A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:29:12 · Pablo Srugo, Surojit Chatterjee
[00:29:12] S1: Let's dive into that. Like, were in stealth for a long time. What did you do for them to see what you were doing and and give you that cold email inbound? [00:29:19] S0: Yeah. So look, we didn't spend a ton in marketing at all. Spent very little. I think what has been instrumental for us is projecting our vision out effectively. We do a lot of work with influencers, analysts. So early on, Gartner and HFS Research and Everest Group. We're in the leaders bracket in Everest Group's H and T products for last three years, right, the entire life of our company. All those things help because people will see, oh, this is a credible player. We published a bunch of articles in say, Harvard Business Review, HBR, with some of our, advisors or other thought leaders in the industry and so on. I think creating that credibility is super important. That okay, you you are an enterprise player, you have built technology that is ahead of others. You won't steal my data. You understand what it is to play in the enterprise. So credibility and trust and reflecting that trust in in the product itself. So they can see, our customers can see everything I'm talking about manifest in the product really well.
00:29:19 · Surojit Chatterjee, Pablo Srugo
[00:29:19] S0: Yeah. So look, we didn't spend a ton in marketing at all. Spent very little. I think what has been instrumental for us is projecting our vision out effectively. We do a lot of work with influencers, analysts. So early on, Gartner and HFS Research and Everest Group. We're in the leaders bracket in Everest Group's H and T products for last three years, right, the entire life of our company. All those things help because people will see, oh, this is a credible player. We published a bunch of articles in say, Harvard Business Review, HBR, with some of our, advisors or other thought leaders in the industry and so on. I think creating that credibility is super important. That okay, you you are an enterprise player, you have built technology that is ahead of others. You won't steal my data. You understand what it is to play in the enterprise. So credibility and trust and reflecting that trust in in the product itself. So they can see, our customers can see everything I'm talking about manifest in the product really well. [00:30:28] S1: And then to explore a different piece, like, let's go on tactics. When you think about closing enterprise customers, what's one thing that you've done that has worked particularly well? Whether it's an outbound tactic or inbound? But just, you know, imagine I'm a I'm an early stage founder, I'm selling to enterprise, and I'm trying to get something here that I can copy and start implementing to just get more conversations going. What what would be like a top one that you've done?
00:30:52 · Surojit Chatterjee
[00:30:52] S0: The answer will be different for every company. For us, close small group conversations have been very useful, which is, you know, we host dinners with industry leaders, say CHROs and so on, right, in different cities. And these are small group conversations. Actually our sell is process is to not sell. We are trying to get people to think about agentic business transformation. And through that conversation, we get to know them, build relationship, and then that turns out into a commercial relationship over time. Enterprise sales process is long. You know, it may take nine months for a very large deal, seven figure. A lot of our deals are large $7.06 figure or large 7 figure deals per year, multi year, etcetera. So those things don't happen like, you know, it's not like a consumer, oh, I'll put my credit card, pay $10, forget about it for six months. Right? I may or may not use it. Enterprises are careful and it takes a long time to go through their entire process and so forth. So you have to have that patience. So to me, like building credibility, getting your name out, understand where it's ticking. For example, a lot of people spend a lot of time in large conferences. For us that was not the right approach. Like for example, if you go to a very large conference, right, 30,000 people showing up, you as a small company probably not noticeable at all. A lot of the attendees of these conferences also are not necessarily decision makers. Right? They may be junior folks in in enterprises. For us, the level of contracts we are signing requires like a c level buy in, and the c level folks are not necessarily just walking around in in a large conference floor. They're super busy. So how do you get to the right people in the right place is is important. One thing that I personally try to avoid is kind of formal and replicate what somebody else is doing. Right? Oh, somebody else is doing this, so I should go and do it as well. You have to find your own process and own method. Of course, it will change over time. Look, early days to today is a little bit different. Today we we do see kind of mid sized conferences that are useful for us, but very large conferences probably not yet that useful now. Right?
00:33:21 · Pablo Srugo
[00:33:21] S1: Let me ask you just a market related question because you're on the frontier of this. As you're talking to these enterprises about AI and AI agents specifically, where are you finding most or landing? All the way from the extreme of because of AI agents, I'm going to not hire any more humans or fire all the humans I have and just basically just purely AI agents. That's one extreme, unlikely, but just to draw the spectrum. And then on the other extreme, because of AI agents, I'm just gonna do way more, and I'm therefore gonna hire more humans and more AI agents, and just the output is gonna grow exponentially. Like, where on that spectrum do you think things land for most large enterprises based on your conversations?
00:33:59 · Surojit Chatterjee
[00:33:59] S0: See, most enterprises are not unlike maybe what people think in Silicon Valley, are not looking at just letting go of people. They are looking at how do I get more efficiency, revenue efficiency, my people are already overburdened, right? How do I create a better work culture atmosphere? I mean, if you look at any examples, say healthcare, right? The average nurse is, first of all, there are not enough nurses available to hire, like trained nurses. Second is 50% of their time is in paperwork, Right? So they would rather spend time with the patient care, but they have to do all this paperwork. Right? So even when hospital hires a nurse, they're only getting like half an hour or something. So I think the first level is efficiency, productivity. Even, you know, some of the VCs are saying the same thing. I see with all these AI tools, it's not like people are working a lot less. They're working on things that they like to work on, but they are excited to see, oh, I can do this also. I can get so much more done. Right? That's what I am hearing. By the way, one more thing I'll mention in our your question on go to market approach. For us, a big thing has been partnership. We partnered with some of the largest consulting firms, GSIs. These partners have very large reach, like whether, you know, PricewaterhouseCooper or KPMG and so on. Because what we are doing requires c level folks to think differently and transform their organization. And a lot of these partners have been doing that for a long time, have been advising clients. So that has been another thing for us. And even in this kind of sales process, we are often going with partners and helping draw this picture in front of the client that what would your organization look like in a few years with your current headcount? Like, what can you do more? I'm sure there'll be restructuring. I'm sure some of that will also happen. In some areas like customer support, I do see there is more radical shift happening. Other areas, it's more efficiency gains.
00:36:11 · Pablo Srugo, Surojit Chatterjee
[00:36:11] S1: Perfect. Well, let's stop it there. Let me ask the final question, which is if you think about an early stage founder looking for product market fit, what is like top piece of advice that [00:36:19] S0: you might have for them? Top piece of advice is, look, you have product market fit when your average salesperson can go and sell your product without you being in the room. I am continuously looking at that and saying, okay, can I train my sales team to go and sell without me being in the room? Sometimes, of course, for larger deals, etcetera, you still have to show up. And it's different for different types of products, which is like, look, some products are more complex than others. Right? But can you get to a point where somebody can articulate that is simply what the product does and what benefit it'll bring for you. [00:36:58] S1: Perfect. Well, Surajit, thanks so much for jumping on the show, man. It's been awesome. [00:37:01] S0: Thank you so much. Take care. [00:37:03] S1: Wow. What an episode. You're probably in awe. You're in absolute shock. You're like, that helped me so much. So guess what? Now it's your turn to help someone else. Share the episode in the WhatsApp group you have with founders. Share it on that Slack channel. Send it to your founder friends and help them out. Trust me. They will love you for it.