Mr. Girish Mathrubootham, Founder [/b]FreshDesk[/b], shares his Pivotal Moments that Inspired him to Launch Freshdesk [/b]
SC:[/b] What’s the story behind Freshdesk?
GM: [/b]Freshdesk is web 2.0 helpdesk software delivered as a Service. The increased adoption of cloud computing combined with the emergence of social CRM provides an excellent opportunity to bring the much needed innovation into the customer support helpdesk. With this refreshing idea came Freshdesk with wholehearted efforts of Mr Girish Mathrubootham, the man behind Freshdesk. To refresh the helpdesk – he came up with an excellent idea of “Freshdesk”.
He has successfully spent 9 years of his life as an employee of Zoho Corporation and he played his last role of being a VP of Product Management at ManageEngine and has built in several successful brands under ManageEngine brand. He was keen on building on-premise helpdesk systems since 2004. In fact he has experience with an ITIL helpdesk, a customer support helpdesk and a facilities helpdesk and knows a lot about these markets. In addition to this he had a ringside view to all the action in cloud computing happening in Zoho.
Now you would image what ignited me to shift from employment to entrepreneurship? Sharing his sacred moments below..
SC:[/b] What is your vision for Freshdesk?
GM:[/b] To build the best cloud based customer support software for small and medium size businesses around the world.
SC:[/b] Which are the pivotal moments in your life that inspired you for commencing Freshdesk?
GM:[/b] The idea of commencing Freshdesk stroked when I was reading an article in Hacker News which was about Zendesk raising their prices 60 - 300% and how their users were unhappy about it. It was a casual read actually and glancing through the comments on HN a single comment from user “megamark” caught hold of my attention & there I had my opportunity for Freshdesk. Being aware of the fact of massive transition to cloud along with my domain knowledge, the spidery sense in me that I should throw in my hat into the ring
That was the exact moment that I decided that I should build something in the customer support market delivered as SAAS.
The next few weeks were actually pretty stressful. I couldn't sleep because of the excitement and the fear (school fees, home mortgage etc.) I had not talked to anyone (not even my wife) about the idea but I was researching all the companies in the space.
I actually read everything that was ever written on those companies on Hacker News. The Hacker News Search (yes that tiny little link on the bottom of every HN page) is in my opinion an entrepreneur's best resource. (If you are the type who prefers reading printed articles you should consider the Hacker Monthly)
I zeroed in on some potential domain names and found that freshdesk.com was actually expiring in a couple of weeks. So I backordered it on Godaddy and waited and waited. It was almost a month before the domain was officially transferred to me.
Speaking about my team, I would like to say:[/b][/b]
The time had come when I needed a co-founder. I talked to my good friend and colleague of several years, Shan - who is a great techie and he immediately, agreed.
For a few weeks we tried working weekends and nights but since both of us had families and kids it was obvious pretty soon that we had to do this full time if we were serious. We both resigned in October 2010. Now we have a team of six people - (3 developers, 1 UI/UX designer, 1 QA / Customer support engineer and me as - the Product Manager / CEO)
Incorporation stage:[/b][/b]
US Company or India Company was the Question before us
We are based in India and I couldn't find any payment gateway provider offering recurring payment solutions in India. The best payment processors that we wanted to work with worked only with US bank accounts. We decided to incorporate Freshdesk in the US. You can read the entire story of how we incorporated a US company from India here. We used FeeFighters to search for an affordable card processor and almost settled on Co-Card, but instead went ahead with the more expensive Braintree as they had everything we needed and also had excellent reviews on Hacker News. We also ended up registering a company in India as we were going to have employees, hire an office space etc.
Time for Creating Logo & Website for self[/b][/b]
We wanted a logo and a website and we did not have a designer in our team at that time. I looked at several outsourcing options and again Hacker News gave me 3 excellent choices - 99Designs, ThemeForest and SortFolio. We liked the idea of 99Designs very much but we wanted a website design and a logo and we found an Indian company on Sortfolio called Getmefast.com who agreed to do everything for around $450.
Marketing Mania [/b][/b]
We put up the website with standard helpdesk features and we wanted to know if customers would buy what we were going to build. So we created a Wufoo form for beta signup and started advertising on Google adwords, Facebook and LinkedIn with $10 and $25 and $50 budgets. We also wrote some blog posts which got some decent views. In all we spent around $350-400 in advertising and we got more than 150 valid signups.
We started looking for patterns in our customer profiles and identified that most of our leads were from a few niche market segments that we could market to easily.
Leveraging the Product /Market Fit[/b][/b]
We started engaging with our prospects on what they were currently using and what problems they were facing. In many cases people were telling us clearly what they really wanted to see in their customer support software.
We were surprised to see that a lot of what customers wanted were their core problems solved and not some fancy features of supporting customers from their Facebook wall or converting tweets into customer support tickets. While we understand that these are definitely the way of the future, many many customers do not need this today.
Another important learning for us was that customers did not want to be dealing with separate invoices for their helpdesk, their contact management software, for their customer feedback forums and customer satisfaction surveys. The SMB customer wants one invoice and as much functionality as possible in the customer relationship management solution.
We also identified underserved market segments (companies with multi-brand support requirements) and segments which were getting priced out because the current solutions were expensive.
So we reprioritized our feature set to what we thought is the ideal product/market fit for us. This means that things like Twitter and Facebook integration can wait. But things like multiple support emails or support for SLAs and Business hours are in.
Funding Concerns[/b]
We have had no outside funding till date and have not applied to any VCs or angels. Our burn rate is quite small currently - around $5K for a six member team and our entire team is working for around 30-50% of their market salary.(I don't take a salary and we all have generous stock options). We moved in to a swanky new office for a rent of around $160 per month! We may look for some angel / VC funding in the near future and I read up a lot on Venture Hacks on how to get funded.
They have an excellent article on preparing a Business plan using a 10 slide deck at "What should I send investors?", which I used to create a Business plan. I also created a profile for Freshdesk at AngelList which I think is one of the best things to have happened to startup entrepreneurs. We have not made our Angel List profile visible to any investor because we want to wait till our launch - because we know that traction is the most important metric for any investor. (Thanks to Venture Hacks for the excellent advice)
Launch[/b] - We are now in private beta and hosted on Engine Yard. We are sending invites to small groups at a time to beta test Freshdesk and plan to open up the public beta in the coming weeks.
SC:[/b] What’s life as an entrepreneur like for you?
GM:[/b] It’s like a giant roller coaster ride - exciting, frightening, thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But it is no doubt the experience of a lifetime.
SC:[/b] Most Entrepreneurs are workaholics. Are you too?
GM:[/b] I am a person who believes that If you enjoy what you do, then work is not a burden, work is like play. I have never believed in the term work-life balance. If you deeply enjoy your work then it is more like work-life integration. Short answer - Yes, I am a workaholic but I like it that way.
SC:[/b] How was your experience working with 1M/1M?
GM:[/b] It was very good. Sramana is very knowledgeable and very well connected. The curriculum also has a lot of valuable advice for budding entrepreneurs.
SC:[/b] Bootstrapping v/s fund raising. Which one would you favor and what makes it special?
GM: [/b]It depends on the kind of business you are building. Some businesses are not fundable by VCs.
[/b]
[/b]
SC:[/b] When's the right time to raise funds in your opinion?
GM: [/b]When you have the product ready and start getting traction in the market. If customers are paying you money, it’s even better.
SC:[/b] How does Freshdesk stay ahead of competition?
GM: [/b]We focus on our customers. We listen to them and understand their problems and try to build the best solution for the problem. If we always focus on competition then you are always playing catch up.
SC:[/b] What keeps your team going?
GM: [/b]Good feedback from our customers and a regular supply of a very potent drug called customer payments.
SC:[/b] Marketing and public relations are a vital component to new business, how would you relate this to Freshdesk?
GM: [/b]We have been fortunate enough to have to good PR at the right moments, - first with the Freshdesk story getting traction at Hacker news and also when we won the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge.
SC:[/b] How would you define success? When should one believe has achieved success?
GM:[/b] I will consider Freshdesk successful if we have thousands of happy customers who are using the product on a daily basis and are referring the product to their friends.
Visit Freshdesk: http://www.freshdesk.com/
Readers can contact Freshdesk
www.facebook.com/freshdesk
@mrgirish
@freshdesk
Mr.Girish Mathrubootham is a 1m/1m participant, if you want to scale up your venture as well, Join 1m/1m premium program
Wait for more such interesting read ahead
[/b]
SC:[/b] What’s the story behind Freshdesk?
GM: [/b]Freshdesk is web 2.0 helpdesk software delivered as a Service. The increased adoption of cloud computing combined with the emergence of social CRM provides an excellent opportunity to bring the much needed innovation into the customer support helpdesk. With this refreshing idea came Freshdesk with wholehearted efforts of Mr Girish Mathrubootham, the man behind Freshdesk. To refresh the helpdesk – he came up with an excellent idea of “Freshdesk”.
He has successfully spent 9 years of his life as an employee of Zoho Corporation and he played his last role of being a VP of Product Management at ManageEngine and has built in several successful brands under ManageEngine brand. He was keen on building on-premise helpdesk systems since 2004. In fact he has experience with an ITIL helpdesk, a customer support helpdesk and a facilities helpdesk and knows a lot about these markets. In addition to this he had a ringside view to all the action in cloud computing happening in Zoho.
Now you would image what ignited me to shift from employment to entrepreneurship? Sharing his sacred moments below..
SC:[/b] What is your vision for Freshdesk?
GM:[/b] To build the best cloud based customer support software for small and medium size businesses around the world.
SC:[/b] Which are the pivotal moments in your life that inspired you for commencing Freshdesk?
GM:[/b] The idea of commencing Freshdesk stroked when I was reading an article in Hacker News which was about Zendesk raising their prices 60 - 300% and how their users were unhappy about it. It was a casual read actually and glancing through the comments on HN a single comment from user “megamark” caught hold of my attention & there I had my opportunity for Freshdesk. Being aware of the fact of massive transition to cloud along with my domain knowledge, the spidery sense in me that I should throw in my hat into the ring
That was the exact moment that I decided that I should build something in the customer support market delivered as SAAS.
The next few weeks were actually pretty stressful. I couldn't sleep because of the excitement and the fear (school fees, home mortgage etc.) I had not talked to anyone (not even my wife) about the idea but I was researching all the companies in the space.
I actually read everything that was ever written on those companies on Hacker News. The Hacker News Search (yes that tiny little link on the bottom of every HN page) is in my opinion an entrepreneur's best resource. (If you are the type who prefers reading printed articles you should consider the Hacker Monthly)
I zeroed in on some potential domain names and found that freshdesk.com was actually expiring in a couple of weeks. So I backordered it on Godaddy and waited and waited. It was almost a month before the domain was officially transferred to me.
Speaking about my team, I would like to say:[/b][/b]
The time had come when I needed a co-founder. I talked to my good friend and colleague of several years, Shan - who is a great techie and he immediately, agreed.
For a few weeks we tried working weekends and nights but since both of us had families and kids it was obvious pretty soon that we had to do this full time if we were serious. We both resigned in October 2010. Now we have a team of six people - (3 developers, 1 UI/UX designer, 1 QA / Customer support engineer and me as - the Product Manager / CEO)
Incorporation stage:[/b][/b]
US Company or India Company was the Question before us
We are based in India and I couldn't find any payment gateway provider offering recurring payment solutions in India. The best payment processors that we wanted to work with worked only with US bank accounts. We decided to incorporate Freshdesk in the US. You can read the entire story of how we incorporated a US company from India here. We used FeeFighters to search for an affordable card processor and almost settled on Co-Card, but instead went ahead with the more expensive Braintree as they had everything we needed and also had excellent reviews on Hacker News. We also ended up registering a company in India as we were going to have employees, hire an office space etc.
Time for Creating Logo & Website for self[/b][/b]
We wanted a logo and a website and we did not have a designer in our team at that time. I looked at several outsourcing options and again Hacker News gave me 3 excellent choices - 99Designs, ThemeForest and SortFolio. We liked the idea of 99Designs very much but we wanted a website design and a logo and we found an Indian company on Sortfolio called Getmefast.com who agreed to do everything for around $450.
Marketing Mania [/b][/b]
We put up the website with standard helpdesk features and we wanted to know if customers would buy what we were going to build. So we created a Wufoo form for beta signup and started advertising on Google adwords, Facebook and LinkedIn with $10 and $25 and $50 budgets. We also wrote some blog posts which got some decent views. In all we spent around $350-400 in advertising and we got more than 150 valid signups.
We started looking for patterns in our customer profiles and identified that most of our leads were from a few niche market segments that we could market to easily.
Leveraging the Product /Market Fit[/b][/b]
We started engaging with our prospects on what they were currently using and what problems they were facing. In many cases people were telling us clearly what they really wanted to see in their customer support software.
We were surprised to see that a lot of what customers wanted were their core problems solved and not some fancy features of supporting customers from their Facebook wall or converting tweets into customer support tickets. While we understand that these are definitely the way of the future, many many customers do not need this today.
Another important learning for us was that customers did not want to be dealing with separate invoices for their helpdesk, their contact management software, for their customer feedback forums and customer satisfaction surveys. The SMB customer wants one invoice and as much functionality as possible in the customer relationship management solution.
We also identified underserved market segments (companies with multi-brand support requirements) and segments which were getting priced out because the current solutions were expensive.
So we reprioritized our feature set to what we thought is the ideal product/market fit for us. This means that things like Twitter and Facebook integration can wait. But things like multiple support emails or support for SLAs and Business hours are in.
Funding Concerns[/b]
We have had no outside funding till date and have not applied to any VCs or angels. Our burn rate is quite small currently - around $5K for a six member team and our entire team is working for around 30-50% of their market salary.(I don't take a salary and we all have generous stock options). We moved in to a swanky new office for a rent of around $160 per month! We may look for some angel / VC funding in the near future and I read up a lot on Venture Hacks on how to get funded.
They have an excellent article on preparing a Business plan using a 10 slide deck at "What should I send investors?", which I used to create a Business plan. I also created a profile for Freshdesk at AngelList which I think is one of the best things to have happened to startup entrepreneurs. We have not made our Angel List profile visible to any investor because we want to wait till our launch - because we know that traction is the most important metric for any investor. (Thanks to Venture Hacks for the excellent advice)
Launch[/b] - We are now in private beta and hosted on Engine Yard. We are sending invites to small groups at a time to beta test Freshdesk and plan to open up the public beta in the coming weeks.
SC:[/b] What’s life as an entrepreneur like for you?
GM:[/b] It’s like a giant roller coaster ride - exciting, frightening, thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But it is no doubt the experience of a lifetime.
SC:[/b] Most Entrepreneurs are workaholics. Are you too?
GM:[/b] I am a person who believes that If you enjoy what you do, then work is not a burden, work is like play. I have never believed in the term work-life balance. If you deeply enjoy your work then it is more like work-life integration. Short answer - Yes, I am a workaholic but I like it that way.
SC:[/b] How was your experience working with 1M/1M?
GM:[/b] It was very good. Sramana is very knowledgeable and very well connected. The curriculum also has a lot of valuable advice for budding entrepreneurs.
SC:[/b] Bootstrapping v/s fund raising. Which one would you favor and what makes it special?
GM: [/b]It depends on the kind of business you are building. Some businesses are not fundable by VCs.
[/b]
[/b]
SC:[/b] When's the right time to raise funds in your opinion?
GM: [/b]When you have the product ready and start getting traction in the market. If customers are paying you money, it’s even better.
SC:[/b] How does Freshdesk stay ahead of competition?
GM: [/b]We focus on our customers. We listen to them and understand their problems and try to build the best solution for the problem. If we always focus on competition then you are always playing catch up.
SC:[/b] What keeps your team going?
GM: [/b]Good feedback from our customers and a regular supply of a very potent drug called customer payments.
SC:[/b] Marketing and public relations are a vital component to new business, how would you relate this to Freshdesk?
GM: [/b]We have been fortunate enough to have to good PR at the right moments, - first with the Freshdesk story getting traction at Hacker news and also when we won the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge.
SC:[/b] How would you define success? When should one believe has achieved success?
GM:[/b] I will consider Freshdesk successful if we have thousands of happy customers who are using the product on a daily basis and are referring the product to their friends.
Visit Freshdesk: http://www.freshdesk.com/
Readers can contact Freshdesk
www.facebook.com/freshdesk
@mrgirish
@freshdesk
Mr.Girish Mathrubootham is a 1m/1m participant, if you want to scale up your venture as well, Join 1m/1m premium program
Wait for more such interesting read ahead
[/b]