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Goyal: Whatfix beats WalkMe across every SaaS metric
“There was WalkMe in that segment. But today, WhatFix beats WalkMe just in every SaaS metric one can think of.”
Batti: Whatfix instituted a mandatory five-day in-office policy years ago
“Probably we are one of the very, very few or one of the first SaaS companies to call all people back for five days office. We did like three years, two and a half, three years back, and I've been propagating because we believed it is not going to work. Every l…”
Ahluwalia: Batti is the only Indian SaaS CEO who stayed in India
“As we discussed, you are the only CEO who has stayed back and still managed to create a very large company in enterprise software.”
Batti: Whatfix abolished corporate titles to end tenure-based promotion expectations
“We abolished designations. Because what happened, everybody was asking, I have spent two years in my position. I want to get promoted. Now spending two years in your position doesn't mean you need to get promoted. Promotion means you need to take more ownershi…”
Whatfix removed account expansion quotas from its customer success team
“We changed that success guys will only focus on NPS, ROI, business reviews, quarterly business reviews, and renewals. That's it. No expansions. Even if it happens, give it to sales guys. Your core KPI is this.”
Whatfix stations 90% of its hunting team in India for better economics
“So I have 80%, 70% account managers, 80% account managers in the region. But my land team is 90% in India, and considering the land economics, like I land at 8000 thousand dollars, and an expansion can happen even at a million, but economics also works really …”
Channel partnerships do not move the needle for early-stage SaaS startups
“Like we went channels pretty early when we were 2,000,001 half million dollars in revenue, but it doesn't move the needle very early on because it takes a lot of effort to even get entry into the channels and show them the value.”
Batti: New category creation enables remote, inbound enterprise SaaS sales
“It's a new category, has a potential of landing in, even into large enterprise. In this case, even inbound might work. There's a potential wherever you're sitting globally because you're solving a problem, which is actually people are trying to solve with the …”
Goyal: Whatfix would have died if they followed most of my advice
“You know, if WhatFix had listened to most things I had said, I think they'll be dead five years back. The reason they're successful is because they apply their own judgment, and I'm not saying that everything I've said was wrong, but we sit at a distance.”
Batti: Whatfix US leadership starts at 5:30 AM for India overlap
“And in us we pushed as much as possible people to start early, right? Like my CRO is in office at five-thirty AM. My co-founder Vara is in office at six-thirty AM. And we asked everybody to open up the calendar at seven AM. So at least we get solid four to fiv…”
Batti: Tying promotions to team size incentivizes managers to fabricate unnecessary work
“Like you start building your platoon or hierarchy because you want to get promoted. So you create something which is even not required. So the thing, so that structure, what are the intent, what you created, like, okay, you need to have span of control to grow…”
Batti: Customers ask Whatfix for help with newly purchased AI adoption issues
“In fact, for, I'm just putting a plug here at what, for what fix in last six months, we have seen several of our customers coming back. Can you, We have bought some AI solutions. We are facing adoption issue.”
Batti: Whatfix closed a million-dollar US Army contract from India
“We did, of course we did several million dollars before this, but we did the first million dollar in federal space from India again. US Army, we closed that deal.”
Batti: Inflated stretch targets damage sales team morale at later stages
“As when you start scaling because that organization is much larger and if you, I set a goal saying, okay, I need to have a ten million dollar quarter. I feel it's very ambitious. Practically it has to be, let's say, for example, six, and we end up at six. I am…”
Batti: Moving Whatfix's CEO to the US would have shifted organizational gravity
“If I would have moved, the gravity would have shifted. So best person was Vara who would actually go to US, work with the customers and evolve the category.”
Batti: Introducing prospects to existing customers at booths sells half the deal
“Out of my hundred customers, can I get my 15 customers on the booth and just try to make a match there so that if somebody hears from existing customers, Half of the dealish sold there actually, right?”
Whatfix's revenue breakdown: 40% expansions, 25% inbound, 25% outbound, 20% channels
“Today inbound is only contributing around 20%, 25%. My expansions are contributing 35, 40%. My channels are contributing close to 20%. My outbound is contributing another 25%.”
Enterprise SaaS startups should charge for any pilot exceeding three weeks
“So we also first understand the requirements very clearly, try to squeeze as much as possible as a smaller POC of two weeks, three weeks, because it's feasible, it's possible. If somebody really wants to go for longer, then ask them to pay, because the scheme …”
Batti: Never give inflated senior titles at the early stage
“So I would say never over designate people at early stage. Give them the title, what is actually relevant for your organization at that point, and then let them grow over a period of time, unless you're very, very sure That this motion is for my company.”
Enterprise SaaS ROI must directly tie to operations, revenue, risk, or compliance
“We need to really have a strong business ROI, whether it's an operating metrics we are influencing, whether it's a revenue metric, risk or compliance. It has to be one of these four, which we are impacting, not just very abstract productivity, right?”
Batti: Sell to business heads first when selling novel software categories
“Specifically in our category, when it's not a clearly budget line item defined, you always don't start from CIO. You start for the business functions. You end up talking to head of operations or head of sales or someone, and they would, Try to buy Whatfix for …”
Batti: Hire hustlers to define sales playbooks, then hire scalers
“For initial, when your playbook is not defined, you don't know what's working, what's not working, no need to have a clear boundaries and constraints, get hustlers, who will actually define that playbook. Once that playbook is defined, many of those hustlers w…”
Events drive 25% of Whatfix's total revenue across 100 annual appearances
“Today we have around seven to eight people dedicated on events. We do close to a hundred events offline and online in a year, right? And it's already contributing 25% kind of 25% kind of revenue, and the deals what we make from events are pretty big, right?”
Goyal: Whatfix executes $100,000 deals completely out of India
“You go and talk to Khadem and Vara, they'll tell you their 100,000 dollar deals, they get completely end-to-end executed out of India today.”
Goyal: Whatfix has 65 Fortune 500 customers
“Today, they have 65 Fortune 500 customers, right? Ah, they sell, their landed revenue in enterprise accounts is north of a 100,000 dollars.”
Batti: Whatfix took four years to reach its first $1 million in revenue
“I took four years to get to million dollar.”
Batti: Whatfix pursued Vispi Daver for over a year to join
“So even for Wispy, I think I kept on pestering him for more than a year to join WhatFix. Like several times he said, no, I don't see this category. And he had several reservations. I kept going back to him every couple of months, Like, said, we'll figure it ou…”
Batti: Whatfix gives every executive a budget to hire veteran advisors
“So we gave budget to every leader that they can hire their advisors and mentors who've been there, done that in the industry, because Probably they're doing the right thing, but if they are doing for the first time, they need to bounce off that and just get th…”
Batti: Whatfix requires at least three design partners before launching any product
“We will not roll out a product unless we have three design partners. And you can say at least 60 to 70% of the design partners are Fortune 500 companies.”
Batti: Whatfix department heads average seven to ten years of tenure
“If you look at all my heads I think the young, somebody who is lowest tenure is like three and a half years. Otherwise average tenure is like seven to 10 years now. All my leaders.”
Goyal: Stellaris modeled a $600M exit for Whatfix in 2017
“When we backed Wordfix, and this was an early 20 17 investment for us, our spreadsheet math on the exit size was we put six hundred million at that point in time, saying that that's the farthest at least we could imagine.”
Whatfix assigns executives as internal sponsors for specific customer accounts
“Yeah, we continue to do so now also. We call it as an internal sponsorship. So every leader has a set account. So the whole idea is twofold. One not to, one to help customer to make sure that there are no blockages for the customer and we unblock and we do wha…”
Whatfix pays for external executive coaches for all director-level leaders
“So we push a lot, not only for us, for our CXOs, for VPs, even to directors, get advisors, get coach. So somebody who has been there, done that before, right? I can, if I'm a VP sales, get a couple of SVPs or CROs from large companies, let's say AppDynamics or…”
Batti: Half of Whatfix leadership is internally promoted, half lateral hires
“See, half of my leadership today is people who have grown internally, right? My VP of products or VP of demand gen or VP of sales. They've all been here for seven, eight years and they've grown along. Some places where some of these guys couldn't scale or some…”
Batti: Sales reps must enable enterprise champions to sell to 20 internal stakeholders
“This is your champion. This is your persona whom you're going to interact with, but consider this guy is going to go and sell internally to another 20 people. So not only you need to sell to this guy, but you need to enable this guy so that he can go and sell …”
Whatfix spent up to $40,000 on its 2016 Dreamforce booth
“It was actually at that point, along with the booth and everything, it costed 35, 40,000 dollars.”
Whatfix counts 71 Fortune 500 companies among its customers
“Like today we have a 71 of fortune 500.”
Inbound drove 95% of Whatfix's first $2 million in revenue
“I think for first couple of million dollars, 95% of revenue came from inbound after initial validation of outbound.”
Whatfix raised its Series C and Series D rounds without pitch decks
“Series C, Series D, I didn't have a deck.”
Whatfix found product-market fit only after pivoting to enterprise
“It actually started from a community. From community, we went to SMB, and from SMB, we came to enterprise, and that's where we got real fit, actually.”