Freshworks' Girish Mathrubootham on Building a Multi-Product Future

00:00:02:00 - 00:00:19:20

Girish Mathrubootham

If you think about photography, ten years ago, we all had these point and shoot cameras, if you remember those things. Yeah. You take pictures and then if we want to send you some pictures, I think this because they loaded onto my laptop and then they download the file to them, then they e-mail them to you and then you actually download them, see it, and then say, Hey, get this coolpix right today.

00:00:20:06 - 00:00:41:04

Girish Mathrubootham

If you look at it, you will flip out your iPhone and take a picture and then set it on Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever. And then I give you a thumbs up. So the same thing is happening in the business world. That's the approach we took to see how we asked ourselves, Hey, why do we need to get five or six different tools and bundle it together so that I can have everything in one package?

00:00:41:14 - 00:00:47:17

Girish Mathrubootham

Helps my sales person with all the context about the lead that they need and to be able to sell more effectively.

00:00:48:07 - 00:00:56:04

Patrick Campbell

From profit well recur. It's Protect the Hustle, a show about those who are in the trenches actually doing the work. I'm Patrick Campbell.

00:00:56:04 - 00:00:57:02

Ben Hillman

And I'm Ben Hillman.

00:00:57:02 - 00:01:08:09

Patrick Campbell

And on today's show, how fresh Works is founder used a multiproduct strategy but took on some of the most competitive spaces in the world to build a $1.5 billion unicorn out of Chennai, India.

00:01:08:13 - 00:01:19:14

Ben Hillman

Also, just a quick note, if you share this episode on Twitter with the hashtag protect it. We'll hook you up with some nice profit. Well, swag.

00:01:19:14 - 00:01:24:17

Patrick Campbell

We live in a world where building software and technology is no longer the difficult part of building a business.

00:01:24:18 - 00:01:38:18

Ben Hillman

You're you're absolutely correct. I know this sounds controversial to a lot of our audience, but it's completely true. You know, we no longer have server racks. Complicated dev processes are these huge technological barriers to keeping our products up and running.

00:01:38:18 - 00:01:56:11

Patrick Campbell

Exactly. You know, AWP, DevOps tools, GitHub, all this infrastructure has made it so that if everyone listening wanted to spin up a product or a website, start driving traffic, we could all do that within within the course of really an afternoon. And the problem now becomes building and scaling the right product and then of course distribution, right?

00:01:56:11 - 00:02:08:01

Ben Hillman

Especially since the breakdown of these technological barriers, it's it's got this huge explosion of products out there which is causing our customers to just be hammered and not in a good way with different options.

00:02:08:01 - 00:02:09:14

Patrick Campbell

How exactly that's true is true.

00:02:09:17 - 00:02:27:07

Ben Hillman

But furthermore, the educational barriers and there's also breaking down as well. It's no longer a group of Silicon Valley elite to have all the secrets on how to build a business. It doesn't matter what school you go to, where you come from. You know, we're now in a world where you can become successful anywhere with any background.

00:02:27:07 - 00:02:43:20

Patrick Campbell

That's right. And that's why I'm so excited about our guest today, Girish, the founder and CEO of Fresh Works, who went straight at one of the most competitive markets in the world, the helpdesk market. And then he chose to take on all of the other most competitive markets in the world with his second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth fresh works.

00:02:43:23 - 00:02:58:11

Ben Hillman

Ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th. They're all coming down the road. And, you know, you can I can both agree that a lot of products that they've built all of them in only eight years time, while recently crossing the $100 million revenue mark at a $1.5 billion valuation.

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Patrick Campbell

Unicorn status, their unicorn.

00:03:00:11 - 00:03:07:21

Ben Hillman

Status, they have six offices across the world, but they started out in the southern part of India in a little city called Chennai.

00:03:08:01 - 00:03:13:10

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, and you and I had a chance to actually go to Chennai last year and visit our friends at Charge B as well as friends of Fresh Works.

00:03:13:21 - 00:03:15:11

Ben Hillman

And discover it's not small at all.

00:03:15:11 - 00:03:50:12

Patrick Campbell

It's not small at all. It's a very, very large city and love Chennai a lot. And before we get deep into why multiple products in your portfolio is the actual future, let's first learn a little bit more about Krish specifically, including how the idea of Freshdesk, which was fresh, works. His first product came out of Krish being in a position we've all probably been in, wanting to complain about a company's terrible support and pay careful attention to gracious view on why a competitive market is actually a huge advantage.

00:03:50:12 - 00:04:13:23

Girish Mathrubootham

The original idea to start Freshdesk started as a fresh helpdesk in 2009. I was working at Austin, Texas, and then moving back to Chennai from Austin. So at that point of time I actually was shipping all my stuff back from the US to India, and it so happens that the shipping company that shipped my stuff broke my TV 14 Samsung LCD.

00:04:13:23 - 00:04:14:19

Patrick Campbell

TV, not cheap.

00:04:14:21 - 00:04:38:16

Girish Mathrubootham

And so I had bought insurance from the shipping company so I thought it should be relatively straightforward to contact the customer support of the company and get my insurance claim. Several phone calls and emails later the company wouldn't do it. Tell me which insurance company underwrote the insurance. I actually got pretty frustrated because I had been found out for months in the process and I just decided that I don't care about the money anymore.

00:04:38:16 - 00:04:57:12

Girish Mathrubootham

I just wanted revenge and justice. So I actually went online to a forum called the Auto Club Forum, which is down to India Club Forum. So this is where Indians who are moving back from the US actually go to get recommendations on shipping companies, etc. And that's and a lot of other things in India. But that's where I got the recommendation for this particular company.

00:04:57:21 - 00:05:17:06

Girish Mathrubootham

I thought I heard their legion. So I actually went and shared my entire story with the pictures of my broken TV and what the experience that I was going through and the community started engaging. And the next day the president of the company came and apologized, and the next day money was in my bank before starting Freshdesk, I had built for help desks.

00:05:17:06 - 00:05:37:14

Girish Mathrubootham

So I know the customer support space. And I also know that customer support a multi-channel customer support solution means customer tries to contact you. Our phone or email or website or chat. And all of these channels were traditional channels. The company has so much power over the customer. You just hope that as a customer, you just hope that the company will do the right thing.

00:05:37:22 - 00:06:00:03

Girish Mathrubootham

Now, what I experience in my life with this shipping company was for the first time the balance of power seemed to have shifted from the company to the individual, where when I was able to take on this company on an online channel because it was impacting their brand, the company was forced to do that. I think that's where the idea to build a fresh helpdesk came.

00:06:00:03 - 00:06:10:22

Girish Mathrubootham

So that's why we call it Freshdesk. So which which not only will do the traditional channels of customer support, which is phone email, upset intent, but also the newer channels like those days it was redundant.

00:06:10:23 - 00:06:30:10

Patrick Campbell

Facebook help desks. Not a not a market. That's a brand new. Right. Like a lot of competitors, like you mentioned, you had built multiple ones before. Were you looking at the market and just thinking, oh, I could just do this so much better? Like, was that the idea or was it more like, I have some other competitive advantage that makes me want to like, be on this?

00:06:30:13 - 00:06:58:12

Girish Mathrubootham

So I think it's a combination of two or three things, right? Then it's not Silicon Valley, so we don't have into those in ten. There was definitely no access to capital or we seen them, so we didn't know that we would be VC funded. So one of the first reasons why we chose to build a helpdesk product is that something that we knew and we knew that we could charge customers from day one and if you look at the helpdesk market globally, there were like even 600 help desks before we started Freshdesk.

00:06:58:12 - 00:07:23:16

Girish Mathrubootham

So there is in fact a website called Help Desks dot com that you can go and search all these help desks today. So it's like almost like a cottage industry where you can build a small product and try to get enough customers and survive. So our plan was worst case. We will go small, we'll be able to make some money and let's say make half a million dollars of revenue and and slowly then use that to build and grow and build something else later on.

00:07:23:16 - 00:07:49:09

Girish Mathrubootham

Maybe that's what the original thought. We never thought we'd be this fundable, Right? We're all funder helpdesk and we've all seen a into those. And then the fancy stuff was like Twitter and Instagram and all these new consumer cool things coming up. So that was how we started. But apparently the one tailwind that we caught very nicely, even though we were a couple of years late, was the SAS adoption.

00:07:49:09 - 00:08:15:15

Girish Mathrubootham

So so that was the new thing that was changing. So even though it's a very old market, it's an established market, customer support, but a lot of companies, the small companies that are coming up, the startups are coming up, they'll all want this SAS based solution and not on premise solution. That gave us the opportunity, along with the social differentiation in features that we had, we could actually do social channels and the traditional channels of support.

00:08:15:15 - 00:08:36:22

Girish Mathrubootham

So I think this gave us the initial differentiation to be able to address global markets from Jenny. And we also picked the global market because we knew that it has to be a commodity market with enough search volume because it didn't really evolve to sell to the world. I have to say in the initial days, we have to rely on inbound search volumes.

00:08:36:22 - 00:09:00:11

Girish Mathrubootham

So people are really searching for customer support, helpdesk and so on, which we can ride on the traffic and let the product do its magic in terms of the free trial and so on. Once people liked it, they can buy online. So that was all in hindsight, I could say everything was aligned perfectly with the business model.

00:09:00:11 - 00:09:10:03

Ben Hillman

You know, gorgeous stories seems extremely natural. All you have to do is just start with the what you know, in a world where, you know and you can build enough revenue to survive.

00:09:10:04 - 00:09:29:10

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. And Grice knows this space really well. I mean, before starting Fresh Works, you actually led product over at Zoho as well as a number of other companies in kind of tangential, if not similar spaces. And to me, the most interesting thing based on his background here is, is really the power of the competitive market, particularly because he knew he could survive this.

00:09:29:10 - 00:09:31:01

Ben Hillman

Maybe limiting innovation, though, Right.

00:09:31:06 - 00:09:55:17

Patrick Campbell

I think you're right, because if you start in a market that you really, really know, then all of a sudden what's going to happen is, is that you might fall into those best practices and kind of the same the same thing that you always do. I think if you take this model, you're not necessarily going to build nuclear fusion reactors, but I think there is actually a lot of innovation even in approaching a space like the helped us market.

00:09:55:17 - 00:10:14:12

Patrick Campbell

You know, think of just how terrible a lot of the helped us are or just software in general. I mean, it's kind of like the TV he was describing and it was like a really minor point about what he was talking about. But, you know, there was some new technology that came out every single year that made it better and easier to build a better helpdesk, like a better TV.

00:10:14:12 - 00:10:24:08

Patrick Campbell

But just like TVs now, the technology has advanced so much that the innovation is more in the design and the experience where Girish and the Fresh Works crew really focused on.

00:10:24:14 - 00:10:43:07

Ben Hillman

Yeah, you know, that does make sense. But I also think there there really is a lot of innovation in the business model of going multiproduct, kind of like we are here Profit Well, you know, just think about how we've seen consolidation and disruption over and over and over and over again with multiproduct and single product over the years.

00:10:43:07 - 00:11:07:21

Patrick Campbell

Exactly. And what's fascinating here in particular, at least in my opinion, is that multiproduct is very, very much the future. We actually have data on this that I'll share after Gresh gives us some background on why multiple products was important to Fresh Works, his growth and their future. And I would pay careful attention to what he says about the unified experience.

00:11:07:21 - 00:11:16:06

Patrick Campbell

Has that been more building internally, maybe someone externally like this? Or is it now like multiproduct, like an actual strategy?

00:11:16:16 - 00:11:47:14

Girish Mathrubootham

So right now we've multiproduct is an actual strategy because what we realized is we are selling to the same customer base effectively for most of our products and a lot of us and be customers. Our startups actually like the fact that I can have a single customer record, right? So right from sales to marketing to support. If I can actually have a single customer record where I can know everything, I know that A, this is the person who came and we did a deal with this person and they bought this product and now they're talking about me in social media.

00:11:47:14 - 00:12:10:01

Girish Mathrubootham

They've raced into bought tickets and we know which campaigns they're open. So I think it's the integrated experience because sales, customer support and marketing, it's one closed loop actually. And so we thought, why can't we build it as an integrated offering? And that's one of the reasons a lot of our customers actually like the fact that they can use two or three of our products together.

00:12:10:01 - 00:12:33:17

Girish Mathrubootham

So it's still early days for the newer products, but that's the strategy to make sure that we are actually focusing on areas which are very close and adjacent to what we obviously started out in support or sales. And in one aspect, if you think about it, it's like more like the iPhone or the Android phone. We all remember the TomTom devices and the e-book reader saying.

00:12:33:17 - 00:12:34:19

Patrick Campbell

About the money back in the day.

00:12:34:19 - 00:13:09:06

Girish Mathrubootham

And the portable DVD players, and those don't exist today as standalone products. So you don't need them because it's all integrated into the Google experience. So I think we would like to think of it like the smartphone revolution happening in business software. You have a solution that makes it more relevant to the business users. So we're not going by the traditional definitions of how software should be cut versus looking at how can we add more value to our users to make their lives better.

00:13:09:06 - 00:13:41:17

Patrick Campbell

And I find that super fascinating to you because it's an SMB products, right? Like, I mean, I know you have large companies on there as well, but it started off at least kind of focused on the smaller companies and then very, I think relatively quickly and correct me if I'm wrong, like you opened your next product, right Like and then now you have going to get this wrong, eight different products right under under the Fresh Works brand, like what was kind of the decision like as you were growing and as you were kind of scaling the helpdesk, What was the decision to launch the next product or to kind of move forward with kind of

00:13:41:17 - 00:13:42:20

Patrick Campbell

this multiproduct strategy?

00:13:43:00 - 00:14:09:05

Girish Mathrubootham

So if you really understand ours is a business model disruption, the opportunity that we have is a business model disruption where we are able to profitably cater to the long tail of the global SMB, which is not previously wasn't serviceable. So once we realized that, so the second product that we built was actually taking the same Freshdesk code base, we built an IT service desk on an ideal desk, which we were able to go and address data departments.

00:14:09:12 - 00:14:30:05

Girish Mathrubootham

So it was customer support for the external world at Freshdesk, and customer support for the internal employees is ideal. So we were able to increase our addressable market and with relatively little engineering effort, and that's how we became two products. And then when you think about the third product, it was more borne out of natural, our own solving our own needs, right?

00:14:30:05 - 00:15:10:08

Girish Mathrubootham

So because we were using a very popular CRM and so we see if you think about the evolution of Seattle and the evolution of selling so more CRM solutions, which started off in the year 2000 or so, are built as a platform because all the new technology came after that. So you we are almost today if you are an entrepreneur, you're almost tuned in to the habit of thinking, Hey, I need a CRM, and then they need to buy five different tools, like let's say a marketing automation tool or an email tracking tool or a campaigns tool and they have to integrate all of them together to get a full blown system working.

00:15:10:13 - 00:15:32:21

Girish Mathrubootham

But to me, like when we were trying to do this, it almost became like a very complex project. So we had the CRM and five different tools in order to give our salespeople all the insights that they need to work on the prospects. If you think about photography, right, and if you look at the evolution of photography, ten years ago we all had these point and shoot cameras, if you remember those things.

00:15:32:21 - 00:15:51:08

Girish Mathrubootham

Yeah, and we had this SD card and we're not talking about film photography, we're talking about digital photography where you take pictures and then if we want to send you some pictures, I think the DeCarlo, they loaded onto my laptop and then they download the file to them, then they email them to you and then you actually download them, see it, and then say, Hey, get this Coolpix right.

00:15:51:17 - 00:16:13:04

Girish Mathrubootham

It seems such an old story now. Today, if you look at it, do you flip out your iPhone and take a picture and then shut it on Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever and then I give you a thumbs up. So what's happening here? So technology, even in the previous version of what you're talking about, technology like SD cards and laptops and point and shoot cameras.

00:16:13:06 - 00:16:33:17

Girish Mathrubootham

So but the evolution of technology in the consumer world has made it possible to integrate everything into a seamless device that's a smartphone that you're able to do all of this. So the same thing is happening in the business world also, right? That's what we that's the approach we took to see how we asked ourselves, hey, why do we need to get five or six different tools and bundled together?

00:16:33:17 - 00:16:59:16

Girish Mathrubootham

So why don't we start building our own CRM, which is not only the traditional lead account management part of CRM, but also it integrates event analytics from the web, from inside in-app analytics, email, campaign management, or like lets me integrate my phone and email so that I can have everything in one package. Helps my salesperson with all the context about the lead that they need and to be able to sell more effectively.

00:16:59:16 - 00:17:21:23

Girish Mathrubootham

So that's how first sales was born. As more of an internal need or a use case tools to help solve our own salespeople problem. But we have as a company, we always believe that whatever we build, we'll build it as a product and not as an internal tool. So that will see if we are able to kind of give it to other folks and if they are interested.

00:17:21:23 - 00:17:28:14

Girish Mathrubootham

We have a vendor product. They feel they're not. We just don't want.

00:17:28:14 - 00:17:50:07

Ben Hillman

Okay, I get why they built multiple products because it's really more because they could, but I'm not really sure that I'm sold on the why here. You know, the iPhone experience really makes sense to me. I'm definitely an iPhone generation kid, but people still do buy products separate from their phone. They still buy nice cameras with SD cards right on those.

00:17:50:07 - 00:18:10:05

Patrick Campbell

But those markets have changed, right, Like you're a show producer, so you obviously need these fancy cameras. But I'm a believer when it comes to cameras. So my iPhone works because it's it's just pictures of my dog that no one is ever really going to see. And remember, Chris is going after the SMB market and targeting software that shouldn't be that complicated in the first place.

00:18:10:12 - 00:18:33:18

Patrick Campbell

And it really doesn't need to be bespoke. There are definitely going to be these, you know, specialized fields and specialized help desks, like a help desk for hospitals or the help desk market. But that's not really what we're talking about here. And he even reference, you know, an IT desk versus a regular help desk. But that's the long story short, is is this specialized market is not what he's targeting, if you will.

00:18:33:20 - 00:18:40:10

Ben Hillman

Okay. I think that I think that does make sense. But it's it's still hard to see exactly why this is really the best option.

00:18:40:11 - 00:19:03:11

Patrick Campbell

Well, it probably isn't for all spaces. I mean, for most spaces, you're probably going to have going multiproduct if you want to be a large company. But there's also plenty of spaces where you can go extremely, extremely deep. I think the issue is, is that for for most software that we're producing, you know, just in the market in general, what we end up finding is that that software isn't a nuclear fusion reactor.

00:19:03:11 - 00:19:18:07

Patrick Campbell

That software is a help desk. And so if we're going to go after a market like that, you do need to be multiproduct unless you just want like a lifestyle best. If you want a large company, you're going to have to be that multiproduct. But we can we can actually go through that data that Ben was mentioning before.

00:19:19:03 - 00:19:24:06

Ben Hillman

Wow. Patrick brought some data. Yeah. Come on to us, baby. Let's go. Okay.

00:19:24:06 - 00:19:50:23

Patrick Campbell

I'm just going to ignore every implication of that condescending laugh there. But we looked at just over 500 companies that grew from 1 million to 10 million, and then a group that went from 10 million to 100 million other groups were split up by being single product and multiproduct. And regardless of the average revenue per user, the single product companies grew roughly 50% quicker than the multiproduct companies when going from 1 million to 10 million.

00:19:51:05 - 00:19:53:13

Ben Hillman

Single product for the win baby hold on.

00:19:53:13 - 00:20:04:18

Patrick Campbell

Here's the other shoe that's about to drop here. The multiproduct company is grew at 50% to double the rate a single product companies when going from 10 to 100 million.

00:20:04:21 - 00:20:14:07

Ben Hillman

Okay, well, that makes sense, I guess. You know, by by 10 million, you've probably figured out enough of the complexity of building a company to scale multiple products to 100 million.

00:20:14:07 - 00:20:30:12

Patrick Campbell

Right. A lot of this comes down to learning and gaining the DNA that's needed to handle multiple products. But the other data that we've found is showing it's actually harder and harder to succeed without multiple products. The caveat being if you want to be that large company.

00:20:30:16 - 00:20:35:11

Ben Hillman

Okay, so what goes into this DNA? It can be easy going multiproduct.

00:20:35:11 - 00:21:05:02

Patrick Campbell

Well, yeah, nothing worth doing is easy, or at least nothing that I can think of. But let's go back to Girish here, who can actually start going into how they approach this problem and pay careful attention to essentially his refutation of this whole, hey, you have to focus argument. Do you find going from the user side to like internally, how hard is it because I know you guys have grown insanely quickly, right?

00:21:05:02 - 00:21:28:14

Patrick Campbell

I think you added 500 people in the last year. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Like from 0 to 1000 in less than five years in terms of people. Right. 150,000 customers like just insanely great numbers. How hard is it to have multiple products because other other companies that try to have multiple products, like even looking at like HubSpot and some of these other don't even have seven, they have two or three.

00:21:29:01 - 00:21:42:17

Patrick Campbell

It doesn't necessarily seem like it's it's difficult, but definitely like they're not moving at the pace that you guys are like, what is that like? Like, do you have specific you know, each team is a product is across team like how do you kind of manage the chaos, I guess.

00:21:42:17 - 00:22:08:16

Girish Mathrubootham

Yeah. So I think, see, there are two or three aspects to consider here, right? Eight number one, and I am not the person saying this. I think it was I took Google conference, I heard the Stripe CEO or the I think the types of you was saying these are if I go to sleep or slack. Sure. So somebody asked him, how important is it for you to focus and do like only one product and not do multiple?

00:22:08:16 - 00:22:42:09

Girish Mathrubootham

He said in the Valley, the focus is a function of expensive developer resources. Interesting. Yeah. And also the business model of actually hiring more salespeople and going and selling out. And when the territories are shrinking and they're going upmarket and using more and more salespeople to sell, like the focus on one product is a good thing. But eventually in the Valley, what happens is if you look at companies, all the big companies, whether it's Microsoft or Salesforce or Apple, for all the famous talk about Focus, now they have multiple products.

00:22:42:17 - 00:23:05:18

Girish Mathrubootham

It just a function of at what point of pain in your journey are you ready for the multiproduct journey? Sure. There is no leader in software in the world who is not a multiproduct company. Can you name if you look at all the vendors, talk about Oracle Arena, Utah, and all of them are multiproduct companies. So we chose to play to our strength, right?

00:23:05:18 - 00:23:29:11

Girish Mathrubootham

So for us, when we started out in the early years in India, like for us, the developer resources weren't the same. It was not as scared as it was in the valley. So we were able to kind of run multiple experiments quickly for a much lower cost. In one sense, I used to joke inside the company that I'm like the VC and you're all startups, right?

00:23:29:11 - 00:23:36:15

Girish Mathrubootham

So we'll try multiple things and if it picks up, we'll back you up with more resources. If it doesn't fall, then do it and do something else.

00:23:36:15 - 00:23:49:10

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, that's kind of how HubSpot, that's the story with the sales product they built. They wrote a check for that leader to take on sales and then they spun up the product and eventually kind of brought it back in once it succeeded.

00:23:49:10 - 00:24:07:08

Girish Mathrubootham

So but to answer your question, everything comes with its own challenges, right? So, so if you but you have to understand the business model talent if we are if in the US context, if you are going upmarket and you are really enterprise focused, then you can actually scale revenues easily with large enterprise deals by hiring only sales teams.

00:24:07:17 - 00:24:29:09

Girish Mathrubootham

But in our business model where we actually dominate the the small and medium sized companies, this and we in the mid-market is where most of our success comes from. So, so in that space. So we need to make sure that in order to ramp up revenues quickly, we use multiple right as an advantage. We also know the downsides of this rate.

00:24:29:10 - 00:24:50:11

Girish Mathrubootham

So because we know the bandwidth could be stretched and the leadership bandwidth and the management bandwidth. So we have taken a lot of effort into doing frameworks. So we are a framework company at heart. So which means what would we build? Like we actually build thinking that how can it be used across multiple products? So we today have a marketplace for freshness.

00:24:50:18 - 00:25:00:20

Girish Mathrubootham

The same marketplace can be rolled out fresh to the list of sales. Now it's already being rolled out. Read out. If you think about even something like a custom forms, it's built as a platform and not as a feature.

00:25:00:20 - 00:25:05:04

Patrick Campbell

And so no, like siloed code. Yeah, like everything is like able to be used everywhere.

00:25:05:09 - 00:25:20:14

Girish Mathrubootham

Yeah. So basically we look at chat or the phone channel that we built. All of this is reused across products, so that's what allows us to more quickly.

00:25:20:14 - 00:25:31:02

Ben Hillman

This makes total sense. You know, you always need to play to your strengths. And Patrick, it's honestly amazing to me how few people know their strengths though, or the strengths of your company is rather green.

00:25:31:02 - 00:25:50:04

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know your strengths, right? I mean, likely because you don't want to admit to having weaknesses or wanting to optimize all your weaknesses. I mean, that's something we talk about a lot, is that you don't want to optimize your weakness. You want to basically control around for it and really kind of go headfirst into your strengths.

00:25:50:04 - 00:25:55:01

Patrick Campbell

You know, even though those weaknesses are probably the opposing ends of their strengths.

00:25:55:01 - 00:26:01:06

Ben Hillman

Right. And I think that a lot of companies don't realize that their environment or the constraints are actually strengths.

00:26:01:14 - 00:26:23:21

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're we're a fully customer funded company, so we've had resource constraints in a market that I believe required resource constraints. And as a result, we were very thoughtful about what we built in and when we built it and how we built it, because we can always be more thoughtful. But it's it's helped a lot in hindsight to have these particular strengths.

00:26:23:22 - 00:26:40:06

Ben Hillman

Yeah, agreed. And I would say we're almost too efficient sometimes, and I don't think it's a constraint, but the location, garish and fresh works actually played to their strengths quite well. And it's not because of cost. Although engineers in Chennai do cost a lot less than the Bay Area.

00:26:40:10 - 00:27:07:21

Patrick Campbell

And the better thing is that they're they're often just as good, if not better. And the engineering talent there basically grew up, quote unquote, through multiple generations of working in dev services, farms, essentially. And then now there's enough kind of tailwind behind that experience where, you know, people are jumping in and building their own companies in an environment where costs are pretty low, which is which is really, really a strength.

00:27:08:05 - 00:27:32:16

Patrick Campbell

But let's listen in to how Girish looks at Chennai specifically as part of their DNA that's shaped the culture of who works at Fresh Works and pay careful attention to his take on this whole mercenary missionary dichotomy. Do you think that being in Chennai specifically because the dev talent here is really good, but it's definitely not the same price as in the valley?

00:27:32:16 - 00:27:37:08

Patrick Campbell

I do think that's been a big advantage for for you guys or is it not something that you necessarily know?

00:27:37:08 - 00:28:01:21

Girish Mathrubootham

I think every location comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. I'm super happy that what we've been we've been able to accomplish what we accomplished from today. But that's not to take away anything from, say, Bangalore out of the valley. You just need to know how to make it work. So there are you obviously have to have different strategies based on the location, based on our ability to attract talent, the location and availability of talent is one thing.

00:28:01:21 - 00:28:21:00

Girish Mathrubootham

Our ability to attract the best talent is another. So how do we make it work with this balance in mind? So in fact, in Chennai we have folks who have moved from Google in Mountain View or from people from Boston whenever they are moving to Chennai. So we are that startup of choice for those people and that's helped us.

00:28:21:00 - 00:28:39:15

Girish Mathrubootham

Yeah. Now, now I could be in Chennai but not have that kind of advantage. Then I would be really struggling to attract talent and I could be in Bangalore or Valley, but if I don't have the credibility of the brand to attract good talent, then I'm even there. Some. Sometimes in the valley you may have like mediocre talent.

00:28:39:15 - 00:28:50:19

Girish Mathrubootham

Who's overhyped? There are good people and there are a lot of people. Somebody said this recently that a lot of people who think they are good. Yeah, right. And the problem is. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

00:28:50:19 - 00:29:07:00

Patrick Campbell

And what do you what do you think on the topic of Chennai? Like what makes Chennai unique, whether it's the actual, you know, city or the tech talent here versus, you know, other folks out there like because you've obviously experienced tons of different ecosystems at this point. Like why did you stay in Chennai? I guess.

00:29:07:03 - 00:29:38:13

Girish Mathrubootham

Yeah, No, I think seeing that this is where I'm from, so that's the reason I'm here. But what I like about Chennai is I think it's possible to build a company with the long term vision so people here are not always looking to move on to the next big thing or so they like to believe in the vision of the company and if that is aligned, they're willing to put down their heads and work so it's not carried away, be the next big fad.

00:29:38:13 - 00:29:55:14

Girish Mathrubootham

So we're not like mercenaries who are on a four year mission or a two year mission. So I think that's what I have always seen and liked telling.

00:29:55:14 - 00:29:56:21

Ben Hillman

Oh, I miss Chennai.

00:29:56:21 - 00:30:14:05

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that was a good trip. I mean, it was it was one of those things where I think, you know, I've been to India before, but the kind of the southern city, especially the southern food, very, very spicy. And then shout out to the charge of being fresh works cruise And we miss you and we also miss a meter coffee.

00:30:14:12 - 00:30:16:03

Patrick Campbell

That coffee was really good.

00:30:16:03 - 00:30:22:11

Ben Hillman

Coffee was so good. But you know, the way that they did it from the top part of the. Yeah, the bottom is really cool.

00:30:23:03 - 00:30:27:00

Patrick Campbell

I know exactly what you said. It was just so cool. That's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:27:20 - 00:30:31:01

Ben Hillman

Okay. But coffee aside, there is something that I'm still struggling with.

00:30:31:01 - 00:30:31:14

Patrick Campbell

Just one thing.

00:30:31:17 - 00:30:43:20

Ben Hillman

Just one thing. Only one always only one thing. I'm over the focus argument. But isn't all this product and all this distribution incredibly difficult? Just from what? From, you know, a team perspective?

00:30:44:10 - 00:31:05:14

Patrick Campbell

Absolutely. I mean, of course it is. But to be frank, it's incredibly difficult for even like our size, Right, of 60 people. And it's it doesn't really I guess what I'm trying to say is it's going to be difficult anywhere. So you just have to take that difficulty straight on. What I've learned and what we're trying to do better with profit.

00:31:05:14 - 00:31:26:14

Patrick Campbell

Well, is this this really comes down to alignment, right? Because it doesn't matter if you're ten people, if you're 50 people, if you're 5000 people, if you're 50,000 people, that alignment is really what's going to kind of take you to the next level. And Grush is probably the best person to chat through this because he's hailing team members in six different countries and thousands of team members.

00:31:26:20 - 00:31:52:05

Patrick Campbell

And I would pay careful attention to what he mentions about not wanting to, but needing to say things over and over and over again. Like when you think of not quite managing a team across all those different areas, like what are the big challenges that you've seen, like managing a team of a thousand now across all those different countries that like a lot of people don't think about?

00:31:53:04 - 00:32:21:14

Girish Mathrubootham

No, I think it's really challenging to manage remote teams. I think every startup founder who has done this will actually go through this journey. We also had our share of challenges of managing a remote team and managing large workforce, but I think it's important to get everybody aligned on the Common Core. So a lot of times what we realized was everybody thinks that they are bringing in that experience to in the best interest of the company.

00:32:21:21 - 00:32:45:09

Girish Mathrubootham

But if you and I are not aligned on where we want to go forward, right. So for example, if I say we need to focus on mid-market and SMB, and if you think you've come from a large enterprise company and if you want to say, hey, let's go and do the million dollar deals with large enterprises. So if you're not aligned, then all the motions that we go through in our work life is going to keep challenging and creating friction and frustration.

00:32:45:09 - 00:33:06:21

Girish Mathrubootham

And I think for us, the biggest learning was how quickly can we integrate and align our leadership to clearly understand not at a very high level, but at a deep level on why are we winning, what our strengths, what is our vision, where do we want to go and make sure that the culture values of the company are also taken in?

00:33:06:21 - 00:33:26:12

Girish Mathrubootham

So we have an operating model, right? So basically we know that this is what will fly inside fresh. This one fly, and everybody needs to know that. And that's getting that alignment was really the challenge. And I think we I'm happy that we made a lot of progress in implementing that.

00:33:26:12 - 00:33:31:15

Patrick Campbell

How do you get the alignment? I'm sure it's a lot of things, but like take me like one step down, like how do you.

00:33:31:16 - 00:33:50:05

Girish Mathrubootham

Okay, so I'll tell you the one of the things that I see you as a person, I definitely don't like to do the same thing again and again. But as a CEO, if you want alignment, I have to have the same conversation again and again multiple times with multiple stakeholders. I'm just giving you one example of how it is done right?

00:33:50:05 - 00:34:09:17

Girish Mathrubootham

So it's not enough If you just said one's in one place and you cannot hope that everybody will get button. So this is a fundamentally a personal learning and challenge for me because usually I don't like even repeating the same presentation again. I get bored, so I improvised. So like, oh, telling the first story I would have already told thousand times.

00:34:09:17 - 00:34:31:20

Girish Mathrubootham

No, but, but I don't like to do the same thing in the cultural alignment. And the alignment with goals is something which I realized was so important that it didn't matter what I liked. And then legs will have to do it again. So I made sure everybody in the company knows this and doing it in batches of 30 or 50 people, going through the new hires, going through the existing ones.

00:34:32:13 - 00:34:49:10

Girish Mathrubootham

So we've done a lot of work there and when you have people, when your fast growing company or adding a lot of people quickly. Right. And a lot of things I'm saying may have an Indian context to it, right? So, so people see when you don't know each other, when you don't have the rapport, like it's very hard.

00:34:49:10 - 00:35:06:19

Girish Mathrubootham

And I think it's not just Indians global also like because I read this book the Dysfunctions of a team. Yeah yeah. Which exactly talks about the same thing, right? So when you don't know each other, there is an element of doubt in your mind. So thinking always, Is this person completely trustworthy? Why are they saying what they're saying?

00:35:07:01 - 00:35:26:21

Girish Mathrubootham

And also to combine the people have an articulation problem, right? So you may not really hear the real concern. So surfacing the real conflict, finding a solution together collaboratively. So those are the simple problems that need to be fixed. So when when somebody disagrees with you, we used to think we are fighting, right? So like he doesn't get it.

00:35:26:21 - 00:35:44:07

Girish Mathrubootham

And I have been here five years. I know what it is. He's just come in new and he's trying to say this. But what we realized as a culture is now trying to understand, hey, this is a smart person whom we hired. We all interviewed. We hired this person because they're smart and now they're bringing a disagreement. Right.

00:35:44:07 - 00:36:11:16

Girish Mathrubootham

Let's build on in it. Let's understand where this disagreement is coming from. Like, maybe they have a point. So we treat it as a learning opportunity to really understand is there some genuine thing that's bothering them Once we uncover that? And we have been surprised so many times that if we put the effort to actually treat this disagreement as a learning opportunity, we were actually able to really solve the right problems quickly.

00:36:11:16 - 00:36:26:08

Girish Mathrubootham

Otherwise, there was a lot of cycles wasted in terms of going all around the place, not knowing where the problem is.

00:36:26:08 - 00:36:36:05

Ben Hillman

So building a company is always going to have its barriers and this difficulties. But in the current market that we're in the way you handle these difficulties is by working on your team.

00:36:36:05 - 00:36:56:21

Patrick Campbell

The people agreed in the market may demand just because it's the market, it may demand multiple products to be successful moving forward. You want to be that large company, but the only way you're going to be able to take advantage of that opportunity is if you're hyper focused on making sure your team is aligned to where you currently are and where you're going to be going.

00:36:57:05 - 00:36:58:11

Ben Hillman

It's incredibly difficult.

00:36:58:12 - 00:37:11:02

Patrick Campbell

Of course it is. But as we've said, all things worth doing are going to be difficult to protect.

00:37:11:02 - 00:37:35:16

Ben Hillman

The Hustle is produced by Dan Callahan and Ben Hillman, with help from Robert Byrne and Alissa Chanos, written and produced by Patrick Campbell. If you share this episode on Twitter with a hashtag, protect it. We'll hook you up with some nice profit. Well, swag. This week's episode is brought to you by Wistia. Better video hosting that's built for business Wistia dot com.