The Exchanges

Q I just have to unpack before we move on to enterprise and SMB. You mentioned the low pricing being really easy for them to sign up and just low friction. You know, Marc Andreessen said, if I could have a billboard, I would have on it raised prices. What are your biggest lessons on pricing from the very successful low pricing you have? And how do you reflect on them?

A See, I think, uh, at the end of the day, It matters to, uh, its pricing is all about. Who are you selling to? What do they care about? And, and, um, what is your entry wedge into the market? Right? So if I have something that can solve a great problem for a large enterprise and, and I can increase my prices and charge whatever I want, uh, then that could be the strategy that Mark Anderson is saying, right? Like, uh, but if, if I am the 601st help desk, like when we started fresh desk, there were 600 help desks already in the market. Uh, there is a website called helpdesks.com, uh, where you can go and filter and search what kind of, uh, help does he want? So for us, we wanted to win by superior execution with a better design, better UI and, and a great price and, and then build our brand and then raise prices. Of course, today we have customers who pay us, um, millions of like a couple of million dollars a year. Also, uh, many customers who pay us over a million dollars a year. Uh, but we also have customers who start off paying Uh, say, uh, uh, 29 dollars a month.

AI assessment note: “pricing is all about. Who are you selling to? What do they care about?”

Q do have to ask. It seems like something is, India and Europe are often characterized in the same way, which is every generation we say, ah, now's the time for European tech, or now's the time for Indian tech, and we're still kind of waiting. There's amazing companies like Freshworks, or Spotify in Europe, or, but there's not that many. Why is now different, or is now not different, Girish?

A This is the time. I would now say now is the time for Indian tech product companies, and this is going to be the decade of India as a product nation. I will tell you, uh, what I am seeing, we are living, the reason why I even started a fund called Together Fund, and we, I'm a co-founder of an organization called SAS Bhoomi. We just had our annual event, uh, I think two weeks ago in Chennai. In We first came together as a bunch of founders. There was a grand total of 40 companies, SaaS companies, building global products in India, right? So we, we all met. We, we didn't find any ecosystem, so we decided to create an ecosystem. And, uh, last year, uh, there were over 3500 companies, uh, in India, and a thousand people, a thousand founders attended, uh, SaaS Bumi. This year, there are over, I think, 6000 companies, uh, uh, startups Uh, in SaaS and AI in India, 1600 of those founders were attending our event. And so we are just seeing this tsunami of startups happening. And I will also tell you in the last two weeks alone, uh, at our fund, uh, Together Fund, we have received 150 applications from startups in two weeks. So, so we are going through this. We have never seen this kind of deal flow before. So, so this is really, really happening.

AI assessment note: “now is the time for Indian tech product companies, and this is going to be the decade”

Q Talk to me. So we launched Freshworks 20 10. What happens then? Do we have like immediate product market fit? Is it very clear that it's working?

A I launched the company in 2010. Um, we launched the product in June, 20 11. I'll tell you what happened. Uh, uh, March 18th and 19th were very, very important days, uh, where, uh, we were a small team of six people, uh, like, and, and I was not coding. Uh, I was doing everything else, right? So one of the things I was doing was I was trying to participate in an AppSumo contest called the Lean Startup Contest, where the price was 50,000 dollars if you write a blog post on how your startup is a lean startup. So while I was waiting for the product to get ready, I was, uh, as the CEO and marketer, I was trying to do these things to see if I could get some money. And, uh, I actually wrote a nice post on, uh, Hacker News, uh, on how a simple comment on Hacker News made me quit my, uh, comfortable job and start a startup. So I, I shared that story and posted on Hacker News. It went viral on, uh, March 18th. It stayed on the, as the first post for like 3:04 hours and on the top page for like, uh, um, more than, uh, a day, which is pretty incredible on Hacker News. And, uh, I had a website with a simple WFO form, but the product was not ready. There were so many people who are coming in and filling those WFO forms, like hundreds of users had already signed up. So I talked to my team on March, uh, uh, or, or at least an alpha, which we started sending out to a few customers. May, uh, we,…

AI assessment note: “we had, A hundred customers in hundred days, 200 customers in 200 days.”

Q So when you were priced so much lower than everyone else, how are you able to have attractive unit economics so early with such smaller ACVs?

A So I think, um, you have to understand the whole unit economics of, uh, if you break down the CAC, the customer acquisition cost, uh, for, uh, A SaaS startup that is being built in India versus the US. So in the US, the CAC would be two thirds sales and one third marketing because salespeople are so expensive if you're sitting in San Francisco and, or, or even London for that matter. Uh, what we did was, uh, what is today known as product led growth, but we did, the term wasn't coined, uh, back then. Uh, so when we put out the product, uh, so we actually do a lot of SEO work. Uh, and, uh, Google ads and, and stuff like that. And we, we look at the keyword density, actually, uh, make sure that, uh, we are able to drive traffic for, from people who are searching for all those keywords. They come to the website and the, the website is designed to get the customer into the product quickly without talking to anybody in sales. So the pricing is open, uh, and the products are built to be intuitive, do it yourself kind of product. So You don't have to hire an SI like Accenture or TCS to come and implement it, so the online buyer who's coming in feels like, hey, I'm trying to do this, and it feels simple enough, easy enough, I can do it on my own, and the pricing is here. You can put your credit card on file. There's no back and forth contract negotiation, no redlining of contracts, no …

AI assessment note: “website is designed to get the customer into the product quickly without talking to anybody”

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 I just have to unpack before we move on to enterprise and SMB. You mentioned the low pricing being really easy for them to sign up and just low friction. You know, Marc Andreessen said, if I could have a billboard, I would have on it raised prices. What are your biggest lessons on pricing from the very successful low pricing you have? And how do you reflect on them?

A See, I think, uh, at the end of the day, It matters to, uh, its pricing is all about. Who are you selling to? What do they care about? And, and, um, what is your entry wedge into the market? Right? So if I have something that can solve a great problem for a large enterprise and, and I can increase my prices and charge whatever I want, uh, then that could be the strategy that Mark Anderson is saying, right? Like, uh, but if, if I am the 601st help desk, like when we started fresh desk, there were 600 help desks already in the market. Uh, there is a website called helpdesks.com, uh, where you can go and filter and search what kind of, uh, help does he want? So for us, we wanted to win by superior execution with a better design, better UI and, and a great price and, and then build our brand and then raise prices. Of course, today we have customers who pay us, um, millions of like a couple of million dollars a year. Also, uh, many customers who pay us over a million dollars a year. Uh, but we also have customers who start off paying Uh, say, uh, uh, 29 dollars a month.

AI assessment note: “pricing is all about. Who are you selling to? What do they care about?”

Q What was the biggest cow in the ditch to follow your analogy that you didn't identify for a while? There was nothing that was a surprise that like lingered. And then it was like, oh gosh, we actually haven't allocated nearly enough to enterprise or to the U S sales team.

A Um, we were really, really, uh, growing fast and, uh, we were hiring a lot of sales folks and, uh, the, the sales wheel was spinning faster than the engineering wheel. We didn't hire enough engineers and, uh, like we, we added like thousand customers or something like that. And, uh, feature requests were coming, flying in and, uh, our engineering team was actually involved in a, a Ruby on Rails upgrade. So we couldn't even ship enough. And, uh, so I realized that, okay, How do you balance hiring, uh, across the org? And, and so we did not have a process to do headcount planning in advance, uh, looking at, okay, where are the revenue numbers going to be next year and how much, uh, like now we have a full blown headcount planning process, but, but that was a big mistake that I did, uh, where I, I didn't hire, uh, product developers enough.

AI assessment note: “We didn't hire enough engineers and, uh, like we, we added like thousand customers”

Q Have you ever had a product not work?

A Two examples I can give you. One is a product called Fresh Connect. Uh, so where this was the early days of Slack when we saw Slack, uh, uh, really growing, uh, rapidly. So I could see that enterprise collaboration was actually gaining momentum, and this was even before Microsoft Teams had launched. So theory in my mind was, if I look at how our customers or our employees were using Slack, so they would get a customer service ticket, and then they would go on Slack and ask somebody for help And then that person will say, okay, send me the link to the ticket. And then they'd copy base the ticket link. And then, uh, the person would go there. They need to have a login and then they would read the customer context. And then they come back on Slack and offer help. I'm just using customer service as one example, same thing in sales, same thing in HR. So we found that, okay, that Slack is actually winning because enterprise software is broken in collaboration. So what we wanted to do was Bring context and collaboration together. Like, uh, while you are, uh, working on a customer service issue, how can you collaborate on that ticket then and there? Like how you do in Word doc, right? Google doc. So, but what had happened by the time we were late, like we took more than two years to launch, and by that time both Slack and Teams have actually started winning so many users, when we took …

AI assessment note: “Two examples I can give you. One is a product called Fresh Connect.”

Q do have to ask. It seems like something is, India and Europe are often characterized in the same way, which is every generation we say, ah, now's the time for European tech, or now's the time for Indian tech, and we're still kind of waiting. There's amazing companies like Freshworks, or Spotify in Europe, or, but there's not that many. Why is now different, or is now not different, Girish?

A This is the time. I would now say now is the time for Indian tech product companies, and this is going to be the decade of India as a product nation. I will tell you, uh, what I am seeing, we are living, the reason why I even started a fund called Together Fund, and we, I'm a co-founder of an organization called SAS Bhoomi. We just had our annual event, uh, I think two weeks ago in Chennai. In We first came together as a bunch of founders. There was a grand total of 40 companies, SaaS companies, building global products in India, right? So we, we all met. We, we didn't find any ecosystem, so we decided to create an ecosystem. And, uh, last year, uh, there were over 3500 companies, uh, in India, and a thousand people, a thousand founders attended, uh, SaaS Bumi. This year, there are over, I think, 6000 companies, uh, uh, startups Uh, in SaaS and AI in India, 1600 of those founders were attending our event. And so we are just seeing this tsunami of startups happening. And I will also tell you in the last two weeks alone, uh, at our fund, uh, Together Fund, we have received 150 applications from startups in two weeks. So, so we are going through this. We have never seen this kind of deal flow before. So, so this is really, really happening.

AI assessment note: “This is the time. I would now say now is the time for Indian tech”

Q What's the biggest misconception about the Indian tech ecosystem? What do you hear that you're like, Fuck sake. I wish that would change.

A I will speak specifically from, uh, SaaS. Uh, people always think that, uh, like, like we started the conversation. People think that we will build for India first and then, uh, go global, uh, as opposed to many of the Indian SaaS product companies are actually starting global on day one. And, and that I have found many times when I am talking to LPs and investors, they, they don't get it because A U S company would sell in U S and Australian company would sell in Australia first and then branch out. So they're all coming with that, uh, preconceived notion, uh, where we had to educate them saying, Hey, these are global product companies that are getting customers internationally from day one. And, and there is a playbook for that.

AI assessment note: “People think that we will build for India first and then, uh, go global”

Q Just help me understand though. Why is that? Is that because Indian markets need social validation from external international markets before they will buy? Is it, what is the reasoning behind that? I'm just interested.

A So I think, uh, to some extent that could be true, but also India, uh, Indian customers are used to a services mindset. Uh, like if you go to us or Australia, customers there know that they are buying, uh, uh, A shrink wrap product. They know that, Hey, um, the product is the product. If I like it, I'll buy it. If I don't like it, I don't buy it. And, and if I have some feedback, I'll give the feedback. If I need a feature, I'll ask and wait. Imagine going to Microsoft office and, uh, and, and asking for a feature, like when are you going to get it? Uh, so, uh, I think, uh, global customers have that awareness. Indian customers have been, uh, used to a lot of services mindset where they would say, Hey, why don't you come to my office? I'll tell you what needs to be built and you build it.

AI assessment note: “Indian customers are used to a services mindset”

Q So when you were priced so much lower than everyone else, how are you able to have attractive unit economics so early with such smaller ACVs?

A So I think, um, you have to understand the whole unit economics of, uh, if you break down the CAC, the customer acquisition cost, uh, for, uh, A SaaS startup that is being built in India versus the US. So in the US, the CAC would be two thirds sales and one third marketing because salespeople are so expensive if you're sitting in San Francisco and, or, or even London for that matter. Uh, what we did was, uh, what is today known as product led growth, but we did, the term wasn't coined, uh, back then. Uh, so when we put out the product, uh, so we actually do a lot of SEO work. Uh, and, uh, Google ads and, and stuff like that. And we, we look at the keyword density, actually, uh, make sure that, uh, we are able to drive traffic for, from people who are searching for all those keywords. They come to the website and the, the website is designed to get the customer into the product quickly without talking to anybody in sales. So the pricing is open, uh, and the products are built to be intuitive, do it yourself kind of product. So You don't have to hire an SI like Accenture or TCS to come and implement it, so the online buyer who's coming in feels like, hey, I'm trying to do this, and it feels simple enough, easy enough, I can do it on my own, and the pricing is here. You can put your credit card on file. There's no back and forth contract negotiation, no redlining of contracts, no …

AI assessment note: “website is designed to get the customer into the product quickly without talking to anybody”

Q And what are the challenges and frustrations? I just want to dig in on those. Cause I think that's where learnings come from.

A There, there are tons in every department. Like we, we already talked about product management, so I will probably, uh, so, so the, the number one difference in product management is see in, in when building for an inbound user, you focus on intuitive do it yourself product. When you're building for the enterprise customer, they are not going to do it themselves. Uh, you, you need an SI partner who will, uh, be trained to use it. So product managers can, Build stuff that's not very user friendly. Like how well, like my challenge internally is how do I drill into my product managers that even if you're building for mid-market enterprise, it doesn't hurt to keep that intuitive, uh, user-friendly interface. Like I, I'll, I'll just, uh, say that is one of the, uh, stuff in product. Enterprise sales guys always want the highest possible price because they believe they can sell. And, and, uh, when I'm inbound, when I'm selling inbound users, the sticker shock will drive away website visitors. So I need to make sure that the pricing is affordable and open. Uh, enterprise sales guys will want to say contact sales. They don't want to publish the pricing on the website. So how do you balance this? So now we make a philosophy that our pricing will be open. Uh, it will be on the website. So, uh, that's the company policy, right? And the other important challenge would be hiring. When you'r…

AI assessment note: “the other important challenge would be hiring. When you're hiring leaders”

Q What was the biggest cow in the ditch to follow your analogy that you didn't identify for a while? There was nothing that was a surprise that like lingered. And then it was like, oh gosh, we actually haven't allocated nearly enough to enterprise or to the U S sales team.

A Um, we were really, really, uh, growing fast and, uh, we were hiring a lot of sales folks and, uh, the, the sales wheel was spinning faster than the engineering wheel. We didn't hire enough engineers and, uh, like we, we added like thousand customers or something like that. And, uh, feature requests were coming, flying in and, uh, our engineering team was actually involved in a, a Ruby on Rails upgrade. So we couldn't even ship enough. And, uh, so I realized that, okay, How do you balance hiring, uh, across the org? And, and so we did not have a process to do headcount planning in advance, uh, looking at, okay, where are the revenue numbers going to be next year and how much, uh, like now we have a full blown headcount planning process, but, but that was a big mistake that I did, uh, where I, I didn't hire, uh, product developers enough.

AI assessment note: “I didn't hire, uh, product developers enough.”

Q You can see my hand. I'm building, I'm doing notes as I listen to you talk. Um, what are the biggest hiring mistakes you made there? I think hiring is one of the hardest challenges of business building. What are some lessons that you know now that you wish you could tell yourself?

A So I think my biggest mistakes have been there. So I'll give you three or four, right? Number one, I did not do ref, uh, uh, ref checks on candidates who actually came through like investor referrals. Uh, so Costly mistake. I should have talked to people who reported into those leaders and got a style of their management style. Uh, I actually on a couple of occasions have gotten carried away by the resume, like, Hey, they work for a great company, uh, went to a great college. Uh, they should be incredibly smart. And so obviously there'll be a fit here. Uh, boom, didn't work out cultural misfits. Uh, my management style, I'm usually very hands off in terms of when I hire a new leader, I look at all the best candidates and then we hired the best possible candidate. Then I step out of the way and let them play the game. Also, A lot of us in India, like we have not been there, done that. So when you hire experienced talent, we assume that, okay, we are going to learn from this candidate. So we let them play, right? But what happens is one of the most important lessons I learned, which every CEO should do is while you can be hands off the initial period of letting the leader transition and settle in, you have to be closely involved in all the big decisions. You have to be watchful of how they're treating their people. So you have to be in. So my, one of my, My OKRs now or, or my, uh…

AI assessment note: “Number one, I did not do ref, uh, uh, ref checks on candidates”

Q Have you ever had a product not work?

A Two examples I can give you. One is a product called Fresh Connect. Uh, so where this was the early days of Slack when we saw Slack, uh, uh, really growing, uh, rapidly. So I could see that enterprise collaboration was actually gaining momentum, and this was even before Microsoft Teams had launched. So theory in my mind was, if I look at how our customers or our employees were using Slack, so they would get a customer service ticket, and then they would go on Slack and ask somebody for help And then that person will say, okay, send me the link to the ticket. And then they'd copy base the ticket link. And then, uh, the person would go there. They need to have a login and then they would read the customer context. And then they come back on Slack and offer help. I'm just using customer service as one example, same thing in sales, same thing in HR. So we found that, okay, that Slack is actually winning because enterprise software is broken in collaboration. So what we wanted to do was Bring context and collaboration together. Like, uh, while you are, uh, working on a customer service issue, how can you collaborate on that ticket then and there? Like how you do in Word doc, right? Google doc. So, but what had happened by the time we were late, like we took more than two years to launch, and by that time both Slack and Teams have actually started winning so many users, when we took …

AI assessment note: “Two examples I can give you. One is a product called Fresh Connect.”

Q How do you create an environment of performance? It's a tough environment to create.

A First thing is you find people who are passionate about What they do, right? Like, uh, and, and that starts with our hiring process and the context in India, you have to understand this. Everybody finishes computer science engineering and then figures out what they want to do in life, right? So, so I have, uh, folks working in sales and pre-sales and marketing who are all computer science engineers, right? So, uh, that's a very different context, which means our hiring actually identifies what are they really good at? Because if, if you are truly Playing to your passion. You, you don't have to work for a day in your life. Somebody said that, right? So, so work becomes play. So that is core to getting the right people on the job, right? And that's the first thing for environmental performance. Second thing is all about culture. How do you treat people? Like we build genuine relationships. I don't like our, our manager training program is called lead by lead with heart. So I've never done empty pep talks, sugar coated feedback. Like if I am happy with somebody, I'll tell them I'm happy. If I'm unhappy with somebody, I, I, I just do it in private, but I actually tell them what didn't work out. I, I'm still friends with all the people I've fired and let go also, uh, because it is never personal. It's all about having that open conversation, telling people why something is not worki…

AI assessment note: “creating that environment of performance means you need to act when you have made bad hires”

Q I did just want to ask, when you were talking about young people and purpose, Girish, what do you advise the thousands of young people today who don't know what their purpose is?

A See, I think, uh, this is where, uh, The Maslow's need hierarchy has to play in. It is quite common for young folks to not worry about things like purpose because, and I'm sure all of us are familiar with the Maslow's need hierarchy, right? First comes the physiological needs, then the safety needs, then the social needs and esteem needs. I think people have to go through the journey. And when you don't have enough for yourself, you're not going to be able to think about purpose. But I think it's okay. Like when I reflect back on my younger days, I did not actually, uh, have a lot of purpose. It was more about, Hey, I need to first make money. I need to provide for my family. I need to do all these things. And then once you, uh, it, it dawns on you, like once you become successful, once you make, uh, some money and then you realize, okay, what do you want to do? I think it's, there is time. It's okay.

AI assessment note: “when you don't have enough for yourself, you're not going to be able to think about purpose”

Q What's the biggest misconception about the Indian tech ecosystem? What do you hear that you're like, Fuck sake. I wish that would change.

A I will speak specifically from, uh, SaaS. Uh, people always think that, uh, like, like we started the conversation. People think that we will build for India first and then, uh, go global, uh, as opposed to many of the Indian SaaS product companies are actually starting global on day one. And, and that I have found many times when I am talking to LPs and investors, they, they don't get it because A U S company would sell in U S and Australian company would sell in Australia first and then branch out. So they're all coming with that, uh, preconceived notion, uh, where we had to educate them saying, Hey, these are global product companies that are getting customers internationally from day one. And, and there is a playbook for that.

AI assessment note: “People think that we will build for India first and then, uh, go global”

Q What are the biggest lessons in what it takes for them to be successful in that period? Okay. You need to be on top of them more and you can't just leave them, but what does that actually break down into as granular and specific as possible? I'm really interested.

A I'll give you a couple of stories there. One, I think, um, one of my friends, uh, Chandar, who's the CMO of Koopa, uh, wrote a LinkedIn post recently, which is very relevant here. He said, uh, when, when you're changing jobs, philosophies are portable, playbooks are not. So, so basically you can bring your philosophies and values, but you cannot take, bring your playbook and, and, uh, use it as a template to run in the new company. Right. And the way I used to tell that one of my first meetings with every new leader that I hire, this is an original, uh, uh, uh, management, uh, uh, lesson from me. I said, I always ask, uh, the leader, Like you, you need to learn to ask which cow, which ditch. So, and I'll explain. So there is an ancient Indian fable, which says, hey, in a village, when a cow falls into a ditch, you first need to take the cow out of the ditch, and then you fill the ditch with sand, and then you go and educate the villagers on how to prevent cows from falling into ditches. And the sequence in which you do these things is important, right? And that is the original story. And my adaptation of that is as a new leader, when you come with all your experience in a fast growing startup, you have to understand that there are already hundreds of cows that are falling into ditches. So if you want to be successful at Freshworks, you have to ask the question, which cow, which…

AI assessment note: “you have to ask the question, which cow, which ditch”

Q Can I ask a bit of a weird one, but in the journey that you have as an entrepreneur, you change financial profiles as well. Um, I, I always ask this cause I think it's such an interesting one. How do you reflect on your own relationship to money?

A So money doesn't really change a person. It only amplifies who you really are. So I, I think I truly believe that, uh, so purpose of money is to serve society. So beyond a certain need, uh, like I have no interest to kind of keep accumulating more. And, uh, so I, I believe, uh, that it's more about giving and giving back. So for me to truly Succeed in life. You need to unleash your purpose. And what I spoke about on that day was how as Freshworks, we have been, like, we have this incredible opportunity to make an impact on so many lives, lives of our employees who have been with us for so many years. Uh, like, uh, now when they share their stories of them buying a home with cash or being able to spend for their, uh, siblings, Uh, weddings and things like that. Or, uh, we have a software academy where we, uh, take, uh, students who can't afford college, teach them, uh, software skills, and then place them in companies. FC Madras is an example where we are helping young sports people build into athletes.

AI assessment note: “purpose of money is to serve society. So beyond a certain need”

Q Just help me understand though. Why is that? Is that because Indian markets need social validation from external international markets before they will buy? Is it, what is the reasoning behind that? I'm just interested.

A So I think, uh, to some extent that could be true, but also India, uh, Indian customers are used to a services mindset. Uh, like if you go to us or Australia, customers there know that they are buying, uh, uh, A shrink wrap product. They know that, Hey, um, the product is the product. If I like it, I'll buy it. If I don't like it, I don't buy it. And, and if I have some feedback, I'll give the feedback. If I need a feature, I'll ask and wait. Imagine going to Microsoft office and, uh, and, and asking for a feature, like when are you going to get it? Uh, so, uh, I think, uh, global customers have that awareness. Indian customers have been, uh, used to a lot of services mindset where they would say, Hey, why don't you come to my office? I'll tell you what needs to be built and you build it.

AI assessment note: “to some extent that could be true, but also India, uh, Indian customers are used to a services mindset”

Q Why do you have 13% then beneath? I always think like often your smallest customers will be your most difficult. They'll be the ones who complain the most on social, who just Aren't champions. Cut the bottom and you don't need them.

A We are always looking for optimal ways to find, uh, customers who are higher value customers, but it is the nature of the game. Like when, when you are dealing with search globally, you will attract all kinds of customers, right? So we have our sales processes to, and our marketing fine tuning to kind of, uh, take us towards the right customers. But also we are here to remember that Freshworks is a multi-product company, and, uh, see many of our, um, pretty much all of our 5000 dollar customers probably started off paying us hundred dollars or 50 dollars or whatever, and, and even some of our 50,000 dollar plus customers are actually SMB customers who have adopted three, four products from us. So, so this strategy of, uh, really keeping the long tail open and, and, uh, uh, feeding it And then letting customers grow and use multiple products and, and give us more value as worked well for us.

AI assessment note: “this strategy of, uh, really keeping the long tail open and, and, uh, uh, feeding it”

Q You can see my hand. I'm building, I'm doing notes as I listen to you talk. Um, what are the biggest hiring mistakes you made there? I think hiring is one of the hardest challenges of business building. What are some lessons that you know now that you wish you could tell yourself?

A So I think my biggest mistakes have been there. So I'll give you three or four, right? Number one, I did not do ref, uh, uh, ref checks on candidates who actually came through like investor referrals. Uh, so Costly mistake. I should have talked to people who reported into those leaders and got a style of their management style. Uh, I actually on a couple of occasions have gotten carried away by the resume, like, Hey, they work for a great company, uh, went to a great college. Uh, they should be incredibly smart. And so obviously there'll be a fit here. Uh, boom, didn't work out cultural misfits. Uh, my management style, I'm usually very hands off in terms of when I hire a new leader, I look at all the best candidates and then we hired the best possible candidate. Then I step out of the way and let them play the game. Also, A lot of us in India, like we have not been there, done that. So when you hire experienced talent, we assume that, okay, we are going to learn from this candidate. So we let them play, right? But what happens is one of the most important lessons I learned, which every CEO should do is while you can be hands off the initial period of letting the leader transition and settle in, you have to be closely involved in all the big decisions. You have to be watchful of how they're treating their people. So you have to be in. So my, one of my, My OKRs now or, or my, uh…

AI assessment note: “Number one, I did not do ref, uh, uh, ref checks on candidates”

Q I did just want to ask, when you were talking about young people and purpose, Girish, what do you advise the thousands of young people today who don't know what their purpose is?

A See, I think, uh, this is where, uh, The Maslow's need hierarchy has to play in. It is quite common for young folks to not worry about things like purpose because, and I'm sure all of us are familiar with the Maslow's need hierarchy, right? First comes the physiological needs, then the safety needs, then the social needs and esteem needs. I think people have to go through the journey. And when you don't have enough for yourself, you're not going to be able to think about purpose. But I think it's okay. Like when I reflect back on my younger days, I did not actually, uh, have a lot of purpose. It was more about, Hey, I need to first make money. I need to provide for my family. I need to do all these things. And then once you, uh, it, it dawns on you, like once you become successful, once you make, uh, some money and then you realize, okay, what do you want to do? I think it's, there is time. It's okay.

AI assessment note: “It is quite common for young folks to not worry about things like purpose”

Q Well, listen, I think Naughty Boy is always a good start to any schooling career. Uh, we look at Freshworks today and it's this incredible business. Every business starts somewhere. It was not obvious. Take me to the founding moment of Freshworks. How did, how did that come to be, and what was that origin story?

A Before the origin story is, uh, I, I spent almost 10 years of my career building products. Uh, I was an accidental product manager. My boss, uh, threw a challenge to me saying, hey, Girish, you're an authoritative person. You're in marketing, which is a very concentrative role. So you should try building products. I went and Googled for the term product manager roles and responsibilities in 2001 and, and, uh, or 2002, I think. And that's how I stumbled upon being a product manager and I really fell in love and created multiple products. Uh, the Freshworks origin story, I think, uh, there are two stories in it. One, uh, in 2009, I was moving back from Austin, Texas to, uh, Chennai, India, and, um, I, I was shipping all my household goods, uh, back, and, uh, amongst them was my price position, a 40 inch Samsung LCD TV, and, uh, long story short, two and a half months later, my stuff arrives, the TV comes broken. I thought, okay, I've bought shipping insurance, so it should be fairly easy to, uh, Uh, kind of, uh, call the shipping company and get the insurance process claimed, and, uh, five and a half months of back and forth submitting multiple documents, they simply wouldn't, uh, uh, process the claim, and, uh, so I went and shared my experience on, uh, an online forum, which is where I originally got the reference for the shipping company, so I wanted to really, uh, uh, hurt th…

AI assessment note: “the Freshworks origin story, I think, uh, there are two stories in it.”

Q Talk to me. So we launched Freshworks 20 10. What happens then? Do we have like immediate product market fit? Is it very clear that it's working?

A I launched the company in 2010. Um, we launched the product in June, 20 11. I'll tell you what happened. Uh, uh, March 18th and 19th were very, very important days, uh, where, uh, we were a small team of six people, uh, like, and, and I was not coding. Uh, I was doing everything else, right? So one of the things I was doing was I was trying to participate in an AppSumo contest called the Lean Startup Contest, where the price was 50,000 dollars if you write a blog post on how your startup is a lean startup. So while I was waiting for the product to get ready, I was, uh, as the CEO and marketer, I was trying to do these things to see if I could get some money. And, uh, I actually wrote a nice post on, uh, Hacker News, uh, on how a simple comment on Hacker News made me quit my, uh, comfortable job and start a startup. So I, I shared that story and posted on Hacker News. It went viral on, uh, March 18th. It stayed on the, as the first post for like 3:04 hours and on the top page for like, uh, um, more than, uh, a day, which is pretty incredible on Hacker News. And, uh, I had a website with a simple WFO form, but the product was not ready. There were so many people who are coming in and filling those WFO forms, like hundreds of users had already signed up. So I talked to my team on March, uh, uh, or, or at least an alpha, which we started sending out to a few customers. May, uh, we,…

AI assessment note: “we had, A hundred customers in hundred days, 200 customers in 200 days.”

Q What are the biggest lessons in what it takes for them to be successful in that period? Okay. You need to be on top of them more and you can't just leave them, but what does that actually break down into as granular and specific as possible? I'm really interested.

A I'll give you a couple of stories there. One, I think, um, one of my friends, uh, Chandar, who's the CMO of Koopa, uh, wrote a LinkedIn post recently, which is very relevant here. He said, uh, when, when you're changing jobs, philosophies are portable, playbooks are not. So, so basically you can bring your philosophies and values, but you cannot take, bring your playbook and, and, uh, use it as a template to run in the new company. Right. And the way I used to tell that one of my first meetings with every new leader that I hire, this is an original, uh, uh, uh, management, uh, uh, lesson from me. I said, I always ask, uh, the leader, Like you, you need to learn to ask which cow, which ditch. So, and I'll explain. So there is an ancient Indian fable, which says, hey, in a village, when a cow falls into a ditch, you first need to take the cow out of the ditch, and then you fill the ditch with sand, and then you go and educate the villagers on how to prevent cows from falling into ditches. And the sequence in which you do these things is important, right? And that is the original story. And my adaptation of that is as a new leader, when you come with all your experience in a fast growing startup, you have to understand that there are already hundreds of cows that are falling into ditches. So if you want to be successful at Freshworks, you have to ask the question, which cow, which…

AI assessment note: “as a new leader... you have to ask the question, which cow, which ditch”

Q Can I ask a bit of a weird one, but in the journey that you have as an entrepreneur, you change financial profiles as well. Um, I, I always ask this cause I think it's such an interesting one. How do you reflect on your own relationship to money?

A So money doesn't really change a person. It only amplifies who you really are. So I, I think I truly believe that, uh, so purpose of money is to serve society. So beyond a certain need, uh, like I have no interest to kind of keep accumulating more. And, uh, so I, I believe, uh, that it's more about giving and giving back. So for me to truly Succeed in life. You need to unleash your purpose. And what I spoke about on that day was how as Freshworks, we have been, like, we have this incredible opportunity to make an impact on so many lives, lives of our employees who have been with us for so many years. Uh, like, uh, now when they share their stories of them buying a home with cash or being able to spend for their, uh, siblings, Uh, weddings and things like that. Or, uh, we have a software academy where we, uh, take, uh, students who can't afford college, teach them, uh, software skills, and then place them in companies. FC Madras is an example where we are helping young sports people build into athletes.

AI assessment note: “purpose of money is to serve society. So beyond a certain need”

Q Why do you have 13% then beneath? I always think like often your smallest customers will be your most difficult. They'll be the ones who complain the most on social, who just Aren't champions. Cut the bottom and you don't need them.

A We are always looking for optimal ways to find, uh, customers who are higher value customers, but it is the nature of the game. Like when, when you are dealing with search globally, you will attract all kinds of customers, right? So we have our sales processes to, and our marketing fine tuning to kind of, uh, take us towards the right customers. But also we are here to remember that Freshworks is a multi-product company, and, uh, see many of our, um, pretty much all of our 5000 dollar customers probably started off paying us hundred dollars or 50 dollars or whatever, and, and even some of our 50,000 dollar plus customers are actually SMB customers who have adopted three, four products from us. So, so this strategy of, uh, really keeping the long tail open and, and, uh, uh, feeding it And then letting customers grow and use multiple products and, and give us more value as worked well for us.

AI assessment note: “letting customers grow and use multiple products and, and give us more value”