In today's fast-paced startup ecosystem, founders face unprecedented challenges in building successful businesses. Navigating the complex world of venture capital, product development, and market expansion requires not just innovative ideas but a strategic approach to growth.
In this episode of the Grow Fast podcast, we dive deep with Vijay Rajendran, an experienced entrepreneur, investor, and author who has worked with hundreds of startups across more than 80 countries. Vijay brings a wealth of knowledge from his time at 500 Global, where he led corporate innovation partnerships and helped portfolio companies raise capital and expand their networks. His recent book, "The Funding Framework," offers founders a systematic approach to fundraising, challenging the notion that securing investment is purely a matter of luck or connections.
Through his work as an executive coach and investor, Vijay has developed keen insights into what makes founders successful in today's competitive landscape. Join us as we explore the critical traits of successful entrepreneurs, the importance of storytelling in pitches, strategies for maintaining mental health while building a startup, and the transformative potential of AI in traditional industries. Whether you're a founder, investor, or simply curious about the startup world, this conversation promises to provide valuable perspectives on accelerating business growth in an ever-changing market.
You can find the whole episode of The Grow Fast Podcast with Vijay Rajendran here:
The Funding Framework
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This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go. Hi, Vijay, how are you?
Vijay Rajendran [00:15]
I'm well Mark. How are you?
Mark Shriner [00:18]
Awesome? I am up in Seattle, we're having an amazing summer. I think we've had three cloudy days since the middle of May, some light showers, and the rest have been beautiful, sunny, 70 to 80 degrees. I think you're in the Bay Area.
Vijay Rajendran [00:31]
Yes, I am just outside San Francisco.
Mark Shriner [00:35]
Awesome. And how has the summer been shaping up for you?
Vijay Rajendran [00:38]
Summer has been great. We had a wonderful family vacation right after school got out, and now we are just kind of enjoying that, sort of like pleasant, mild summer temperatures here at home.
Mark Shriner [00:56]
Awesome! Hey, do things in your field. Slow down during the summer. I've worked with some European companies in the past and like, things almost hit at that stop, you know, from July and August. But what about in the VC space?
Vijay Rajendran [01:11]
Yeah, I would say things do slowdown in terms of deal activity. For the most part, people are traveling. They are taking time off. This is not a good time to be trying to take initial meetings and run a process, because it's hard to pin people down. That said, I know people who kind of use the off season to train so they are workshopping their pitches, their ideas, they are talking to their customers, when they slow down and have some sense of being able to tell them about pipeline and shape their own roadmaps. So, I know on the on the founder side, like it can be a time to just kind of get the house in order ahead of the post Labor Day season for everything else.
Mark Shriner [02:10]
Yeah, I was going to say one of my most, I guess, successful, rewarding investments of time has been tech week Seattle last year, and it's coming up again this year. They run at the end of July, and I think it was because it was, you know, in the summer, a very relaxed environment. And it's not it's much smaller scale than what tech week in San Francisco, so it's manageable, and it's a little more intimate. And I some of the most meaningful contacts and advice that I received happened during tech week and Seattle, and I think it was that relaxed summer vibe. But let me, let me, you know, I want to jump in because you've got this amazing amount of experience, and it aligns with a lot of the things that I'm currently going through as a CEO of Breezedocs, which is a Gen AI startup, but you know, for our audience, and they can kind of understand your background. Maybe you can talk a little bit about your work at 500 global, the book that you wrote, why you decided to write the book, and then what you're doing now. So, you can do your like elevator pitch, right? All that together now and then we'll jump into like our main points of conversation.
Vijay Rajendran [03:18]
Thank you. In a nutshell, I'm someone who has either been a founder and entrepreneur or of service to entrepreneur leaders at various points in my career, and so you know, my past experience with 500 global as you alluded to, really focuses on two things. One, focusing on the connection between startups and larger corporates, so leading corporate innovation and partnerships around the world, which look like setting up accelerators and incubators with the likes of Siemens and LG and visa and GM and others in different markets, and allowing those big organizations to tap into the innovation and potential of different companies they could collaborate with, or finding ideas inside the organization that we can use accelerator and Startup approaches to help them be more successful. And so did that for a number of years, and then stood up portfolio value team to help the hundreds of companies in the portfolio with raising capital, forming connections to new customers and markets, and then, thirdly, community, because the great resource is the collective network of all the other people going through something similar but also solving similar problems and innovative ways. And so yeah, after doing that and taking time in the last couple of years as an executive coach and as an investor, and then also as an author. As you mentioned, I wanted to distill a number of important takeaways, and what I felt was important was particularly related to fundraising. And so in the book the funding framework, which came out in March with leaders press, there's a four step approach that is counterintuitive to many people, and so I wanted to distill the fact that, rather than serendipity, you need systems in order to raise money, just like you would for other things that you haven't done before, but you need to be really good at such as sales or hiring, or other new skill sets when you're wearing the CEO hat, and it turns out, when you are going to out to start a business, and you're growing into the CEO role, you have to get good at this, this important skill, And it's okay that it, you know, it's hard, and people haven't done it before. It turns out you can get good at it. And so that's the first thing. And the second is, rather than feeling like it's a stroke of luck, those systems require you to drill down into a few things, and that's part of the framework. And so that's a bit of the connection there between my past experience and how and why I wrote the book.
Mark Shriner [06:30]
Awesome. And I want to come back to the book, because I agree with you that for many potential founders and founders who have just, you know, gotten started, the funding is this, like processes like this black box. And, you know, you know, 1000s of companies are trying, and some companies get it, and some people assume that it's luck. Well, they got lucky, or they had connections, they had the relationship, they were in the right space. They were, you know, the DEI kind of thing. I mean, there's all these different kinds of excuses. And I think if you if you don't, you know, take a peek under the hood, understand what the real mechanics are, and have a process to address that, then the chances of you progressing are, you know, extremely limited. So, let's come back to that in a second. But let's go back to what you know. You worked with hundreds of founders. I think in your LinkedIn bio, you said in over 80 countries, you know, I've lived in, I think lived and worked in maybe 10 different countries. And there are different business cultures, but there are also, you know, great similarities when you talk about at the enterprise level, when you look at founders, are there some traits that founders, regardless of where they are, you look for in terms of as in with your investor hat on, they need to have traits doesn't matter where they are.
Vijay Rajendran [07:52]
Yeah, absolutely. So, the first is just their empathy and intimacy with the problem. It may be something they lived and experienced themselves, or there's just this approach they have for getting close to the customer and following along with what they're experiencing. I say the customer. It could be a consumer. It could be the problem as it's felt. And this is the thing I've seen people who are industry veterans have their own way of bringing their life experience to it. I've also seen people who are out of graduate school but are learning machines that allow them to develop that same sort of knowledge. So, it's not a thing. Whether you have it or you don't, you've either, you know, experienced it, or perhaps gone and like, developed a way of learning and feeling it and caring about it in a strong way. So that's the first part is the that, that deep understanding there. The second part is, I think the, you know, the trait is a very high say, do ratio. So, there are people who like, they commit to something, and then they go, they follow through. And that that is, like, really important. Because when you are the chief everything officer, you are suddenly you feel on the hook for everything, and it's not easy to follow through. And so, it seems kind of obvious. You know, people say things and then they do them, but when the potential scope of responsibilities feels infinite, like that's actually a very special thing is in order to fulfill that. And then the third thing I will say is the rate of the rate of growth, the rate of iteration, and the ability to ship product, to put more customers into your pipeline, to do things. In a way that is just not just fast but getting faster and improving the process that allows you to continue running at that that speed. So that's, I think, a very hard thing to always predict about you get kind of like, see over time whether someone is able to continue at a very high rate.
Mark Shriner [10:30]
It's funny, I can identify with all three of those in terms of you know you, if you don't have the empathy or the true understanding of the problem that you're trying to solve, I don't think you can really have the passion for it, because for me, the passion comes from this is an awesome solution, and it's going to make people's lives easier. And I know exactly down to the, you know, to every single detail how this helps them, because I went through the problems before. So, I get that, and I think you could probably get that in a conversation, and maybe you have to do a little due diligence from your side to understand the problem. Because you're an investor, you can't understand every problem that's out there initially, but you can do the work. But when you come to the say, do ratio to me, that's also kind of like a trust thing, and trust takes time to develop, you know. And so how do you as an investor? Because, you know, you also have a limited amount of time too to make decisions. Do you have a process for measuring, or, you know, quantifying their say, due score or ratio?
Vijay Rajendran [11:31]
Yeah, you know the one of the expressions in the book is that investors invest in lines, not dots. And this is something that I had to coach a lot of founders on, is, you know, you people want to see your progress over time, and that looks differently in terms of touch points, where you may meet them, or maybe they're going to see investor updates, or they're going to hear and follow your company, and you're goanna be on the radar. And then they, they heard you're shipping this thing, and it happened you were going to enter this market, and you did that, you were going to onboard a particular customer and convert from a pilot to maybe a commercial relationship. And when you when you announce something, or you state your intention, and then you do it, that builds trust, because it's consistency. Trust is this, this amazing, like topic we can, we can spend hours talking about, but there is a, there is out there a framework someone came up with called the trust equation. And, you know, the it looks different if you're an investor versus a customer. Obviously, like your perspective on it, but basically it is, you know, someone's, I'm paraphrasing here, they're caught. It is a set of inputs. There's competency, there's consistency, there's what you might call familiarity or intimacy, right? There are all those things, those that together help build trust. So, like, consistency is just one part of like, those, those three things, and then those three things are divided by the degree to which you are self-oriented or self-centered. In other words, if I'm approaching you in a really transactional way, and it's all about like, what can I get from my own benefit, maybe not even at your expense, but for my own benefit? That erodes trust, right? And so, I think consistency, you're right, is a very big part of the trust equation. And just like, you know, perceiving someone's competence, which maybe you can, like, understand off paper, is part of it. You want to, like, see and experience the consistency in order to have that key input for trust.
Mark Shriner [13:54]
Yeah, totally agree with everything you're saying there. I've done a fair amount of sales training, actually, and I part of my process, of the process that I use and also like to teach, is that in parallel with whatever you're doing in sales, whether that's, you know, cold calling, you know, doing an initial meeting, setting the agenda, you know, delivering a proposal, every single touch point that as part of that process, in parallel With that, you should be working on establishing and edifying Trust. Trust takes time, as you just said, but, but you also alluded to that there are other ways that you can accelerate that. For example, a warm introduction, okay, professional credentials. Have you having published a book? You know, all those days, you know, these type of things help you to accelerate that trust. But you but if you're serious, self centered and not very empathetic, like you said, people just are gonna go like, no, I don't care, you know what, I'm not gonna trust this guy. Again, though, again, both you know, founders and investors have this limited time window. So let me just ask you, if you have any anecdotal you know, stories. People that have impressed you with their ability to accelerate that trust process.
Vijay Rajendran [15:07]
Yeah, I you know the people who accelerate the trust process are listening, not just pitching. What do I mean by that? There is so much performance anxiety and pressure when someone comes in to meet with a potential investor or and I'm experienced from both sides, as someone who has been a founder, and then someone who has worked with founders on portfolio, and then as someone who has made angel investments or being part of a syndicate group. You know, what you see is people who just, they, they come out guns blazing. They want to say their things. They have their, you know, their 20-slide deck they need to get through in the next 30 minutes. And they are, they are trying to do a lot of the talking, as opposed to make it a back and forth and asking a lot of questions. So, I might say, Mark, you know, tell me about your ideal check size. Where are you in the history, in the history or stage of this fund? What's your process look like when you've worked with a company you're excited about. Know, what are some of the things that you provide beyond capital? Right at this point, you are building trust because you're showing interest in actually being part of that person's portfolio and being and asking them what a great investment experience and relationship on the board, or whatever you know looks like, so that you're listening, and you care a lot about that person's priorities or values or whatever, and how they like to work, and not just unleashing, you know, the the five talking points you have to get through in the next, You know, handful of minutes as the clock is ticking and you're worried about, like, not getting it all out.
Mark Shriner [17:07]
Yep, I've seen it and experienced it, lived it totally. And it's interesting. I think that that question, question process, or asking questions, is super valuable. I don't care what you're selling. You know, how are you going to know what somebody's needs are, what their interest levels are, you know, what their objectives are, unless you ask questions. But I think you can also ask very intelligent questions that allow you to demonstrate your subject matter expertise or the fact that you've done the research. So, for example, you know, oh, I noticed, you know, when you invested in this company, you wrote, you know, you were interested in it, or you found that investment because of this, is that, is that the really, what happened? I mean, you know what I'm saying, is, you bring up relevant topics to show that you've done your research. But that performance anxiety, I got to say, I've been selling my whole life. I started going door to door, selling Christmas cards when I was eight years old, you know. And then I would be doing mowing lawns and then whatever. And at the enterprise level, since, since my early 20s, I can be in front of, you know, a room full of it doesn't matter anywhere in the world. And I feel comfortable as long as I believe in my product, right, you know. But when I started talking to potential investors, I remember, I met it. I met it, a partner for one of the largest VCs in this area. It was, in fact, it was at Tech Week Seattle last year. Now we were already funded to, you know, seed funded. So, I wasn't out there, like, pitching an idea, and I, you know, the person gave me his card, and I just couldn't talk. I was like, mumbling about, like, do you know? Because I hadn't prepared. And the other thing is, I reflected on it afterwards, and I've realized, you know what, I've been selling products and services my whole life, but now I'm kind of selling myself, and I'm asking for money, and that's a little bit different dynamic. How do you coach founders to work through that mental kind of flip flop there?
Vijay Rajendran [19:07]
That's a great question, yeah, and because it's, it's hard to promote ourselves. It's it this is very, very like normal and very human. So, I'm really glad you asked the question the book has suggestions for how this can be done, and some particular like devices that that people can use. So, you know, the key is, first of all to, like, really dial your pitch in to a couple things. At the earliest stage, people are investing in the team, and at the later stage, people are investing in traction, right? And so, if they're investing in the team, like, the first thing they want to know is your authority. And like, why you know you are someone special, and you're probably you. The best team in the whole world to go after this opportunity or to address this problem and establishing that thing about why you care. And I have seen people try and talk about this fundraising process from the perspective of, okay, this is our team. We're really good. This is the problem. Here's our solution, here's the size of the market, here's and they're kind of going through this, like checkbox, because that's the way, like they're talking told to do, to do, you've got to address the problem.
Mark Shriner [20:33]
You got to have this, the market size, the solution, and then the who's the team, and then, like you said, check the boxes, but go ahead, yeah, exactly.
Vijay Rajendran [20:42]
And that's because we're now taught to, we've been taught for like, two decades to think in terms of slides, and you do need slides, but what you need even more is to be memorable. And what we remember mark is stories. And so if you tell if you start by framing your problem in terms of a story that that person is never going to forget, or you start telling them a story where you know they might have met 812, founders that day, you know, sometimes dozens. This is the course of a week they're going to think back on Friday, like, who do I want a second meeting with? And they were like, Mark told me this great story about how it was Friday, and their customer was trying to me pull a rabbit out of a hat, like, make something happen. For their client. And because they were able to send something over, get a signature, execute an important sale, they were able to, with confidence, you know, do something that was really special, and that was like life changing for their business and so forth, right? And so this situation conflict resolution, like, you know, every great story is like three acts, right? Like every you can see that, you know, not over 30 minutes, but in like one to three minutes, like you can tell a story, and so few people tell good stories, but they're inside all of us, and we and we share them over a beer or a coffee all the time, but we forget to introduce these stories that make us memorable. So, your first goal is to be memorable, and the best way to trigger human memory is with a great story, because then people feel your problem. They don't just like, know it from a statistical or, you know, financial metric perspective.
Mark Shriner [22:54]
I think that that's huge. And for me, personally, you know, product belief or belief in what I'm doing doesn't even matter if it's worked whatever I'm doing in life, I have to believe in what I'm doing. Otherwise, I'm just going through the motions and but when you believe in something, people can kind of pick up on your passion for that and your belief. If you don't believe in it, you're like, yeah, it's okay. But the challenge is, they we. You know, some of the conventional wisdom is the founders have to be almost maniacal about their belief, you know. And I, you know, having worked in Asia for, I don't know, maybe 20 years, places like Japan, Korea, where you have to be, what's the word understated? If anything, right, you should be otherwise perceived as being arrogant. Now, I'm now, we're on the West Coast of America, and if you're in it, it's like, oh man, you know, it's the greatest in the world, right? And, and so there's that conflict as well. But you know, I've just brought up something the like talking about the customer stories. We just did a couple things with two of our customers that made me a real believer. And I, for me, that was important, because I believe in our vision, and I believe in where we're going, but to actually believe in what the platform can do right now, I needed that direct feedback from a couple customers, and you know that were there, literally were knocking on the door and saying, Hey, we can't access the platform. We need it. It's an emergency situation. But when we you know, they using it so intensively, right? And the reason they couldn't access it was because their entire internal firewall, so it wasn't even us, right? It was like, it's awesome, but it just made me that much stronger. Blue. This is a long winded way to say that it's really important to have those stories and to believe in it. How do you coach, you know, to pull, how do you coach your mentees, to kind of harvest those stories from their from their experience,
Vijay Rajendran [24:53]
Yeah, and this looks really different, right? So, the story needs to be very. Available, and you want to think very carefully about who you're putting in as the protagonist of that story. Okay, so there was one medical tech, med tech company, and they had a new imaging product which had been delivered, which had been created by some, some top faculty at one of the nation's best medical schools. And so, the technology was good. The team was like, amazing. But people were not like, sure, you know, is this something that people are going to use versus MRIs? And you know what they know with X rays? Like, are radiologists going to like use this product, not you know, more so than is the team brilliant, and are they, you know, technically competent, and all of that sort of thing. So, yes, best team in the world. Check the box, right? The second part of the story required to rework it from saying, you know you're a parent. It's like, oh, you're a parent at the at the playground, and your child falls from the play structure, and they're in a lot of pain, and you don't know if what's happened. You think they may have broken a bone. You rush them to the hospital, and then they're seen in the emergency room. And what usually happens is you wait there. You wait you wait until someone can, like, read a chart. And depending on what's there and what they can read, right, they might be able to, like, see where something's broken, and depending on how many angles you can take, a picture of their arm and see the broken bone, they're going to have an understanding of what is there. However, this approach takes many more angles than you can take with an X ray. It's you don't have to have an expensive room with an MRI, you know, set up that usually requires scheduling and getting someone in and out, and it's much faster. And also it is likely to find more, you know, more ways in which, let's say, a bone is broken, because what can happen. And then this is, like, the counter intuitive thing is, you know, X percentage of the time a bone has to be reset. And so what would you know, anyone want to do in that picture they were in that scenario, they would not want to have to go and re, break and reset this child's like bone. And so the in this situation, the ER, docs and nurses and radiologists are able to do something in a fraction of the time, get a figure out, oh, wow, there was at, you know, there's actually a second fracture, or, you know, broken area, and so they reset it properly and did it once, and now you know that family is able to go home. It actually costs less for the hospital because you don't get you don't face either malpractice issues or potentially someone having to come back and then redo the procedure again, which is, like, really expensive. Really expensive, so lowering costs, improving patient outcomes, and create, and ultimately not creating, a really like, unintended, like effect where someone's bone has to be reset. So, you tell the story, which is a lot better than like, you know, X rays only see, you know, this percentage of the problem MRIs are usually in short supply. And there's a waiting time, long waiting time in the hospital of like, you know, this many hours. So, you know, therefore, you should buy our thing, because it's cheaper, and, by the way, you don't need and it's also got this many more features, right? So when you're just like, focusing on the cost and the features, because you know you're we know this has to be 10x better or 10x cheaper, and you know those are important variables, we're going to be still forgotten, because what people need to know is that there's a great story that matters to the people at the center. And so, the hero of the story, depending on you know who you're talking to, can be you know that this this medical team, and these people who you want to win, and they come in and kind of save the day. And when you repeat that story from a sales perspective, it's, it's, it's exciting for you know, a chief of medicine or someone like that to endorse it and become a Chafe. In inside of your, your hospital or whatever. And separately, like investors kind of kind of, like, stop and think like, yeah, you know, this is something worth investing in, because, yes, it makes economic sense. But you know, people will, will remember and ask for, like that particular treatment.
Mark Shriner [30:23]
I love that because you originally talked about going in and talking to these highly trained medical professionals. The Medical industrial complex tends to be bureaucratic, and there's an amazing there's amazing amounts of innovation, but it happens over, you know, typically at a slower pace, probably for safety concerns and approvals and all that. But also, there's a certain mindset, this is what we do, and this is what we you know, why we do it, and so to introduce change is, if you just look at the Oh, the dollars and cents equation, might not wake them up, but I love that, that you start with parents at the playground, their child falls, you know, potentially, possibly breaks a bone, and I'm like, right there, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, like, what happens to the kid? I want to know, you know, and I'm not gonna be able to find out unless they have this device. Otherwise, they're gonna sit there and wait and wait and wait, and maybe they have to go to another facility with the MRI, and they're still gonna have to wait. And anybody with children or relatives, or anybody who's been in a situation like that knows how painful the waiting is, so you've kind of flipped the script there, then and then, and then, and then. I love it that you made the medical professional the hero, because they had this device. So that's awesome. Yeah, let me jump kind of tracks here for a second. I've talked to different VCs and then startup advisors, and one of the things that comes up a lot is founder or CEO mental health, because, as you alluded to before there, you know, you're the chief everything officer, and you can be dealing with, you know, getting that product shipped. You're dealing with customers, but there's all these different admins and issues as well, and then there's investors and board members, and you know, you're getting pulled in all these different directions. And the business, you know, people like, oh, you're running a startup, and it's like this, no man, it is. You know, every day come maybe sometimes several times a day, you can have these reversals. What? How do you coach founders in terms of trying to kind of level these ups and downs out?
Vijay Rajendran [32:27]
Yeah, yeah, it is a roller coaster. And sometimes that's exciting and sometimes you want to throw it so, you know, I think the ups and downs are, are there, and there are various like ways to manage that. The key is, you know, figure out what, what you need to do for yourself. That means you're performing at your best because the tendency, and I see this, you know with founders of all ages and levels of experience, but particularly younger ones, is I can just grind this out. If I, you know, we, when we get to this next stage, it's going to be better. Or when this happens, like, then I will, like, be okay. And that's, that's not works. And so the I think there's, there's a mental and a physical and an emotional, like, set of aspects to this, which mean you need to take care of yourself, and a lot of founders are very bad at this, but they need to take care of themselves, either with some level of exercise, diet and sleep, because those are three things you can control, but they're all things you're probably cheating yourself on right now, right? But you can control those things, and they affect your ability to make good decisions, think coherently, and put gas back in the tank so that you can go further. And I think the reframe for a lot of people is when they realize I as the CEO of the company, or the founder of the company, and the single biggest point of failure right? It is not this line of code. It is not, you know, what the junior marketing person posted on social media, or the, you know, whoever's working on the conference booth. It is actually me. So, if I were me, you know, thinking about it in that way, what would I want to do differently? And you don't have to, like, pull every lever at once. But the key thing is, like, starting in terms of, like, what is it that that I need? And maybe it is you need time to think. And because, because this is kind of. Ironic thing is, like you're pulling these directions, and you want to be there for all the one on ones in the sales meetings and write the newsletter and the update and tell your story and go to that conference. And it turns out you, you're doing a lot of things that are reactive. And so if you to the extent that you can reduce the reactive time and create time, either with your co-founder, collaboratively, if you're an arbitrary person and needs to talk to think or potentially separately, if you're somebody who needs alone time, and that looks like journaling or meditation or something else, the thinking time is very, very important, because it allows you to reset and refresh and ask yourself, like, what are we doing and does it matter? Are we keeping the main thing, the main thing? So I have founders I work with who really like meditation and they and it's a daily thing for them. There are others who cannot, like, sit quietly by themselves in a room, and but, you know what, if they for 15 minutes, they get up and they take a walk around the block or something like that, like, suddenly things happen. And so, there are things we can do in order to both reduce stress and increase clarity. And those are actions, not just intentions.
Mark Shriner [36:33]
They have some great advice. And if you invest in yourself first, I try to do it at the beginning of the day. I try to, like do all three in terms of getting up, get my exercise, do some journaling and then, and then, maybe even, like, go for a walk. So, I have some time to kind of reflect. It's hard though, because you know, your impulse when you first get up, is that better check the email, right? Which is the worst way to start the day, or social media, or anything like that. So, I think that's some, some great advice. Because the other thing too is I feel like if I've invested myself, if I did my workout today and I did my journaling or and, or meditation, and if I did some reading, you know, some self-development, and I ate, well, no matter what went on with the business, at least I could feel good about what I do. You know, with myself, I mean, built myself up. I also I believe that if you focus on a problem too much, the solution won't come to you. You have to start thinking about other things, and that solution will pop in there sometimes. So, I love to go for a walk listen to an audio book, and I'll be listening to this book, and somehow they'll be talking about a problem that relates somehow tangentially to what I'm working on. And it's like, I get three or four different ideas right there, you know, it's like, but I wasn't focused on the problem. It was just, you know, getting out and kind of breathing.
Vijay Rajendran [37:52]
Yeah, I think what you're touching on is there are more than one way to think, right we go. I grew up in an educational environment where we have deductive reasoning. And so it's like, well, I start off with this math problem, and I get to the end of the equation, you know, solving the equation, and I get an answer. The thing is, that's, that's just deductive. There's also inductive, there's abductive, like ways of thinking, because it turns out sometimes you actually know the answer you need to, like, work backwards. There are other like times when you see different things, and the connection relationship between those things allows you to find the answer. So unless you take yourself out of this situation and, like, literally give your brain like better conditions and environments to be successful, you won't do that. There's a great study that was done at Stanford that asked people to do some creative exercise, and then had two groups of people. One went and taught, went for a walk first, and the other was just asked to get started the group that, and particularly they went for a walk, not on like a busy downtown street, but in a wooded, like more natural setting. You can guess which group was more successful, right? The group that went for a walk first was 30% more productive. And so, so we, so they came up with 30% more solutions than the first group. And it's not an accident, it's very it's what we need. And so there, there's a lot of work about energy, and I think managing your energy is one thing that you can control. A lot of people say, well, I just need to prioritize and manage my time. Prioritize, yes, but man, it but you can only manage your energy. All of us get 24 hours in a day, so that that is fine. Now, however, your energy is something that is highly variable, and it is contingent on your circadian rhythm. Them, and the things that you do to jog memory, to improve cognition, to be performing at a higher level.
Mark Shriner [40:13]
It's funny, I know there's a book, I think it's called the Energy Project, by Tony Schwartz, Yeah, amazing. I love that time is your most valuable asset. And he's like, No, it's your energy. Because, yeah, we all get 24 hours, but if you're exhausted, if you're, you know, chronically stressed, if you're run down, if you're depressed, you know, if you're forget about it. You can't outperform anything. So, you need to, you need to build that. And I've read that a couple times. It's great, great food for thought, great motivation.
Vijay Rajendran [40:46]
Wonderful book.
Mark Shriner [40:49]
Yes, I highly recommend, speaking of books, what other books or authors would you like Top of mind? Recommend for founders to read. And it doesn't have to be like how to run a startup. You know, it doesn't have to be that. It could be anything.
Vijay Rajendran [41:05]
A couple books that come to mind. One is never split the difference by Chris boss, a wonderful book that is written by a former FBI hostage negotiator, about negotiation. Wow, awesome. Yeah. And, and there are so many tools there that are that are effective, and then you have to practice, you know, using them. And then you find they are, they're very useful. And it comes down to a term he calls tactical empathy in order to get to results. The other book that comes to mind is, how do, how will you measure your life? By Clay Christensen, and he's very well known, obviously, for the innovators dilemma. But how will you measure your life? Is a reflection on like him as a professor at the Harvard Business School, seeing many alumni come back for unions every year. And these people were, on paper, very successful, but they seemed deeply unsatisfied and perhaps something else in their life was broken. And so, he actually uses some economic concepts and business strategy ideas in order to measure and to like, execute on what you ever you want your life to look like. But I think it's it this is important for anyone who is, you know, in an entrepreneurial situation, because it's up to you like no one is telling you like, this is the job and what you have to show up and do and what six what success looks like. You have to come up with that for yourself. And that's really, really hard. And so the question of, how will you measure it is very important, because that's going to influence what you get awesome.
Mark Shriner [42:53]
So, I have, I'm going on a bit of a road trip next week, and I have now those two books never split the difference. And how will you measure your life, plus the funding framework. So those are all three, your book, your two recommendations, and your book on my list. Just out of curiosity, have you ever read or listened to Raval Bhavik hunts? Yeah, super, that guy. I mean, he's, I find, like that book is just like distilled wisdom, you know, he's just taken all that experience as a founder, you know, and the ups and downs and all of that, and now he's, he's, he's out there, he's working he's an investor now, and he's, but he's also working on himself, or he's been working on himself for many, many years, and he shares that very openly. And it's, for me, it's been helpful at times. It's like reading something from Marcus Aurelius, or something like that, 2000 years later and plopped him in the center of Silicon Valley. It makes sense at this.
Vijay Rajendran [43:57]
Oh, absolutely. Like, yeah, I think, you know, naval, you know, is just one of these people who is, who sees things having, you know, gone very quickly through some roller coaster and has come out, not being broken, but perhaps seeing things, you know, like, very clearly and with a point of view that I think like, like really resonates for a number of people, yeah, in in roles and in situations like ours, yeah.
Mark Shriner [44:32]
I think one of his, the memorable quotes, there's so many of them, but one of it is retirement is not sacrificing today for some perceived you know, event in the future retirement is when you are enjoying and living today fully for just it. You know, just enjoying today no matter what you're doing, doesn't matter if you're working 15 hours a day, if you really. Enjoying it, then you're kind of retired, you know, it's like, you know? So, of course, he says that a lot more eloquently than I just did, but, but the point is there.
Vijay Rajendran [45:10]
So, yeah, I I'm fond of, I think it's Bob Dylan quote. A successful person is someone who wakes up every day and does what they want,
Mark Shriner [45:21]
Exactly, love it, yeah, and I can't, you know, rub out Bob, no, they're good at that kind of, you know, let me, let me ask you, kind of, is there, what are the dynamics now, or is it same as business as usual in terms of, you know, AI startups, AI kind of related startups. Is Silicon Valley, is it or potential investors? Is it the same business as usual? Are there any different dynamics that are affecting the kind of the funding process?
Vijay Rajendran [45:58]
Yeah, we are in an interesting place in, in the market cycle, where, since the boom of 2021 higher interest rates have mean less dollars coming into venture, you know, in the in various segments and like this, this sort of cyclical rotation out of some sectors into others. So, what does that mean? A lot of interest in AI. So, we're in the middle of this, like step function change that we haven't seen in in a long time, where what AI allows us to do is probably the biggest productivity jump, you know, since, like, the introduction of the PC. It's, I think that big, you know, one of these, these things that will change all our lives. And so that is getting a lot of funding to the exclusion of, like so much else, and I'm exaggerating slightly, but that that is generally what is taking place. And so, a couple things are happening. That means there are companies that need to figure out either path to problem with profitability or what to do if they're going to continue, if they can't get access to funding, because they're not one of the few focused companies that are sort of AI native. And what that also means is for like people who are building an AI and people invest in AI, you realize outside of building, let's say the foundation, models and things that you know, the bedrock of the AI landscape, you've got people building valuable Businesses with far fewer employees and achieving like extraordinary product led growth really, really quickly. And what that does is it means top investors want to invest in that, that company that got to 10 million in sales in like 24 months with like, you know, 12 people, me too, like me too, I want to invest in that company. We're all being compared, if we're builders, to that. And so, this is just like bonkers, because, like, that's very It's like going from something that was, you know, analog and artisan to something that's supersonic. So, I think that is, the thing is, you know, founders who thought three years ago, oh yeah, when I get to $100,000 in ARR, I'm going to be, you know, a series. I'm going to be a seed or a series, a company or whatever. Like, you know, a million dollars a series a company on your habit that that's what product market fit will look like. And all of that is like changed, because you're being compared it now to, like, a supersonic category of startup.
Mark Shriner [49:13]
So what kind of advice would you give a startup that has built an amazing platform, has some a handful of customers that are very, very happy, but has not invested that much in sales and marketing, because it was focused on getting the product, you know, ready. Okay, product is ready, but it's struggling to because I bring this up because I think you do a lot of B2B sales coaching or a fair amount, right? Yeah, so the product, the company hasn't figured out how, what's the repeatable process for, for bringing in these their new customers and prospects? And, you know, they've tried the AdWords, and they've tried. You know, there's like, what 18 different activities with marketing can do, and they've tried them, but they haven't invested heavily in them because they were focused on, you know, getting the product ready. So, so, you know, what kind of advice if they're if they're going to go out and talk to investors, do they wait until they get more customers? But if they haven't, but they don't have the marketing resources to go get them or miss it. Maybe the expertise, maybe they need to get that higher in place. Yeah, you know, what would you say?
Vijay Rajendran [50:26]
Yeah, that's such a chicken and egg problem, right? Like, if we had the traction, we get the money, but if we had the money, then we could get the traction. And so I think the situation can often be like, are the market we started in is not necessarily the market we are going to grow the most in. And so, you know, how can we use the traction and the happy customers we have as case studies to move into a category where there we're going to sell them sell more seats. Or, if we're on a consumption-based model, like people will, just like, use a lot more of it because of the amount of data they have, or then the number of transactions they process, or whatever. Or do we think about the, you know, the parallel or adjacent market that we want to enter where people are just more aware of the problem, and they're there, they're going to convert much more readily, because the problem is much more obvious in that space versus the one maybe we started in, because, you know, we've worked in it before, and we know the people, and we're able to get off the ground in that, that starter market. So, you know, teams pivot, sometimes the product and sometimes either pivot or expand to new markets as a way to, you know, keep growing. And I think product market fit is, is less and less a moment where we have this epiphany of like, oh, we got product market fit. Now the company can, can switch from build, build, build to sell, sell, sell, and instead it is build, sell, build, sell pivot. Sell bill. Sell bill, again and again, because we're moving towards a road maps and questions of product market evolution based on the fact that new models and new agents are being created every day that are better and better. And so our possibility of what we can do to solve customers problems, if we're a customer for truly customer obsessed changes with that. So you know, the we're at this like interesting space of constant product market evolution and just a set of capabilities that that change for us, if we're thinking about product roadmaps, you know, every few weeks, instead of, like, every few months or years.
Mark Shriner [53:14]
So, so are you saying that you know your pivot to you're not changing the platform, but you're pivoting to a new market. Or could be segments, you know, example, SMB, to enterprise, something like that, or industry we're going to go from this industry to that industry. Yeah, that future pivot, or that pivot that you're trying to go through, could be part of your pitch to say, hey, you know, we've got this figured out. This is working. What we need to do is pivot to maybe Account Based Marketing for enterprise versus, you know, just tons of outbound emails, for example. Will investors consider that, or is or do they want to see?
Vijay Rajendran [53:52]
That you're already they want to see that you've already started the journey, and the data is coming back, that it works and that they're not investing for you to continue where you are, but rather, they're investing in a future state. So, they put capital in, and then you're going to get to this much larger state of the business, or with additional products and feed it. So I'm taking your money not to just pay salaries and continue with where we are now, but to be able to create something new, because the evidence and traction is like so obvious and clear from the pilots and experiments we have now in terms of expanding into this, like additional segments. So that is, I think, that from messaging standpoint, what's there, but also what the investor wants to know is, you're not just going to like, land on that market or iterate the product once, but there's, there's a there's a long journey of evolution for the product, because the market is. Change as investors, sorry, customers, expectations get higher, and also your ability to make even richer and more impactful products will improve over time itself.
Mark Shriner [55:14]
Awesome. Last question, and then I want to talk a little bit about how you engage with your customers or the market you serve. What are you seeing as effective ways for companies to, you know, to reach prospects these days? Because, you know, back in the day, it could be the phone, it could be the fax, and then it was email, and then LinkedIn, and now everybody's just flooded with everything, all through all channels. So, it can be very challenging. In the context of B2B, what are you seeing as effective ways to reach your target market?
Vijay Rajendran [55:54]
Very Yeah, it's very hard. We it's like we've, we've gone in and ruined every channel that was good by overwhelming it right? I think the Yeah, the key is finding the B2B customer who, in that moment, knows they need and in that moment wants to engage with you, right for your product. And so, if you know, if your product is bought, not sold, it may be that content is a really important approach, because it edge, because the customers out there trying to educate themselves. And so that is one path. If your product is sold, not bought, then you know, it might be going to the place where everybody congregates, like an industry convention, or, you know, in certain networks and trusted communities, like, maybe law firms refer you or someone else, right? Like, then you're kind of, you know, there in that moment where someone you know needs and wants your product or service. So those are some of the like, I guess, less automatable approaches to building, you know, out a channel that is high trust. To go back to our earlier point, not that email doesn't work, or that, you know, social media isn't effective. You know, those channels are worth experimenting with, and so that you figure out which part of it is going to generate a result.
Mark Shriner [57:51]
Yeah, makes a ton of sense. You know, it's funny, like you look at Google and they're struggling, because I think 60% of the revenues, it's funny to say Google is struggling. I mean, I wish I had those kind of struggles. But anyway, I mean, 60% of the revenues, yeah, 60% of the revenues come from AdWords, apparently. And AdWords is really struggling right now, because everybody's just going to the LLM's ChatGPT or and, or even to Gemini, or whoever it just, you know, in doing their queries there, so they can get a more thorough, comprehensive answer. And so how do you monetize that? You know, obviously, Chafe T's kind of figured out a bit of that. But, you know, so we're digging doing right now is try, really trying to dig in and understand, how do the Loes, you know, provide their responses? What did they look at and we did a query for our industry, and I was really excited, because we came up as number three, and there's, there's a couple big, you know, 500 pound gorillas that had been in the industry for years. And so I was, you know, the fact that they were ahead of us. I was like, that's fine, that we're even in the same paragraph with them. That's amazing. Then I found out that, just like with traditional search, there are content bubbles. The LLM's do that too. They look at, you know, previous queries and feed you information that aligns with what you they perceive that you would be looking for, and it's just so I think if you can crack that, that's a whole startup right there, if you can be the firm that says we can figure out how that you know, the major LLM's will, Will, you know, feature you and any queries related to your space, you know, that kind of like SEO optimized for LLM'S’s, if you can figure that out, that's a business.
Vijay Rajendran [59:49]
Yeah, now that is a conversation that is that is starting is, how do we not just optimize, let's say, our website for SEO. How do we optimize? Our website for, you know, these, these large models to read, because a lot of the stuff just needs to be rewritten. And not, not just for keywords, which is what we we've been doing now for, for however many years, but for like, certain types of information and like, it can be retrieved. And then that's good, because if they keep finding that, they retrieve stuff there, whether it's whether, whether it's chat, GPT or perplexity, or something, then they do come back again, again. And then if someone asks, like, where, do I go for this type of, you know, solution? It might, you know, surface your company, and that's, you know, a nice thing, if it's able to do that.
Mark Shriner [1:00:51]
Absolutely. The last thing I would touch on is that we're kind of, originally, I was kind of skeptical about is the buyer intent tools. They can tell you, hey, it's, it's pretty granular right now, who in what organization is searching for a product, or has been to your competitors website. And that's, that's, that's pretty powerful. But like you said, we have a tendency to kind of ruin all these channels eventually. So you know, even if you get that intent, you know, they're in the market for it, you still need to get in touch with them. And again, if emails and social media doesn't work. So it's, it's a challenge.
Vijay Rajendran [1:01:30]
Yeah, definitely. I mean, going back again to the question of trust, you know, people are most likely to believe in recommendations from people they can relate to, or people like them. So, you know, for a long time, people have been looking at reviews and influencer marketing, things like that as like the next, next thing again, that that too can be done badly, and you can have a lot of, you know, review sites and even like influencer marketing campaigns that where you can overdo it, and it can be you can actually root trust because it looks like it's just, you know, paid advertising, as opposed to like, objective, objective, objective, like, you know, influencer content. So yeah, all of these things are good moderation and valid, as long as it is accurate and, you know, authentic.
Mark Shriner [1:02:38]
Absolutely. So let me ask you last question here, tell us a little bit about, you know what, what you do at GI AI ventures. Is that how I'm saying that, right? Yeah.
Vijay Rajendran [1:02:50]
Gi ventures, yeah. So at GF ventures, what we're doing is we are building AI businesses that impact traditional industry and working with experienced people with domain expertise or and industry knowledge in order to build business to business like vertical, typically, AI products and that means we get to know people who are seeing the world in perhaps a different way than the rest of their industry. They understand the problem in a very acute way, and there are new products that they would like to introduce and businesses that they would like to build. And we think it's a very exciting time to be that form of inception stage capital and bring our technical resources and our engineering team to help just go very fast. Because, as I said before, like that ability to go fast is the critical capability for a startup, and we want to, like, create that capability very early on in companies we work with.
Mark Shriner [1:04:05]
So are these companies that have already received funding, or these at the concept stage? Or where are they at?
Vijay Rajendran [1:04:12]
It starts with a concept. It starts with a founder and a concept. And from there, we want to build together the right type of business and like, subsequently, it can be funded.
Mark Shriner [1:04:27]
Awesome so well. And if people wanted to find out more, what's your URL or what's the best way to get in touch?
Vijay Rajendran [1:04:33]
Yeah. So, two ways. One is LinkedIn. I'm keen to connect with people there. And then I I'm also on sub stack. So, startup system is my newsletter on sub stack to just kind of follow what I'm thinking and writing. And then finally, Gai dot Ventures is our site.
Mark Shriner [1:05:00]
Yeah. Awesome. Hey, BJ, I can, we could probably keep talking for a couple of hours here. I mean, you got a tremendous amount of experience. I think we just scratched the service. But, you know, I took literally a page full of notes here, and I got some book recommendations. So for me, this was a, you know, a good, good, good return on investment for the time spent. Thank you so much for being on the girl class podcast. And do you ever, do you ever go up to the Seattle area?
Vijay Rajendran [1:05:25]
Once in a while?
Mark Shriner [1:05:28]
Yeah, if you're ever up here, let me know, and I may be down in the Bay Area mid end of September. Great to go out and grab a cup of coffee or something.
Vijay Rajendran [1:05:35]
Let's do that. Sounds great. Thank you, Mark.
Mark Shriner [1:05:36]
Thank you, Vijay. Take care. Cheers.
