The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 41 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mathrubootham: No enterprise software company has successfully transitioned down to SMB
“Oh, start high and go down never, never works. In the history of software, you can tell me which company has succeeded in starting at enterprise and actually winning in SMB. It's not happened. But if you look at many companies, including Salesforce and Freshwo…”
Mathrubootham: Building company culture without in-office presence remains unsolved
“I did not know. I still don't know how to build culture when nobody's coming into the office.”
Freshworks maintains transparent public pricing for mid-market and enterprise customers
“अब हम यह साफ रखते हैं कि हमारी कीमते खुली होगी, यह सब कुछ website पर ही available होगा”
Mathrubootham: Generative engine optimization will replace SEO for software marketing
“Now we have generative engine optimization, right? Like if a lot of people are going to go to ChatGPT and ask about, hey 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, s…”
Hiring senior executives based on prestigious resumes failed at Freshworks
“मैंने वास्तव में कुछ मौकों पर resume से खुद को बहेकने दिया, जैसे अरे वे एक बड़ी company के लिए काम करते हैं, एक अच्छे college गए थे, वो बहुत smart हो सकते हैं, और मेरी company के लिए अच्छा काम कर सकते हैं, लेकिन मेरा अंदाजा गलत था, उन्हें basic knowledge भी नह…”
Freshworks' ideal mid-market customer size is 500 to 5,000 employees
“हमारे लिए सबसे अच्छा स्थान पांच सौ से पांच हजार कर्मचारियों के बीच में हो सकता है।”
SolarCity paid Freshworks $1M annually across 13 separate team accounts
“बेशक, यह एक enterprise व्यापक सौधा नहीं था, लेकिन यह बड़े enterprise की एक team के लिए था, जैसे अगर आपको याद हो, Tesla ने जिस company को खरीदा था, वो दूसरी Elon Musk company Solar City थी, तो हमने तेरह अलग-अलग टीमें इसका उप्योग कर रही थी, वे हमें लगभग एक मिलिय…”
New SaaS products require two to three years post-launch to gain momentum
“جب آپ ابھی کام کرتے ہیں تو آپ شاید اگلے سال اسے لانچ کریں گے اور پھر یہ دھیرے دھیرے بننا شروع ہوگا اور پھر آپ کو گتی پرابت کرنے میں دو سے تین سال لگیں گے”
Freshworks was built to operate globally from day one
“हाँ हम पहले दिन से ही global थे ये एक हमारा सोचा समझा निर्णय था”
Freshworks' second product, Freshservice, reached $1.5M ARR in its first year
“और वह product पहले वर्ष में डेड़ मिलियन और दूसरे वर्ष में छे दशमलव पाँच मिलियन तक पहुँच गिया”
Freshworks under-hired software engineers relative to sales during its 2015 growth
“दो हजार पंद्रह में हम वास्तव में बहुत तेजी से बढ़ रहे थे और हम sales team को nuket कर रहे थे और sales का पहिया engineering के पहिये से तेज घूम रहा था. हमने जरूरत मताबिक engineers को hire नहीं किया”
Freshworks generates 87% of revenue from customers paying over $5,000 annually
“اور دو ہزار سے ادھک گراہک ہمیں ہر سال پچاس ہزار ڈالر سے اوپر کا بھکتان کرتے ہیں اس لئے ہمارے پاس SMB گراہکوں کی ایک لمبی لائن ہے مجھے لگتا ہے کہ ہماری کمائی کا ستاسی پرتیشت ان گراہکوں سے آتا ہے جو ہمیں سال آنا پانچ ہزار ڈالر سے ادھک کا بھکتان کرتے ہیں”
Freshworks' $50K accounts often originate as SMBs adopting multiple products
“Pretty much all of our 5000 dollar customers probably started off paying us hundred dollars or 50 dollars or whatever, and even some of our 50,000 dollar plus customers are actually SMB customers who have adopted three, four products from us.”
Freshworks has two product lines surpassing $300M in ARR each
“We are second product recently crossed three hundred million dollars in ARR. So now we have two product lines north of three hundred million in ARR.”
Freshworks mandates transparent website pricing over contact sales gates
“So now we make a philosophy that our pricing will be open. It will be on the website. So that's the company policy, right?”
Skipping reference checks on investor-referred executives was a costly mistake
“Number one, I did not do ref ref checks on candidates who actually came through like investor referrals. So Costly mistake. I should have talked to people who reported into those leaders and got a style of their management style.”
SaaS startups can expand into higher price points as features grow
“And my learning as a product manager has been that you can always grow into a much higher price point. You can build more features and create all these enterprise versions.”
Mathrubootham: Executive philosophies are portable between companies, but playbooks are not
“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 use it as a template to run in the new company.”
Freshworks expanded SolarCity from a 25-seat deal to nearly $1M ARR
“We entered SolarCity, I think with a 25 seat deal. And two years later when we hired our first 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 pay…”
New startup executives must solve immediate problems before teaching strategy
“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 …”
Mathrubootham: Indian talent dynamics lead CS engineers into non-technical roles
“In 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 folks working in sales and pre-sales and marketing who are all computer science engine…”
Product leaders must focus on revenue two to three years out
“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 revenue that's going to come this quarter and next quarter, right? So product person has to w…”
A quarter of early Freshdesk customers used it for internal IT support
“सेईस या पच्चीस प्रतिशत हमारे ताजा डिस्क ग्राहक वास्तव में इसे इंटर्नल आईटी सपोर्ट के लिए इस्तेमाल कर रहे थे”
Freshworks acquired 100 customers in 100 days before raising external capital
“फिर हमारे पास सौ दिनों में सौ ग्रहक थे, दो सौ दिनों में दो सौ ग्रहक यहां तक कि हमने अभी तक कोई भी फंड नहीं उठाये थे, इसलिए हम एक अच्छी शुरुआत कर चुके थे.”
Freshworks operates a software academy to train and place underprivileged youth
“ہمارے پاس ایک سوفٹ ویئر اکیڈمی ہے جہاں ہم ان بچوں کو لیتے ہیں جو اپنے کالج کا خرچ نہیں اٹھا سکتے اور انہیں سوفٹ ویئر سیکھنا ہے اور پھر ہم انہیں کمپنیوں میں رکھتے ہیں”
Freshworks faced 600 helpdesk competitors when launching Freshdesk
“जैसे जब हमने fresh desk शुरू किया था, बाजार में पहले से ही छे सो help desk मौजूद थे”
Freshworks' early Indian traction came from digital-native startups like Flipkart
“भारत में हमारी शुरुआती सफलता डिजिटल नेटिव स्टार्टअप के साथ भी थी और यह सब फ्लिपकार्ट दुनिया की ई-कॉमर्स कंपनियां”
Freshworks launched into a market with 600 existing help desk products
“When we started fresh desk, there were 600 help desks already in the market.”
87% of Freshworks' revenue comes from accounts paying over $5,000 annually
“Like 87, I think 87% of our revenue comes from customers who pay us over 5000 dollars a year.”
Freshworks' first seven customers spanned four different continents
“We had seven customers. When we had seven customers, I think they came from four different continents. First customer was Atwill College from Perth, Australia.”
Freshworks acquired 100 customers in 100 days before raising external capital
“May we launched our beta version with 500 people trying our product. By August we had, like, 70 customers. So we had, A hundred customers in hundred days, 200 customers in 200 days. Even while we were like, we have not yet raised funds.”
Freshworks' early failure to balance sales and engineering headcount
“We were really, really growing fast and we were hiring a lot of sales folks and the sales wheel was spinning faster than the engineering wheel. We didn't hire enough engineers and like we added like thousand customers or something like that. And feature reques…”
Freshworks operates a software academy for students unable to afford college
“We have a software academy where we take students who can't afford college, teach them software skills, and then place them in companies.”
Freshworks repurposed its failed collaboration product to integrate with Slack and Teams
“So what we did was we conceded collaboration. So today our same fresh connect code that we built is integrating with Slack and teams. So we conceded collaboration to teams in Slack.”
Freshworks lost collaboration market to Slack by taking two years to launch
“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 it to our customers the CIOs actually told us, Girish, we are already dealing with slack and teams. We have to standardi…”
Freshworks has multiple enterprise customers paying over $1 million annually
“Of course, today we have customers who pay us millions of like a couple of million dollars a year. Also many customers who pay us over a million dollars a year.”
Freshservice hit $1.5M ARR in year one and $6.5M in year two
“And that product hit one and a half million in the first year and six and a half million in the second year.”
Freshworks landed 3M, Sony, and DHL as customers by 2013
“So we, as early as 2013, we closed enterprise customers like Burger King, DHL, Sony Pictures, three M Schneider Electric, Pearson.”
Freshworks has 67,000 customers and 2,000 paying over $50K annually
“See today, Freshworks has over 67,000 customers. And more than 2000 plus customers actually pay us over 50,000 dollars a year.”