Building a Strong Partner Ecosystem: Lessons from Ashish Kamotra from Titan Workspace

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Anthony Carrano (00:05):
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership.
The podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IAMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your co host,Anthony Carrano. And in each
episode, I'll be talking to someof the most innovative and
successful partners in theMicrosoft ecosystem. The

(00:26):
International Association ofMicrosoft Channel Partners,
otherwise known as IAMCP, is acommunity of Microsoft partners
who help each other grow andthrive.
Members can find and connectwith other partners locally and
globally and access exclusiveresources and opportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. We'll hear

(00:48):
their stories, learn from theirexperiences, and discover the
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast.
We hope you enjoy this podcastand find it useful and
inspiring. If you do, pleasesubscribe, rate, and review us

(01:09):
on your favorite podcastplatform. And don't forget to
follow us on social media andconnect with us on our website,
www.profilesinpartnership.com,where you can find information,
resources, and opportunities topartner for success. Thank you
for listening.
Now let's get started withtoday's episode. But before we
dive into our interview, let meask you a few questions. As a

(01:32):
Microsoft partner and member ofthe IAMCP, what kind of approach
are you taking to scale yourbusiness? And how are you
developing your partnerrelationships to achieve those
goals? Finding the right partnercan be challenging, but can also
be rewarding.
In fact, according to a channelprofitability study, Microsoft
partners derive margins 19%higher than the next closest

(01:54):
competitor. That's a hugedifference, and it shows the
power of partnering. So how doyou leverage the Microsoft
partner network in IAMCP tosupport your partnerships? And
how do you ensure success foryour customer? These are some of
the questions we'll explore inthis podcast with the help of
our guests, a recent P2P Award,APAC finalist, who is also an

(02:15):
expert in partnering.
He'll share stories, challenges,and successes, and give you
practical tips and advice on howto partner for success. Are you
ready to join us on thisjourney? Then stay tuned because
we have a great show for youtoday. Our guest is Ashish
Kamotra the CEO at TitanWorkspace, a Microsoft 365 app
that unleashes enterpriseproductivity by improving the

(02:38):
usability of M365 and MicrosoftTeams. Titan Workspace was
developed by Adapt SoftwareIndia, a Microsoft modern work
solutions partner thatspecializes in SharePoint, Power
Platform, and M365, Teams, andMicrosoft Viva.
Let's hear what he has to say.

(02:59):
Welcome, Ashish, to the podcasttoday. Thank you for joining us.

Ashish Kamotra (03:03):
Thanks so much, Anthony and Rudy, for having me
on this podcast. So I feel,highly obliged to be part of
this, podcast to share my IAMCPexperiences.

Well, we're really glad that you joined us.
Why don't we start off and, tellus a little bit about yourself
and, your role in the company?

Absolutely. So I'm the founder and CEO of,
Adapt Software. So we startedour company in India and now
headquartered in Dallas, Texas.So I generally travel a lot
between India and US to takecare of both the operations.
Right?
So we started this company wayback, I think, 2 decades back in
India as a SharePoint consultingcompany. And then over a period

(03:43):
of time, we graduated toMicrosoft Modern Work, Solution
Partners, and now deliveringsolutions globally. Also, we
have Type Workspace as our ISPproduct, so which is now an area
where I'm spending a lot of mytime in promoting and selling
that product globally. So I lookafter mainly operations and

(04:06):
sales and the product side ofthe of the company. And then we
have teams, in US as well as inIndia, both to take care of
customers.

And now as, you founded the company, why did you
start the company?

Why did you start the company? Because I
kind of see, my history is that,I wasn't an IT guy. Right? So I
was working for a very largecorporation in Japan, and then I
was the buyer of IT.
And then, right, sitting at theother side of the table. Right?
So, and then I was veryfascinated with, the IT trends

(04:45):
coming up and the product to thesoftwares, and then decided to
start my own company. And that'swhy I jumped into it without
being a technical person. But Iwas aware that, IT is very
challenging, and that that's arole I wanted for myself,
actually.

Mhmm.
So now I know in addition to,you know, CEO and founder, I
heard through the grapevinethat, you're also a musician.
Why don't you share a little bitabout that?

Oh, yes. So I love music. So Indian classical
in in a way that, and this issomething came from our family
that our parents andgrandparents, they were all very
fond of Indian classical music,and that's how we grew with the
family. Right?
So listening to all that. Ipicked a flute as my musical

(05:30):
hobby and which is Indianclassical flute I play a solo. I
play in a group, but, generallyfocus on traditional Indian
classical music, and I love it.

That's fascinating. I know just to
kinda, rabbit show here a littlebit. So you mentioned it's,
like, Indian classical. Whatwhat's the difference between
that and and, I guess, whatother people would think is,
like, other types of classicalmusic? What's distinct about
that?

Look. Indian classical music when you're
playing so, the the best part ofthat is that we we always
perform within the sanctity ofthe rock. Rock is kind of a
notation. It's it's a kind of aset of, kind of, notes, and you
have to perform within that. Sothere are thousands of varieties

(06:21):
of ratmas.
Right? Not one. And each has itsown unique, music, alignment.
Right? So you have to pick up ifyou pick up one, so you have to
make sure that you don't gooutside the boundaries of that
rock. Right? And that's thescientific way of playing Indian
music. See, for example, if youlook at, Western Orchestra

(06:42):
Symphonies, everybody isfollowing notes. Right?
While a group of it isperforming. But if you look at
Indian classical music,performed on a stage, you'll see
that there's nothing written infront of anybody. So everybody
is following a set, which isdefined by the classical music,
and that that's the fun part ofit. Right?

Well, that sounds pretty fascinating. Yeah.
And I appreciate you sharingthat. Now tell us a little bit
about when did you join, theIAMCP?

See, my my association with IAMCP, started,
I think, around 2015 or 2016 inIndia. IAMCP was not very
popular or very big at thattime. So we, Suresh, in fact,
you know that. Right?
So he was he started that inIndia much before me. From since

(07:37):
2016, I think we have grown,IAMCP in India, and I love being
part of that growth journey andlove being part of the entire
growth in the business that camealong with my IAMCP association.

I was gonna ask about, you know so we've got
Adapt Software India, and thenyou have Titan Workspace. Tell
us a little about the areas ofspecialization for for each.

Right. See, Adapt Software is a company, and
Titan Workspace is the brand. Sothe prop so we are Microsoft ISV
Modern Work. And Titan Workspaceis a SaaS, B2B SaaS, which is a
Microsoft 365 app.
Sits on top of SharePoint, and,basically, it is a document

(08:27):
management and workflowautomation app that facilitates,
adoption of Microsoft 365 andSharePoint with its very unique
framework. Right? In addition tothat, we are Microsoft co sell
partner and also modern worksolution partner. Adapt Software
in India is basically the nameof a company which has two

(08:50):
functions. 1, a modern workpractice where we deliver
SharePoint based solutionsglobally as a project, and then
it has Titan Workspace as adevelopment center, as a product
company.
And, yeah. So I oversee boththose both those areas.

Excellent. Excellent. I appreciate you
sharing that. Rudy?

Rudy Rodriguez (09:11):
Okay, Ashish. Now we're gonna dive into this
nice little P2P story that wewanna talk about. So let's talk
about, you know, the partnershowcase that you turned in with
IAMCP. Tell us a little bitabout how you became an ISV, why
you became an ISV, you know,developing that product, and
then how you built the channeland the challenges you may have

(09:34):
faced in building that channelto help distribute your product.

Right. So great. This is almost a summary of my
journey. Right? What yourasking. Ha ha ha.

Ha ha. 8 years in 30 seconds. Come on. You can
do it.

Alright. So Titan Workspace was created
based on our more than twodecades of, consulting on
SharePoint. Right? So I startedSharePoint consulting company,
as I said, in 2006, 2007 inIndia. And that time SharePoint
was a very early product WSS3,Moss 2000, you know, and then

(10:15):
2010 came in.
It's a whole lot of journey fromsince then. Right? So these
customers, they, they gave us acouple of ideas that if
SharePoint is so complex andevery customer must spend a lot
of money in terms ofcustomizations or trainings and
make it working, why not tobuild a product that simplifies

(10:36):
it so that at least the SMB's,which don't have those kind of
deep pockets, can leverage thatplatform very well. Right? So,
typically, if you look back in,you know, 2010 or 2006, 2008,
those kind of era, SharePointwas a luxury.
You know? A big guys would buyservers, data centers, and, you

(10:57):
know, SharePoint admins, and$1,000,000 worth of consulting
and all. And we knew that if youknow, when Office 365 came, we
knew that it is bundled witheven one single user now. Right?
So even if you have $2 worth ofan office you know, Microsoft,
you still have a SharePoint.

(11:17):
Right? So the opportunity wasintense. So we knew that SMB's
would have it, but it will bechallenging for them to unbox
SharePoint. Right? So that's howthe Titan Workspaces was
created.
And we focused mainly on 2areas. One was simplifying the
document management experience,and the other was automation of

(11:38):
your internal business processesusing SharePoint. So these are
the two core areas that wesimplified and, precisely the
way we thought, we are seeingthe results coming up exactly.
So we have customers which arenow leveraging our technology to
maximize the benefits ofMicrosoft 365. And that's that's

(11:58):
what we love doing.
In terms of our channel andpartners, you know, when you
create a product as an ISV,from, like, minimum viable
product, what we call MVP, youhave to go through a journey of
product market fit. Right? Whichis takes sometimes two years. In

(12:19):
our case, took about two and ahalf years, three years. What we
did when we were doing theproduct market fit, we continued
engaging our channel partners,showcasing Titan to them.
And we were we knew that theywill not be ready to sell it,
but we we continue to toshowcase our strength, our
vision to these partners that,Titan Workspace can solve a lot

(12:42):
of their problems. And over aperiod of time, the partner
community got nurtured. I mean,even they they were not selling
initially, but off late, we haveseen a lot of partners joined
our partner program, and that'show how we are growing now.

So tell us a little bit about it because it's
you know, being an ISV is a verydifferent business than just
doing the projects like we allstarted out in the IT space. So
what are the challenges that youfaced in trying to go global
with with the product and thethe the framework that you have
to build for your company tosupport customers in different

(13:22):
different countries and,different industries? Can you
talk a little bit about that?

Absolutely. So the first transition as a ISV
was see, in our case, wetransition from a services
company to a product company.Right? And that transition was
very hard because services, youyou get money regularly coming.
But when you're building aproduct, especially a SaaS
business, takes many, many yearsbefore you make that kind of a

(13:51):
run rate, you know, forsustaining the entire product
development sales of thecompany.
Right? So this transition wasvery hard, but we successfully,
kind of work on that. As far asexpansion to global, so, you
know, we knew that, till thetime the product market fit is
achieved, there's no point inexpanding to different

(14:15):
geographies. So what we did, weinitially focused on Asia and
India. That's where we were verystrong.
Right? And, we initiallyacquired almost more than 70, 80
clients here and make sure thatthe customers are happy. And we
understood how to sell, how toposition it, and, what's the

(14:38):
right price for the product.Right? So, that was the first
milestone that we achieved.
And after that, we expanded toUS. And when we when we entered
US, we kind of, we knew thatwhat is the right messaging,
what is the right you know, whatkind of features are in demand.
Of course, both geographies havedifferent, set of challenges.

(15:03):
Right? So India has a differentset of challenges when you're
selling, and US has differentset of challenges you're you're
selling.
Right? So but one thing wascommon that Microsoft operates
everywhere same. Right? So thatwas the consistency that we
could leverage. Their structureis same everywhere.
Right? So if you're an ISV, onecountry, you understand how to

(15:24):
operate in the other country. Ithink that's that's one good
part. So expanding to newterritory other than your home
home turf is always challenging.Building new customers, building
partners, That's not easy.
We, I would say that we arestill at a very early stage of
our product journey and thesales journey, even though we

(15:46):
are now almost touching almost 4years since we, from, from the
first, you know, minimum viableproduct to where we are today.
Right? So, but we we think thatanother one year we need to make
make sure that our partners aretotally aligned in different
geographies with us. Right? Sonow with with lot of, visibility

(16:09):
that is coming to us, we we areseeing some inbound partner
requests coming.
We are partners would like toknow more about the product and
that's how it is.

Oh, very good. So so one of the things I heard
in in in your in yourexplanation there was that
you're still developing theselection criteria for choosing
the right partner, you know, soso you 2 can align and make sure
that you're delivering theproduct and the services that a
customer really needs. Did Ihear that correctly? Right.

Yes. Yes.

Very good. Well, that's very good in working with
partners, period, is that ischoosing the right partners and
and, going forward with them. Ordo you have any plans for
expanding into other geographiesanytime soon?

See, we are currently focused totally on US.
And, of course, India isgrowing. And now we have started
getting lots of customers fromMiddle East, though we don't
have any direct sales fromMiddle East. We don't have any
rep in Middle East.
In fact, couple of partnersapproached us in the last two

(17:17):
quarters and signed up thepartner program, and, we have
signed couple of customers withthem.

Anthony, I know you've got a few more questions.
You wanna go?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I, when you start talking
about, like, with, as youdeveloped out, you know, you had
your product MVP, and then youworked on your product in a
market fit. I'd actually like tounpack that a little bit if
that's okay, because Ithink, I know, it's not
necessarily part of the a P2Pstory, but I think our our
listeners will get tremendousvalue from you sharing, you

(17:48):
know, from your experience onthat. So you you hit on
something really key where yousaid it's important to achieve
product market fit first andthen expand. I'd like you maybe
to let's talk a little bit aboutthat process of, like, your
journey of how did you go aboutdetermining, product market fit,
and maybe, like, just some ofthe iterations. And and if you

(18:10):
don't maybe necessarily feelcomfortable maybe talking about
the specifics for TitanWorkspace, maybe we can, you
know, talk about the principles.So just kinda leave that up to
you.

Look. I'll share my journey as a product market
fit so that you know, and andcan give some tips to other
ISVs. Right?
Especially, so whether it'sTitan Workspace or any other
product, I think the journeymore or less is similar, right,
for every every founder. When wecreate an MVP, it's our belief

(18:41):
that we think there's a marketfor it. Right? And, when you go
to initial 3 or 4 customers,they are the initial customers
who will have some trust in you.
And we took a path where we wentto existing SharePoint services
customers. And so look, for thisuse case, you are paying us,

(19:02):
let's say, $20,000. How aboutthe same use case I have
developed as an MVP, and thatyou can pay us $2 per user per
month. And, you can try. If itdoesn't work, probably you can
switch to services.
Right? So these kind of smallbaby steps we took initially
with couple of clients. And wewere fortunate that we had a

(19:22):
footprint of existing SharePointcustomers where we could go, and
we understood them and that weleveraged those relationships to
to to, you know, take off.Interesting part starts now. You
acquire these clients, 5 or 6.
Right? So but you know that yourproduct is not complete. Okay?
It's not meeting end to endcycle of the operations of the,

(19:44):
you know, there are a lot ofcomponents to be fixed.
It could be buggy. You know? Itit it could have a lot of
challenges. But but you stillwork with those clients trying
to convince them to use that.Right?
Then you start getting thefeedback. And when you start
getting the feedback, yourealize that there's a long way
to go before you even scale up.Right? So the product market fit

(20:07):
in my understanding is completeonly when you sense that the
repeatable business sense hascome. So now you you have repeat
sales coming from some of theuse cases.
Right? So when you sellinitially, you are all over the
product. Right? You have and youfocus on a lot of areas that

(20:30):
just to understand, you know,which one would click to the
clients.
And that took us almost 18months to realize that out of 20
features that we thought werethe hero features, client would
need only 5 or 6. And that andthat journey is, I think, most
critical for a product marketfit. Right? So today, if I

(20:51):
compare my sales pitch, 3 yearsback, I was talking about 10
features when I opened my salespitch to a customer.
And today, I talk about 3features. That's that's a
transition that's happened.Right?

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

So it's not that other seven features are not
important in product, but Igenerally tell my customers,
look, these 3 are the the realones that you love. Rest 7,
you'll discover when you startusing it. You know?
And and that's the learning thatthat has come. So also product

(21:27):
market fit as a repeatablebusiness. Right? So how much
sales is have you come to apoint where you appoint a VP of
sales, and he can go and scaleit up? Right?
Because what we understood wasthat if the product has not
completed the product market fitand you tend to scale up your

(21:51):
sales, it will not work. And inat least in our case, it didn't
work. Right?

Mhmm.

So initial product market fit, I think, is
a very founder led sales, youknow, who understands product
vision, and then he tries to fixhis the gaps. And then with with
us now when we got about 70 plusclients, then we thought that
now we are ready to scale upsales team. So a lot of

(22:18):
companies I have a lot of ISVsto talk to, a lot of SaaS
founders in different countries,and a lot of mistakes they do is
they get 10 clients and thenthey scale up. Right? And
without understanding that itdoes not attain the repeatable
business model.
Right? Because the sales willcome to scale up. You know? In

(22:41):
in ISV business, the firsttwenty sales is done by founder
has to be done by founder.Nobody can can do that. Right?
So if you can't sell first,Anthony, nobody else is gonna do
that. Right?
So that's the learning, I mean,I hope that answers some of your
questions. Right?

No. That's great. What was what's really
intriguing, I gotta, you know,just because I know a lot of
your your business currently isyou have currently dozens of
partners, right, you know,globally. But you said for this,
your first twenty sales were,you know, by you as the founder.
So, was it was it once you gotto a place that you've you're

(23:21):
like, okay. It's it's repeatableby you, like, reselling, like,
direct, and then you opened itup to your partners to then sell
it? Is that how is that how thatwork?

Yes. I think, this is another learning we
would like to share. Forpartnerships, you have two2 kind
of opportunity. One is services.So services are project based.
Right? The partner would getsome opportunity and he'll work
with you, scope and deliver itand finish. Right? So typically
that's a business model. Butwhen it comes to an ISV

(23:54):
partnership, ISV partnershipmeans the solution sales for a
particular use case, right,which is which may or may not be
very well defined and understoodby customer.
The challenge with this model isthat partners can bring you an
opportunity, but they cannotsell initially. And as an ISV,

(24:16):
it's very difficult for us totrain initially the sales team
of partners as good as we we do.Right? That means the role of
partner is merely to bring us alead. And then we we nurture
that lead.
We work with that partner insolutioning. We do the pilot. We

(24:39):
do everything. We doimplementation. So in our case,
what has worked is, we neverburdened our partners with any
sort of services or anythingother than just the client
management.
So our partners don't invest intechnical. They don't invest in
presales. They don't invest inafter sales support. All they do

(24:59):
is they have understood theproduct, how to bundle it with
Microsoft 365, what kind ofsolution it is, and what kind of
customers do we need, what's ourtarget audience market. Right?
So we operate typically betweena customer, you know, which has
100 users to about 700 users.That's where our sweet spot is.

(25:20):
So a lot of our partners, wetell initially that, you know,
these are the kind of customers,industries, and the use cases
that you should hunt. And if youfind one, bring it to us, and
then we'll take it forward withthe with the cost, you know,
partner.
So partnered program is anotherimportant area here that we have
a very structured partnerprogram for product. It has full

(25:41):
description of what the programis, different level of
partnerships, what are thepartner commitments, what is it
that we can do, what is it thepartner is supposed to do. And
that's very clear, clearly,defined document, right, with
very clear margins, how muchsales and how much margins. And
also that's also another aspectof ISVs that they should build,

(26:03):
a a detailed partner programthat can help them to at least,
align the partner expectationsvery well with your sales GTL.

Mhmm. So even with, you know, I mean, the
experience that you have, thethe framework that you've
shared, and the just kind of thedetailed partner program. So you
have all these things in place.Do you ever have any challenges
during the actual engagements?And, you know, if so, like, what
were they? How did you, youknow, work together with your

(26:34):
partner to overcome thosechallenges?

Challenges are there, because partner is
exposing his clients to us.Partner has already sold
Microsoft 365 to a customer.Customer is very happy with the
partner, right, for whateverthey are doing. Now Titan
Workspace comes into picture andpartner introduces us. Right?

(26:59):
So we have to make sure that thepartner's reputation with the
client is at stake And the trustbetween us and the partner has
to be utmost in terms oftransparencies and support. We
work with two type of we comeacross two type of partners when
we go to market. One, those aremodern work services partners,

(27:19):
and they understand how theconsulting works and how, you
know, solutioning would work andtypical nuances of the project
management and things like that.Right? The second set of
partners are pure CSP's.
So they are just sellingMicrosoft licenses, and they
don't have any projectmanagement practices or Modern
Works, you know, consultingpractices. But they have tons of

(27:42):
clients which need solutionslike us. Right? So our approach
of working with both these typeof partners is different because
the partner which is, you know,which which has a knowledge of
project management, consulting,and he has a model of practice,
he understands how the projectsare executed and, you know, how

(28:02):
the customer management and theclient expectations are met.
But the partner, which has notso deep experience in execution
and consulting, sometimes getfrustrated because, you know,
when the product gets installedand, you know, customer
expectations see, you are aproduct company, so you have to

(28:25):
operate within a framework of atechnology. Customers keep
asking us tons of new features.So we can't build every feature
for every client. Okay? Soproduct has a road map.
Right? Next quarter, twoquarters down the line, what is
coming. Though we can commit toour customers that, okay, today
we don't have it, but a quarterlater, we'll deliver it. But

(28:45):
sometimes partners will push us.Right?
That he wants this to be now.Right? So these kind of things,
they do come. But I would saythat, we need to fill in the
gaps. Sometimes we workaggressively to fill the gaps on
presales, right, in anengagement.
Sometimes the gap is filled onclient expectations, setting up

(29:11):
the right client expectations,and also educating our partner
what is the right way toproceed. Sometimes we fill the
gap in terms of projectmanagement, seeing that the
partner doesn't have anybodywho's competent enough to do the
project management role. Youknow? So we take over that role.
So I think there are a lot offailure.
There's no one single answer toyour question, but I think that

(29:34):
every partner is different.Scale is different. Right? And,
also, their teams are different.So we kind of, we are still
learning.
I would say it I wouldn't saythat we have mastered anything
of that, even though today weare working globally with about
30 plus resellers, out of which10 are from IAMCP community in

(30:00):
different countries. It's a mixof CSP's, MSP's, and
distributors. I hope thatanswers some of your questions
that you tried to ask me. Right?

Oh, no. That was that was great, especially
just sharing on the on theexperiential side. And I know,
Rudy's got some questions foryou, like on some of the metrics
side.

Yeah. So, you know, one of one of the
interesting things about workingthrough partners is, you know,
not only you're you're workingwith a productivity tool, you
know, and that's one with TitanWorkspace. You've got a, by the
way, I have seen the product inaction, so I will full
disclosure there. So I was veryimpressed with the with the
technical capabilities of theproduct. But one of the things

(30:42):
that, when you're when you'reselling productivity tools is
customers always ask for what'sthe return on my investment?
And the partner side is alsolooking for that return on
investment too, because that'sgonna drive customer
satisfaction as well as revenue.So do you do an ROI analysis
with your customers for eachimplementation, or can you tell

(31:05):
us a little bit about how howyou, approach that particular,
question that partners andcustomers have?

Yeah. It's a great question. Right? And this
is a very, very valid, topic ofdiscussion. Right?
The ROI. Look, when we approacha partner, we realize that
partner is already doingsomething. He has a business
running, and he's making money.Right?
He may not need us. Right? Yeah.And Titan could be very new to

(31:37):
him. So the first question comesis, what is my ROI?
You know, that's the first stepwe have to overcome that how
much, you know, time is neededvis-a-vis what kind of a return
the partner is going to get ifhe invest that that kind of
time. Right? So, so we we kindof answer that in multiple ways.

(31:59):
Generally, I don't approach itwith money. Money will come.
Right? I tell my partners, look.You have 100 Microsoft 365
customers. Right? And you havesold them tons and tons of
licenses.
So every year, you go back to aclient and the client questions

(32:23):
the adoption. And at that time,your renewal is vulnerable.
Right? Client can switch to, youknow, some other CSP if you're
not adding value. You forgetabout the price.
So if Titan can deliver some ofthat, you know, use cases and
help in adoption, that meansfrom a mere commodity reseller,

(32:47):
you would graduate to a valueadded solution reseller. Right?
And that stickiness is going tohelp you a lot in retaining your
customer to whom you can upsellcross sell some other products.
In this process, you will makesome money on Titan as well
because we have very highmargins that we pay to our

(33:10):
partners, and that's recurringthroughout the life of the
client. So that's a bigger ROIfor a client, you know, partner.
So I think my conversations arenever focused on how much money
they are going to make. Myconversations are always focused
on what is it that the TitanWorkspace can add value to
partner's business in terms ofcreating a long lasting client

(33:33):
relationships, making sure thatthe client sees that partner as
a value valuable partner to themrather than just supplying the
licenses. And I think that'swhere we drive our GTM with our
partners. Right? So this is howmy based on my learning and how
I communicate to them. Right?

I understand. I've been a Microsoft partner
for over 30 years. And so one ofthe things you learn in working
with and through partners is howto build the trust relationship
and understand each partner'svalue proposition. So I think
you explained that very well andespecially from an ISV
standpoint, because, again,everybody's looking for what is

(34:14):
my value proposition and howdoes that how do I make it work
for me?
So I thought you explained thatvery well. But in closing, what
advice would you give to otherISVs, to build and grow
partnerships like the onesyou've done, that where, again,
you're going to be successful.You're you have returning

(34:34):
business, and you're seeing thegrowth of your company as as
well.

For any product company. So I would not use the
word ISV here. I can use theword a product company or a SaaS
company, you know, be itMicrosoft or not. So that's what
I've, see, when you are tryingto build a partner channel, the
scale when you're small, let'ssay, if you are at very early

(35:03):
stage of your product journey,Partners should be nurtured only
to a point where you educatethem what the product can do.
Don't expect them to sell.
I never expected that the first30 sales, anything would come
from partner. Even though, youknow, we got some clicks
initially with, you know,business came from partners. But

(35:25):
we never focused on chasingpartners to sell. We always
continued to educate ourpartners. So IAMCP was one such
great platform where whereverthe IAMCP meeting would happen,
I would, you know, take anopportunity sometimes as a paid

(35:46):
sponsor or something just to goand showcase what Titan
Workspace can do withoutexpecting that any partner would
give me a lead or, you know, anopportunity tomorrow.
Right? And then we created apartner information system
through different channels wherewe are educating our partners
about something new comingright. Over a period of time, we

(36:07):
have seen that partners haveunderstood that this is
consistently growing and he isseeing lot of new logos coming
from our announcements. Andsomething that has now started
working is that some partnerswhich initially thought that
they may or may not sell Titan,but now when they're seeing

(36:30):
that, recently Titan hasacquired some of their clients
directly. You know?
That's kind of a momentum thatwill now now is more trustworthy
moment because their own clientis happy and there's a product
that they think that they canadd value. So now this is a time

(36:51):
so it's a slow journey. Right?So the mistake I did initially
also was with 10 customers, weexpand try to expand the partner
network. And we burned a lot ofmoney, to be honest.
But, the the ROI was absolutelynothing. Partners like the
product, but since the productmarket fit wasn't completed,

(37:12):
their effort and our effort wentwaste. And that's a mistake. And
and then we totally stopped it.And then we said, we'll go back
to partner community once wehave a repeatable business, and
we understand how to sell andhow to communicate to client.
And that took us almost 50clients' logos to get to that
point where I can confidentlysay that now we are we have some

(37:34):
sense of a repeatable business.We have also know that what kind
of a partner. So today, everymonth I get about five or six
partner requests that they areinterested. Out of these five or
six, I actually politely tellthese partners that we are not
yet ready for you. So it is notthat they are they want to work

(37:55):
with us, which is great, but wethink that, we need some more
time to be able to do some moreconfidence building with the
existing partners before weexpand.
So that's my my learning and myadvice to other ISV's that, it's
a partnership is a slow game.Right? And, generally, we have

(38:18):
seen that partners will jump ona moving train. They will not
help you to kick start thetrain. Okay?
That's a summary. Right?

That's funny.
Oh, wow. Rudy, can I jump inwith a piggyback question on
that?

Go ahead.

You've mentioned a few there are
several times in our time aboutthe slow journey, which I really
appreciate. But how do you youknow, as, you know, as as you're
developing, you know, yourproduct, you're the CEO and
founder, you're trying to takethis to market, how do you
balance that, like, when you'redoing all along this journey

(38:59):
that, like, the trigger betweenwhen to pivot versus, you know,
just to continue to perseverethrough it, to get to that place
of, where of of confidence ofknowing.
Does that does that make sense,that question?

Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is. So that I think this
this is precisely what'shappening these days.
I'm we are seeing some pivots,right, coming. We are seeing
some partner models established.Right? We have partners which
are doing repeat sales, right,on their own.

(39:34):
Okay? So that's a sign where wewould say that our association
with the product journey and thego to market with partner has
some reached to a point where wecan take a call very shortly,
when to pivot and, when to scaleup with full throttle. Right? So

(39:59):
so that's we are at that.
But it took a a lot of time toto get to this point. Right?

You know, Ashish, one of the things I
really appreciate about the lastcouple of questions and to
answer is the measured approachthat you take, is so contrary to
to what we see in Americanculture, which is sales have to
go up a 100 percent everyquarter and the challenges that

(40:28):
you face there. So I reallyappreciate your measured
approach because that willguarantee your success over a
period of time, of course. Butit's a very refreshing approach,
and I really appreciate that.And I wanted to tell you that,
you know, having been in thismarket for a long time, we we
all set our goals, but a lot oftimes we don't understand how

(40:50):
much work goes into intoachieving those goals. So I
really appreciate your measuredapproach.

See, if you look at the industry, you know, it's
in the SaaS business, it isalways said that, its hardest
part is the first million. Youknow? That's the most hard part.
And 99% SaaS companies don'teven reach up to that point and

(41:17):
they shut down.
Right? As you said that in theUS, it's always about scale up,
100% growth, 200%. It's not inUS. It's everywhere. Right?
So expectations of everybody isthat our growth should be super.
But I would say that SaaS andthat's my advice to partners
that if you get into a SaaS, ifyou build a product which is
SaaS offered, it has acompounding effect. So if your

(41:41):
customer retention is good, thatmeans in couple of years due to
compounding, your sales willgrow 200%, 300%, 400%. And
that's that's beauty of theSaaS. You know?
It's only the 1st, three to fouryears when you are still early
and product market fit and thosekind of things, which kind of

(42:04):
don't make any sense from thevery high expectation VC kind of
environment. Right? But over aperiod of time, everything
would, get to that point, Iguess.

Well, definitely wanna wanna thank you so very
much for for your insightstoday.

Yeah. Ashish, this was fantastic. Thank you, I
mean, for sharing, you know,about, you know, your
partnership story, some of theand but also just a lot of the
real great business advice,just, you know, the importance
of, you know, a measured, youknow, approach, and and then,
you know, I love, you know, youknow, obviously being as a as a
marketer, you know, just theemphasis on the the steps you

(42:47):
took for the product market fit.So that was that was great.
Thank you so much for your time.
Let me ask you this just, youknow, last question is how, how
can people find out and, findout about you and connect with
you?

Ashish Kamotra: Titanworkspace.com is our (43:00):
undefined
website. They can reach out tome at, my email ID, which is
ashish@titan4work.com So you canreach out to me anytime. I'm
available on LinkedIn. AshishKamotra is my LinkedIn profile.
So you can find me, easily. I'mhappy to connect partners and

(43:24):
happy to share my advice withany product centric founder or
partner, who is in the journey,and I'd love to be part of the
community to help that.

Excellent. Excellent. And for those that
are listening, we'll have, youknow, all three of those links,
in the show notes, you know,below. Ashish, once again, thank
you so much. Enjoy the rest ofyour day.

Yep. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Rudy. It was
a pleasure talking to you guys,and, we all love IAMCP. Right?
Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Wow. That was a great episode. I really
appreciate Ashish just forsharing, not only just some
aspects of, you know, the goodpractices and principles in
partnering, but a lot of greatbusiness advice and the
perspective that he brought. Iknow in particular, I really
appreciated when he was talkingabout evaluating partner ROI and

(44:21):
just the importance of he said,"No. No. I wanna focus the
conversation not on the money,but on the value added that
helps partners create long termrelationships with their
clients." I just I thought thatwas really an excellent point,
and I really appreciated that.How about you, Rudy? What what
really stood out to you?

Well, you know, I really appreciated, Ashish's
measured approach to just, onein developing his channel,
helping partners, educatingpartners to understand the value
of the product and how toposition it better and
demonstrate the overall value ofthe SaaS product that they have

(45:03):
in which we really didn't jumpinto too much. But but having
seen and and evaluated theirproduct, it helps partners
implement a much stickierSharePoint implementation, for
their customers. And that hismeasured approach was it took
him a while to learn what themarket fit was going to be for

(45:26):
his product. Like he said, thethe owner has to sell the first
20 copies, you know, first 20products to really understand.
And then that helped him thenbuild a value proposition that
partners could understandbecause there's there has to be
an ROI to the partner, an ROI tothe customer.

(45:47):
And he's not, you know, as, Ithink you've heard me say this
this term amongst of ourselves,Anthony. He's not a world beater
about, you know, having to growa 100% every quarter. It's about
let's make sure that this isdone effectively and done right.
And the money will come over aperiod of time. And I really

(46:09):
appreciated that that, thatmeasured approach because having
been in the ISV space early onin my career, you know, ours was
always go sell, sell, sell, andwe'll fix we'll fix it later.
And that doesn't always work.

Mhmm. Mhmm. No. That was really good point. I
mean, just to even piggyback onwhat you were sharing, that that
point about the product marketfit where you said, look, you
got to achieve product marketfit first, then look to expand.
And just, you know, for ouraudience, just the 5 areas,
because we asked myself, can yougive us some tips, on how you
would recommend other ISVs andproduct developers to do that?

(46:47):
I'll just share this herebecause I thought that was so on
point. You know, have get thoseinitial customers and and to the
point you brought up just howthe what was the first twenty or
so, you know, by the founder,you know, is leading that sales
effort. But then, you know, topiggyback on that, he's you
know, he mentioned take the babysteps. Right?
You know, and and leverage with,you know, your existing

(47:10):
relationships. He emphasizednumber 3, just the importance of
getting good feedback and theniterating on that feedback
according to your product roadmap. Number 4, it's not complete
until you have a repeatablebusiness and how he mentioned
just the importance of beingable to sell it over and over
and over again. Not 5 times, not6 times, not 10 times, but

(47:31):
getting, you know I mean, hesaid the first twenty, you know,
by the founder. In the storythough, he said, look, we didn't
get we didn't start expandinguntil, you know, we got to 70,
and then, you know, we look toscale it.
And then last but not least,just the importance of refining
the pitch. And I thought it wasfunny, and I know you and I can
appreciate this because, youknow, being, you know, as a

(47:52):
marketing agency, everybodywants to give you their, you
know, 5 to 10 reasons whythat's, you know, they should
buy, you know, their solution.But he said, no, no. We had to
get ours down to when I wasn'tcommunicating, you know, the 6,
quote, unquote, main benefits,but I got it down to 2 to 3.
And I really appreciated that,especially because I know some
of the challenges we, you know,we work with, you know, in

(48:14):
helping, you know, ourcustomers. So I thought that was
really, really solid.

Yeah. Very much so. I really enjoyed enjoyed it,
and and I hope, our audience,enjoys the ISV or SaaS approach
to this interview because it's adifferent market than some of
the other services that thatwe've talked about in our other
podcast. I wanna thank everyonefor joining us today, for this

(48:40):
podcast, in this episode of,IAMCP profiles in partnership
powered by Dunamis Marketing. Wehope you enjoyed this podcast
and find it useful andinspiring.
If you did, please subscribe,rate, and review us on your
favorite podcast platform. Oneof the best ways to partner for
success is to join IAMCP, acommunity of Microsoft partners

(49:02):
who helps each other grow andthrive. IAMCP members can find
and connect with the otherpartners locally and globally
and access exclusive resourcesand opportunities. Whether
you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. To learn
more, visit the website atwww.iamcp.org.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Building a Strong Partner Ecosystem: Lessons from Ashish Kamotra from Titan Workspace

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

All Episodes

Building a Strong Partner Ecosystem: Lessons from Ashish Kamotra from Titan Workspace

Stuff You Should Know