The Exchanges

Q So in your journey as a second time as an entrepreneur now, uh, I believe raising money has, would have become much easier. Building a team would have become much easier. So what remains tough?

A Uh, see, it's, it is never very easy, right? It's almost like, sure, there are some skills that you can transfer. There is some credibility that you can transfer, which helps with investors and team. But it is kind of like back to square one. So you have to like, do the whole thing. People are smart. Investors are smart. If your idea doesn't make sense, what you're doing doesn't make sense. But yeah, sure. It's better and I'm more prepared for it. What remains a challenge is still daily execution. Like, I think raising money is one, when you raise it, it hits your bank account, and then that's that. And you, hiring is a continuous process, but how do you bring all of this together to create products that solve for real consumer pain? And then grow the organization, the daily hustle, ah, the daily challenges, the daily problems, everything, some, every day something is breaking, every alternate week there is an existential crisis, especially in the early days. Ah, so yeah, that, that remains as tough as ever. Ah, so.

AI assessment note: “What remains a challenge is still daily execution.”

Q And what are you doing different in your second innings as an entrepreneur, when the first time you did an upgrade?

A Yeah, so I think a few things I want to do differently is, one, today, I think I want to be much more thoughtful, as I said, around hiring. In the past, we made the mistake of just saying, okay, let's hire people at scale, right? It's almost in a certain sense of, like, throwing people at the problem and hoping it results at scale, right? I think one, given where we are with technology and what's available today, but also second, in terms of my own maturity of, like, how to handle that, I think that's one big, ah, thing. The second thing I think is a big learning for me over time is just relationship management. With your founders, with the team, how do you set the right culture, what, what you are responsible for, and being very clear about that, and making sure that, uh, you show up for those things, I think, uh, is very important, and that's the second thing I'm trying to be better at. Uh, the third is, as you said, it's a totally different industry. Uh, there's a lot to learn. Uh, so I think the difference is that when I came into Upgrad, from four years of Parson on, I kind of knew a lot about online education and education in general, and I had a lot of like network, uh, but this is a whole different space. Obviously I've been on the other side as a brand, which spends a lot of money, uh, for acquisition. Uh, so this is a very interesting, uh, exercise for me to go into s…

AI assessment note: “a few things I want to do differently is, one, today, I think I”

Q And in your case specifically, because the market is changing so fast, when you are positioning yourself, like, how much of it is service component versus product?

A So given how early we are, we deliberately kept it pretty service heavy, right? Because we want to be very, very integrated into understanding how our customers are using this and what else they are struggling with, because this is only one of the small problems we are solving. So think of any team today sitting and like trying to deal with all the changes that are happening in the world of AI, right? We are just offering one small solution to solve for a specific problem, which is a good start. We need that wedge. And as I said, it's a good wedge. It's a massively growing wedge. And there are results to see for that. But we want to be very close and integrated with the service component because we want to understand what else are the massive challenges that they're struggling with and how can we expand our product suite, right? So for that reason, deliberately, we spend a lot of time servicing our clients today. Now how that model changes as we scale, we'll figure out what the best way to do that is. But right now we are very, very heavily involved. We spend lots of hours with our clients to make sure one, we get sharp feedback on our product, what it is doing, what it is not doing, where our computer is doing better, but also understand what are the other challenges that our clients are facing and what are the big problems that they're struggling with so that, uh, we can buil…

AI assessment note: “we deliberately kept it pretty service heavy, right? Because we want to be very, very integrated”

Q So, so there, is there an inherent fear? Because usually in the, like, since the service versus product differentiation came in, services has always got a lower multiple, is, is not considered in the same bracket as product. Do you think that changes in the AI era?

A I think it will. Now, again, we are right now too young to think of multiples, right? Right now our problems are how valuable is what we are building, right? And what are the other problem spaces where we can build more valuable products, right? So, we are not even thinking of multiples right now. And sure, in the past, obviously, product, ah, and SaaS have gotten much larger multiples. Now SaaS is taking a hit. Now what it'll do, I'm not an expert on any of these things, but intuitively, it does feel like services are more defensible right now. Ah, ops businesses are more defensible. They might not be as crazily valued, but sure, there is a certain defensibility aspect to it, which is tougher to replicate. Ah, So where this will go, I feel like a strong combination of product and service is always what I have felt will succeed. And that's what we did with Upgrad, right? Like, it's not just a content library where we said, okay, there's a product, now we can log in and serve. We had a fairly large customer success team that was making sure that you were getting the learning outcomes and career outcomes. Obviously we don't want to build a million people organization. So how do you then use technology to effectively make your consumer or client feel like they're getting the best possible service while you back and figure out what, what is the best way to do that? Uh, I think it's…

AI assessment note: “I think it will. Now, again, we are right now too young to think of multiples”

Q So, how did you make a choice of starting a company again? Ah, you're at a point where, you know, the IPO was like, or is around the corner. For Upgrad, whereas starting a company today, the zero to one journey is again tough.

A So the Upgrad IPO journey, whether it's around the corner or not, we'll see, ah, that's, ah, yeah, that's, that's a different topic. Ah, but coming to why I started again, I think for me personally, I moved to the US five years back, as I said, and one of the things that is super exciting is the current wave of AI, right? And I think there are so many things that can be done very differently, and, ah, just the excitement and the craziness of AI and where it is at today, I, I kind of started feeling that it will be a missed opportunity if I don't build something now from zero to one and try and Uh, that was my, that was my primary motivation to go out, uh, and try and start again. Uh, because I think we are in a really exciting time, uh, with what is possible. Things are evolving super fast. This experience of starting up is very different from my first time experience of starting up in terms of the pace of things, in terms of the stress and anxiety around like things changing every day, but also the opportunity of building something truly amazing and, uh, at scale. So that's the excitement, and that's the reason I went back to starting.

AI assessment note: “that was my primary motivation to go out, uh, and try and start again.”

Q But the space that you are in, in GEO, right? Yeah, it has a lot of companies, like around 50 to a hundred companies. How do you build a differentiator mode?

A Yeah, so first, GEO is just our first product, ah, and that in itself, I think, is very, very early days. Sure, there are 15, 20, maybe a hundred companies, starting from the largest, maybe the profounds of the world to the smallest vibe coders who are also offering a similar solution. But I think the market is so large. Just think about Every single brand, every single company, every single SMA is spending a combined trillions of dollars on advertising every year, right? A lot of that is going to move to LLMs is our thesis. Sure, a lot of those are going to be in the form of ads and are going to be taken away by the big labs, all of that stuff. But that being said, I think there is still space for a lot of people to succeed.

AI assessment note: “But I think the market is so large... space for a lot of people to succeed.”