, no. I don't actually want 20 direct reports because that's 20 careers. [00:47:41] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:42] S0: Emotions and 20 egos that I've gotta manage. Yeah. How are you getting better at being a people manager? [00:47:51] S1: Because it's I am. Yeah. It's... No. It's so... It's the hardest thing. I think, yeah, when you're when you're
00:47:51 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:47:51] S1: Because it's I am. Yeah. It's... No. It's so... It's the hardest thing. I think, yeah, when you're when you're [00:47:55] S0: you're really good. You're teaching like, a good listener and you're empathetic, which is like a daily challenge. Right? Particularly in a startup that's growing so fast.