Mar 3, 2021 · 44m · neon-show
Inside the mind of Nishith Rastogi, Co-Founder & CEO, Locus
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the 100x Entrepreneur Podcast, Locus Co-Founder and CEO Nishith Rastogi shares the journey of pivoting a B2C safety app into a global enterprise logistics optimization platform. He provides actionable insights on enterprise sales, organizational scaling, fundraising, and leadership mental models.
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 1.8 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 0.7 Siddhartha pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 23:15 Rebutting founder title distinction
Nishith pushes back on Siddharth's attempt to read deeply into his LinkedIn title change, explaining that founder identity never disappears even as the role demands being a CEO.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 22:59 Probing title evolution from LinkedIn profileSiddharth challenges Nishith with a specific observation about his profile title shifting from Founder & CEO to solely CEO.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:37 The reality of logistics mathematicsNishith breaks down all the hidden variables of enterprise dispatch, explaining why standard theoretical routing models fail on the ground.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 40:12 Citing John Doerr on OKRsSiddharth demonstrates familiarity with management literature by identifying John Doerr's book as the canonical authority on OKR systems.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origin Story: From AWS and RideSafe to Locus | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth introduces the guest and provides an open prompt on the founding journey. Nishith educates the host on the key distinction between tracking visibility and automated decision-making in logistics. | |
| Deconstructing Ground Realities and Enterprise Logistics Complexity | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Nishith gives a masterclass on ground-level logistics complexity versus simplistic routing assumptions, explaining why early Locus hired more PhDs than sales reps to invent new math. | |
| Early Fundraising and Navigating the Pivot to Enterprise | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks about early funding and specific first enterprise clients like Unilever. Nishith explains the learning curve of navigating enterprise procurement and multi-stakeholder buying committees. | |
| Funding Trajectory, Product Expansion, and Global Scale | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host inquires about the cap table progression and ARR milestones. Nishith outlines the 0-1, 1-5, and global expansion phases, quoting Lemkin on product versus distribution. | |
| Evolving from Startup Founder to Disciplined Enterprise CEO | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Siddharth points out that Nishith dropped 'Founder' from his LinkedIn title to show only 'CEO'. Nishith downplays it as potentially accidental but clarifies that while one is always a founder, scaling requires a disciplined CEO. | |
| Managing Business Risk, Strategic Bets, and High-Stakes Mistakes | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks for practical examples of operating with discipline. Nishith explains how experiment costs scale from $50k to $1M, necessitating deliberate market sizing and risk reduction. | |
| Structuring Regional P&Ls and Partner Distribution Channels | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks about GTM distribution and assumes Locus needs a large $15M+ round. Nishith clarifies that Locus has low burn and generates strong revenue, though they are raising to fund inorganic growth and geo-expansion. | |
| Fostering Company Culture Grounded in Ambition and Integrity | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks about cultural benchmarks. Nishith describes early communal living, high personal sacrifices, and instilling non-zero-sum value creation and technical integrity across the team. | |
| Implementing OKRs and the "Process Over Policy" Philosophy | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Nishith outlines his 'process over policy' framework and OKR implementation. Siddharth demonstrates domain knowledge by referencing John Doerr's seminal book on OKRs, which Nishith validates while noting how Locus adapts the framework. | |
| Mental Models, Stockdale Paradox, and Concluding Thoughts | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks for formative books and mental models. Nishith reflects on Paul Graham's essays and Viktor Frankl's discussion of the Stockdale Paradox before closing the interview warmly. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Rastogi: Supply chains solved visibility but neglected automated decision-making
“While there has been a lot of solution towards visibility in supply chain, there has been very few and very little effort around the decision making in supply chain.”
Rastogi: 1-hour home delivery is 10x more complex than retail logistics
“The complexity of delivering to an end customer at their home in a one-hour slot is 10 times more than delivering to a retail store, which is at the same location open throughout the day. And to solve this 10, 10 X complexity, you have one 10th of the time, wh…”
Rastogi: Percentage-based logistics savings create the most value for large enterprises
“Given we save in percentages, the maximum impact we can bring is in large enterprises with large amount of supply chain. Because if we are saving 10%, the absolute value of 10% is much bigger in large enterprises.”
Rastogi: Locus employed more PhDs than sales personnel in year one
“Like for the first year of Locus, we had more PhDs than sales guys in the team.”
Rastogi: Locus pivoted to B2B mid-fundraise with zero investor resistance
“And during the fundraise itself is when we pivoted from a B to C focus, RightSafe, To a B to B focused locus. And we received absolutely no resistance from our investors.”
Rastogi: Early enterprise sales require nine months of uncertain effort
“Enterprises have really long sales cycles. So as a young startup, imagine, you know, putting in nine months of effort in a sales process where you don't know whether you will get something or not. And because it's a much larger company, your entire leadership …”
Rastogi: Locus took over a year to close its first enterprise customer
“I think overall, like it took us more than a year to really get our first enterprise customer.”
Rastogi: Locus enterprise clients offered survival capital during COVID
“During say the COVID time, our clients more, you know, in addition to our investors, our clients actually reached out and asked us that if we needed additional capital to survive the pandemic, they will be happy to help, right?”
Rastogi: Over 50% of Locus revenue originates outside of India
“And today we have customers, teams, and offices present across Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh Berlin, UK, US, and of course, India. And we have customers in, you know, another 20 countries. So with more than 50% of our revenue today coming, you know, from outside our ho…”
Rastogi: Automating Supply Chains Is Harder in India and Indonesia Than the West
“And automating anything in India and Indonesia is far tougher than doing it in say Europe or US, right? Because the infrastructure is slightly better.”
Rastogi: Locus Has Reached Double-Digit Million ARR
“Yeah, we are in the double digit million range. And right now is when we are basically working out our strategy and resources to take the 10 to a hundred million journey.”
Rastogi: Building new enterprise modules at Locus costs $750k to $1M
“So we could think about trying out building a completely new module, new product, you know, 40, 50,000 dollars spent you know, which gets you, like, about two, three engineers for three quarters in that and their working budget, right? But today we know like o…”
Rastogi: Customer-facing enterprise mistakes cause 6 to 9 month setbacks
“Also in an enterprise company any customer facing mistakes have longer sales cycles, which you are working with customers who will want to grow at 20 to 40%. While as a company, your growth target is 200 to 300 or 400%, right? So you need to parallelize your e…”
Rastogi: Locus targets 50% of sales through partners within two years
“A year back, about 95% of our sales were done directly. Today, about 20% of our sales are done with partners, and over the next two years, we want to take that number up to 50%, right?”
Rastogi: Locus seeks funding to scale from $10M to $100M revenue
“So yes, we are looking you know, at a healthy round, which allows us to go from the entire 10 to a hundred million journey without needing any additional capital.”
Rastogi: Lack of process leads to restrictive corporate policy
“Lack of process is what leads to policy.”
Rastogi: Locus operates an expense process without any expense policy
“We have Locus as an expense process that you should know what email ID to send your invoice to. But we actually don't have an expense policy. We trust every individual to judge themselves what should be filable. If you file it, we will expense it.”
Rastogi: Locus links OKRs directly to performance appraisals
“That book on the Google, it mentions that in the Google, they don't link OKRs with appraisals, because that impacts ambitious goals. We haven't done it that way. Right now, we have linked it, and we are more like, you know, it's fine if you reach 70, 80% but w…”