These are exciting days for us at Pensaar. The Summit, which we have planning for a while is right around the corner. Here’s what you can expect from our Summit workshop (Phase1 on 15, 16 and 17 July hosted at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore). The co-creation session is carefully designed to be a completely immersive and experiential 3 days. You’ll learn how to understand...
This is a about a long raging debate on the process of designing and developing great products. In a recent Medium post, Jesse Weaver said something very simple but powerful — we need more designers who know *about* code. And I agree! Not only because I myself like to experiment with code but also because of the following. “The reason designers should know about code, is the same reason...
“Throughout history, it has never been easy to identify a deserving king!” I attempted to address this in my previous post, in the context of customer strategy. I proposed Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) as the key metric to identify king customers. However, I’ve found this philosophy extremely difficult to follow, which is why I wrote this post. It’s okay if you have not read my previous post...
In Q1 2016, we saw our hard work payoff. We achieved some notable milestones. We became cash flow positive and our annual revenue rate (ARR) grew by 3 times in 3 months. We expanded our customer base to 68 countries (with over 90% of the revenues from outside our home base), and doubled our team to 50. Our Average Revenue per account (ARPA per year) has doubled to $10,000. Above all, we pushed...
“To know how to measure the success, is to know how to achieve it” A few days ago while discussing complexities of managing a product portfolio, Uday asked me a simple question: what is the most important metric one should use to measure product performance? I suddenly felt dumbfounded because I didn’t have a clear answer. Though I could have used my heuristics to throw suggestions...
It takes passion to start up and convert your idea into a moneymaking business. However, passion alone is never sufficient to succeed in a business. It is people that make business happen; the ‘right’ kind of people. The core team plays a key role in shaping the future of a startup. It is the moot point that sets the course for the future. Hence, it is imperative that the founding team comprises...
When organizations are relatively small, it is possible to keep all parts of the company – execs, PM, sales, engineering, QA, operations, etc – in sync with the direction and with the vision of the company. Communication across the company can be seamless and everyone can remain aligned to what they are working on and understand how their work maps to the broader vision. However, as...
Most of us have read the famous story about Jeff Bezos’s cross country trip from New York to Seattle. Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. Jeff’s important advise for startup company or any company is to write up the business plan. Now if Jeff Bezos has done it, and become one of the most successful entrepreneur in the internet era, why not just do...
After building, marketing and selling lots of software, I’m convinced that the single most underutilized component to driving growth is your roadmap. In SaaS or consumer products monetized via an enterprise budget, you make your numbers because of your current feature set. But you blow out your quarter because your product and sales teams present a roadmap that explains the customer’s future...
The number of startups launching every month is growing at a fast pace. Some entrepreneurs opt for a service based model, while others like me go the product model way. Although, there is no clear winner in terms of which model is the best, right or a deal breaker, there are many factors that contribute to the success or failure of startups. However, when I launched my startup Sainergie, an IT...
