Watch our next speaker Neha Singh who moved from a small scale business to a data powerhouse with her perseverance and dedication. She is the co-founder of Tracxn, view the video to know about her journey!
#NehaSingh #Tracxn #WOW2019 #WomenEntrepreneurs Tracxn#Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
#NehaSingh #Tracxn #WOW2019 #WomenEntrepreneurs Tracxn#Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
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00:00 So you know, I was seated backstage thinking that growing a business is, or rather growing
00:06 a successful enterprise is really a tough call, right?
00:10 For us women, it's almost like birthing a child.
00:15 It requires a lot of perseverance, some serious leadership skills, and of course, on your
00:20 feet critical thinking.
00:23 Everyone wants to climb the top of a mountain.
00:26 But the truth is that real happiness and real growth lies in the journey, in the climb.
00:33 Ladies and gentlemen, our next woman of worth is here to talk about her climb of scaling
00:39 up a small startup into a data powerhouse.
00:44 The venture funds, that venture funds, private equity, and corporates today absolutely cannot
00:50 do without.
00:51 Please put your hands together as we welcome on stage Outlook Business Women of Worth superstar,
00:57 co-founder Traction Neha Singh.
01:02 Okay, there she comes.
01:10 Come on, let's welcome her with a warm round of applause.
01:23 Hi all.
01:25 Firstly, glad to see such a big audience of female entrepreneurs in Bangalore.
01:32 This is probably the biggest, you know, group that I would have seen in, you know, across
01:36 all the past years.
01:38 And also this conference is unique in a sense that the female restroom has the largest line,
01:43 which is very unlike most of the conferences where it's, like, nearly empty.
01:49 So I don't know how many of you know Traction.
01:51 We co-founded that about five years back.
01:53 It's essentially an easy way to think about us is that just like Bloomberg is for public
01:59 companies, we're building a platform for private companies, which investors and corporates
02:04 use.
02:05 I wanted to spend some time in highlighting some of the things that I have learned on
02:09 the way and, you know, see if that is helpful for people over here.
02:14 So I don't know if this works.
02:24 Okay.
02:27 So how many of people here want to do a startup and are looking for an idea?
02:37 Is there?
02:38 Okay.
02:39 Or people who are already doing a startup?
02:41 Most of them?
02:42 Okay.
02:43 Cool.
02:44 So the first thing is about -- okay.
02:45 A lot of people that I meet is they want to do a startup and are looking for the idea.
02:50 And the first thing is about which idea to choose.
02:52 So my learning has been that you should pick an idea that you really want to solve.
02:57 You can be opportunistic about it, that, you know, that's a big market in U.S. or a big
03:02 market in China, and you want to build a large domestic market over here.
03:07 But I think the key thing that I have learned is that, you know, it should be a problem
03:10 that you want to solve for, say, the next ten years.
03:14 Because good chances is that, you know, in a startup, there are a lot of highs, but there
03:18 are also a lot of lows.
03:20 So there are a lot of times when your conviction is tested, and at that time, you have to really
03:25 love and stay excited about doing that.
03:29 So that's probably the first thing.
03:30 And even if your startup is, like, really successful, which I wish for a lot of you,
03:35 you know, become, your journey for doing that is going to be long.
03:39 So for instance, if you look at the average time to IP of a company, it's about ten years.
03:44 So you'll be probably doing that for a good time of your professional career.
03:48 So it better be a problem that you like to do.
03:55 The next thing after you've chosen your idea and, you know, have decided to take the plunge,
04:02 the thing is about hiring -- the first challenge that a lot of us face is about hiring your
04:06 initial team.
04:08 So someone actually gave me a very interesting tip, which I incorporated while hiring our
04:13 initial team, which worked very brilliantly, and I would love to share.
04:17 So what I did was that I made a list of 15 to 20 people that I really respected, and
04:25 I called them up and asked them that, you know, in all their professional life, say,
04:29 they would have worked for, say, five, six years, who are the top three people that they
04:34 would really recommend; right?
04:37 And you'd be surprised at really interesting names come up when you ask this question to
04:41 people.
04:42 And what I did was that I, you know, made a long list when people gave their top three
04:46 recommendations, sometimes they did not remember at the top of their head, so I'll call them
04:50 after a couple of days, give them time to think, and then ask them this question again.
04:55 In about a few days, my list of candidates, so I had people who had been recommended by,
05:01 like, you know, three or four people.
05:03 Which means that, you know, these are, like, really nice people, and when I'm meeting them,
05:07 I'm actually not judging them for their functional abilities, which is anyways very difficult
05:12 to do in the first meeting.
05:14 What I'm looking at is more the fit.
05:16 You know, are they looking to join at that position or at that stage of the company?
05:21 So that makes your mistakes in hiring the initial team much lesser.
05:28 Yeah.
05:31 The next thing which we have debated a lot about, you know, within hiring also, within
05:36 the company, we are now 800 people strong, is what is the quality that you look for,
05:42 especially in your leadership team; right?
05:45 So the first which comes to your mind is obviously fit.
05:48 That the person has to be willing to come to a startup of that stage, because most likely
05:53 you're going to ask them to take a pay cut.
05:56 So firstly they have to be ready to come to startup of that stage for the role, et cetera.
06:00 So that's probably the first thing.
06:02 But the one thing which I found to be most interesting is asking the simple question
06:09 is can you trust the decision that this person takes; right?
06:13 So when you're working in a team, you can have a logical debate if you don't agree with
06:19 the person's point of view, but it's very important that you are ultimately able to
06:24 trust their decisions.
06:26 If you don't end up doing that, then what happens is that you're typically taking decisions
06:30 for all the departments.
06:31 You're taking the picking of the top projects for marketing, top projects for ops, et cetera,
06:36 which you can do probably initially, but as the company scales, it's very difficult to
06:40 do that, and then you ultimately become the bottleneck for a lot of decisions.
06:45 So this is another interesting thing that I have learned.
06:50 The next is getting the product market fit.
06:54 So most of the startups in the early stage fail because of not getting the product market
07:00 fit rather than because of lack of funding.
07:03 For that, it's very important that I have also learned firsthand is doing the initial
07:08 sales yourself.
07:09 In our case, our customers are venture capital investors.
07:13 I spent the initial one or two years inïżœ so I was in Stanford earlier, and we also
07:19 started Traction there.
07:21 If for people who know around Stanford, Sand Hill Road is the biggest concentration of
07:26 VC funds, like globally.
07:29 And so I would have met, like, you know, nearly dozens of people in that area.
07:34 To a point that I would, you know, remember or know each of the streets and each of the
07:38 parking lots.
07:39 And I've visited them, like, multiple times.
07:42 So it's very important to actually do the initial sales, because only then you understand,
07:47 you know, how the customer is, what do they think, what is their work flow.
07:52 And that comes in very handy when you are taking the product decisions later on.
07:56 Because as your company scales, you get less and less time to do that, because you have
08:00 many other things to also worry about.
08:07 The next thing is competition.
08:09 So a lot of founders actually, you know, like young founders, I've seen them, they worry
08:14 about competition a lot.
08:16 You know, they are fretting about it, they are tracking, you know, what is the new thing
08:19 that they have launched very, very closely.
08:22 My learning has been that, you know, worry about competition.
08:26 To give you a simple example, like, you know, one competition has lost a service for 100
08:31 rupees.
08:32 And you think, oh, you should also be competitive and you're launching -- you're trying to match
08:35 the same price point of 100 rupees.
08:38 After a year, everyone realizes that, you know, it was never affordable in the first
08:42 place to be selling at that price point.
08:44 And both of the companies had a tough time.
08:47 So typically, most likely you only see the highs of your competition.
08:53 And for your company, you see the day-to-day struggle.
08:56 So what I've realized is that more often than not, your competition scenario is not as rosy
09:03 as you imagine it to be.
09:05 And it's not as bad for you as you imagine it to be.
09:09 If your competition is someone like -- or someone like an Amazon or a Google or a Gorilla
09:14 like that enters your space, then probably it's another thing.
09:19 Then my sympathies are with you.
09:21 But apart from that, for most other people, you can do away with worrying less about what
09:26 the competition is doing.
09:31 The last thing is pitching to investors.
09:33 This is something that a lot of founders also go through.
09:38 So I've also been like a VC earlier, and I've seen this in both the avatars.
09:44 Typically what I've seen is that people give a lot of importance to pitching how well they
09:49 have executed.
09:52 How well they have executed, how well the team is.
09:55 But if you look at how a VC looks at their world, for them, typically for most early
10:02 stage, growth stage venture capital funds, first is market, second is team, and third
10:08 is execution.
10:10 So you have to give a lot of importance of selling the market to the investors as well.
10:17 Or selling what your perception is of how the market is going to unfold.
10:23 Once they are sold on the market opportunity that this large space, then it's much easier
10:29 to convince them about that you have a great execution or that you have a great team.
10:37 So this is some of the things that I have learned on the way.
10:42 In case anyone has any questions, we would be happy to take.
10:47 But yeah, this kind of summarizes most of it.
10:53 [APPLAUSE]
10:56 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:05 Ladies and gentlemen, a louder round of applause.
11:08 Thank you for candidly sharing what we can do better.
11:11 Thank you so much.
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