Mar 7, 2022 · 47m · neon-show
HOW They're Competing With ADOBE! ft. Satej Sirur, Founder @Rocketiumapp
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In this 100x Entrepreneur episode, Rocketium founder and CEO Satej Sirur discusses pivoting from a consumer app to an enterprise creative automation platform competing alongside Adobe, expanding into the US market to reach $10 million ARR, and cultivating a transparent, deep-work-oriented organizational culture.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 5.2 Guest disagreement 0.5 Siddhartha pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 29:08 Rejecting hustle-culture work hours
Satej rejects conventional startup glorification of midnight oil burning and 9-9-6 schedules, arguing it degrades creative work and leads to long-term failure.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 36:56 Pressing on founder relocation necessitySiddharth challenges whether it is genuinely necessary for a founder to physically relocate to crack the US market rather than hiring local talent.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 44:20 Rethinking TAM presentation for venture investorsSatej breaks down why quoting abstract multi-billion TAM numbers is useless, demonstrating how framing the problem around an 8-hour workday lets investors deduce market size.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 19:15 Synthesizing full-funnel value propositionSiddharth synthesizes Satej's technical explanation into an enterprise-level value proposition focused on top-of-funnel conversion and marketing efficiency.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Satej's Career Journey: From Big Tech to Rocketium's Inception | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks an open-ended question prompting Satej to share his career background and early steps before Rocketium. Satej provides a detailed overview of his engineering background, graduate studies at Cornell, and roles at AWS and TaxiForSure. | |
| The B2B Pivot: Overcoming Superficial Feedback and High Churn | 2 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth inquires about the pivot from B2C to B2B SaaS. Satej provides a deep masterclass on how superficial customer feedback and weak engagement metrics signaled the need to abandon consumer gaming and build enterprise software. | |
| Rocketium's Current Scale, ARR, and Business Metrics | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks for ARR metrics and how Rocketium differentiates from Adobe. Satej explains the assembly line concept where Adobe builds the initial prototype while Rocketium enables creative scaling and variant production. | |
| Messaging Strategy: Outcomes for Leaders, Efficiency for Operators | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth summarizes the top-of-funnel value proposition for marketing heads. Satej reframes this by contrasting high-level outcome messaging for executives with granular workflow optimization for operators. | |
| Attracting Top Talent Through Cultural Transparency | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks how Rocketium attracts talent from established tech unicorns despite being smaller. Satej explains their transparent culture code and why encouraging candidates to be self-interested builds authentic alignment. | |
| Internal Systems: Focus on Self, Mentorship, and Wikis | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks for specific culture principles and internal processes. Satej details the internal copilot mentorship program and treating organizational culture as an evolving product. | |
| The '8-4-5' Philosophy: Work-Life Balance for Creative Output | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks Satej to elaborate on the 8-4-5 working model. Satej explains the rationale as an explicit counter to 9-9-6 hustle culture to protect sustainable creative output and prevent burnout. | |
| Roadmap to $10M ARR and Company Objectives | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks about the framework for growing from $2M to $10M ARR. Satej explains why high-level company objectives work better across diverse functional teams than top-down revenue quotas. | |
| US Market Expansion and Revenue Goals | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks for the international playbook and geographic revenue split. Satej breaks down the current 8% US share versus 78% India share and their target to flip that ratio. | |
| The Importance of Founder Presence in Core Markets | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks whether physical founder relocation to the US is mandatory. Satej explains the irreplaceable value of spontaneous in-person relationship building and meeting enterprise buyers directly. | |
| Leadership Evolution: From Coding to Culture and Vision | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth prompts Satej to reflect on his leadership transformation. Satej shares an insightful breakdown of moving from IDE coding to writing culture wikis and holding an honest mirror up to teams. | |
| Strategic Fundraising and Building Investor Conviction | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks about fundraising lessons. Satej explains why pitching massive market TAM figures fails and how showing the exact daily workflow problem empowers investors to calculate market size themselves. | |
| Discipline in Investor Relations: The 1st of the Month Update | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth praises Satej's strict habit of sending shareholder updates on the first of every month. Satej explains that keeping discipline and highlighting bad news builds deep investor trust. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Sirur: AWS had only 200 to 250 employees when he joined
“AWS was 200 to two 50 people when I joined.”
Sirur: Rocketium pivoted from consumer internet to 100% B2B focus
“We did some stuff in the consumer internet space for a few years. And then two years ago, we pivoted into a more mid market B to B sort of a focus. And that's a hundred percent of our focus today.”
Sirur: Low-value products fail because users don't care to give feedback
“If we add so little value, how much would they invest in making us, helping us build a better product? Very little. They are not invested in giving us feedback, you know, making the product better. And so that acceleration that would come from heavily invested…”
Rocketium hit $2M ARR following its 2020 B2B pivot
“So today we are about two million in ARR, and most of that growth has come in the last two years after we have done this B to B pivot.”
Rocketium reports 80 customers paying an average of $2,000 monthly
“And also we have about 80 customers, 50 of them are using this new product that we have. And on an average, our customers pay us 2000 dollars a month.”
Rocketium reports 110% net retention rate
“So that net retention for us is 110%. So even though we are not true enterprise, we are seeing fairly good net retention in spite of COVID, in spite of any business uncertainties that might happen.”
Sirur: Rocketium's usage is split evenly between advertising and in-app content
“This is advertising, which is maybe about 50% of our use case. Another 50% of our use case is content that goes into apps, especially the more transaction oriented apps, whether it is fintech, edtech, or e-commerce.”
Sirur: Creative automation software begins where Adobe's design tools end
“We begin where professional design software like Adobe end professional scaling software like ours would come in.”
Sirur: Enterprise sales must separate executive outcomes from daily operator workflows
“The conversation has to happen at two levels for a senior decision maker. They, for them, what their team does is a black box. They don't need to know what software they use, what pain points they have. What is it that they want? They want lower Cost of custom…”
Rocketium lists future teammates on job descriptions and arranges 1-on-1s
“If you look at our job description, one of the things that we say is, these are your future teammates, and we write names of people. So we expect that they would click, they would go to LinkedIn. In that interview process, we make sure they talk to folks one o…”
Sirur: Job seekers should evaluate offers like single-shot startup investors
“Nobody should join a company because the people are nice or, you know, CEO got on a call with me and said some good things about me. Those are easy things to manipulate. And that's what we tell people that, you know, don't fall for some of these tricks. Join t…”
Sirur: Rocketium urges employees to prioritize selfish interests at work
“So one of those things is the focus on self, where we tell everybody that first focus on your selfish interests, make sure that whatever we are doing helps you directly, because if it helps you, most chances are, unless you've done something unethical or illeg…”
Sirur: Founders and HR should treat company culture as a product
“For us as a company, we look at our culture and our team as a product, and the founders and the HR team as sort of product managers of that product.”
Rocketium operates on an 8-to-4, five-day-a-week work schedule
“Eight, four, five is meant to be eight m to four pm five days a week.”
Sirur: Overtime Beyond Three Weeks Destroys Creativity and Leads to Burnout
“Because it's okay for you to have a few sprints like this, right? One, two, three weeks of doing that. But it is not sustainable. It is not good for your health. It is not good for your creativity. Eventually it will lead to burnout. And neither you nor we win…”
Sirur: Rocketium expects to reach $10M ARR by late 2023 or 2024
“So what we would expect is by some time, Late 2023 or early 20 24, we should have hit that ten million ERR number.”
Sirur: India generates 78% of Rocketium's revenue, while US generates 8%
“Right now, U.S. Is eight percent of our revenue. India is 78% of our revenue.”
Sirur: US revenue will surpass India as Rocketium's largest market by 2024
“So we think by the end of this year, we should be closer to 20% from the US and sometime by 2024, the ratio should have flipped because by then we should have figured out a few more ways of go to market, which are not relying only on our sales team to start th…”
Sirur: In-person presence maintains enterprise sales momentum that remote calls lose
“There is a very different dynamic to go for a walk in the park with the head of monetization at you know, a forty billion dollar company And them sharing some of their challenges and saying where you could come in and help, right? The vibe is very different. N…”
Sirur: Founders should be close to customers when scaling 1 to 10
“At least at the stage of one to 10 where we are, I think founders should be closer to where the customers are.”
Sirur: Pitch bottom-up workflow sizing so investors autocomplete your TAM
“Telling somebody, 1,000,000,050 billion, hundred billion, beyond a certain point, intuitively, you cannot wrap your head around it. Instead, when you tell them that, Look at this eight hour period when a marketer works. Look at this eight hour period when a de…”