The Exchanges

Q What's the most non-obvious thing you look for in the founders you bag? So for example, for me, I look for early, early signs of exceptionalism in something. It could be an exceptional footballer when they were nine. It could be they made money selling cookies when they were eight and made five, 5000 dollars, whatever it is. What's non-obvious, but a big tick for you?

A See, I, I look at Three or four things. I don't know if it's not obvious or obvious. First thing is what gives them the right to win in that market? Like, do they have, ah, Like, because sometimes I meet founders who say, Hey, I evaluated a 160 ideas and I picked this one, uh, based on these 70 parameters that I looked at. Super smart founders, but I don't get excited by those founders. So for me, you have to have spent a lot of time in the problem domain to be able to solve that problem. So, so what gives you the right to win in that market? That's number one. Number two, uh, craftsmanship. Like, Everything that they do, whether it's a deck that they send or a product mock that they have, like, can I see them to be world-class? Because you cannot win, uh, in, in a global market without being, uh, a truly world-class product. And then their ability to hire a great team. While this may seem obvious, many times you see people hiring just younger folks fresh out of college, that they, they don't have the ability to sell their vision when they don't have anything, right? But Building a product is not about UI. Building a company is all about people, right? So, so, uh, only the great founders who go the distance are the ones who are able to build a great team. And, and I think that's, in my opinion, that's the most important part of the challenge. If you hire a great team, the work …

AI assessment note: “I look at Three or four things. I don't know if it's not obvious”

Q in on here. You also chose to be global from day one. Like if I was advising you Girish, which is why I should never be advising you. I would have said that's a terrible idea. We should focus on a very specific region. We should dominate it. We should build brand. Why did you decide to be global from day one? And what are some lessons from that choice?

A Yeah, we went global from day one conscious choice. We had, uh, seven customers. When we had seven customers, I think they came from four different continents. First customer was Atwill College, uh, from Perth, Australia. So, um, see the fundamental lesson that I learned in life was taught to my, to me by my boss. He said, Girish, it's easier to earn one dollar than earn one rupee. So, and you have to have worked with Indian customers to really understand how hard it is to, uh, um, Do business, uh, with, uh, customers in India, right? Especially, uh, when you're an early stage product, uh, your roadmap will go for, uh, uh, they would hijack your roadmap, right? So, and, and, but if we win globally and then go to India, like the, the chances of success are actually even better. Like if you see most of the, uh, uh, even Indian startups who are doing well, like I would say BrowserStack, Chargebee, uh, some of the newer age companies, uh, they're all global companies who first won globally and then Uh, when in India.

AI assessment note: “He said, Girish, it's easier to earn one dollar than earn one rupee.”

Q When you review that strategy and where we are today, do you think that keyword approach, that SEO focus, that keyword targeting, that approach would work today in the plethora of PLG mass that we have today?

A It, it still plays its part, right? So, so, uh, I, I'll also tell you some of the, uh, uh, areas of research where we're working on Uh, like search engine optimization. Now we have generative engine optimization, right? Like if, if a lot of, uh, people are going to go to ChatGPT and ask about, hey, uh, which software should I use? How do we make sure that the AI models are trained to tell customers that Freshworks is a great product? So, so, uh, we, we, that is where the future is going. If, if, uh, Google, uh, people are not going to Google for search, but they're going to ChatGPT. So, so we need to do that.

AI assessment note: “It, it still plays its part, right?”

Q What are your biggest lessons on when to do a second product? You have a product suite today. You mentioned that people using multiple. What are big lessons on when to expand to a second product?

A So you have to do it when your first product is actually doing well. So what we have done at Freshworks always is when you have one product that's like, uh, uh, the wheels are spinning fast, money is coming in. And, and, uh, so while you're continuing that always, See, I always say that my job as product manager, I have to worry about the revenue that's going to come in 26 and 27. My sales VP or my president can worry about the, uh, revenue that's going to come this quarter and next quarter, right? Uh, so product person has to worry two, three years down the line and do the work now, because when you do the work now, you will probably launch it next year and then it will start to build slowly. And then for you to get momentum, it'll take two, three years.

AI assessment note: “you have to do it when your first product is actually doing well.”

Q What's the most non-obvious thing you look for in the founders you bag? So for example, for me, I look for early, early signs of exceptionalism in something. It could be an exceptional footballer when they were nine. It could be they made money selling cookies when they were eight and made five, 5000 dollars, whatever it is. What's non-obvious, but a big tick for you?

A See, I, I look at Three or four things. I don't know if it's not obvious or obvious. First thing is what gives them the right to win in that market? Like, do they have, ah, Like, because sometimes I meet founders who say, Hey, I evaluated a 160 ideas and I picked this one, uh, based on these 70 parameters that I looked at. Super smart founders, but I don't get excited by those founders. So for me, you have to have spent a lot of time in the problem domain to be able to solve that problem. So, so what gives you the right to win in that market? That's number one. Number two, uh, craftsmanship. Like, Everything that they do, whether it's a deck that they send or a product mock that they have, like, can I see them to be world-class? Because you cannot win, uh, in, in a global market without being, uh, a truly world-class product. And then their ability to hire a great team. While this may seem obvious, many times you see people hiring just younger folks fresh out of college, that they, they don't have the ability to sell their vision when they don't have anything, right? But Building a product is not about UI. Building a company is all about people, right? So, so, uh, only the great founders who go the distance are the ones who are able to build a great team. And, and I think that's, in my opinion, that's the most important part of the challenge. If you hire a great team, the work …

AI assessment note: “First thing is what gives them the right to win in that market?”

Q Help me out here. Cause we often hear the trope that you should always be embarrassed of your V one. Were you embarrassed of your V one when you look back now and do you agree with that scope or do you actually think that you should just ship as soon as possible?

A So, so I actually was terrified with the alpha release that we put out. I'll tell you, even though we had like three, Uh, 304 hundred users were signed up. I was worried that the product would crash, so I first sent it out to five people who had signed up way back in October, and then nothing happened. Nobody came, and then I sent it to 15 people, and then I sent it to 30 people. So, so I was trying to see, make sure that, hey, the, the, uh, servers wouldn't crash, uh, because suddenly, uh, a hundred people are coming in, right? And, uh, I wouldn't say I was embarrassed, uh, but today, if you look at the product, and if you look at what was there, yes, uh, you could say that, uh, it, it, but One of the things that worked well for us was we had priced our product very low. So we were fishing in a very different, uh, pond. Uh, so our product was priced at nine dollars, 19 dollars and 29 dollars per agent per month. That was the highest. Our competition, the lowest price was 29 dollars a month to get started, right? So, so which means, uh, we had basic functionality that did its job. Like you can call it a minimum viable product. Uh, I call it minimum desirable product, something that will work well. People are happy with the UI. They are happy with the price. So, uh, and, and, and not surprisingly, many of the early customers that we got were really small, uh, SMB customers, uh, …

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't say I was embarrassed, uh, but today, if you look at the product”

Q What are your biggest lessons on when to do a second product? You have a product suite today. You mentioned that people using multiple. What are big lessons on when to expand to a second product?

A So you have to do it when your first product is actually doing well. So what we have done at Freshworks always is when you have one product that's like, uh, uh, the wheels are spinning fast, money is coming in. And, and, uh, so while you're continuing that always, See, I always say that my job as product manager, I have to worry about the revenue that's going to come in 26 and 27. My sales VP or my president can worry about the, uh, revenue that's going to come this quarter and next quarter, right? Uh, so product person has to worry two, three years down the line and do the work now, because when you do the work now, you will probably launch it next year and then it will start to build slowly. And then for you to get momentum, it'll take two, three years.

AI assessment note: “you have to do it when your first product is actually doing well”

Q products. When you, you know, you said your second product now crosses three hundred million in ARR. You have a resource allocation question as the leader, which is, I can put more money into growth, plow this forward, or I can do a third product and a fourth product. How do you balance between investing more in that killer product second that works versus expanding further with net new products?

A In the early years, the first decade as a VC funded company, ah, see one of the things You have to understand in that inbound model, uh, the secret sauce for Freshworks was the business model disruption of being able to profitably serve the long tail of the global SMB from Chennai. When I wasn't able to articulate it, uh, as well in, as early as, when Freshdesk, the first product had not even hit a million dollars, I was already working on the second product called FreshMarketer. I had booked 40 domains starting with Fresh, uh, in, in 2010 and 20 11. So I, I, my dream was to build a multi-product company and use that inbound, uh, PLG motion across so many products. And you also have to understand that when we took our first round of VC money and then we spoke to some of our investors, so they actually, uh, gave me advice, which is good advice at that time, 2012. Girish, your first product is not even a million dollars in revenue. If you build a second product now, You would be confusing the market. People will think you're pivoting from customer service to marketing. And, and if you're going to raise your next round of VC funding, that investor will be confused on why, uh, you're doing this. So I actually killed the fresh marketer product that we built in 2012 because it was good advice. Uh, but then I actually convinced our board to let me build fresh service, which is today t…

AI assessment note: “my dream was to build a multi-product company and use that inbound, uh, PLG motion”

Q Help me out here. Cause we often hear the trope that you should always be embarrassed of your V one. Were you embarrassed of your V one when you look back now and do you agree with that scope or do you actually think that you should just ship as soon as possible?

A So, so I actually was terrified with the alpha release that we put out. I'll tell you, even though we had like three, Uh, 304 hundred users were signed up. I was worried that the product would crash, so I first sent it out to five people who had signed up way back in October, and then nothing happened. Nobody came, and then I sent it to 15 people, and then I sent it to 30 people. So, so I was trying to see, make sure that, hey, the, the, uh, servers wouldn't crash, uh, because suddenly, uh, a hundred people are coming in, right? And, uh, I wouldn't say I was embarrassed, uh, but today, if you look at the product, and if you look at what was there, yes, uh, you could say that, uh, it, it, but One of the things that worked well for us was we had priced our product very low. So we were fishing in a very different, uh, pond. Uh, so our product was priced at nine dollars, 19 dollars and 29 dollars per agent per month. That was the highest. Our competition, the lowest price was 29 dollars a month to get started, right? So, so which means, uh, we had basic functionality that did its job. Like you can call it a minimum viable product. Uh, I call it minimum desirable product, something that will work well. People are happy with the UI. They are happy with the price. So, uh, and, and, and not surprisingly, many of the early customers that we got were really small, uh, SMB customers, uh, …

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't say I was embarrassed, uh, but today, if you look at the product”

Q the product manager in terms of the timelines associated with the revenues. Honestly, Girish, when I listened to you, everything seems like it kind of just worked. And I know that startups are never like that. And so when we look at the movement from SMB to enterprise, the pricing structure, the global from day one, where did it go wrong? What broke and what are some lessons from that?

A So first of all, I tell you, clarify that When we moved from SMB, ah, meaning not moved, when we layered on, ah, a second go-to-market motion, we were focused on mid-market, not necessarily enterprise, right? So, so mid-market we define as 500 employees to 5000 employees, because we found that, hey, that segment of the TAM is huge, and they are probably not big enough to have budgets in the millions of dollars for the enterprise systems, and Their needs are similar. And so, uh, the sweet spot for us could be in the 500 to 5000 employees. So that's when we overlaid, uh, the, the second go to market motion of now what we call as a twin engine model. Now, I think, um, one of the life lessons that I've had is you have to learn with the consequence. You have to learn to live with the consequences of additions, right? I will tell you that the number one challenge for Freshworks is, or for any company for that matter, is Balancing this, uh, to go to market motions, right? The needs are different. The friction, as you rightly said, product management child, product management becomes hard, but we are also enjoying the fruits of that decision. We are a multi-product company that is working in multiple segments. So our revenue is coming from like, we are second product recently crossed three hundred million dollars in ARR. So now we have two, uh, uh, product lines north of three hundred …

AI assessment note: “we are also enjoying the fruits of that decision. We are a multi-product company”

Q the product manager in terms of the timelines associated with the revenues. Honestly, Girish, when I listened to you, everything seems like it kind of just worked. And I know that startups are never like that. And so when we look at the movement from SMB to enterprise, the pricing structure, the global from day one, where did it go wrong? What broke and what are some lessons from that?

A So first of all, I tell you, clarify that When we moved from SMB, ah, meaning not moved, when we layered on, ah, a second go-to-market motion, we were focused on mid-market, not necessarily enterprise, right? So, so mid-market we define as 500 employees to 5000 employees, because we found that, hey, that segment of the TAM is huge, and they are probably not big enough to have budgets in the millions of dollars for the enterprise systems, and Their needs are similar. And so, uh, the sweet spot for us could be in the 500 to 5000 employees. So that's when we overlaid, uh, the, the second go to market motion of now what we call as a twin engine model. Now, I think, um, one of the life lessons that I've had is you have to learn with the consequence. You have to learn to live with the consequences of additions, right? I will tell you that the number one challenge for Freshworks is, or for any company for that matter, is Balancing this, uh, to go to market motions, right? The needs are different. The friction, as you rightly said, product management child, product management becomes hard, but we are also enjoying the fruits of that decision. We are a multi-product company that is working in multiple segments. So our revenue is coming from like, we are second product recently crossed three hundred million dollars in ARR. So now we have two, uh, uh, product lines north of three hundred …

AI assessment note: “the number one challenge for Freshworks is... Balancing this, uh, to go to market motions”

Q So is this not a product marketing nightmare gearish in the way that you have, you know, 500 people who all serve the same customer base or, you know, similar product suites. Like, how do you think about the product marketing challenge of differentiation in such a crowded field?

A So I think, uh, one of the tools that we have used, uh, in, in product marketing, that's a great question, by the way. Uh, so a lot of times in the early years, right, uh, When you are getting traffic to come to your website, you are not really controlling who's coming in. It could be a five person company, or it could be, uh, a team member from a 5000 person company who's trying to come and buy something. So we, as early as 2013, we closed enterprise customers like Burger King, DHL, Sony Pictures, three M, uh, uh, Schneider Electric, Pearson. So all these, uh, like teams of users From these companies came online, looked at the product, it solved for their use case. Of course, it was not an enterprise wide deal, but it was for one team within a larger enterprise. Uh, like if you remember, there was a company that Tesla bought, uh, uh, another Elon Musk company called SolarCity. So we entered SolarCity, I think with a 25 seat deal. And, and, uh, two years later, uh, when we hired our first, uh, uh, president of sales in the US, he went and spoke to SolarCity. We found out that 13 different teams were using it, more than a thousand licenses. They were almost paying us a million dollars a year, but, uh, but under 13 different invoices. So the CFO was not even, uh, uh, looking at us in the top 10, uh, vendors by payment. So, so we were flying under the radar because all these teams…

AI assessment note: “one of the tools that we have used, uh, in, in product marketing”

Q products. When you, you know, you said your second product now crosses three hundred million in ARR. You have a resource allocation question as the leader, which is, I can put more money into growth, plow this forward, or I can do a third product and a fourth product. How do you balance between investing more in that killer product second that works versus expanding further with net new products?

A In the early years, the first decade as a VC funded company, ah, see one of the things You have to understand in that inbound model, uh, the secret sauce for Freshworks was the business model disruption of being able to profitably serve the long tail of the global SMB from Chennai. When I wasn't able to articulate it, uh, as well in, as early as, when Freshdesk, the first product had not even hit a million dollars, I was already working on the second product called FreshMarketer. I had booked 40 domains starting with Fresh, uh, in, in 2010 and 20 11. So I, I, my dream was to build a multi-product company and use that inbound, uh, PLG motion across so many products. And you also have to understand that when we took our first round of VC money and then we spoke to some of our investors, so they actually, uh, gave me advice, which is good advice at that time, 2012. Girish, your first product is not even a million dollars in revenue. If you build a second product now, You would be confusing the market. People will think you're pivoting from customer service to marketing. And, and if you're going to raise your next round of VC funding, that investor will be confused on why, uh, you're doing this. So I actually killed the fresh marketer product that we built in 2012 because it was good advice. Uh, but then I actually convinced our board to let me build fresh service, which is today t…

AI assessment note: “In the early years, the first decade as a VC funded company”

Q So is this not a product marketing nightmare gearish in the way that you have, you know, 500 people who all serve the same customer base or, you know, similar product suites. Like, how do you think about the product marketing challenge of differentiation in such a crowded field?

A So I think, uh, one of the tools that we have used, uh, in, in product marketing, that's a great question, by the way. Uh, so a lot of times in the early years, right, uh, When you are getting traffic to come to your website, you are not really controlling who's coming in. It could be a five person company, or it could be, uh, a team member from a 5000 person company who's trying to come and buy something. So we, as early as 2013, we closed enterprise customers like Burger King, DHL, Sony Pictures, three M, uh, uh, Schneider Electric, Pearson. So all these, uh, like teams of users From these companies came online, looked at the product, it solved for their use case. Of course, it was not an enterprise wide deal, but it was for one team within a larger enterprise. Uh, like if you remember, there was a company that Tesla bought, uh, uh, another Elon Musk company called SolarCity. So we entered SolarCity, I think with a 25 seat deal. And, and, uh, two years later, uh, when we hired our first, uh, uh, president of sales in the US, he went and spoke to SolarCity. We found out that 13 different teams were using it, more than a thousand licenses. They were almost paying us a million dollars a year, but, uh, but under 13 different invoices. So the CFO was not even, uh, uh, looking at us in the top 10, uh, vendors by payment. So, so we were flying under the radar because all these teams…

AI assessment note: “one of the tools that we have used, uh, in, in product marketing”