The Exchanges

Q Uh, just help me understand, you know, when you say broadening the horizon, what does, does it entail to broaden the horizon of an entrepreneur? Is it how large a company can be built or is it much more beyond that?

A So, so we, we have a terminology in, in nexus. What we say is that think broadly and globally, but act narrowly and locally. So the idea really is that, you know, you should always have an inspirational vision and that will evolve over time. So for example, for me, the inspirational vision for Postman at this point is we need to have a hundred million developers, a hundred million users. I mean, you know, they all become developers at some point, like they don't need to be coders. They don't need to be programmers, but let's say, you know, a hundred million plus users, right? And that will evolve maybe, you know, two years after I will say billion. Uh, uh, that is the inspirational vision, right? What goes underneath is very, very like, you know, you have to act narrowly and kind of see, okay, you know, given everything that you have, what are the opportunities, what are the potentials you can, you can go to in the coming 12 months or 24 months, let's say, right? So that is always kind of like, you know, a balancing act of thinking, thinking broadly and acting narrowly. Uh, which is, I, you know, it's a bit subjective, but that is what do you mean? And, and, and for us is basically just, just pushing them to go out of comfort zone, because sometimes I have seen that entrepreneurs always, even their broader thinking also gets resource constraints. So they start first thinking, t…

AI assessment note: “think broadly and globally, but act narrowly and locally”

Q Uh, Jishnu, and, uh, there are a couple of companies in your portfolio which have crossed hundred million ARR, right? Uh, one is Dhruva.

A So in, uh, in Nexus portfolio quite a bit, like, you know, I mean, partly I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm either fully involved or partially involved, um, um, Dhruva, Kaltura, Ariyaka is also in that line, you know, uh, yeah, Postman should also not be too, too further, uh, behind, you know, things like that. So there are, there are, Quite a few, quite a few, uh, of the companies, uh, which are there. And, um, yeah, I mean, you know, for us in a way, just, um, again, like basically, you know, keep on working with the companies and hopefully helping them doing the best thing at one possible time. And these are the milestones which would happen. You know, we necessarily, I, I, I definitely think that for most of the companies like Postman for us, ARR is a lagging indicator. Like we, among all the metrics that drives the company, I will definitely say that in, in most cases, it's not, it's not the ARR, which is the main goal. ARR of course is an important goal, but often, often like, you know, ARR follows versus, versus ARR driving, like, you know, all key decisions.

AI assessment note: “Dhruva, Kaltura, Ariyaka is also in that line, you know, uh, yeah, Postman”

Q So how do you pick up the select two, which you decide that you are going to work with them? Because each year you pick only one or two investments to work as a board member.

A So, you know, uh, yeah, I mean, of course, this is probably something, you know, we are learning every year and Um, so, so I will say first thing first is entrepreneur. I mean, as much as we want to say other things is, it's not, and much of that is what is not saved versus what is saved, you know, pitch, pitch deck and all that are kind of just collaterals, which are not, I mean, which are good to have important to have, but those are not the decision makers is really the person like, you know, what drives the person, What really kind of like, you know, I mean, I mean, why, why somebody is doing what they're doing? Of course, they would need to have the smarts, uh, a, a, a, a complimentary founding team. I find that, you know, two to three people team are probably the best beyond that it become like one is maybe, maybe too few, uh, and beyond three sometimes becomes a challenge. Uh, so, so, you know, so things like that and then, you know, resonance, you know, if I, if I can't resonate with, What their vision is, then, then I conclude that, you know, I won't be the right venture capitalist for them. So I need to resonate. Uh, sometimes I am actually learning for the first time also. It's not that I need to know always a space before I invest in it. Not that way, but I, I push myself to kind of very quickly come up to speed on at least the basics of what is happening. And can I…

AI assessment note: “first thing first is entrepreneur... what drives the person... resonance”

Q Wonderful. And how do you, how much do you think the large company or Postman can get? Is there a cap to it?

A So it's, see, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing how, how big, so if you look at what is happening right now, broad, broadly, like, you know, and that's where kind of the inspiration comes in and why, why, you know, there is so much excitement. So if you look at today, when, when Postman started, initially it has been developed, right? Now developers at this point in the current accounts, it will probably be whatever, like let's say, thirty-five million. And, you know, we have companies like GitHub, we have companies like Atlassian, you know, And out of that, say one third of those are, are there in Postman platform. Now, now what has also happened and which is extremely encouraging and that, that is kind of where the technology world is also growing, growing is many other personas in addition to developers started using Postman. So for example, like, you know, I have other companies who are selling API as a product today. Um, and, and the salespeople are actually showcasing Their APIs on Postman platform, because the beauty that happens is that, you know, Postman is basically the turnkey of all things API. So with the API, what you can do, uh, what all, like, you know, if you have to demonstrate what API does, if you have to demonstrate their performance, if you have to demonstrate kind of like, you know, what all things you can do with API, you can do in a heartbeat. Like, yo…

AI assessment note: “many other personas in addition to developers started using Postman”

Q you think about, you know, the next, uh, age of SaaS companies? You know, do you have some blueprint on, you know, because each, each year it will be completely different. For example, when you explored or, or met Postman for the first time and now currently, what are, what are the things you are seeing in the market right now on which SaaS entrepreneurs are innovating and building on?

A So if you look at, right, you know, I, I, I firmly believe, which is, which also goes back to our thesis of India being the hybrid of China and Israel. I firmly believe the real kind of, um, Innovation coming out of India and startups coming out of India would be driven by, uh, uh, product leadership, technology leadership, uh, something that they are introducing into the market and they are gaining leading position. I mean, it did not be a new thing that they're introducing, but whatever they come up with, they have to be leader in that through a perfect example. I mean, they are hands down the best, the pioneer cloud data protection, uh, and they are the best offering in the world today. Postman, Not even a competitor, right? Uh, similarly observe killing it in many different dimensions, and again, these are all product-driven innovation. There is, the, the point I wanted to, the reason I wanted to emphasize is that, you know, I mean, one, so there are two, uh, uh, leverage points that you have in a startup, and more so when you are building out of India. One is, of course, product leadership, right? And the other part, Is, and this is not one versus other, rather both has to come in. The other part where you can use India is the operational efficiency, uh, like, you know, I mean, which is not our portfolio, but talk about what Girish has built in Freshworks, you know, fantas…

AI assessment note: “there are two leverage points... One is product leadership... The other part is operational efficiency”

Q Jishnan, please help me understand, like, you have taken two examples, Droa and Postman. Uh, it's very rare that the customer adoption in SaaS happens, uh, without a sales and a marketing team. Right. If you can share what, what, what were those key things in the product that led to other users leading onto other users to use it?

A So, uh, and it's, it's, it's, it's great. Uh, two examples are, are very good because two has very different motions. Um, talking about Druva that I would say is more like what you would expect in general for a, for a company, uh, product first company. So to, to what they did is they had a very, very easy to use product. That people could use and they did a lot of like, you know, their process was through like Google search. I think people would find through Google search and then they will use it. And they started, and when they started seeing that people are initially downloading and using it, those are in department levels. They invested in sales, you know, fast insight sales out of India. And then right after we invested, uh, just, we helped just move to us. And then start building out the sales organization from there. Initially it was inside sales, but gradually we started kind of like, you know, going up, like if more departments within organizations were using, then it was bubbling up to the CIO's radar and we were doing then enterprise sales and we were kind of building out the entire, entire kind of like, you know, marketing engine, sales machinery and all that. So that was kind of Dhruva's journey. And of course, you know, Dhruva has grown, grown very big and hopefully like, you know, incoming Coming year or two, we can take the company public. Um, whereas on postma…

AI assessment note: “they had a very, very easy to use product. That people could use”

Q So what are the key indicators which you, which, which you help the company drive? One you have already indicated in the postman case, that is a number of users. What would be other indicators in case of your other company?

A Usage more than number of users, like what people are using, how engaged people are and all that, uh, in, in terms of, in terms of many, many, many, many foundational indicators, right? You know, product roadmap, like the product market feed based on market feedback, you have decided on product journey. And how has that evolved? Is that like, you know, if you're launching, suppose you had, uh, you know, whatever product launch, product version launch and all that, are those being used the way you thought it would be? Uh, are these yielding? So there is a lot of kind of like, you know, micro kind of feedback loops that you are always getting from the customers. And that is leading to, if you are thought of like, you know, so many customers you would need in Q three. I'm just saying that, you know, you would add say new, 50 new customers, you know, where have you ended up on those goals? If you think that, you know, now the next 12 months focus will be new ACV, not on the existing era, how you have. Come on, come on to those. So I think they're like, like what I'm saying is that, you know, that each company, by the way, each company is quite different. You know, how Gruva will be measuring and kind of coming up with all these, uh, OKRs and, and, and Postman will be is quite different. Um, and you know, it's, it's, it's situation specific and, and, uh, we do it kind of like, you k…

AI assessment note: “Usage more than number of users, like what people are using, how engaged people are”

Q And, and, uh, tell us, you know, more about Postman because specifically it's a very different kind of, uh, SaaS which you have invested is community SaaS, I would call it rather than traditional SaaS. How would you, you classify in those, those buckets, any SaaS investment which you are evaluating?

A So if you look at, right, you know, I mean, there, there are a couple. So one, one is the underlying commonality of any investment we want to do. The underlying commonality and the spark that we look for is product first thinking. Like it doesn't mean that somebody we have even invested in companies which are, which are in PowerPoint or sometimes even pre PowerPoint. So it's not that somebody has to have a product, but it is very important that they are thinking product and technology first. Which means that at the end of the day, like talk about Dhruva, for example, there was, you know, another, I don't come back to post in a second, but to drive that point of product, like when, when I invested in Dhruva, I mean, that was the, the following in 20 11, uh, which was like, you know, in today's part, today's terminology, that will be series A and, and, uh, sequence seed. I mean, though at that time it was called sequence, sequence series A and series B, but you know, it was very much like kind of smaller series A rounds compared to what is happening today. Now at that time, he had this product, uh, Jaspreet and Milind, they had this product, which was actually being used, like their bookings was very less, like, you know, revenue was probably hardly five or something like that, or even less. Uh, but the product was being used, uh, in 26 countries. And many of them didn't even tal…

AI assessment note: “I don't come back to post in a second, but to drive that point”

Q insight versus field, channel versus direct. Jishnu has a great sense for SaaS metrics, and he has made sure the company Start tracking these metrics from very early days. That's a very profound feedback. Like, it was almost like you are the co-founder, one of the co-founders in that company. How, how, how do you get, you know, so much of your bandwidth for each company to, to invest in?

A You know, honestly, it's very kind of certainly, certainly to, to, to say this, honestly, you know, I feel that in, as my role as venture capitalist, and which is true for all of us at, at Nexus is, Really kind of like, you know, doing proactive thinking and asking the right questions. I mean, I always, I always tell and certainly will, will tell you that, you know, I mean, none of these I can decide because I, I don't understand, like, the level they understand their business, right? You know, I, I don't even understand one 10th of that. But what I force myself to do is that, you know, take an approach common sense oriented approach. Look at the business as you would see as a businessman and maybe like, you know, with my, you know, whatever, whatever understanding I might have developed over the last decade working with so many companies and all that. And then can you ask the right questions? So that's what, that's what I do. And, and, you know, some of the things I might have, I might have strong views on. I always tell my entrepreneurs that please push back. Uh, because which is also very important and which, you know, something does all the time, all the time. Like, you know, so, so I think that that's the, that's the interaction that it is not so much about your point. So that it is not so much about the time involvement. I mean, I don't necessarily say that, you know, I'm…

AI assessment note: “it is not so much about the time involvement”

Q So Jishnu, one of the company, which clearly, you know, What stands out among your wonderful portfolio is Postman, right? Because many of your companies have gone IPO, many have been acquired at a very high valuation, but Postman certainly stands out, right? So when, when you invested in Abhinav and his co-founders, what was it that spark which you spotted at that point in time?

A Yeah. Yeah, no, very, very different. I will talk to that. Just, uh, uh, yeah, several companies. I'm, I'm looking forward to IPOs in, in, in, in coming months and days. Uh, IPOs haven't happened yet. Uh, uh, yes, there has been fantastic acquisitions, but I think the next leg, next leg is IPOs. And I think, you know, you will see several companies, several IPOs for, uh, companies being built out of India in the coming, you know, let's say, 12 to 24 months. Uh, so yeah, I mean, you know, very, very exciting times ahead. Now coming to Postman. Yeah, I mean, you know, that, that, that exemplifies, I would say Postman is very unique, by the way. It's very, very outlier company, very unique, and it also exemplifies, I would say, the kind of companies we want to do, and also the kind of, like, the ways we connect with entrepreneurs. So, so let me give you the, uh, the background. Actually, we first got to know about Postman through one of our companies.

AI assessment note: “Now coming to Postman. Yeah, I mean, you know, that, that, that exemplifies”