Outlook Business | WoW 2019 Bengaluru - Neha Singh - video Dailymotion

OutlookIndia

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

Transcript

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 in� 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.

11:12 [APPLAUSE]

11:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]

11:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Outlook Business | WoW 2019 Bengaluru - Neha Singh

Category

Transcript

Recommended