Alok Goyal’s Post

Sales tech has undergone significant transformation in the last decade. Specifically, outbound demand gen, once characterized by brute force spam email outreach, has evolved into a highly data-driven, targeted, and personalized approach. Factors.ai is at the forefront of this shift, pioneering the "art of possible". Super excited to see the launch of their LinkedIn product that is a game changer for demand gen marketers. Srikrishna Swaminathan Praveen Das Aravind Murthy Arpit Maheshwari

I very distinctly remember the interview process with Arpit Maheshwari when we were just 1 year old, fund raise for the first fund was not fully complete and when there was precious little for us to show. You have, in so many ways, shaped Stellaris Venture Partners to be what it is today. Your intensity, depth orientation and curiosity have helped me be a better professional, and I know that I am not alone in the firm who feels that way. What sets you apart are your values. I am immensely proud of our firm values, and I always felt that you were the best demonstration of these values through all these years! Thank you Arpit Maheshwari. It will take Stellaris Venture Partners time to figure out the "life after".

Automating complex tasks requires interpreting all the messy data within organizations. This presents a massive opportunity for re-imagining back-office workflows! The release of #ChatGPT marked an important milestone. There are huge tailwinds in the world of AI as even conservative leaders are welcoming the use of AI agents in their HR, finance, sales, marketing and customer support divisions to reduce costs and improve the quality of work.  Calling all developers to team up and join us on 6th-7th July to be part of the AI revolution! Register here: https://lu.ma/rmde6yz3 Naman Jain Sayantan Sarkar

Vispi Daver is the most untypical CRO you will ever meet. He never did sales, was an investor and landed into sales accidentally. He has been one of the finest sales leaders I have had the opportunity to work with. He built Whatfix from almost ground zero to being the global category leader position, with 80+ Fortune 500 customers, and a sales team that spans the globe. But it all started with just the founders (Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar Namburu ) selling. Building enterprise GTMs is hard, takes time and is expensive. How do you bootstrap this engine? US or India? Partners or yourselves? Hire a VP Sales right from the start or not? Crawl your way up to larger customers or start with them?.... For all these questions and more, join us for #SaaSTalks #34 today at 9.30 am IST. Arpit Maheshwari Sayantan Sarkar Naman Jain

Few people bring a perspective that Vispi Daver can. He was an investor in the valley in enterprise software startups, was amongst the earliest angel investors in Whatfix. Helped Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar Namburu in thinking about the early GTM, and then lo and behold, came on board at Whatfix to lead global GTM. He has seen the journey from the early days when few startups from India targeted global enterprise. If you are a SaaS founder targeting the enterprise segment, this is a must attend discussion! Friday, 28th June, 9.30 am IST! Register here: https://lu.ma/lc0zp9bu #SaaSTalks Arpit Maheshwari Sayantan Sarkar Naman Jain

I met Saurabh Mishra back in January 2022 We were introduced via a common friend & entrepreneur. My entire focus was to convince Saurabh on why he should not become an entrepreneur👇 ▶ Saurabh was a Partner at McKinsey, and tracking well towards being a Senior Partner, a role that many would give up an arm and a leg for. Saurabh, however, was convinced that he needed to be an entrepreneur. He would rather fail than live with the regret of not having tried. I thought he had lost his mind and fallen for the startup hype that India (and the world) was going through in 2021-22 ▶Saurabh’s work at McKinsey was focused on sales acceleration of large IT/BPO services, and he was exploring how technology can help Account Executives in these companies to identify opportunities in large enterprises. We found the problem difficult to solve, and the space cluttered - we'd just exited Slintel, our portfolio co. focused on identifying top of the funnel for B2B companies ▶During that experience, we came across dozens of companies amassing vast amounts of public data to help identify top of the funnel opportunities. While Slintel was a very successful investment for Stellaris Venture Partners, given our experience in this space, I was even more convinced Saurabh shouldn't leave McK to pursue an idea that made no sense But entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs! 🚀 ✨In 7 months since our conversation, Saurabh left McK and partnered with Swapnil Saykar, a product leader at Amazon who'd spent 8 years in the US and India, and was running the ads platform for India. While Saurabh brought the domain knowledge to the problem, Swapnil brought the experience of building complex, enterprise scale systems ✨Saurabh & Swapnil had the problem of plenty, i.e. too many people with deep pockets wanted to invest in their venture. As they were contemplating starting their journey in August 2022, they weren't looking for VC money. We're fortunate that they agreed to have us as part of their angel round, and allowed us to be thought partners as they started building their product ✨Fast forward to 12+ months, we've been amazed at the speed and frugality with which they've built what they've built, and the kind of customers they've been able to penetrate. Most people who had not met with OrbitShift.AI were initially dismissive of technology’s ability to help AEs of large IT/BPO service providers do their job better. It's a highly skilled job that AI can't help with. But reference calls with the customers were diametrically opposite. They were delighted with the value OrbitShift added, and the possibilities of solution extension ✨ In my last 11 years as a VC + a previous decade in software sales, I've learnt that no matter what new concept you take to the market, you'll find very few believers in the beginning. There are few early adopters. But if there's a pain point and real value being created for the early adopters, there is a large business to be built Continued in comments👇

Earlier today, SAP announced the acquisition of WalkMe™. Two emotions: 1. Delighted for Whatfix 2. "I told you so", i.e. SAP cannot do it itself! Here's why 👇 ➡ There are only two primary providers of Digital Adoption Platforms - Walkme and Whatfix. WalkMe is the largest but has had significant execution challenges and has yielded market share to Whatfix. Every major ISV now has a reason not to partner with WalkMe, and have Whatfix as the only enterprise grade option. Whatfix has replaced a large number of WalkMe installations in the last 2 years, and this should only speed up the process. Explains my delight! ➡ Now the "I told you so" part 8-9 years back, Whatfix founders and I had a chance to present to the global product leadership of SAP. We felt that we could both benefit from the partnership. They said they will do it themselves - they have the money, talent and distribution. And yes, they did. They released SAP EnableNow as their product. The guy who ran global sales for this product was a good friend of mine when I was at SAP in Palo Alto. ➡ What I have repeatedly learnt is that focus is one of the biggest drivers of success. Despite having one of the best enterprise distributions globally, SAP was not able to make EnableNow a success. Why - because it was never a large enough category to be material to them. By the time it gets to it, large companies realise that they are far behind in the race. I have made the mistake of not investing behind several great companies because I was worried about the bigger competitors. 9/10 times I have been proven wrong! Hopefully this signals even bigger times ahead for Whatfix, Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar Namburu have done an incredible job building this category leader from India. This moment will define a new turning point for the company! Stellaris Venture Partners Tejeshwi Sharma

Learning some hard lessons in customer service and retail experience from both LG India and Croma Bought an AC from Croma last weekend, delivered immediately. LG team came to install on Monday and opened the box to find that the AC is broken. Since then we are being shunted across the two brands, each telling us someone will get back to us, and of course no one has. If anyone has senior connects in either place, would highly appreciate your help.